Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Linkedin as a business development tool for professionals (see 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals for my guide to the best ways to use it).

I’ll be doing quite a few more Linkedin posts in the upcoming weeks. Some of them will be further ideas on using Linkedin for business development. But some will be more news oriented.

The reason for that is I’ve been asked to blog about and comment on the upcoming Linkedin European Business Awards 2010.

As you may have seen in the press, Linkedin and Cisco WebEx are sponsoring these awards and are running a large poll over at www.linkedinbusinessawards.com to get votes for the Start Up, Leader, Business Innovation and Rising Star of the Year.

The judges for the Grand Prize are Pierre-Yves Gerbeau (of Millenium Dome rescue fame), Reid Hoffman (Executive Chairman of Linkedin) and James Campanini (Director of Cisco WebEx for EMEA and LATAM).

During the run-up to the awards, they’ll be holding a variety of discussion events and polls. As a blogging partner for the event I’ll be getting exclusive access to these and will also be able to pose questions to the judges. I’ll be posting the results up here.

The first thing I’ve got a sneak preview of is a poll they’ve been running on leadership.

I don’t claim to be a great expert on leadership, but I’ve run and analysed quite a few surveys in my time.

The basic question they asked was What do you think is the most important factor in Leadership?

The possible answers were:

• Character
• Knowledge
• Communication
• Vision
• Drive

Very surprisingly, despite the dominant stress on Vision, Drive and Character in the literature on Leadership, the overwhelming choice of the 608 respondents (so far) was Communication:

What do you think is the most important factor in Leadership?
Overall Results

Does this really mean that communication is the most important factor in leadership?

Not really – after all, a poll is only telling you the opinion of people – it’s not measuring which factor has the most impact in practice. But it does highlight something I believe is rather important.

In my experience, what polls like this actually measure is the most pressing related issue at the top of the minds of the participants right now. If you ask us what the most important factor in leadership is, or teamwork, or business development excellence; we never really give our objective, dispassionate view of the absolute importance of the factors. What we give is our view on what we are most missing out on right now.

In this case, the poll is highlighting that most participants see a problem with the level and quality of communication of their leaders (or they see it as their main challenge if they’re a leader themselves). It’s impossible for anyone to know for sure, objectively whether communication is more important than vision. But they answer with their gut feeling. And if currently they feel they’re not being communicated well enough with, then that’s what they’ll answer.

The results were pretty consistent across gender, and also across the different sizes of companies respondents worked for. With the exception that communication was (understandably) viewed as even more of an important factor in very large enterprises.

Results across job role were similar too – with the interesting discrepancies that engineers don’t seem to care about their leaders having character, IT people not seeming to care about them having a vision, and sales people not seeming to care if they had drive.

What do you think is the most important factor in Leadership?
By Job Function

Perhaps the most interesting result was the variety in responses across age groups:

What do you think is the most important factor in Leadership?
By Age Group

There’s a big difference between the scores of the different age groups here (discounting the 55+ group which is obviously a very small sample size).

It seems that as young people enter the workforce, they have a fairly balanced view of what is needed from leadership. However, those in their mid 20s to mid 30s are focused much more than anything else on the importance of communication with leadership (or the lack of it). Then those from 35 upwards are less concerned with communication and again have a more balanced perspective on leadership issues.

The results could be read 2 different ways.

On the one hand, you could interpret this as meaning that the 35+ group are more senior and closer to their firm’s leadership – and so are being communicated effectively with, whereas the younger cohort of up and coming staff aren’t.

On the other hand you could view it as a demographic shift. Those of us of a slightly older generation don’t expect so much communication and interaction with our leaders. But 20 somethings are used to being able to connect closely with their idols through the media or directly via twitter, and follow their exploits and outpourings on blogs, comment columns and gossip sheets. It could well be that this generation needs to be communicated with more, and in different ways.

I don’t have the answers to this, of course. But it’s interesting food for thought.

I’ll be doing another Linkedin post shortly with a quick hint on using status updates. And I may well have some news about another interesting poll that’s being run.

Disclosure: I’m not being paid or given anything to support this event. I’m a big user and fan of Linkedin, but I’ve never used WebEx at all so can’t comment on it’s effectiveness as a business tool (although I might give it a whirl sometime in the next few months)Similar Posts:

• Postscript to Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication
• How to Turn Old Contacts into New Clients
• Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication
• Forget Your Competition
• 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals

Linkedin News and Leadership Poll is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

Over on my (small but very friendly) Rainmaker Network Linkedin group we’ve been discussing using Linkedin for business development in professional services.

