How well do you fish for referrals?

Author: Matt Anderson

 1. Stop being so vague.

One of the things that amazes me when I work with people on getting more referrals is how often I find people telling me that they don’t know who they want that specific client to introduce them to. This is step 3 in my 6 step process. It’s the most important step. I tend to hear vague responses like ‘oh, other business owners they know’ or ‘some of their friends or neighbors – maybe some family members’. (This is, by the way, one more reason to have a target market)

The reason I’m so surprised is that we’re talking about their next possible piece of business.  It doesn’t work to say ‘if you can think of someone else I should talk to, please have them give me a call’. It doesn’t work to say ‘who else do you know that I should be talking to?’ You’ve got to be more specific.

Your job is to narrow down your referral request to 2-3 people. Your clients are crazy busy just like everyone else. They also think about themselves 95% of the time. The odds of them spending time figuring out who among the 200 plus people they know that they should introduce you to are very slim.

It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to identify specific people you’d like to be referred to. Only a few raving fans will do it for you.

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