The Power of Referrals in Generating Qualified Leads with Catherine Brown

Wesleyne (: 00:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Transforms Sales Podcast. Today I am so delighted to have Catherine Brown with me. How are you Catherine?

Catherine Brown (: 00:10

I'm so good, thank you for having me.

Wesleyne (: 00:12

Let me tell you guys a bit about Katherine. She's on a mission to help other people get more business. She serves as a president of the National Business Development Network and is the founder of a B2B referral network called the Good Humans Growth Network. She serves others as an entrepreneur, community facilitator, sales professional, and an author. In 2021, Katherine wrote the book, How Good Humans Sell, The Proven Path to B2B Sales Success, in which she combines best practices for sales and psychology principles.

She lives in Houston with her family and enjoys reading, planning her next globe -trotting adventure and hosting dinner parties. Catherine, how did you get started in your career and how did you get to where you are today?

Catherine Brown (: 00:55

Thank you, Wesleyan. Well, it's funny when you think about the arc because now I'm about 30 years out of college and the arc that you see over and over again is connecting with people as a recruiter than as a salesperson, et cetera. So my first couple of jobs out of college were as a technical recruiter and that was where I first learned about the power of referrals because I blew my commission.

you know, quota out of the water because I started to get to know people really well when I hired them. And then I would say, who else do you know, should I talk to? I would do that referral asking thing, which we all know we're supposed to do, but frankly, we forget. And even after all these years, sometimes I forget, but I got in this good rhythm. And so then they would be sending me highly qualified people who were, who were ready to make a change. So they had already done a lot of that qualifying for me and I brought that to sales. So I sold consulting services for a while.

I had a long stretch where I ran a cold calling company because people don't like to do that work and they'll pay other people to do it. So I did that for about 15 years. That taught me sales training. And then eventually, a couple of years ago, I started to realize that a common theme of all of this was the referrals and looking for long ways to have relationships with people over and over and over again. And when you find out what's important to them,

You learn about your client, you find out their goals, you can make introductions that help them get where they're going. And that's what led to the founding of the Good Humans Growth Network, which is kind of atypical networking group. People participate in different kinds of networking groups. What I've learned selling services over the years is that you want to be with people who sell to similar clients as you. And you want to be with a group of people who really want to invest in learning how to describe what everyone sells.

So I started that a couple of years ago and that's kind of brought me full circle because now I'm back to recruiting because I'm looking for group leaders and I fill groups and it's just a funny full circle sort of thing which I think happens in our life,

Wesleyne (: 02:58

I love that, that full circle moment. And so I want to kind of go back to the beginning because as a technical recruiter, I'm imagining that you talk to a lot of people. And so in your time as a recruiter, what were some of those lessons that you learned that you still apply

Catherine Brown (: 03:17

Well, thank you for that, Wesley. I think that one of the things that served me best was that you have to remember that in the mid 90s and the late 90s, the internet was really getting up and going. I remember the first firm that I worked with that decided to throw up a webpage. And I remember the partners looking at each other and saying, isn't this basically just a billboard? Like, isn't this just online advertising? And at the time, that's what it was, right? And people said, yeah, but you still need one.

And so you couldn't even find candidates that way. We would put ads in paper. We would have, advertising trade journals. And then eventually when the firms developed a website, we would post the jobs on the site. But most of my job was cold calling. And so the reason that's meaningful is because you have to learn to manage yourself when you feel scared. And that's the thing that I think you and I see, I know you work with

so much as well. And what we see and one of the reasons people are so reluctant, I think, to embrace an identity as a business development professional or as an owner who also sells, the reason they push that away is fear. And so to learn to control your mindset, to learn to reframe when someone is or isn't interested in you, it's that self -mastery about the disciplines required to do the work that has served me over and over again.

regardless of what I'm recruiting for. Now we have all these other tools that help you bring more qualified people to you. But whenever I have to initiate with someone from scratch or I feel scared I have to take a risk, I can call back on that work of don't make it personal. This is not about you. Don't make up a story. All those things we have to say to coach ourselves to keep going because otherwise you just want to quit.

