Many business people are, very rightly, proud of getting referrals from existing clients. It’s a great feeling.

It usually means you did a good job and they are happy to speak about you. Can this business be relied on to fill your referral pipeline ( the amount of business you need every month) ? Especially at the moment where so many companies have cut back on advertising and marketing?

The problem is that these client referrals are often passive referrals ( by chance ) that require a prompting from a third party, so that they will impart their knowledge and pass on your details.

Therefore, these referrals come about by chance. How can you build the business of your company based on chance? There are a couple of points to consider here. The first I will not focus on in this article but it is that you can educate people to give you pro-active referrals that will keep your pipeline full.

The second is that so many individuals and companies believe that their best referral business comes from existing clients. This is a myth. How much business could you be losing because of this incorrect assumption? It’s easy to see why people make this mistake. They have been trained to believe that the only referrals can come from clients, as usually the only referrals they have received are from clients.

I am not saying that client referrals should be ignored. Of course not. But so many referral opportunities are being missed from other sources that can be extremely powerful.

There can also be a clash of priorities when chasing referrals from existing clients because your focus is on getting referrals not necessarily on servicing the client. The best referrals can be generated from professional referral sources in a well-developed referral network. When you help another person get business by giving them a referral, you are cultivating a long-term relationship that will, in a win-win referral relationship, encourage high quality referral giving which will become reciprocal.

In simple terms what you are looking for is the Golden Goose that continuously lays the Golden Eggs rather than the Golden eggs themselves which are often one offs. Find the Golden Goose and they will provide you with endless Referrals all you have to do is care for the goose.

The ideal candidates would be people who share the same target market, for example – real estate agents, landscape gardeners, mortgage brokers.

“with a well developed referral network you can realize more good referrals from one or two professional referral sources than all your customers combined” Truth or Delusion – Dr. Ivan Misner, Mike Macedonio and Mike Garrison