Keep a Referral Scorecard

Ivan Misner, president of worldwide networking organization BNI, published a great idea in a recent article on Entrepreneur.com (I saw it here, on MSNBC).  While it may be complicated to track results and ROI for most marketing strategies, he explains, it's actually quite easy to track your referral results.  How?  With a scorecard.

On this card, Misner suggests, record each referral. From whom did you get it, and how?  Was it unsolicited, or did you ask? If so, how?  How did you follow up on the referral? How did you follow up with your referral source?  Also track how you made referral requests that fail to yield new prospects.

When you keep track of all of these data points, Misner points out, you can then look back at what you did and analyze how successful you were and why. You can determine whether or not you're getting repeat referrals from specific clients.

It's the little things that make all the difference.  Did you forget to send a thank-you note?  Did you word your referral request just a little bit differently this time?  Pay attention to these small details, track the path and outcome of each referral you request and receive, and you'll be in a great position to tweak your referral strategy and improve your results.

"Burn the Boats" to Achieve Referral Success

I recently saw a blog post by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing that takes one minute to read, but can literally transform your business and even your life.

Here's the core of it (click here to read the rest):

Sometimes knowing and doing have a hard time intersecting. I learned years ago one of the best ways to get something done is to give myself no choice.

There is a fable that tells about a captain coming ashore to conquer a new land and finding his forces outnumbered 10-1. Seeing this a sergeant asked what they should do, to which the captain replied, "burn the boats."

For example, he says, if you want to do more public speaking, get yourself booked for a speech.  If you want to get in shape, enter an upcoming 10K.

So what are some referral-related "boats" you can burn?  Here are a few ideas:

• Schedule a referral event and start getting the invitations ready.
• Book an evening at an exclusive restaurant for a client advisory board meeting.  Then, you can actually set up the client advisory board (free registration required)!
• Make 5 lunch reservations for two over the next 30 days.  Now find top clients to fill those slots, and then figure out who they know so you can ask for introductions over lunch.
• Really want to challenge yourself?  Make those reservations for three. Now you need to ask the clients to invite the people you want to meet.
• Get up from your desk right now, walk into your branch manager's office, and tell him or her that you are going to commit to getting at least 2 referrals per month, starting this month. (Don't have a manager? Call a mentor or close friend whose opinion of you matters, and commit to that person.)
• Book a lovely vacation for yourself and your spouse for a year from now, with a nonrefundable deposit. This will be your reward for meeting your referral goals and increasing your production.  If you don't meet the goals, you're going to eat the deposit!

As Jantsch writes, it's funny how your priorities can change when you have no choice. Stop choosing NOT to get referrals. Instead, choose success—even if you have to force it on yourself.

The ABCs of Automatic Referrals: J is for Jumpstart

I've been writing this blog for almost a year and a half now.  There's a lot to say about referrals and client relationships and networking, and I'm glad you are here taking the time to read it.

But you know, when you really come down to it, reading this blog will only get you a fraction of the way to the referral success you deserve. Even reading the Automatic Referrals report will only get you part of the way there.

Because in the end, all the reading and thinking and preparing in the world won't put more clients or assets in your book.

The only way to effect positive change in your business is to jumpstart yourself and take action.

This doesn't mean you should stick with the status quo. You SHOULD read about new and potentially transformative approaches to referrals. You SHOULD think about what you are and are not doing that may be holding you back.  But at some point, you have to stop thinking about getting more referrals, and just get out there and GET them. 

If you haven't tried any of the ideas you've been reading here for the past year and a half, try them. If you haven't gotten around to investing in Automatic Referrals yet, get around to it. If you already have it on the shelf and just haven't found time to read it yet, find the time. 

Then, remember that you can't just read a report and expect magic fairy dust to come spraying out of the pages and transform you into a top producer. You've got to commit yourself to full participation in your own development and your own life. That means actually completing the worksheets in the report and using them in your business. You can also be on the lookout for a series of public Jumpstart programs from Horsesmouth later this year designed to help you start implementing the Automatic Referrals process in your business.

We know that change is difficult.We'll keep on blogging and sending you ideas and tips and success stories. But we've heard from enough advisors at this point to know that when you DO actually make the necessary changes to implement a real referral process in your practice, it can change your professional life.  As Andrew Jackson said, "Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."

'Nuff said.