One idea I’d not heard before came from Julian Johnstone. He’s set up a group called Meet: Lawyers where lawyers who are travelling can set up “meetings for coffee” with other lawyers in the cities they’re visiting.

One of the best sources of referrals for many professionals is other professionals in the same field. This might either be in complementary or non-competing specialisms (a lawyer in a corporate practice referring to a divorce lawyer in a family law practice for example) or even from direct competitors (a divorce lawyer recommending a “competitor” as they clearly can’t represent both sides in a case).

Sometimes professionals are asked to recommend people in other locations – and small firms are at a disadvantage here as they often don’t have good contacts outside the town they practice in.

The Meet: Lawyers idea really helps with this. And for a lawyer alone in a different city, provides a bit of social contact too (hey, someone’s got to feel sorry for lawyers).

Check out Julian’s group hereSimilar Posts:

• How to Get More Referrals Using Offers
• Do I really need a USP?
• The Rainmaker Network now Open for Business!
• What's Your Backstory?
• Linkedin News and Leadership Poll

Meet: Lawyers – great idea is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

One of the situations I’ve always found it difficult to handle in business development is when a potential client you meet “stonewalls” you.

In other words, they don’t respond or react to what you’re saying.

I rarely get this reaction nowadays – for reasons we’ll come on to later. But early on in my career when I first started taking on consulting sales roles rather than just delivery roles it was something I encountered a number of times. It’s worth taking a look at some of the reasons why you might get this reaction from potential clients, and what you can do about it.

The first reason you might get a stonewall reaction is if the client is not expecting a sales meeting. In particular they’re not expecting to be asked about or to talk about their own business or challenges.

This can often happen if you’ve been referred in to the client, or if your firm already has a relationship with the client and you’re brought in to cross-sell other services.

Often the way the meeting has been set up in these cases can leave something to be desired. The potential client is often just told that you’ll be there to share information, or present some new ideas or techniques. The referrer or person in your firm who holds the relationship with the client feels they’re being helpful by inviting you in – but doesn’t want to go as far as saying to the potential client “I think you need help in this area, and this meeting is about seeing if that’s the case”.

So part of the solution here is to be very clear about when to call you in, and how best to position it with the client. You should only be brought in if your colleague or referrer thinks the potential client really could need your help – preferably with a specific problem. And it’s best to agree that with the client up front. Even if it’s only to say “he’ll talk about some of the best practices we’ve seen, and ask you a few questions about your business to see if they might apply to you”. They have to create the expectation that you will be probing and asking questions about their business to identify a fit – not just presenting some material for their education.

If that pre-positioning hasn’t been done, then it’s imperative that you at least know about it. Then at the start of the meeting you can clarify what you’ll be doing and that you’ll be asking them questions and looking to see if there might a fit. You may want to consider not holding the meeting if it hasn’t been set up correctly.

The second reason why the client might stonewall is if you don’t really give them the chance to interact. In my early days I tended to present at potential clients rather than discussing things with them. I was an engaging enough presenter, and I’m sure they learnt a lot from the presentations and it might even have worked to establish my credibility. But the style I used didn’t work to get them interacting with me.

It’s something that’s difficult to describe in words, but there are ways of presenting – the tone of your voice, the way you make eye contact, pauses you put into the material – that invite discussion. You can use almost the same words, but be much more likely to generate a reaction or response.

In the early days, the way I was presenting was sending out the signal “you’re here to listen”. The potential client was placed into a passive mode where they sat and listened – but didn’t talk about how what they were hearing might relate to their own business.

The third cause of stonewalling is the client’s own reluctance or fear of engaging.

This can be for many reasons. they may fear you’re going to try to “hard sell” them – and so don’t want to open up. Or they don’t perhaps want to admit to having problems in their business – they may be embarrassed, or not want to appear “weak”.

Getting over this fear has a lot to do with how you handle yourself in the meeting and the impression you create. You need to build rapport quickly, and to demonstrate that you’re someone safe to open up to. You’re not going to push product at them, and you’re going to be understanding and empathise if they share their challenges with you.

