Being referable, then asking

Referred work is the cheapest and highest-converting source a small business has, and it is treated as weather: something that happens or does not. It is more systematic than that, and the system is mostly about being referable rather than about asking.

What makes a business referable

Somebody recommending you is answering a question for a third party. Three things have to be true for them to do it, and only the first is about quality.

• The work was good, and visibly so. Necessary and insufficient.
• They can describe what you do in one sentence. If they cannot, they will not risk recommending you, because a vague recommendation reflects on them.
• They know who it is for. A referrer needs to recognise the right person, which requires you to be specific about the kind of problem you solve.

The second and third are positioning, which is why a business that does a bit of everything gets few referrals regardless of how good the work is. Nobody knows which friend to mention it to.

Asking, which most people do badly or never

1. 01Ask at the point of success, when something has just gone well, not at the end of the relationship or in a quarterly newsletter.
2. 02Ask for something specific. Not do you know anybody, which requires them to search their whole memory. Instead: do you know anybody else dealing with the stock-ordering problem we fixed.
3. 03Make it easy to pass on. A sentence they can forward, written as they would write it.
4. 04Ask once and do not chase. A chased referral request damages the relationship that generates referrals.

The second point does most of the work. A general request produces nothing because it is a difficult question; a specific one is answerable in seconds.

Referral fees, carefully

They work in some trades and change the nature of the thing. A paid referral is a sales channel rather than a recommendation, and it carries a disclosure question: in the EU, commercial communications must be clearly indicated as such, and presenting paid promotion as independent editorial content is listed as unfair in all circumstances. The equivalent rules elsewhere are similar in effect.

So if you pay for referrals, the person referring should say so. If that feels like it would undermine the recommendation, that is information about what you are actually buying.

Giving referrals

The most reliable way to receive them, and the least discussed. Refer work you cannot do, promptly and without expecting anything, including work you could have taken and should not have.

Keep a short list of people you would genuinely recommend in adjacent trades. It makes you useful to clients beyond your own service, it is remembered, and over a few years it produces considerably more than any amount of asking.

An introduction is not a referral

Worth separating, because they need different handling and conflating them wastes both.

A referral is somebody recommending you to a person with a problem. The trust transfers and the conversation starts most of the way along. An introduction is somebody putting you in touch, with no recommendation attached. Useful, and it starts from the beginning.

Treating an introduction as a referral is the common error: arriving as though the sale is half made, when the person on the other end has agreed to a conversation as a favour to a mutual contact. They need the same qualifying and the same questions as anybody else.

1. 01When asking for an introduction, make it easy to make. Say who, why, and provide the sentence they can forward.
2. 02Release the introducer from any obligation explicitly. They are doing you a favour and should not feel responsible for the outcome.
3. 03Tell them what happened afterwards, briefly, whatever it was. This is the part almost nobody does and it is what makes a second introduction possible.