Conquer Your Self-Limiting Thoughts and Get More Referrals in 2007

I have heard only a handful of speeches in the course of my life that actually transformed me in some lasting way. Six years ago, I heard one of those speeches. I was attending a performance improvement conference in San Francisco where the featured speaker was Debra Benton, author of a variety of books including How to Think Like a CEO and How to Act Like a CEO. Benton has studied and interviewed hundreds of chief executives and found that they share a number of key traits.  She addressed one specifically in her keynote that I found profoundly important.

If you want to think and act like a CEO, Benton explained, look around you, see what everyone else is doing, and then DON'T do that.  Do the opposite.

She illustrated this principle in a very immediate way that I was fortunate enough to experience firsthand. At the end of the keynote, she held up a copy of her latest book, and said, "This book is for someone in this audience.  I'm waiting." 

All of the 1,000-plus people in the room just sat there for a moment, looking around with confused expressions, waiting for something to happen.  After about 20 seconds, a few people somewhat tentatively raised their hands.  Benton smiled and said, "That's not it." Then one or two folks stood up and waved at the podium.  Benton just stood there, still holding the book, and shook her head.

That's when the light bulb went off in my head. I looked around at everyone else to see what they were doing.   What they were doing was sitting, doing nothing, waiting.  So I applied the lesson I had just learned in the keynote. I did the opposite. I stood up, squeezed past the row of other attendees and made my way to the aisle. Then I walked up to the podium with my hand outstretched toward Ms. Benton and the book. 

Out of a room of 1,000 people, I was the only one to take that risk—the risk that I might make a fool of myself.  And guess who went home with the book?

I have carried that experience and that lesson with me to this day.  I tell you about it now because I was reminded of it by Robert Middleton's More Clients blog entry today, "Two Huge Things." The bottom line of Robert's post: go into the new year with big intentions—and strip yourself of the mental limitations that are holding you back.  He writes:

"What beliefs are you addicted to that are holding you back from realizing your intentions? As long as you remain attached to them, they will shape your current reality as they always have.

• Are they about how much money you can earn?
• Are they about how successful you can be?
• Are they about your capability as a marketer?
• Are they about the difference you can ultimately make?

And what if those beliefs weren't really true at all? Take a few minutes to seriously question them."

That day six years ago in a San Francisco hotel ballroom , as I walked up to that podium to claim my prize, I realized how powerful self-imposed limitations can be, and simultaneously how easy it can be to jettison them—and what you can accomplish if you do.  How many conversations have I failed to initiate; how many opportunities have I failed to leverage; how many ideas have I failed to try in my life... all because of self-limiting thoughts?  How many referrals have you NOT gotten because of YOUR self-limiting thoughts?

You want more referrals, or you would not be reading these words today.  The new year is here.  Now is your chance. Resolve to map out your intentions—and more importantly, become aware of your own limiting beliefs, and work consciously against them.

There is a Dale Carnegie quote that I always use to close my presentations on conquering referral anxiety:

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Read Robert's post. Read the articles below (free registration required).  Then make 2007 a truly transformative year in your business and your life. 

Happy New Year!

How to Wipe Out Self-Limiting Thinking in 5 Steps
Your greatest barrier to success is not the market or your competition. It's your own mind. Find out today how to recognize and overcome self-limiting thoughts that prevent you from reaching your full potential.

Your Productivity Starts With Positive Thinking
Try these strategies for controlling negative thoughts and outbursts during difficult situations. You'll find yourself happier, more productive, and better able to maintain good relationships.

Turn Around Your Negative Thinking in 3 Steps
Your future success depends on your ability to meet adversity with renewed energy and optimism. Remember, your thoughts influence your feelings and actions. Follow this method for staying upbeat in the face of rejection.

Referrals: Are You Worthy?

Last week I told you about a great marketing article by Robert Middleton on the topic of what we at Horsesmouth call "sales shame" (free registration requred) While reading comments on the article submitted by Robert's readers, I came across one that contains a great teaching point.

A reader named Victoria said that as she read Robert's article,

"I realized that the only times I have disliked and demonized selling have been when I had no confidence in the value of what I was offering. From now on, when I feel reluctance to sell, I will look a lot more closely at what I am offering for sale!"

This is a great point.  When you do a gut check, you may find that you feel great about your knowledge and service and just have negative feelings about asking for referrals... or, you may find that you actually don't feel very good about yourself professionally. 

If that's the case, give the matter some real, honest, objective thought.  Are you selling yourself short?  Are you better than you're giving yourself credit for? Or do you have some bona fide deficits you need to address in your knowledge base, your client service approach, or in some other key area of your practice? 

As Victoria points out, it's very unpleasant to sell when you don't feel good about what you're selling... and as an advisor, that "product" is really you and your services.  If you don't think the product is up to snuff, it's time to make the necessary improvements. 