Wesleyne (: 05:10

And you know, the thing that you said that's so impactful, it's we don't really realize when we are, you know, 10, 15, 20 years down our career journey, the early lessons that we learned and the very first jobs that we held that were a professional job, like for me, I was a chemist. And so I was asking questions all day, every day. Like, I'm like, why are we doing this? What is broken? Why do you need this? Like I was the why person. And that is literally what I do now and what I love doing. And so the fact that you started as a technical

and you're like, this is pretty much just cold calling. And then you had a firm for 15 years doing cold calling. I'm guessing that was probably when cold calling was pretty still accepted, I would say. It was a pretty new thing and it was still accepted. So almost two decades of having a cold calling firm. Why did you step into that after recruiting?

Catherine Brown (: 06:01

Well, necessity is the mother of invention, right? That's the expression. So what happened is at the time, my husband had taken a position with the University of Oklahoma. We lived in Norman, Oklahoma. And up until that time, I had all these different positions where I lived in bigger cities and it was easier to travel from there. But I needed to make money. I needed we needed some supplemental income. And I wanted to keep my toe in the water, even while my kids were really young, because I wasn't sure what I want to come back to professionally. But I thought it'd probably be something sales related.

So at first I was the caller, then I was the project manager and I hired callers, then I was the seller of the project and I hired callers and project managers, right? Just grew, grew, grew, grew, grew up to a point where I had about 25 contractors and I got up to just under $1 million in revenue at its peak. And I share that just to say, it started out with me by myself, you and I just grew, grew, grew, grew, grew and looked for talent. You learned a lot of lessons along those ways and...

I also think that because we were willing to do something a lot of people are scared to do. They were glad to pay for people to do it for them. And like you said, we just didn't have video. didn't have funnels. You didn't have content marketing in the way that you can now it's expected. Right. This is something I know we're to talk about the conference that's coming up, but one of the things I think even the last couple of years that's happened with B2B buyers.

is that they expect to do so much of their own research about you before you ever get on a call. But that wasn't true back then. So you had to be prepared to answer any question and to earn the right to stay on the phone with them so that you could talk about the offer from scratch because it wasn't as easy to learn about people's products and services as buyers expect it to be now. And so it was really necessary that someone did that calling. And so

taught me so many life lessons, so many business lessons, employed tons and tons, especially women, tons of women for a decade and a half who were also looking for professional opportunities and wanted to keep their skills fresh. And so it was just such a blessing. Ultimately, cold calling firms are kind of like temp agencies. They're very staffing intensive. They're very people intensive and they're hard business models. So I eventually decided I didn't want to do that forever.

Catherine Brown (: 08:25

But I served a couple hundred companies, which also meant Wesleyan that we called into every industry. I mean, I know a ridiculous amount, like this much, you know, not deep, right? But I know this much about most industries because we represented a product or service calling into a C level executive. And I had to, he had to become proficient enough to earn trust to set the next sales call. So it was like a little mini MBA.

to serve all those and have to learn all the things you did in the process. was awesome.

Wesleyne (: 08:58

And so one of the things that you mentioned that I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't understand is you literally like, I did every job in this business and then I hired somebody, right? A lot of times entrepreneurs are like, I don't wanna do project management. I don't wanna do finance. I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna do that. I'm gonna hire someone. And then a couple months down the road, they're like, this didn't work so well. So how were you able to really kind of like bootstrap?

learn how to do the job and then train people how to do the job that you've previously

Catherine Brown (: 09:32

Yes. Well, I think again, it was partly about desperation. Like I had to bootstrap. actually borrowed. I needed a little bit of cash because as soon as I started hiring contractors to do anything else for me, sometimes I paid them before I got paid. And so I actually borrowed against, we had a life insurance policy and I borrowed against my life insurance policy just to get a little bit of cash because I didn't have enough.

equity, I was in my late twenties, right? I didn't have enough equity. I didn't have really anything to put on the line and I didn't have any business history to get a line of credit. So I made my own line of credit. Then I paid it back. I eventually hired an accountant who helped me do all of that legally so that it looked like the corporation, which it was an S -corp, right? But the corporation borrowed the money from me. Then I paid it back. But I had to figure out every one of those steps because I had to make a little bit of money. I needed the job and I didn't even...

didn't know what I know now about bringing on a silent partner or access to capital. I don't even think it occurred to me to go talk to the SBA. So I just had to do the jobs because I didn't have the resources to pay anybody else. And it was really later, I confess that I realized, it was good to actually have to write the standard operating procedure for that thing and learn it. I just, I had to. And actually even before I told the story, I misspoke.

Even before I hired anyone else to do the calling, the first thing I did was hire a very basic bookkeeper because as soon as I messed up my own books and wasn't ready for tax time as a sole proprietor at that point, I was like, okay, I can never do that again. So actually paying for bookkeeping was the first thing I got help with.

