Day 12: Referrals, Monetizing Your Connections

Make it as easy and as pleasant as possible for your clients to tell people you do good work.

Referrals are the most effective and most cost-effective way to find new business, and asking for them still feels awkward. Someone who arrives through a referral already trusts you before you have spoken.

Twelve ways to ask

1. Directly ask. Ask your clients by email, online or in person. It is not pushy if you have earned it.

2. Focus on your best clients. Rather than asking everyone, ask the people you already have a relationship with, those whose work complements yours, and those in your community. They can vouch for you.

3. Provide value. Read something a client would find useful? Published something relevant? Send it. It shows you had them in mind.

4. Start before the project is over. You do not have to wait until the end. If a client sends good feedback halfway through, thank them and mention that anyone else in their position is welcome to get in touch.

5. Get your contact details onto their phone. If clients do not have your number, do not expect referrals. Put it in your email signature and your profiles, and when you meet someone, text them so you each have the other's number.

6. Create referral materials. A card, a leaflet, an email template, anything with "referred by ______" on it. It makes passing you on a single action.

7. Add a recommend-a-friend option to your website. A short form or a personal referral link.

8. Referral fees and commission. Paying for referrals is common. If you do it, write down the terms, say them out loud to the person referring, and follow whatever rules apply to your licence and your state.

9. Follow up and stay in touch. Put reminders in your calendar to check in every few months and ask how people are doing.

10. Ask clients to follow your group. Give them something worth following first.

11. Join a referral networking group. Local business owners meeting regularly to swap referrals. It takes time but it is one of the better ways to get referrals without asking directly.

12. Build relationships both ways. Referrals are not only from clients. Partner with people whose work sits next to yours, send them work when it is not yours to take, and they will do the same.