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How To Get Quality Client Referrals

This article is more than 5 years old.

If half of your quality leads do not come from referrals, you are doing something wrong.

When people have a problem, what do they want? Well they have two problems. The first problem is the original problem, and the second problem is who to trust to help them find someone who can help them. So to find a trustworthy person they naturally ask their network for help.

I asked my network for a true master of networking, and they recommended Andy Lopata.

Lopata was called “one of Europe’s leading business networking strategists” by the Financial Times. A very experienced international speaker, he is the author of three books on networking. His fourth book, Just Ask, will be published in 2019.

Lopata an award-winning speaker, shared four of his best tips for obtaining quality referrals:

Think Strategically. “Move away from the complacent, clichéd thinking of assuming that referrals will come naturally if you do a good job,” says Lopata. “Instead create some focus around how you will generate referrals and track both your activity and the results. Referral activity almost always increases when there’s a strong focus and careful measurement of success.”

Know What Referrals You Want. “It’s quite astounding how vague many people are when asked what referrals they want,” says Lopata. “Anyone who needs our services’ is probably the most common response; well, that or a blank look. Anyone gets you no one. If you don’t know who you want to be introduced to, how can anyone else?”

Know Who Will Refer You. “While there will always be impromptu opportunities for anyone in your network to refer you, if you can identify a group of champions, people who will refer you on a regular basis, and both encourage and enable them to do so, you will see a flow of high quality new leads coming into your business,” said Lopata.

Make Sure Your Champions Want to Refer You. “Stand in the shoes of your champions,” advises Lopata. “What motivates them to refer you? The better you know them, the more accurately you can recognize why they would refer you. Don’t automatically assume that they will do so for financial gain, very often that’s the last factor that motivates people. And how easy would it be for them to refer you? Have you explained what you do and who you do it for in a way that they can understand, jargon-free?”

A final thought from Lopata. “Your job is to make it as easy as possible for others to refer you so paint a clear picture in their mind’s eye of someone they know. Be really specific about the referrals you want and people will find it easier to refer you.”