Article
How Professional Service Businesses Actually Build a ...
founderreports.com
Quoted on this wiki
Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
When we educate our partners to listen for a specific ‘trigger’, we are providing them with the majority of the effort. The referral now becomes a valuable way for them to provide a solution to their network as opposed to simply performing a favor you asked for. When we’ve had success creating global engineering teams, we find that the referrals that close are the ones where the partner can say, ‘I know exactly who can address this specific bottleneck.’ “Do not just ask for a lead; provide a framework for when your expertise should be the only logical option.” Amit Agrawal, Founder & COO, Developers.dev
The best results occur when we educate our partners to identify certain symptoms to indicate a client has a problem, such as a team with an engineering velocity issue or a project stalled by technical debt. “The referral now becomes a valuable way for them to provide a solution to their network as opposed to simply performing a favor you asked for.” Do not just ask for a lead; provide a framework for when your expertise should be the only logical option. This will provide substantial clarity to the person referring you, which is often the largest hidden obstacle in professional services. When a partner has a clear understanding of how you fit, they become an extension of your business development team as opposed to just another contact in your CRM system.
My best tip for building referrals is to engineer them into your client experience rather than waiting for them to happen organically. The moment a client achieves a clear win, closing a deal, resolving a dispute, or saving on taxes, capture that momentum by asking for a brief testimonial and offering a simple, low-friction way for them to introduce you to others in their network. “When clients see that you deliver results and make it easy for them to refer you, referrals become a natural extension of your service rather than a separate effort.” Harrison Jordan, Founder and Managing Lawyer, Substance Law