Wesleyne (: 11:12

That and I will say that is one of the things that a lot of business owners, they're like, no, can't, nope. That was literally the first outsource position that I had that I hired after I think I got an assistant or maybe even before I got an assistant because it's, can, so many people think that revenue is important. Yes, I will say revenue is king, queen, whatever you want to say. But if you don't know where the money is going, you don't know how profitable you are. You're like setting yourself up for failure.

Catherine Brown (: 11:38

or just even people talk about reconciling the credit card against the statements. And, and the minute you have more than one line of revenue, or you start receiving credit cards, you have different things you have to track and it just gets more complex. so if I know anyone that is a peer of mine now, even if they are singles, shingle, you know, sole proprietor, if they're doing their own books, even now, I'm like, you're crazy.

Wesleyne (: 12:04

Yes, you are. unless you have a background in finance or accounting, it's actually not the best use of your time. Like you could be doing so many other things in the business.

Catherine Brown (: 12:14

Exactly. Now, one thing I do think everyone should have to do, and I know you preach this Westland is you have to, you have to learn to sell because if you are the owner, let's say you create the software or you create the widget, you might be able to justify in your own mind, not learning. you say, well, I'm the inventor or I'm the chief product officer or I'm these different things. But the problem is that you can't even manage a team and understand if they're doing good work. If you haven't learned.

the foundations of selling. So what I would see for about nine years, when I had the coal calling firm, one of my clients was actually a seed funding organization. Okay. So what would happen is I got paid on retainer to help these early stage companies and that funding organization would pay for my firm to do a little bit of market validation and appointment setting for their portfolio companies. Okay. Well, that's where I started to see that pattern.

over and over is that early stage founders, especially the more technical the product was, the more they were inclined to say, the minute they got any money, any outside money, they'd want to hire someone to sell for them. And the problem is that especially when you're early on is you don't know for sure who your market is. You don't know for sure who your buyer is. And I now believe as a serial starter of things, I believe it takes

at least a couple of years to figure out even why people really buy because you need enough data that you realize, I thought they thought this part of the value was important, but actually they said the reason they bought was for this reason. You just need a lot of input before you can adjust your messaging accordingly. So the problem is if you use some of your money to hire someone,

too early to sell for you because you're reluctant to do that yourself and you don't want to learn those business development skills. What I saw happen is people kept blaming the seller, but it wasn't fair because we actually didn't know. it the message? Was it the market? Was it the price? Was it the person? Was it the person's mindset or did they not actually receive proper training? Like we don't know what the problem was. And people are so quick to rush to judgment because they're scared, because they're burning through their money and they tend to blame the person.

Catherine Brown (: 14:30

where that would not have happened had the owner developed a little bit more proficiency before they made that

Wesleyne (: 14:36

yeah, I completely agree with you and going back to when you started your company, I have a couple things that I like to tell entrepreneurs. One of them is you should know how to do everything in your business. Don't need to know how to do it well, but if you delegate or hire a bookkeeper, that's fine. Let them do the books, but you should be able to read them, right? It's the same thing with sales. You need to be able to sell so that you know what good looks like. And as a founder, as a business owner,

Sales should be the last thing that you take off of you. You can delegate the engineer. You can delegate the offer. Everything else, those are repeatable tasks that you can teach other people. But selling, because it's a little bit of art and it's a little bit of science. And you have that product knowledge. should know the product market fit. You have all that in your brain. And we know good salespeople are so hard to find.

Catherine Brown (: 15:18

Mm -hmm.

Catherine Brown (: 15:29

Get me? I know, they are.

Wesleyne (: 15:31

It's so hard to find a good salesperson. Whereas again, you can find a good engineer, right? You can find a good operations person, a good accountant, all those things, but good salespeople and they're expensive. need, I don't wanna get on a whole soapbox, but as you said, as small startup companies, being able to have the ability to sell is really, really key.

Catherine Brown (: 15:57

It is. It is.

Wesleyne (: 15:58

When you were transitioning from having your own company where you were doing cold calling for others into your next stage in life, tell me how did that transition happen?

Catherine Brown (: 16:08

Yeah, so I did develop some sales training material after the coal calling firm and that became my book, How Good Humans Sell. Eventually during COVID, I decided this is my chance to change my schedule and sit and write the book I've meant to write. So that's what I did during the pandemic. But what happened is after serving a couple hundred companies, which I really did over those 15 to 17 years, partly because of that relationship with that seed funding company, we did a lot with a lot of portfolio companies that we worked with over and over.