Doing this isn’t about using tricks and techniques. It’s not about mirroring body language or using “hypnotic” words that magically make people like you. It’s about genuinely being interested in, and caring about the other person. It’s about actively listening and trying to understand rather than just listening for gaps to come in with your own clever statements.

It’s also about recognising when you need to challenge the other person. Today, if a potential client who has asked me in to talk to them doesn’t really open up or answer questions then I now have the confidence and courage to pick them up on it. I’ll sometimes ask a very straight question: “Look, you don’t really seem interested in the examples I’m giving, and you don’t seem to have any problems in this area it’s worth talking about. Yet you were interested enough to invite me in to talk to you today – so there must be a reason or something you want to discuss. Rather than dancing around – is there something specific we should be talking about that would be helpful for you?”

It doesn’t always work – but it’s a lot more likely to work than constantly talking at a stone wall.Similar Posts:

• The Number One Skill in Business Networking
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• Don’t “tell ‘em what you told ‘em….”

Dealing with a “Stonewall” is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a friend which got me thinking about this particular topic.

The friend in question is David Lomas, who runs M3 Publishing – but more importantly, is the kind of guy who always has a dozen projects on the boil and has a huge network of connections.

David called me as he was driving home one Friday evening “just to keep in touch”. We spent the next 20 minutes or so just shooting the breeze, exchanging stories and brainstorming a little about a couple of projects we are working on.

Here’s the point: 95% of people – when driving home on a Friday – would be listening to music, thinking about their weekend, or grumbling about the traffic.

But in David’s case, the thing that came most naturally to him was to phone up his contacts to see how they were getting on.

The rest of us either wouldn’t bother, or we’d be thinking “I don’t want to intrude”, “I don’t have a good reason to call” or “Why would he want to speak to me on a Friday afternoon?”.

We talk ourselves out of keeping in touch. Perhaps because we fear that 1 in 10 call where the person really doesn’t want to hear from us. Or perhaps we just don’t enjoy these part social, part business calls.

Now maybe David and others for whom business development seems to come naturally go through the same self-chatter like this. Or maybe they don’t. But either way – it doesn’t stand in their way. When they have a few spare moments they don’t turn inward – they reach out to contacts and clients to stay in touch.

Another example: Steve Head.

Steve is one of the UK’s top professional speakers. He’s got that rare ability to entertain, inform and inspire.

Steve has an unusual business development approach – one I’ve not seen anyone else use: he keeps in touch with clients via text messages.

When I saw him at the Professional Speakers Association in Manchester, he talked about how he checked his phone after an evening away from home before a client seminar and was astounded to see that he’d sent 125 texts to clients the previous evening.

When I quizzed Steve about it he highlighted that every one of those 125 messages was personal and sincere. In other words, it’s his way of keeping in touch with people he cares about – who also happen to be his clients. It’s absolutely not a cold, calculated “what can I get in return” business development methodology. Nor is David’s habit of phoning up his contacts.

Nonetheless, the habit shared by Steve and David is a healthy one from a business development perspective. By keeping in touch, they keep top of mind with clients. And because they both really care about their clients: every interaction they have deepens their relationships.

So do you have a business development habit? A way you keep in touch and deepen client relationships on “autopilot” without having to think, plan and prepare every time.

In reality – most of us don’t do this naturally.

Personally, given a few moments spare, my first thought is to read a book or article – to expand my knowledge. I don’t instantly think of getting in touch with current & prospective clients.

In order to get good at business development I’ve had to create habits which “force” me to do the right things. For example, keeping a list of my priority client and prospective client relationships and reviewing it weekly to brainstorm what I can do to help them this week.

It’s not like I find keeping in touch with clients painful or difficult. It’s simply that, unlike David or Steve, given a few spare moments, it’s not my first thought.

And that’s the thing. The world of the professional isn’t filled with empty hours where we can start from scratch, plan how to keep in touch with clients, and carefully execute the plan. We’re busy. Really, really busy.

We don’t get hours spare at our desks. We get a few minutes here and there. Or we get an hour driving home or on the train.

If we have to think, plan and prepare our keep-in-touch activities, the reality is that they just won’t happen.

So for people like me who aren’t naturals at business development – we need to have already done our homework by the time our free moments arrive. If we’re going to call people up (or even text them) we need to have thought through already who we’re going to call and what we’re going to say. Because if we leave it to our free moments, by the time we’ve figured out what to do the moment will be gone.

