Are you well liked and recognized for your expertise but still struggling to get referrals?

Don’t panic…you are not the only one. 

We recently worked with a professional service provider in that exact situation.  The client survey we completed with this company showed that their clients were very satisfied with their services.  However, when asked what stopped them from referring others to this company, 87% of these very satisfied clients (who had not referred any clients) said they had no opportunity to do so.

We didn’t buy that response and dug a little bit deeper.  Instead, our theory was that these very satisfied clients had opportunities to refer but they were not recognizing them as opportunities to refer.  Once we presented our theory to the CEO, he acknowledged that they probably hadn’t been very good at articulating what a good referral looked like to their past and current clients.  In fact, he added, maybe they hadn’t been very good at articulating what a good referral looked like internally.

How do you develop a profile of an “ideal referral” for your team to understand and then share with your clients?

Start with understanding what your client is doing right now.

We worked with the team to imagine what a typical day was like for their ideal client, including what the client was thinking, feeling, and doing.  We used this information to create detailed narratives for the team to read and use in identifying potential clients.

RESULT: This exercise and the resulting narratives highlighted important client issues and made them more tangible for the team in the client’s own language.

For example, instead of looking for a potential client who needs “time management training,” the team could now listen for a potential client who talks about being “stressed, overwhelmed, and tired” and questions “How am I ever going to be able to wrap everything up by the end of the work day?”

Once they had a detailed profile of their ideal client, they could then share this information with their satisfied clients to make it easier for them to make the referrals they were hoping for.

Satisfied Clients + Ideal Client Profiles = More Referrals!

Does your business depend heavily on referrals?  If so, make sure your team and satisfied clients know what to look and listen for when talking with potential clients.  The team at Saqui Research offers half day to multi-day work sessions to help your team develop ideal client profiles to increase referrals and client satisfaction, and identify new service opportunities.  For details on our customized work sessions, please call us (219-310-8435) or fill out our contact form online.

Tags: ideal client profiles, professional services, referrals, satisfied clients