So some projects were long, some projects were short, but we worked with a couple hundred and I started to see the same patterns over and over. And that was really the basis, especially at the psychology part of what I like to talk about related to selling, because what you would see is, think about this, who hires a firm to prospect for them? You have to have a high enough ticket price, right, it's a sale price, and you probably have a fairly lengthy sales cycle because if those things weren't true,

you would be getting business a different way, right? So you ha it's going to be high touch, navigating an organization to figure out who a buyer is for something complex, probably pretty, pretty high price committee sale, something like that. So even when my team would mark in the client CRM that we met all these qualifications and had great meetings, what would happen is we would do the handoff to the salesperson and there would still be a lot of steps to

just simply by the nature of the fact that this was a six figure project, you had to buy software and services, whatever the product was, it tended to have a pretty long sales cycle. And the reason that's relevant is because the skill of the salesperson that we handed things over to had to be really high scale. And it often wasn't. And I finally learned that I couldn't believe people when we would be in my own sales cycle where they'd want us to cold call for them because they'd say,

k. We would book into Fortune: 1000

Wesleyne (: 18:23

No.

Catherine Brown (: 18:35

perfect because we worked and worked and worked and worked till we find the right person. So say a CIO of a huge company is ready to talk to your little firm about your consulting that you're going to do. And that CIO takes the second call. They take the call we set for you and they're very interested, but they want to bring in this director and they want to involve purchasing and they need to, they need a few more things as a next step. Well, the truth is you're still

Right? You're still further qualifying because there's influencers. There's still things that have to be done. And the, the, the sales person's skill in qualifying and their ability to manage themselves and to be persistent, to not make up a story. If someone misses a call to chase them back for that appointment, all of that would come in play and they would often drop the ball. And so the reason I made the transition to sales training is because I thought this is not about

knowing the right questions to ask when qualifying, although that's important. This is about something here. This is about something going on that the salesperson is not being persistent. Why are they giving up so soon? And that is a lot of the psychology that came up in the different ways I would do sales training, things that even talk about now. I mean, it came up Wesleyan even yesterday. I mean, I was talking to a potential sponsor.

for one of my events and this person has bought from me before. They've been a member of things I've done, they bought from me before. And I did a couple different messages saying, I think you might be a good sponsor, would you like to have a conversation about this? And I just didn't hear from them. Their out of office wasn't on, I didn't know they were on vacation. So not receiving a response is very common. And this person is a customer already, like they're not even new to me.

And I still have to have all those skills to do the self -talk and to stay in the right frame of mind to not make them wrong, to not be irritable, to not get scared, and to stay persistent to say, you're free to tell me if you want to do this or not. I've heard from you about this. Would you like to have a call? Finally, we get a call. It's amazing. We're talking again later this week about their custom package to probably get to buy a sponsorship. And I could have given up because I could have said,

Catherine Brown (: 20:58

Now, this person used to like me and they bought from me in the past, but now they're not getting back to me and so they must not be interested. When the truth is I didn't have any data that supported that. And so the battle was in my own

Wesleyne (: 21:02

Yeah, yeah.

Wesleyne (: 21:15

Yeah, that's so good. It's something that I often talk about. And I think that the battle in our mind, like we defeat ourselves before we even get started. Right. And so that stopping that failing before we even get started. And then we internalize all of the things that are happening out there in the world. And I like to always explain whenever I'm doing training, I'm like, I get lots of emails about things that are actually interesting to me. I'm just busy.

Like, don't email me, I am not the right person to email, right? So even understanding who within the organization do you even need to talk to, that internal champion that can say yes to a meeting that has the time to evaluate options and then bring the right person to the table, right? And I think that that is something when we're talking about the art and the science of sales, that science hasn't been taught.

Catherine Brown (: 21:46

Hahaha!

Wesleyne (: 22:07

So the art people are trying to employ is just a whole bunch of bad emails or spam or just all kind of wrong things. And then after a couple of touches, they just give up, right? And they say that this, well, let me move on to the next person. and then like you said, maybe they do book a meeting and they get on the meeting and they bomb the meeting. And they're like, that was a bad lead. That wasn't the right person. Let me find a different.

ideal client profile, right? And so it's really like that muscle motion that I think so many people don't really get because they don't have the basis of what they need to sell, to qualify, to negotiate, to close.

