21 June 2007
What is the best tactic to get a referral?
For years, Your Business Blogger has advised lawyers and regular human clients that,
If you want a referral,
Give a referral.
The best marketing method to get new business is by word of mouth from trusted friends or third parties.
The Washington Post recently ran an article about the referring phenomenon in the world of closed circuit judges and lawyers in the old-boy eyre of legal eagles.
Carrie Johnson, Washington Post Staff Writer, interviewed Bob Bennett in Their Own Defense: D.C.’s Clubby Attorneys Keep Work in the Flock.
She quotes Bennett,
“There is sort of this old-boy-and-girl network of old U.S. attorneys, and I must say I tend to think of them for business,” said Bennett, a former assistant prosecutor whose closest colleague, Carl Rauh, ran the U.S. attorney’s office in 1979.
So what’s one referral worth? Carrie continues,
Such recommendations can be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more. Top practitioners such as Bennett bill from $850 to $1,000 an hour. Michael Levy, who worked for Bennett early in his career, parlayed a recommendation from his former boss into the task of advising scores of former Enron employees as witnesses in the long-running probe of the Houston energy trader. When it became clear that the government would try to charge some of them with crimes, Levy in turn referred some of them to other lawyers.
This is the ultimate warm-body networking. But it also works for mere mortals.
After clients learn the First Rule of Referrals (Give one). Clients ask two more questions:
How many referrals I gotta give out? And,
How do I break into the old-boy referral gravy train?
The key matrix for many is how many do I give before I get. Yes, Yes, it’s better to give than to receive and all that but frustrated networkers bitterly complain that all they seem to do is output with no input.
And they would be right.
Your Business Blogger has anecdotal evidence that the ratio of give to get is 10:1. Yep, ten referrals gets the connector 1, one, referral in return.
As ungenerous as this ratio appears to be, it might well have Biblical proportions. In the New Testament, Luke chapter 17, Alert Readers will remember the miracle where Jesus healed 10 lepers.
Alert Readers will also remember that only one healed leper returned to thank The Christ. (I would suppose that this would be the only “referral” the Son of God would appreciate…)
So how do lost souls and Samaritans get appreciated and noticed by referral sources?
With an investment of Time, Talent and Treasure.
Time. Volunteering is what every RainMaker should be doing anyway. The fastest way to get invited to sit on a Board of Directors of your local non-profit is to volunteer to be a fund raiser. Hard work, but gets the concerned citizen at the table.
Talent. Attend or create social events. Carrie Johnson, at The Post reports,
Another batch of lawyers … has for more than a dozen years made an annual ski pilgrimage to Aspen, Colo., a social event that turns to business talk on the lifts. Former Treasury official Robert Altman, … makes the journey to what’s known as “the boys’ ski trip,” as well.
“I think it’s more social, frankly, although without question, a substantial part of the conversation over dinner or on the ski lift is going to be about cases,” said lawyer Hank Schuelke, a charter member of the traveling party, … “I bet you every year there are referrals that arise.”
Treasure. Sponsor activities at local fund raising events. Yes, you would be advertising your company, but being a do-gooder is helpful in a civil society. And you might get your calls returned. For doing the right thing.
And this creates trust.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman has said that a cultural prerequisite of capitalism is the holding of truthfulness as a common virtue. Good referring networks are a part of this equation. When you can trust, says Friedman, “it cut[s] down transaction costs.”
Remember only one in ten lepers returned to Jesus to thank and worship. This was how the Creator of the world was dis’ed for doing good.
You, Gentle Networker, will not be treated much better.
But go now, and give 10 referrals. The one that comes back will be worth the work.
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