Most importantly, we need to get ourselves into the habit of staying in touch. Initially we have to force ourselves to do it with reminders and rituals. Over time, we’ll come to do it automatically without having to force ourselves. We may even come to enjoy it.

And then we’ll be indistinguishable from those natural business developers we all get so envious about.Similar Posts:

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Make Business Development a Habit is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

A few months ago I had a bit of a heated email argument with a fairly well-known marketing guru whose newsletter I subscribed to.

I won’t mention names as the point of this post isn’t about criticising others – it’s about something I believe to be vital to succeed in business development: authenticity.

The argument started when I received an email from the guru sent from a hospital waiting room in a few moments he had spare waiting for his wife to give birth. His email said he had to be quick (for obvious reasons) but wanted to make an offer on one of his new products.

Nothing wrong with that, per se. In fact I believe it’s good thing to share insights into your personal life with your community. It deepens your relationships – rather like the way you’d share personal information, ideas and hopes with a close business partner or one of your best clients. Your very best business relationships go beyond purely business.

The problem was that I received the same email 3 times over a 3 month period.

I emailed the guy, and he said he’d had a problem with his email system. OK, fair enough. No one has perfect grasp of their technology. I’m prepared to believe it was a genuine mistake that multiple copies were sent out.

But then I noticed that the emails were actually all a little different. They had slightly different headlines.

In other words, he’d been split testing the headlines.

Now split testing headlines is a good marketing practice in normal circumstances. But when your email is supposed to be something you rattled out quickly when in a hospital waiting room it actually leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth.

Far from being the spur of the moment message it purported to be, this was a calculated marketing tactic. And it left me feeling manipulated.

Here’s the deal: had this been a normal marketing email then, of course I’d have been perfectly cool with headlines or anything else being tested, optimised or whatever. Why shouldn’t the marketer try to maximise the response they get?

But this was an email that purported to be a spur of the moment outpouring. His email personalised things – brought me into his world. It made me feel closer, as if I was sharing his experience.

For me then to discover that the email had been a calculated construction left me feeling used.

And that’s the thing. The most powerful marketing & sales approaches are the ones that bring us closer to our clients, that deepen our relationships.

But they must be genuine.

Deepening a relationship can’t be one-sided. You can’t pretend to open up to someone, but really put a tight filter on what you say. You can’t encourage a client to be frank and honest with you if you’re not going to be frank and honest with them.

If you do try to manipulate, you’ll be found out. It may not be as obvious as a split-test headline on a supposedly personal message: but people will discover your manipulation.

If you can’t be genuine – then stick to more impersonal forms of business development: advertising, factual messages, value propositions.

But if you want to build deep. long lasting relationships with clients, you must, must be authentic.Similar Posts:

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The Importance of Authenticity is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

The latest issue of the Outside In Newsletter for Professional Service Firms focuses on Lead Nurturing: how you progress an initial client relationship over time to a point where you’re actually doing business together.

Lead nurturing is critical for professionals: at the point at which we initially meet clients very few of them need our services right now. But almost all of them will need our type of service in the next few years. To be the one they remember and choose at that point, we need to nurture our relationships with those potential clients over time.

The article gives a number of hints and tips to enable you to do that relationship-building better, and with more clients.

The newsletter also includes a short article on the importance of doing and learning from “win reviews” rather than the traditional “loss reviews”.

If you sign up for the newsletter in the box on the right, then as well as getting a free copy of the guide to getting more referrals for your practice, you’ll also get a copy of this edition of the newsletter delivered to your inbox soon after.Similar Posts:

• What to Do When You Need Sales Fast : Issue 1 of the Outside In Newsletter
• Staying “Front of Mind” with Referral Partners
• Don’t Put Me On Your List
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  Outside In Newsletter Published

Lead Nurturing – Latest Issue of Outside In Newsletter Published is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

Yes, in my view.

For many years, consultants, coaches, trainers – and even accountants and lawyers – have been offering “free initial consultations” as a way of encouraging clients to engage with them.

The logic, of course, is that once they work with them for an hour or so, their fears about whether the professional knew their stuff and whether they’d be able to get on with them would be laid to rest.