Catherine Brown (: 22:44

Yes. And Wesley and I would say too, that you forget that any skill you're going to have to practice. So you have to do the reps in whatever it is. Even the first time I looked at my own financial reports and someone explained it to me, I couldn't do it by myself the next time perfectly. I I needed help doing the reps to learn because it's a whole new vocabulary. It's a whole new set of skills.

And so I think part of that growth mindset, it isn't saying I'm just magically gonna somehow know and be able to manifest this. It's like, actually gonna get there through work. then you can make an educated decision about whether you are the right person to keep the whole sales process. You can imagine, I'm a real fan of using contractors. I mean, my firm was a contractor for years, so I don't believe an owner has to own.

You know, that the founder has to have founder led sales doesn't have to mean that you do every step of everything in marketing, business development, closing yourself. You could keep only a portion of it, but you don't want to those decisions until you've got some basic proficiency that comes from practice. So how will you know if it's good copy? How will you know if what they're saying makes more sense? How will you, how will you know if someone, you can't even train a cold calling team to represent you if you don't know what messages already landed with people. So.

Wesleyne (: 24:07

Yeah.

Catherine Brown (: 24:08

I'm a real fan of, I'm just a real fan of grit. I feel like if you will be scrappy and not give up, you can figure out most things. And I think that's why a lot of businesses don't make it. I mean, I think they like to think I don't have a good idea or there wasn't really a market for this, but I think a lot of times people run out of money or they run out of energy before they actually got to do enough practice to know the

Wesleyne (: 24:12

Mm -hmm.

Wesleyne (: 24:33

Absolutely. you know, I think that understanding which part of the sales process, which things in your business that you enjoy, I think is really, really important. And so for me as a sales training firm, we also have to build out processes and give people procedures. And I don't like doing that. That's not my superpower. I despise it. And before I had people that worked within my organization that could do that, I had to say no to a lot of business.

because I knew that I couldn't do it and I didn't have the capital to hire somebody to do it, right? And so a lot of times people are like, but I'm going to say yes and I'm going to do a crappy job and then I'm going to, you know what I mean? And I think that you have to have that onus as a business owner of what do I enjoy doing and where do my strengths lie and be very realistic and build out a plan that allows you to get from where you are to where you want

Catherine Brown (: 25:28

And may I add too, that I don't think a person just knows that. I think it comes from practice because it's just like playing an instrument. So I have two boys who are now men and because I was a music major in college, I thought I was gonna be a professional musician. I got to have so many travel opportunities, camp opportunities, doors open for college for me because of with scholarships, because of music. And so I wanted my kids to have basic proficiency.

And so even when I was dating my husband, I was in my early twenties and we were getting pretty serious. And I said, if we ever were to have children, I need you to know that I want them to take music lessons. This is really important to me because of the grit. And I said, what people do is they say, well, we're going to do the two years of obligatory piano. You know, we'll take piano lessons for a couple of years. And if you don't like it, you can stop. The problem is you're still terrible after two years. You're less terrible than you were after six months.

But I made the kids do four years. Said you can pick the instrument, but you must play for four years. And then you can decide. And you know what? After four years, they both kept going by their own volition because you don't stink anymore because you've practiced and done the reps. So I don't even think you can know what you'll like until you do the practice. Because again, you have to get enough experience that you can go, okay, I'm proficient, but I don't love this.

Wesleyne (: 26:43

again.

Catherine Brown (: 26:51

I used to have to set up CRMs as a part of the cold calling process and I was proficient, but I didn't love it. It's just a level of detail, but it's so important. was like, you have to have a CRM, it's so important. But I wasn't very good at setting it up. And as soon as I could train my project managers to do that, I was happy to have them take it over. But I could know if they would do a good job or not because I had done

Wesleyne (: 26:58

Yep, yep, same here. You gotta have it. Yeah.

Wesleyne (: 27:16

Yeah, absolutely. that the thing, using that example of your kids, I'm the same way, right? So my youngest, I mean, my oldest, he took piano, I think for like five or six years. He did it for a long time. And then he was like, yep, I don't wanna do this. Then he was like, let me try guitar. And that wasn't it. And now he's in high school and he's doing musical theater, right? So it wasn't exactly where he started.

But because he has that ear for music, he decided he wanted to do choir when he got to middle school. And so now he's confident enough to sing and to act and to try out for all of these things, right? And so that is not me. am not. And so the thing is I played piano a little bit. I never got really good at it. I'm not really a singer. I'm not really an actor. However, I didn't put my kids limitations on myself.

