A steady flow of customer referrals is clearly an effective way to grow a business - and using LinkedIn could be your best way of achieving this.

So what do you do?

1. Start by inviting your clients to connect with you

   Every time you have a positive contact with a client (such as a friendly renewal call), go straight to LinkedIn and invite them to connect with you.

   Our free ‘LinkedIn Client Invitation’ template on Broker Create should be helpful here.
   
   

2. Check their network for people who fit your customer profile

   Once you’ve connected, use their network to identify and build a list of their contacts who seem likely to fit your ideal customer profile.

   To do this:

   • Open their “connections”.
   • Use the “filter” tool to better identify those that closely match your ideal customer profile.
   • Use the “advanced search” where appropriate.

   If you want to browse without limitations is may be worth investing in LinkedIn’s premium version.
   
   

3. Ask for an introduction (via email or LinkedIn messaging)
   • What you’ve now got from LinkedIn is a legitimate list of prospects.
   • The next step is to contact and encourage your client to make an introduction.

Here’s an example draft message to adapt, or get ideas from:

Hi Kate,

Thanks for your ideas regarding our new Referral campaign. As you suggested, we’ll now be making a £10 donation to Children in Need for every new referral we get in December. Our target donation is £1,000 - which I hope isn’t too ambitious.

And with that in mind, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind recommending us to some of your LinkedIn contacts? A big ‘thank you’ in advance if you’re happy to do this!

To make this a bit easier (because I know you’re busy) I’ve listed ten people from your network (see the list below) that I think could really benefit from our services.

If you could email them that would be ideal….and CC me if that’s okay….(so that they can easily get in touch with me). I promise not to use their email address (unless of course they make an enquiry).

I’ve also drafted the sort of message you might send out (which you can adapt/use/ignore – as appropriate)

Many thanks again, Kate!

Here are my thoughts on the sort of message that you might send out:

Hi Bill,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you about this. My insurance broker has recently taken up my idea of making a £10 donation to Children in Need for every new referral they get in December – and I’m naturally keen to support this.

So I’m contacting you to see if their services would be relevant to you. If it helps, I’ve always been delighted by the service and highly competitive prices that they get for me.

I’ve CC’ed Rory on this email (he’s my main contact at Oswolds). I hope that’s okay. He’s promised not to contact you direct, but would be delighted if you could contact him to arrange a telecon or meeting. They serve a delicious Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee at their offices - which may encourage you to get in touch, cos I know you love your coffee!)

Thanks again for this, Bill.

Love to Jayne and the family.

Kate