Identifying complementary service providers who could be great referral partners

Referrals are the best channel for any service business. If you're trusted by clients yourself, you have an opportunity to help other service providers by referring them business.

There are a few common opportunities where it's best to refer business to someone else rather than contort your own service to meet the needs of the client. By building out a roster of complementary service providers who can help in these scenarios, you can be more helpful to more potential clients (even if not working with them directly) and provide more value to the service providers you trust who are looking for more business. Being helpful in connecting these dots is one of the most effective ways to stay top of mind with your network and be people's first call when they have something they need.

When thinking about who is an ideal complementary service provider to bring into your referral network, you should think about service providers whose services are adjacent to yours in each of four directions: upscale, downscale, upstream, and downstream.

• Upstream Service Provider: Provides a service that a client needs right before they need your service (e.g., a brand identity designer is upstream from a web designer). Upstream service providers have a consistent flow of potential clients who they are finishing engagements with and will likely have a need for your service.
• Downstream Service Provider: A downstream service provider is the inverse of upstream. Often, downstream service providers will be talking to clients who need to work with the upstream service provider first (e.g., a performance marketer is downstream from a web designer and may need to refer a prospect to a web designer before they’re ready for any performance marketing).
• Downscale Service Provider: Downscale service providers provide the same service that you do, but at a lower price point or level of complexity. This is a great partner to refer clients to in the event you’re unable to work with them. Similarly, they may have some prospects with needs that are too complex for them and can refer them to you.
• Upscale Service Provider: This is the inverse of downscale. It's a service provider (often a firm/agency) that can handle higher levels of complexity. They will often have prospects with simpler needs or lower budgets that will be a better fit for you, and you may have prospects you need to send to them (which can be pretty lucrative if you can get paid referral fees for engagements with high contract value). A good example would be a Fractional CTO who partners with a 20-person software development agency.

To help identify upstream, downstream, and downscale service providers in your network, you’ll need to spend some time scanning your network. Here are a few tips to help you do this:

• Search LinkedIn: Run a LinkedIn search query with titles such as “fractional,” “consultant,” or “advisor.” This will start to uncover folks in your network that also provide professional services. While this is a good place to start, you should remember that a good partner is someone who you already know and trust. Here's a query you can use to get started which will surface people in your first-degree network with these titles. You can play with title and company name filters to identify people you know who are providing services.
• Tap into Professional Affinity Groups: If you're in any professional communities (e.g., Slack communities), there are likely a lot of people in those communities who you can build relationships with who are complementary service providers. A simple post asking about people who provide specific services will surface people within those communities who would be good partners.

Here’s an example of an ideal partner network for a marketing consultant:

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By identifying and building relationships with these complementary service providers, you can create a robust referral network that not only helps your clients but also strengthens your business connections. Once you've identified these people in your network, you can broach referral arrangements.