Catherine Brown (: 27:49

That's so cool. I didn't know that about you. That's cool.

Wesleyne (: 28:08

And I think also as a leader, we do that to our team. We put our limitations on the people that we hire. We only want people who have the same kind of skill set, who we resonate with, you know what I mean? And as business owners, we hurt ourselves by doing that. If we only hire people who are like us, who have the same skill set as us, it hinders our business and it really caps our growth because we never see a world outside of ourselves.

Catherine Brown (: 28:29

Yes.

Catherine Brown (: 28:37

I love that so much. learned that really fast. And when I started building this B2B ecosystem, because I thought a leader had to look a certain way and the first leaders I recruited to build groups, they literally had to be a recruiter. They had to build the group and then run it. And what was happening is I was missing the opportunity for people who were great facilitators, but mediocre recruiters. And so I realized the mediocre recruiting part can be addressed by systems. That's a place I can help. That's a way we could create some support. But if their group

If the referral group loves them and they're over prepared and clearly communicating their love for their members and they run a tight group, that's a leader too. And so I had the same thing, Wesleyan, it's like, why do I want to argue for my limitations? I'm going to have a smaller pool to draw from if I have these overly prescriptive requirements because I'm trying to make them be like me. What if there is another way to be successful?

Wesleyne (: 29:31

See

Catherine Brown (: 29:34

And I had to adjust my thinking and I had to adjust what it meant to be a leader quickly, or I couldn't grow because I couldn't find enough people who could do it the way I knew how to do it. And so I just think it's cool that no matter how old you are, no matter whether it's your first business or your 10th business, you're going to have these lessons that come up in the first couple of years that it's like, you better learn them and you better learn fast because that first two years is crazy.

Wesleyne (: 29:54

Yeah.

Catherine Brown (: 30:01

And then you start to get your standard operating procedures in place and you figure things out and you can be off to the races. But when I began again, I was right back there. Just like when I started my coal calling company, I had to learn these lessons. What does it mean to be a leader? Who do you need? What does this process need to look like? It's been fun. It's been fun.

Wesleyne (: 30:16

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

So you mentioned your B2B referral company. And I know when I met you, the thing that I knew when I met Catherine is she was passionate. She is so passionate about connecting people. Like, I don't know if you guys ever met somebody who was like that really passionate connector. I know probably a handful of them that is, I'm not that person. So when I see people like that, it's admirable to me because it's like, you see somebody, you meet somebody, you're

I know who I can connect you with. Let me make this connection and they get joy in it. It's like it lights them up inside. How did you get the idea to really plant this new business?

Catherine Brown (: 30:54

So much joy.

Catherine Brown (: 31:01

Hmm, Wesley, there's like two quick answers to that story. One is that because I'm a serial entrepreneur, I have paid to be in peer advisory and networking groups over the years. So over the years, like 20 years, I noticed, this female CEO peer advisory group runs this kind of agenda. And I like this part about it, but this part's missing. that I was a member of Vistage for several years. Vistage is really good at this, but you're not supposed to sell inside the

okay. Well, it's good at this, not as good at this. This networking group, people get to know each other, but somehow we're not becoming really good friends. What's happening there? okay. You you just, learn, right? So just learning, learning, learning, having been a buyer of similar types of services over the years, I've learned. And, and so I think that, that combined with noticing what was getting me leads in my sales training business, I realized,

Everyone wants more referrals, a well -qualified referral. So, Wesleyan, for you, that could be another sales trainer. It could be a management consultant. It could be a small business coach. It could be a marketing firm. When I was focused more on sales training exclusively, I was really saddling up next to some marketing firms because they precede me in what the owner, entrepreneur needed so they would know when there was a sales training lead. If they said, you should use my friend, Catherine,

there's a 50 to 90 % chance that I would close that work. 50 to 90%. And that stat, Vaseline has stayed true. I continue to poll all my members. And so what I'm saying is if someone who knows, likes and trusts you tells a buyer they should use you and makes the intro, there's a 50 to 90 % chance you'll close that work. And so for me, it was coming full circle in my love for recruiting and business development to realize

This is a business development strategy. What if you decide referrals are gonna be where you're gonna put most of your energy in building out that network? It's really the most qualified leads a person can get. And I say that with all love and respect for every other kind of marketing. And I'm on social and I have an email list and I have done, I'm gonna do one season. I haven't been as committed as you've been, but I had one season of a podcast. Like I love lots of other things.

