Building a sales pipeline through referrals

“Do you help with lead gen?”

This is a question that always makes us pause. The outcome of successful lead gen is more sales…but surely it’s a marketing activity isn’t it? Similarly, there’s often questions around whose job it is to gain referrals and introductions.

If you read marketing textbooks they’ll tell you marketing is what generates leads. Then after qualifying them (MQL) they pass the better ones to sales.

The sales job is to build customer relationships and convert these leads into revenue.

This is where it gets a bit muddy.

Because it’s the job of sales people to explore customer needs and find follow-on business opportunities.

So you could argue that repeat business, referrals and introductions are sales jobs rather than marketing. Though your sales people will be more effective at it if given campaigns and materials by their marketing colleagues.

What does lead gen mean to you?

For a lot of business owners this is an existential question. It’s important because the generation of new revenue opportunities is crucial to their growth plans.

But it’s also existential because your experience of lead gen is those disreputable people who relentlessly spam your Inbox with promises of easy money.

Few things wind us up more!

Have you noticed how many of them get your company name wrong? How many don’t even have a proper company footer on their emails? How many don’t have an Unsubscribe option?

This is what makes it existential. It’s about why you exist, who you are and how you want to do business.

Nothing stops you signing up for this sort of approach but it goes hand in hand with people recoiling as they are hit by another spam message from you.

It’s a numbers game and you can only get to Yes by filtering out an awful lot of No’s.

Is it really how you want to be known?

Referrals are a slow way to build a business

Most people would be delighted to achieve growth through referral. It’s a lovely way of doing business and it’s a very low-cost option. The problem is that it’s slow.

By definition, referrals are limited to people who’ve worked with you and not all of them can readily think of someone to recommend you to.

In the long run, building your revenue line through referral helps you build a business community. Most of your clients will know “someone who knows someone” and you can help people by building on these connections.

That adds value to people you work with and helps you live out the principle that “what goes around, comes around”.

The added benefit is that every introduction you’re given is a warm lead. Your sales funnel becomes super-efficient as you’re not wasting time on ill-suited Prospects. Read more about driving growth with an effective sales funnel.

But it takes time.

Three ways you can accelerate referrals

1. Ask

This seems obvious, yet many people don’t regularly ask for introductions and referrals.

Be honest, do you assume your client will refer you if they know someone suitable?

This makes the unfortunate assumption that your client has the time and energy to think about you when you’re not around!

Successful pitching means you’ve made sure your client understands how successful and effective you are. That’s why they choose to work with you.

So they might just assume you’re doing well and won’t value their help. A little nudge is all that’s needed.

And what you really want is an message that introduces the two of you and explains why. One true warm connection is worth more than a list of names.

2. Be clear what you’re asking for

Again, this might be obvious to you, but it’s less clear to clients.

How many times have you heard a client say they are working with someone else on a project and you think “I could have done that”?

Clients rarely understand everything you can do and will place their own interpretation of value on what you do for them.

Helping them understand exactly who you’d like to work with next is really powerful when it comes to increasing referrals.

It’s easiest if you’re looking for someone like them. It gives you a chance to reiterate the successes you’ve had together and ask whether they know someone else facing similar challenges.

You might even ask for an intro to one of their colleagues if you think there are other opportunities in the business.

3. Ask at the right time

It might seem obvious to ask at the end of your project. After all that’s when you’ve delivered all the value and been paid.

But for your client that’s when they’re thinking about what’s next. When your project is over they have 101 other demands on their time and quickly forget how much they enjoyed your time together.

If they can immediately think of an intro then you’ll get lucky. But if not, you’re too late.

A simple rule of thumb is to ask for referrals between one third and two thirds of the way through a project.

You can be more targeted than just this 1/3 rule of thumb.

There might be points in your work when your customer is most delighted with what you’ve created.

An easy example is if you’re in design or marketing and you have that first meeting when you share your initial concepts.

You hope the client will be blown away as they see their brief come to life. They excitedly make suggestions on how to polish the finished article.

That’s the time to ask for a referral.

If you can identify these moments of delight in your sales process and plan to ask for introductions you’ll see your success rate multiply.

So, do we help with lead gen?

You can see why the answer to that is Yes and No. It depends on how you want to approach it.

Are you struggling to untangle the complexities of your sales process?

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