How to make professional service referrals like the best

A lot of people occasionally make introductions with their network. But doing professional service referrals well is about more than just connecting people. You could be catalyzing a valuable relationship where both parties end up investing a lot of time and money working together. Doing this well requires you to act as a matchmaker, where you apply your own expertise to connect clients and service providers who are a good fit to work together.

If you want to increase the volume and quality of the referrals you make, it helps to understand how the best connectors make highly curated referrals. Otherwise, what can start as a well-intentioned desire to connect people can lead to a bunch of cumbersome back and forth. 

To make high quality referrals, you’ll need to figure out who in your network is a good fit for the client’s need, get opt in from both the client and the service provider that they want to connect, and make the introduction. 

Let’s unpack how to do these things well. We’ll start with what comes at the end – introductions – and then dive into how to get to that point.

Good service provider introductions

Good introductions to service providers do three things:

1. Restates the client's needs and context. This makes sure both the client and service provider have a shared understanding of the need before having a conversation. It always helps to put this in writing, even if you think it’s obvious.
2. Gives context on your relationship with the provider you’re referring to and why you trust them. This helps sell the client on your referral partner and increases the probability of both parties working together.
3. Discloses a referral agreement if it exists. Being upfront about this is always best practice. If done tactfully, clients will understand: it makes sense that you’d have a formal relationship with people you frequently send referrals to.

This can be brief. Here’s a great example:

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Sometimes a client is asking for someone and you have the exact person in mind they want to talk to. In those cases, you can just make a quick introduction. But just making a one-off introduction is implicitly a very strong recommendation – you’re saying that they are the one person you recommend they talk to.

If you want to level-up how you make referrals, you can go beyond just one-off introductions and start curating options for a client, empowering them to choose who they want to talk to.

There are generally two ways that people curate: 

1. Need-first: identifying a client need and surfacing candidates from your network.
2. People-first: sharing your roster with clients and letting them request introductions

In both cases, you end up getting double opt-in from both the client and service providers and making an introduction. Let’s break these two ways down.

Need-first: Curating candidates for a specific client need

If you’re spending any time talking to clients or prospects, you’ll uncover challenges or needs that they need to address that you alone cannot help with. Oftentimes, clients or prospects will come to you asking for one thing, but your expertise will help you advise them that what they need is actually a little different. 

For example, if you’re a former VP of HR currently providing fractional HR leadership services, a client may express a need for a compensation consultant. If you run a marketing agency, a client may express a need for PR support. If you’re running a product development shop, you may uncover a need for some data engineering work. 

Other times, they may even be asking for something you could do, but you simply don’t have the bandwidth.

In these cases, you’ve surfaced a client's need and have their trust. This is a valuable position to be in. Often service providers will say, “sorry - this isn’t a fit for me.” Or, they’ll contort themselves to try to offer a service that’s not in their sweet spot. These are the wrong responses. There’s an opportunity to make a great referral. Whether or not you’re monetizing referrals, this is an opportunity to help service providers in your network and earn even more trust with the client. 

To translate a client's need into great referrals, your goal should be to generate a shortlist of 3-4 highly qualified candidates, and you can let them choose who they want to talk to. Being able to quickly deliver a curated list of qualified candidates makes you look really good. And speed matters here – if the client has a need you want to address it quickly, because they may continue asking around.

To create a shortlist, you need to tap into your network to find relevant service providers. There are two pools of service providers you may tap into if needed: (1) your existing referral partners and (2) your broader network.

To efficiently tap into these pools and minimize the back-and-forth, you need to create a simple brief that articulates the anonymous client’s need, with the requisite information you and your network will need to qualify if they’re a good fit. This helps you avoid the situation where you have people asking for a bunch of clarifying information and you end up with a bunch of cumbersome back and forth.

The anatomy of a brief

Briefs can be brief. They just need to have the information you need for you to tap into your network and have people qualify themselves as a good fit. You should have this information before you start tapping into your network and making referrals – even if it’s just in your head. 

Here’s a good example:

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Let’s break down the information you should have:

• Client description: describe some high-level information about the company (stage, industry) and the stakeholder (CEO, CFO, CMO)
• The client need: this can be super brief (e.g. New brand identity) or it can be detailed (e.g. outlining all of the responsibilities a client needs a Fractional head of HR will need to take on over a 3 month period)
• Timing: You need to know when the client is looking to get started with an engagement. Clients' urgency often goes unsaid. Some clients may seem like their hair is on fire but they’re actually looking to start an engagement in 3 months. Some may be calm but need to get started ASAP. This is critical information for you know before you tap into your network. It’s frustrating to put your hat in the ring for something only to learn that the client is 6 months away from getting serious about working together.
• Budget: You don’t need to have exact numbers here, but you should have some information or context that you can provide to your network. You may know from the client that they’re willing to pay up to $200/hr for something. Or you may just know that “they have significant funding and are flexible on budget” or “they are cash-strapped and trying to be frugal.” Any context here is valuable.
• Bandwidth requirement: is this full-time? Project-based? 10 hours per week? This information will help your network understand if they have the bandwidth to put their hat in the ring. Even if someone is an ideal fit on the surface, if the client needs 20 hours per week but your partner is fully booked up and can only take on small projects they can do in a few hours on a Saturday morning, then it’s not a fit.‍
• Your commentary: it’s helpful if you provide your own commentary and perspective on the client or the opportunity. Explaining what you like about the stakeholder or additional commentary you’d want someone to know to sell them on putting their hat in the ring (or giving them words of caution before putting their hat in the ring)