Wesleyne (: 33:24

You've done all the

Catherine Brown (: 33:26

but nothing works like a referral. And so I was like, I'm going to give this a try. And I just took what I love from different things and build in the gaps of what I thought was missing and thought I'm going to go for it. so the second answer to that quickly is that I had a dream. Actually I a dream of the network and it wasn't, it was just like in my dream, I was, I can't remember who I was having a conversation with, but I woke up and I had this idea.

Wesleyne (: 33:34

Ahem.

Catherine Brown (: 33:56

What if you were to build this ecosystem that focused on these same people that you're selling sales training to? What would that look like? And I just started one group at a time, and then I put an umbrella over them, which is now called the Good Humans Growth Network. And what I tell people now is it's like a mall with stores. So in my intro, you mentioned National Business Development Association and the Good Humans Growth

NBDA is a store in the bigger mall. The mall has these different networking groups that all come together and NBDA is one of those and it happens to be where a lot of the business development training materials sit. But the ecosystem is made up of all those groups. So for example, when I do a couple conferences a year, all those groups are invited and it's like a family reunion.

where you come and you see your cousin who you only see on Zoom, but then you meet new people. And that's what it's turning into is I'm realizing my job is to gather people and do a good job creating the experiences so that they can go deeper on their relationships with the people who send them qualified opportunities. That's where I've been focused the last couple of years and I'm really having a good time.

Wesleyne (: 34:56

Yeah.

Wesleyne (: 35:02

Yeah.

Wesleyne (: 35:18

And as I said, you are really good at it and you're very, is definitely not easy to get people together from different walks of life, different places and get them to all come together. And the thing that you said about referrals, my longest standing client, literally I started working with them my first full year in business. I've been in business five and a half years and I'm still working with them, came from a referral.

I've met this person at, you know, just a networking event. We sat down, had a cup of coffee, said they need somebody that can do some sales leader development and I just do regular executives. And I've been working with them for four and a half years. So the power of a referral is like you said, it's not only do they convert hire, they also allow you to have a longer standing relationship because you don't have to do this two step tap dance in the first few months of the contract, right?

do I like them, do I not? It's just like you get the open door really immediately. So you have a conference.

Catherine Brown (: 36:19

And I haven't studied this, I haven't studied this, Wesleyan, but I would be interested. could think about how I could gather this information. think to probably those projects last longer and those relationships last longer, because I think that if you're sort of in this ecosystem of referrals, there's some reciprocity and there's like deeper relationship and trust that happens. And so that would be fun to study to see, do those intros that convert higher?

Do they also last longer with project after project after project? That would be very interesting to study, which I haven't done yet. I suspect it's true. That would be my hypothesis. But I would have to study

Wesleyne (: 37:00

definitely send say a study in an ebook coming out very in the next couple of months on that because again, it's like, you know, what is the conversion rate of a cold call or going to a general networking event and social media running as like all those conversions and then because a lot of people are just looking at, know, we're more I'd say that we're sales informed marketers. We think about how marketing impacts dollars, right? So most marketers or people who are looking at the top of the funnel, they're like, that first conversion

Catherine Brown (: 37:03

Hahaha

Catherine Brown (: 37:24

So true.

Wesleyne (: 37:30

I'm like, no, how does that actual lead that connection turn into revenue and how long, how much does it take me to service that client? How long do I have? Like all of those things are what are important for me when I think about how do I spend my marketing dollars? So I think that would be a really good ebook. Okay, okay, okay. I do want to talk about your first annual conference, which I will be speaking at. I am very excited about it. So tell us about the sell well.

Catherine Brown (: 37:38

That's right.

Catherine Brown (: 37:47

Okay, that'll be our plan down the

Catherine Brown (: 37:58

Yes. So this is the first year of what I plan to have be a recurring fall business development conference in Houston, Texas. It's national. gonna say about half our people that are registered so far live here, about half are flying in, which is just so flattering and delightful and wonderful. And again, remember across the group, you don't have to be a member of one of these networking groups to come. Anyone is invited to come. And I also create this for the service of the network. So people

Wesleyne (: 38:14

Amazing.

