The Professional Connections Network (PCN) started from a finding that comes up again and again: when marketing managers are asked, they rate referrals as the most successful way to win new clients.
Among smaller professional firms (leaving aside the big national practices), there was a second finding. Few firms have a referral strategy, or do anything active to build a steady flow of referrals.
Why is that?
Why would so many firms put time and money into less effective marketing, and leave the most successful approach so underused?
The answer seems to lie partly in a perception and partly in the wrong starting point.
The perception is that other professionals already have referrals sewn up, so there aren’t many new avenues left to explore.
That isn’t the case. Most firms have no meaningful referral arrangements at all, or have ones that never worked. So firms across several sectors each assume they’re the one that can’t make it work, and don’t spend the time building the relationships.
Start with what you can do together
The wrong starting point is to treat referrals as a way to get work flowing towards us. The question becomes “what can we get out of this?” We’d love a referral every week from other professionals, but give little thought to what we’d do in return.
Referrals are as much a by-product as the goal. A better starting point is to build a working relationship with firms that want the same thing, and to ask what we can get out of it together.
So rather than chasing referrals alone, it makes sense to group together with other local firms that share our aims, think about mutual benefit, and look for ways of working where everyone gets more from the same pot.
Why PCN exists
That takes a little organising, which is why PCN was set up: one place where accountants, estate agents, financial advisers, mortgage brokers and solicitors who want to work this way can find each other. Each postcode area has one firm from each profession, so the firms in an area aren’t competing with each other.
Once firms are in the same place, they know the others want the same thing, and they can start talking, meeting and working out what suits them.
It can go further than referrals. Firms that work well together often share knowledge and ideas, and take on joint work such as shared marketing or presentations to each other’s clients.
How a referral works on PCN, step by step.