Some of the more marketing savvy professionals learnt how to focus the initial consultation on identifying the client’s most urgent problems and plotting an outline action plan rather than simply giving away an hour’s free work. In that way the client was taken on a journey where they realised just how big their issues were and were more inclined to buy as a result.

But in my experience, potential clients are becoming less and less likely to take up the offer of free initial consultations.

The change is coming from two angles:

• Firstly, they’ve experienced some professionals using the initial consultation as a blatant opportunity to sell to them. They now view initial consultations as risky – with a high chance they’ll be subjected to a sales pitch and receive little value from the session.
• Secondly, they’ve discovered that they can achieve many of the things they got from an initial consultation in other ways (for free too) without having to engage with a professional. Meeting a consultant, lawyer or other professional can be a daunting prospect. So if they believe they can get similar value from a free e-book or video or seminar recording – then they’ll often prefer to take that option. And they can take this option at their own convenience – without having to travel or wait until the professional is available.

My advice:

Most professionals benefit greatly from having some form of free give-away which gets a client to begin to engage with them. It can demonstrate their expertise, give clues as to what they’re like to work with, and generally reduce the client’s perceived risk.

But the day when free initial consultations worked well for this are gone. If all you have as a freebie is a free consultation you need to think again, and create something else you can offer as an easier to bite option.

It could be that after sampling your free report or teleseminar, the potential client is ready for a free consultation (or they may be ready to buy straight away). But it’s unlikely that today’s time-pressed cynical executives will jump at the chance of a free consultation if nothing has come before it to demonstrate your capabilities and personality.
Similar Posts:

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Is the Free Initial Consultation Dead? is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

The key to marketing professional services is to demonstrate rather than claim.

And if you’re marketing yourself and your skills then one of the strongest ways to do this is through talks and seminars.

Clients hire professionals who understand their problems, have the expertise to solve them, and who they feel they could work with productively. Few other marketing approaches give the professional such an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of client problems and their expertise, and give a feel for what they would be like to work with. Talks and seminars are in the top tier of effective marketing approaches.

I remember the first time I saw a consultant give a talk on marketing at a networking event many years ago. The talk was pretty bland. Nothing special or new. But the consultant had a queue of people wanting to talk to them at the end. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this could be a great way of engaging with new clients.

So how do you go about getting speaking engagements & seminars?

It’s something I asked myself about a year ago as I was planning my marketing priorities for 2009. I wanted to grow my practice locally (historically, the vast majority of my work has been international, or London based and I wanted to cut down on travel somewhat). Talks and seminars seemed an obvious route to go down.

I followed a simple three point plan which can work for many other professionals too. I’m focusing here on speaking for free in order to market your services, rather than paid speaking engagements.

Step 1: Get Good

An absolute prerequisite to marketing your professional firm through talks & seminars is that you must be very good at presenting your material.

That means both good content, and a good presentation style.

It sounds obvious: but so many professionals overlook it. The number of mediocre and sometimes very bad presentations I’ve been to in the last year is simply staggering. A bad presentation does more harm than good. Yet so many people fail to prepare, fail to practice, fail to get feedback – and so fail to get any new clients.

In my case, I’m a fairly experienced presenter, having done sessions at events from local seminars to global conferences. And I’ve been professionally trained in presentation techniques. But I still felt I needed to make sure I made a great impact, so I decided to make an investment in my capabilities in this area.

Early on, I focused on being able to really “ace” just one talk (on getting more referrals). So I developed it, practiced it, got feedback on it, and did it at multiple events in a variety of formats.

I also joined a local Toastmasters group to work on my presentations skills, and hooked up with my local Professional Speakers Association (in the US, this is the National Speakers Association) to learn from watching really polished performers in action. I also took coaching on developing compelling presentations. And, of course, I read a ton of high quality material on the subject.

Even if you’re an experienced speaker or seminar presenter, you can almost always improve. And at bare minimum, you need to make sure that the presentations and seminars you do showcase you at the top of your game. Make sure you prepare them well (please, no endless stream of bullet-point PowerPoint slides), you practice and rehearse, and that you get honest feedback from experienced presenters.

I thoroughly recommend joining Toastmasters. If you don’t know it already, it’s not about becoming one of those guys who loudly announces the guests at functions – it’s about becoming a great speaker. The most valuable element of Toastmasters is that you get to practice in a safe environment and get constructive feedback. And because you go back regularly rather than it being a one-off training course, you learn via the optimal method for skills training: one thing at a time not a whole bunch of new ideas heaped on you.