With this brief in hand, you can broadcast this out to your network to surface people who might be a good fit. In 48 hours, you can turn around a shortlist that looks like this: 

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Now let’s talk about how to tap into your existing referral partners and your broader network.

1. Your existing referral partners

‍If you have existing referral partners, this is simple: you should share the brief with them and ask them if they’re interested. Ideally, they can provide a quick sentence or two on why they’re a good fit that you could pass along to the client. With these partners, you may already have a referral agreement, which will apply to this referral if they end up winning business. 

2. Your broader network

Maybe you need to go broader. You’re likely already in Slack communities or other private networks that you might want to tap into. Or your referral network may know other people who are a good fit. This is where the brief is really helpful. You can share the brief, but you will need more than just their opt in – you need information about their services and why they’re a good fit for this specific opportunity (especially if you don’t know them super well and may not be able to speak fluently to their expertise).

You should have these people provide a quick pitch on why they’re a good fit for the opportunity so you can know if you should share them with the client or not. You can also add qualifying questions that will let you do some qualification on the client’s behalf. When sharing a brief more broadly, it’s common that you may get 10+ people who are interested, and it’ll be your job to filter things out for the client.

Now for the tricky part. You do not have a referral agreement with these people. But given that you have a live potential referral that’s highly relevant for them, it’s clear that you might make good referral partners. 

If they’re a really great fit, you should be willing to put them in front of the client even if you don’t have a referral agreement, so you should give them the opportunity to opt out of becoming a referral partner of yours if they are vehemently opposed to paying referral fees. But this is also an opportune moment to align on referral terms – for this specific referral but also other referrals into the future.

Once they provide their quick pitch, you should ask them if they want to become a referral partner. If they don’t, they can tell you. If they do, then you can collect the other information you’ll need from them to more easily make referrals in the future, and get them to agree to your  your referral agreement. This is a win for everyone.

Preparing your shortlist

If you get 8-10 interested candidates, you may have 3-4 excellent candidates you want to share with the client. You’ll want to include their basic information (name, website, linkedin), their pitch if they gave one, and most importantly, your commentary. You can provide this via email or whatever format is best. Make sure you provide some of your own thoughts on each candidate in a way that’s balanced and shares the pros/cons. This earns a lot of trust and increases your credibility.

This whole process can happen quickly (often in 24 hours). It doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but requires you act as a proactuve curator/matchmaker. But what if you want a more passive way of enabling clients to request introductions to service providers you trust?

That’s a people-first referral.

People-first: Facilitating referrals by sharing your roster

Making referrals based on a specific need is always going to lead to more curated, hyper-relevant matches. But as you build your referral network, there are more passive ways that you can empower your clients and prospects to peruse your network and request introductions. 

Imagine if someone in your network were asking for good marketing agencies and you didn’t have deeper context on what their need is. You could simply share a list of the marketing agencies you like and let them request introductions. 

Directories are fine; Shortlists are better

When people build large referral networks, they may be tempted to create directories that empower people to search, filter, and peruse dozens or even hundreds of service providers. While this looks impressive and may be kind of useful, you’re putting the onus of curation on the client.

For example, if a client is looking for an executive coach and you send them a directory of 50 service providers, only 4 of which are executive coaches, that would be distracting and you’re forcing them to find the needle in the haystack.

This is where you can create shortlists that are pre-filtered lists of your referral partners based on common needs that people have. You can have a shortlist of marketing agencies, a shortlist of exec coaches, and more. You can create these shortlists using your own judgement of the common needs that you get asked for, so you can quickly share these lists with people and facilitate more referrals.

How to make people-first referrals

When making a people-first referral, you should follow the following process: 

1. Share shortlist(s) with the client
2. Let the client request introductions, and ask them to provide context you can pass along to the service provider
3. If needed, share context with your referral partner and confirm that they want the intro (you can skip this if you know that they’ll blindly take referrals)
4. Make the intro to the service provider with the context that the client provided

This process is easier on you than the need-first approach, but it has a lower probability of a successful referral. It’s a lower-lift way to demonstrate your value and potentially make valuable referrals.