Catherine Brown (: 38:27

only see each other on Zoom, wanna be together in person, they're flying in to be together. So that's really, really, really cool. So it's one day. So this year, the time of us recording this, it's gonna be Friday, September 6th, 2024. And we're gonna be at the Norris Conference Center. It's gonna all day long, starting with a little bit of morning coffee and networking while you're registering, finishing with a happy hour on the backside from five to seven. So it's all day on a Friday.

And it's for two purposes. We have curated times for very thoughtful networking. There's gonna be about 100 people. And so you really can meet a lot of people in the room. Think about there's two tracks. So if you run a breakout, know, about half go to one, half go to the other. You can really meet a lot of people because this is not a thousand person event this first year. So intimate for entrepreneurs and business development professionals.

And I'm so excited, Wesley, and you have your talk. have several other people doing the solo talk, and then we also have some panels. And every single thing that's the theme that I would want your clients to know and your listeners to know is that every single person is thinking about this question of what has changed in the last several years for B2B buyers and how does my behavior need to be different? So because it's about business development, we're talking about top of funnel.

We're talking about what to do to get more qualified people on calls with you. And that kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about what do you do now versus the days of cold calling? I'm not saying no one ever can cold call anymore. I'm just saying we do know from outside sources that buyers do a lot of research before they get on a call with you. So are you making that easy? What can you do to make that easier? That's the kind of stuff we're talking about, as well as the psychology.

of being ready for those calls, managing yourself and being successful. So I think it's gonna be super fun. Hopefully it'll grow year over year over year. And my plan is to do it every fall here in Houston, because where you and I live is a big city. There's nothing like this that is just for B2B people. And so this is not about promoting Salesforce. This is not promoting HubSpot. Those are their own events. This is just B2B best practices.

Wesleyne (: 40:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Wesleyne (: 40:40

Yeah.

Catherine Brown (: 40:43

and you get to network with other people who do that. So I hope that your friends and clients will come because they'll get to hear you, but they'll also meet some awesome people.

Wesleyne (: 40:53

Yay, I'm so excited. When you told me about this, I was like, you're right. There is not a place where people who are interested in just getting some good B2B sales development and making connections can go that isn't sponsored by a large tech company. And so this is very different. And I'm so excited that I get to be a part of inaugural event. It's going to be a fantastic time. So as we wrap up, what

Catherine Brown (: 41:16

Thank you. Thank you for doing that.

Wesleyne (: 41:22

parting words would you like to leave with the audience?

Catherine Brown (: 41:26

I think that it doesn't matter if you're recruiting, it doesn't matter if you're calling someone who's not expecting to hear from you, it doesn't matter if you're reaching out to someone who did say contact me. Remember that you have the ability to frame things how you want, and I know something we have in common and what you'll be talking about at the conference is this idea of your mindset. And so you wanna check in with how you're feeling, you wanna notice if you're making up a story that's not true and say, what do I know is really true?

And most of the time the answer is this person likely will benefit from the conversation we're going to have. And so I'm going to keep going and not give up too early because in love, because I care about them and I know my persona, I know this will help them. I'm going keep going and let them decide for themselves. That self -management is required for all success that we want in our businesses and in every form.

of outreach and business development. And I wish I'd understood the power of that sooner. I feel like I did some of the skills, but I was still running scared. And I'm literally less scared now because I feel a little anxiety. I go, what is going on here? You know, and I can work through that process for myself. And I think others can too. And so I hope that people will make that commitment because it will, it'll improve their selling, which will improve their business, which improves their life.

Wesleyne (: 42:55

And Catherine, this has been a fantastic conversation. I'm going to make sure that I drop the link for the conference in the show notes. And what is the one best way that people can get in contact with you if they want to

Catherine Brown (: 43:07

LinkedIn, LinkedIn. There's lots of Katherine Browns with a C on LinkedIn. So if you type in Katherine, C -A -T -H -E -R -A -N -E, Katherine Brown, B2B referrals, if you type that in the top, I'll come up and that's how you'll decipher through all the Katherine Browns. So that's the best place.

Wesleyne (: 43:23

Ooh, such great, great for SEO. I love it, I love it, I love it. Awesome, well thank you, Catherine. This has been a fantastic time and I appreciate you setting aside time to shout with us about your expansive background, how you moved from recruiting all the way to doing B2B referrals. And I'm so excited for our conference in a couple

Catherine Brown (: 43:26

Thank you. Thank

Catherine Brown (: 43:49

Thank you so much. Appreciate

Wesleyne (: 43:51

And that was another episode of the Transform Sales Podcast. Don't forget, leave us a review, share this episode. Until next time.