November 2008
Filling Your Practice - Relationships with Referrers
So you have made the decision to do more networking in order to grow your practice. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part. How and where do you do it?
If you are like most of my clients you are getting a sick feeling in your stomach because you think it means you must attend lots of meetings in order to meet lots of people. That doesn't have to be the case.
What you are looking for is to establish good relationships with people who can and will refer business to you. I'm not talking about referrals of one or two potential clients but a stream of them over the course of a year. With a list of 20 good referrers you would easily be able to sustain a full practice load.
So who might you target for referrers? Think about categories of people who continually meet with your target market. I'll give you three possibilities. I'm sure you will discover others.
One possibility is someone who offers a service that is complimentary to yours. Ask yourself "Where would a potential client go before he/she needs my service?" or "Who would he/she ask for a referral for the service I offer?" For many practice areas the answer might be an accountant, another attorney, or perhaps a therapist.
The second category would be someone who has a big rolodex and enjoys connecting people. It is usually someone who is influential and powerful, a person others look up to. As you build the relationship with this person you will need to help him/her to understand your services and what makes a good client for you. Clients referred from this type of source don't usually look anywhere else once they are referred to you by this resource.
The final group is former clients. Find the ones that were happy with your service and not shy about letting people know what a great job you did. Not every client is a good referral source. Choose the ones that were easy to work with, have already told you how much they value your work and who are in contact with lots of people during their day. Coaching the client on who is a good referral and how to make the referral may be necessary here too.
Once you have a list of 20 or 30 potential referrers, it is a matter of building the relationship in the same way you build friendships in your personal life. That means finding ways to be in their company and contacting them on a regular basis.
Here are just a few ideas on ways to do that. Meet the referrer for coffee before the workday starts. Find an event you are going to that the referrer might enjoy and invite the referrer to come along. Invite the referrer to an open house or party that you are having.
It is important that you enjoy the company of the referrer because you will need to be in his/her company often. The lines between your personal and business life do become blurry here but your business will grow as will your network.
One of the biggest obstacles to being successful at networking is the belief that you have to spend lots of time meeting people at boring networking meetings. To most solo and small firm attorneys that feels like a huge waste of time. So many of the people you meet that way do not have the ability to send you clients or even become clients.
A better way is to target those that can send you multiple clients. Once you find a good potential referrer, stay connected with him/her to build a trusting relationship. Then you will see that you have invested your time wisely and will generate a stream of clients for yourself and your firm.
Take Action
- Take a look at the Seth Godin, best selling author of business books, video. It is slightly over a minute long. As Seth Godin suggests, one way to start your relationship with a target referrer is to help the referrer in some way.
- Create your target list of referrers.
- Choose someone to contact from your list of referrers and think about what you could offer him/her that would help his/her businesses.
- Make an appointment to meet with a potential referrer with the intention of giving him/her your offer and/or learning more about him/her and his/her business.