In the professional services world, referrals are the lifeblood of obtaining new clients, and in some ways also retaining your clients.
My friend Josh Baron is a lawyer in Utah and I find his LinkedIn posts to be very insightful. We actually met through LinkedIn. We became fans of each other’s work, and it’s really nice to be able to feature him here.
He recently posted on LinkedIn the following advice, which is worth repeating here.
“When an attorney sends me a referral, they’re taking a risk.
They’re risking their relationship with the client. If I drop the ball on their case, it reflects poorly on the person who made the referral.
The first step in developing referral relationships is creating a stellar customer service experience for your clients.
You can tell you’re delivering stellar customer service when your clients regularly give you 5-star Google reviews.
You can’t control exactly how often your network sends you referrals. But you can make sure that the risk of sending you a referral pays off.
So before you start looking for referral relationships, make sure your referral partners can trust you to deliver a great experience.”
I hope his words resonate with you and help influence your marketing and business development strategy when it comes to referrals and most importantly, client service.
I think more so today than ever before, clients hire the lawyer not the law firm.
Remember that as you are weighing potential opportunities and also thinking about how to expand your business.
Remember any and everyone could be a potential source of business.