When you first start building your referral network, you’ll find lots of opportunities to network. Unfortunately, you’ll also find lots of dead ends. 

You can save yourself from that unnecessary 3 p.m. migraine by developing your ideal referral partner profile ahead of time.

Using this established profile, you can easily qualify or disqualify networking opportunities accordingly. 

Your mission? To find people who serve your target market and ideally interact with the right people at those companies. 

At some point, you will meet someone who serves your specific target market. They will work at a great company and even talk with the right people, but they might not be ready to refer you. 

So, what do you do with someone who checks all of your boxes, but hasn’t referred you yet?

Here’s what needs to happen to receive solid referrals from people in your network:

1. They must be the right people.
2. They must know, like, and trust you.
3. They must know the types of companies you work with.
4. They must understand the challenges you help these companies overcome.
5. They must spot these challenges and think of you at the right time.
6. They must actually follow through with an introduction.

As you can see, this is a detailed list. Achieving this perfect mix of qualities in a referral partner will likely take time and patience.

Let’s work through each qualification and how to achieve them:

They must be the right people
Drawing a blank? Take a minute to review our article on ideal referral partners to identify the right people. 

They must know, like, and trust you
This is the key step in obtaining a quality referral. After all, no one will refer a coach they don’t trust. You can’t rush this step and you should take your time getting to know your referral partners. What are their networking objectives? Common business problems or painpoints? Store away this information for later, and be ready to lend a helping hand when they need you most. For example, one of my most fruitful referral partnerships began when I remembered this partner had been struggling with their HubSpot dashboard analytics. I was able to hop on a quick call with them and solve a problem that had been long-plaguing their sales team in under 15 minutes. This allowed me to earn the trust of this partner. 

They must know the clients and companies you work with
There are lots of ways people cultivate referral relationships. They may introduce you to other potential referral partners. These are called COIs (Center of Influence) referrals, and they are important or even critical when you are starting out. But once you’ve established your referral network, they become far less critical. At some point, referrals to clients become far more important than a new COI connection. 

Here are some less-than-optimal types of introductions I’ve seen:

• People who serve the same industries, but work with smaller companies.
• People who serve different industries, but work with the right size companies
• Potential clients who don’t fit your ideal client profile

If you schedule a call or coffee, these types of introductions can take 2 to 3 hours of your time. When you are starting out, you probably need to take these meetings. But with experience, you can weed out these less-than-perfect intros quickly.

They must understand the challenges you excel at 
You know how, during road trips, there is always a designated navigator? In both road trips and your referral journey, you need to play to your strengths. Whether you excel at finding the fastest Waze route or helping clients overcome organizational operational issues, you need to make your talents known. We will dive into how to present your ‘wins’ later, but for now, focus on your three biggest strengths when it comes to coaching clients. 

Some examples of challenges you could help clients overcome could include:

• Leadership issues
• Stalled out growth
• Operational inefficiencies

When listing your strengths, try to be as specific as possible. For example, I excel at helping mid-sized tech companies eliminate operational inefficiencies within their sales team. 

They must spot these challenges & think of you
Once you have firmly established the challenges you help clients overcome, you need to help your referral partners think of you at the right time. The best way to be thought of during a ‘trigger’ moment is by establishing CEPs and turning these into narratives or stories you can tell. 

They must actually refer you
None of this means anything unless you can score a real-life introduction. However, by establishing your CEPs, stories, and speaking to the right people, you can drastically increase your odds of a healthy referral pipeline.