Yesterday I talked about the fact that no ONE method is guaranteed to get you corporate clients.
The best way I have found to consistently attract corporate clients for my business without burn-out is to *layer* these three approaches:
1) reaching out to a prospect (outbound),
2) getting prospects to get in touch with you (inbound) and
3) referrals/introductions.
And I will be talking about each of these in turn.
So which is the best approach?
There is no doubt that being referred to or introduced to a prospect by a mutual acquaintance who can vouch for you gives the best results.
Asking for referrals the right way is a bit of an art.
And most people don’t do it very well.
How most people ask for referrals
Most people will say something like “Please pass on my details to anyone who can use me” or “If you know someone who needs my help…”.
Occasionally, you *might* get a kind person to remember you in the right situation, but being so vague makes it hard for your contacts because you are putting the burden of *thinking* on them.
That means they have to think about the situations where your support would be helpful to someone. Then they have to assess if that person would be a good fit for what you do. And then they have to think about how to make an introduction or referral…
As you can see, this takes a lot of mental effort involved on their part, so it’s not surprising that your network doesn’t lead to lots of new prospects.
If, on the other hand, you make it EASY for your network to refer you, it becomes a gold mine!
The best ways to ask for a referral
You do this by being very specific.
Instead of saying “If you know ANYONE”, describe the kind of person and organization that you’d like to be referred to.
Instead of suggesting “Who needs my help”, define the kind of situations where you can help in…
And instead of requesting they “Pass on my details”, suggest an easy way of putting someone in touch – e.g. via email, LinkedIn, forwarding your newsletter or profile summary, etc.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about the other ways to generate corporate leads.