Step 2: Get a Plan

I’d wanted to get more involved in speaking & seminars right from when I set up my own practice two years ago. But for a year it just didn’t happen.

The reason: wanting and wishing aren’t the same as planning and doing.

But once I’d set myself a target of 12 presentations/seminars to audiences with at least 10 or more potential clients I was spurred into to action. I broke down the target into months and planned the activities I needed to do to hit that target. I brainstormed potential events & venues, thought through the topics I would focus on that would be likely to lead to potential clients engaging with me, and identified the resources I would need to achieve my goal.

Once I had my plan in place, I became more aware of possibilities for offering my services as a presenter. And by reviewing the plan and progress initially weekly and then monthly, I kept the pressure on myself to hit the target.

And it worked. I’ve already beaten my target 9 months in.

Simple stuff. But I hadn’t done it the year before, because I hadn’t taken the simple step of setting a target and making a plan.

Step 3: Get Booked

For me, there were three key steps which got me the opportunities to speak I needed.

The first step was to clarify with laser focus just what sort of events and audiences I needed to speak in front of.  Obviously I wanted to get in front of potential clients and referrers. But the key was being able to articulate this clearly so that I could identify potential events and forums myself, and that I could explain it to others so that they knew what I was looking for.

Here, it helps to be focused. If you specialise in working with a particular sector or client type, or working on a specific set of issues or functional area then there are often professional associations or groups similarly specialised. And they’re pretty much always on the lookout for good speakers with interesting topics.

If you’re less specialised there are theoretically more potential groups to speak to: networking events, chambers of commerce, etc. But there are also more people offering to speak at those events.

The second step was to have done my preparation. I knew the topic I wanted to speak about, and it was one of great interest to my potential audience. I prepared a clear summary of the topic so that when I spoke to potential event hosts,  they could see I had something of value ready. It’s infinitely more credible than the tactic many people use of “I’d like to speak at your event. Any subject really, just tell me what you want me to talk about.”

And having a lot of publicly available material available on my blog helped. Potential hosts could quickly see I knew what I was talking about.

The third step was to go for an easy win and then leverage it. I managed to get a recommendation from someone who knew me well to an event host they knew well too. It was enough to get started and I made sure I did an excellent job at that first talk. From then on being able to say “I’ve just presented on abc to the xyz group…” gave me much more credibility in getting booked for other events.

Once I had a handful of talks under my belt, I was able to expand the range of subjects  I covered too.

Now it’s Your Turn

My plan worked, and it worked quickly. And I managed it as a sole practitioner without admin support. As a professional in a bigger practice you should certainly be able to harness the skills of your marketing/business development team to help you both with the material and in getting events booked.

You may even be able to host some events yourself. However, I do advise that unless you already have a big, responsive contact list it’s much easier to get a good attendance by presenting or running a seminar at a well established event or forum.

Remember: the key to making it happen was to set a target and build a plan. Everything flowed from there.

Set your own target. Build your own plan. And it will flow for you too.Similar Posts:

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Win New Clients with Talks and Seminars is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

I popped in to the post-office today to post a few parcels off with some “goodies” in them for friends.

At the counter next to me an old lady was showing one of the assistants an old newspaper with a really old photograph showing a scene from about 80 years or so ago. She was telling the assistant about how there were only two people left alive who remembered that event and how she wanted to post a copy to her son to show him.

The assistant listened to her, asked her questions about the scene, and expressed interest about various aspects of the story. They were still going when I left.

You could tell from the discussion that the old lady really appreciated someone just listening and paying attention to her. Amid all the impersonality of modern life, here was someone who was making her feel human and valuable again.

Does this kind of customer service have a payoff? An ROI? Will it increase loyalty or sales?

Quite frankly I don’t know. And I don’t need to know.

Life isn’t all about calculating whether you’ll get a payback from everything you do. We all owe a duty of care to our fellow human beings – especially the elderly. To try to calculate whether those actions will have a payoff is crass in the extreme. Just do them.

Apologies for going a bit off-topic. There’s no great sales or marketing learning in this story. No insights for professional services. But maybe something for us to thing about as human beings.

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Beyond Customer Service is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog

Almost all professionals say their main approach to get new clients is Referrals.

