Simple Ways to Ask Customers for Referrals

I booked 75 first meetings over three months last summer when I launched Inspirewell. 99% through outbound. My totally repeatable trick? Ask for a referral on Every. Single. Call. Prospect calls. Customer calls. Partner calls. Build the habit to not leave any commercial calls without asking for someone else to speak with. Here is a simple 4 step framework I follow: Toward the end of the call, ask for permission to ask one more question. “Hey, before we jump, okay if I ask one last thing?” Describe several characteristics about what kind of a referral you are looking for, e.g. company size, company sector, position, personality traits, etc. The idea is to help narrow their field of vision a bit and make the task seem more approachable. Use an open-ended question. Not “Do you know anyone?” but rather “Who do you know?” Make it a low-friction ask. Not “That would want to partner with us?” but rather “That may benefit from a quick call with us?” All summarized the ask may look like this: “Really great chatting with you today. Before we jump, would it be okay if I ask one more quick question?” “Thanks. Generally the right person for us to speak with is someone that is only 1-3 years into managing sales people. Who do you know in your network, maybe someone that you used to work with, that may benefit from a quick call with us?” And shut up. You won’t hit every time. But you’ll certainly get a lot more contacts than by not asking. Happy Selling. What other referral strategies work for you? P.S. - I keep this sticky note on my computer to always remind myself of this practice. Even after years of practicing this, I still find myself wanting to chicken-out sometimes!

Referrals are by far the highest ROI channel for B2B businesses. So why aren’t you getting more of them? I use a dead-simple, but incredibly effective method to double my inbound referrals. 1 — Be Direct. The biggest mistake people make is relying on “automated emails” and “programs”. They take the easy way out because they are afraid. They wait for a follow-up email and send vague requests like, “If you think of anyone, let me know!” The reality is people don’t have time to brainstorm referrals for you! 2 — here’s what I do: make a specific and direct ask. And when possible, do it face-to-face right on the video call. Yes, you can do this over email, but asking directly, person-to-person, makes a stronger impact. 3 — Instead of leading with an ask, start by GIVING a lead first. Before ending a call, try this: “Before we wrap up, I’d like to give you two leads I think would benefit from your service. Would you mind sharing two people on your client roster who might find us interesting? I’ll send you a tailored email for easy forwarding.” Even better, do your homework: “I noticed these logos on your website. These two companies look like they’d be a great fit for us because [reason]. Would you mind making an introduction?” Be specific. Be proactive. Be intentional. What’s your go-to approach when asking for referrals? Let me know in the comments.

The proper way to ask for referrals is the way where you do 95% of the work for the person you're asking to go to bat for you. Here's an example - with scripting - that's worked for me since the Nixon administration: Step 1 - Ask for permission: "Hey Keith! Noticed on the ol' LinkedIn that you were connected to Dan Wardle over at Noibu. Do you happen to know him well? Taking a look at his company, I'm confident we'd be able to add as much value to his team as we have been to Bullhorn over the past few years. If I wrote a separate email that includes a bit of context as to why I'd like to meet him, would you feel comfortable forwarding it along to him and seeing if he's open to an introduction? That way, if he's not interested, he can decline to take the intro, and you haven't really used any social capital on your end. All you did is forward along something from me. 🙂 What do you think?" Once Keith agrees to make himself useful, comes the next step... Step 2 - Writing a forwardable "opt-in" email: SUB: Intro to Dan at Noibu? "Hey Keith - how'd the month end up for your team? Noticed you're connected to Dan on LinkedIn - do you happen to know him well enough to feel comfortable making an introduction? I saw they added some BDRs and AEs to the team over the past few months. Given how much your GTM team has been engaged with and loved Sales Assembly over the past few years, I was hoping he'd be interested exploring how we could possibly be supportive to him and his team as well! If he's not interested in that, I'd still invite him to join our monthly Executive Revenue Leader Peer Group, so that he can jam with a room full of 30-50 of his VP and C-level peers every month.  We'd love to have him there as our guest. If you don't know him that well or just aren't comfortable, all good. Just figured I'd float this by you. Thanks!" What happens next? Keith forwards that to Dan. Now, is it possible that when he forwards that to Dan, he simply says "See below - interested?" Sure, I guess so. What's more likely? He forwards that to Dan and says: "Hey Dan, see below. Not sure if you've heard of Sales Assembly, but they've been an amazing partner to us at Bullhorn over the past few years. No obligation to take the intro, of course, but I think at the very least it would be worth connecting with Matt." Back to the original point about doing 95% of the work for your advocate, what did I ask Keith to do? Nothing. Just click forward on an email. I didn't ask him who he knows that might be interested. I did the work for him. I didn't ask him to look through his connections. I did the work for him. I didn't even ask him to endorse us. I just presumed he would anyway. And they usually do. This works when you're trying to meet prospects. This works when you're trying to get a new job. Do 95% of the work. Ask your advocates to simply slick FWD. Make it easy for people to refer you, and they'll refer you.