But sadly, what they’re often talking about is Passive Referrals. Referrals where they’ve been recommended by a previous client or contact without taking any active action themselves.

While it’s great to get these types of referral it’s not really a sustainable business model. A sustainable business model needs to be influenceable by the professional.

In practice, a great many professionals have a psychological barrier when it comes to asking for referrals. They hesitate – and don’t ask for anywhere near as many as they should.

There are three main reasons for this:

1. They’re not convinced asking for referrals works
2. They’re worried that asking for a referral might damage the relationship they have with a client or contact
3. They’re embarrased asking for referrals: it “feels like begging”

Does Asking for Referrals Work?

In their 2009 Benchmarking Study How Clients Buy, RainToday.com looked at which methods buyers of professional services were most likely to use to initially identify and learn more about providers.

The top 2 methods? Referrals from Colleagues and Referrals from Trusted Service Providers.

Take, for example, the experience of one of my newsletter subscribers who recently emailed me to say:

On a visit to a client, where I had done a good job and over-delivered on client’s expectations; we were waiting on someone returning to his office with a bit of information we needed.

For something to say I asked “Can you think of anyone else who might be able to use my services?”.

He immediately opened his address book and started giving me names and numbers, even ringing a few there and then to warm things up.

I’ve since made contact with most of the nine names he gave, and seven are happy to meet with me.

In future I’m going to make “asking for more” a part of my after sales follow-up!

Does Asking for Referrals Work? Absolutely – if done right.

Will Asking for a Referral Damage your Relationship with a Client?

There’s an element of truth in this – if you do it wrongly.

The best referrals are to people the person doing the referral knows well. After all, we’re far more likely to act on a referral from someone we know and trust than from someone we barely know.

By introducing you to someone they know well, your clients and contacts are putting their relationship and reputation on the line. Before the do this, they will need to be sure you’re going to do a great job for the person they introduce you to – and that you’ll be thinking in their best interests.

So you must wait to ask for a referral until you’ve proven you can do a great job and that you aren’t just being self-centred.

The best way to do this for clients is to ask after you’ve over-delivered on your engagement for them. Or if it’s a long project, after you’ve delighted them during the process of delivery.

And your relationship must have progressed so that they’ve come to trust you and see that you aren’t just in it for yourself – that you always act in your clients’ best interests.

The language you use when asking for a referral can help here too. Don’t just ask if they can refer you to someone. Ask “can you think of other accountancy firms who I might be able to help?” or “I believe my services would be really valuable to Jones & Co., if you were me how would you approach them”.

Is Asking for Referrals Embarrassing? Will it seem like Begging?

Again, the answer to this is that it can be – if you do it wrongly.

Part of this is mindset. If you really are just asking for referrals to help yourself – then clients and contacts often pick up on that.

But if you’ve thought through who it is you can really help, and you truly believe you can do a great job for them: then your sincerity will show through.

Again, the language you use can help. Don’t just ask to be referred. Tell your client or contact why you believe you can do a great job for the person you’re asking for a referral to.

In my blog post of a few months ago: How to Get More Referrals Using Offers I showed how creating tailored offers (free, or entry-level) makes it easier for clients to refer you and feel comfortable they are adding value to their contacts. Having these offers also makes asking for referrals less embarrasing. You’re able to name something specific of value the person you’re being referred to will get – rather than just asking a favour.

There are more tips like this in my Referral Masterclass report and Outside In newsletter which you can get hold of here.

Could You Get More Clients by Asking for More Referrals?

Have a look at the 3 factors. Do they apply to you?

My experience is that we all suffer from at least one or more. Myself included.

We’ve not fully convinced ourselves that asking for referrals really works. Or we’re embarrassed to do it, or worried it might hurt relationships.

Whichever negative belief you have, think about whether that belief is really true.

Think about whether holding that belief is helpful to you.

Then think: if I suspended that belief, just for a week, and asked for more referrals, might that help me?

I bet it would.Similar Posts:

• Staying “Front of Mind” with Referral Partners
• How to Turn Old Contacts into New Clients
• Understand Your Client's Beliefs to Learn How to Sell More
• How to Get More Referrals Using Offers
• In Praise of Passion

Can You Get More Clients by Asking for More Referrals? is a post from: Ian Brodie's Get More Clients Blog