Give yourself a "product" you can feel proud of, and you'll find that asking for referrals (and prospecting in general) will get a whole lot easier.

How to Execute on Your Referral Strategy--Efficiently and Effectively

Welcome to Day 17 of our Referral Clinic and Blog-a-thon.  We asked advisors to send us their toughest referral challenges. Now we're featuring the 20 best, along with solutions from top referral experts and veteran financial advisors. 

Today's winning question comes from Jeff R., a wholesaler from New York City. Congratulations, Jeff!

Jeff's question will be answered by yours truly, Miriam Lawrence, resident referral expert at Horsesmouth and author of the Automatic Referrals blog.

Question: "As an Inside Wholesaler with 6 years of experience, always trying to add value by talking about referral generating strategies, prospecting strategies, etc, I've talked to every type of Financial Advisor in the business and the most common roadblock that I've seen is execution or implementation of an actual plan. Every Advisor knows that they need to generate more referral business and every one of them wants to do it and every one of them likes to share ideas and talk about strategies. But when I make my follow-up calls asking if action has been taken, the most common response is... 'No, I haven't had time.'

When an advisor finds a specific niche, or a strategy that might work, how do they implement a plan around that strategy to maximize efficiency? Should there be specific hours of the day dedicated to the strategy, specific questions that are always asked during a client meeting??"

Answer: Excellent question, Jeff. You're spot on with your observations about the difficulty advisors have implementing a referral strategy. 

Advisors absolutely do need to figure out how to integrate their referral process into their business in a way that makes sense and allocates time efficiently.  How that's done will vary from advisor to advisor and from strategy to strategy—there's no "off the shelf" answer. 

The process that we teach in Automatic Referrals is largely centered around client conversations.  The most important task entails listening for clues about the people that clients know, identifying the people who might make good referrals for you, and then asking for introductions to those people. 

So, the first step once an advisor has identified a niche and ideal client is to start asking some basic conversational questions during meetings.  Some FAs already ask these questions, but think of them as rapport-builders or just conversational filler and don't pay much attention to the answers. In fact, they are the cornerstone of the investigative referral process we call "network mapping."

With this approach, the primary day-to-day task is integrating a simple question or two into client meetings. The actual questions can vary from advisor to advisor, and from client to client. 

For example, one advisor started asking "How's the family?" in review meetings and found himself learning all kinds of new details about his clients' families that he never knew. In one case, that simple question uncovered the fact that both of the client's grown sons could be perfect referral candidates.

Another advisor also started asking a variety of questions in every quarterly and annual review. The questions vary depending on the client and the context.  In one case, he asked a client "What do you like to do?" and learned that the client loves to fishing.  A few follow-up questions later, and the client had revealed that he has a cabin on a lake where he fishes during the summer, and one of his neighbors there, with whom he regularly fishes, is a multi-millionaire.  The advisor just had to say, "Wow, I sure would love to meet him," and the client said he'd be happy to set something up over the summer. 

This same advisor has made it a point to start asking his retired clients for introductions to their adult children during reviews, and got 3-4 new accounts in just a couple of months as a result.  When these methods become habits, they begin to bear real fruit.

However, we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves.  Advisors often don't take even the very first steps in getting their strategy off the ground: figuring out what their niche or target markets are, identifying their ideal client, determining who their best existing clients are, setting goals, etc.

For any strategy to work, there must first BE a strategy, and that requires a bit of work and time on the front end.  Unfortunately, advisors often defer planning activities of any kind because they take time that never seems available.  "Working ON the business rather than IN the business" never seems to make it to the front burner.

The only way an advisor can combat that fundamental problem is literally to schedule the time needed for these planning and strategizing activities.  Block the time, and do it officially—break the tasks down into discrete manageable steps, and set aside time for them in your appointment book, just as you would do for a client meeting.  Ask your assistant to hold your calls.  Better yet (much better, in fact) get out of the office altogether and do your ideal client profile and other strategic thinking at Starbucks or the library or sitting on a park bench—wherever you feel comfortable and able to think. 

Similarly, block time each day or week for the follow-up activities that keep a referral process humming along—such as writing thank-you notes, calling referrals to whom you haven't been able to obtain a direct introduction, etc.  Time blocking is also necessary if an advisor wants to cultivate relationships with CPAs or other professionals.  And sometimes it helps to do research on people your clients know before you speak to your clients about them, if those people are prominent, run a business, sit on boards, etc. and you can find some advance information about them.

The time to implement a referral strategy will never just appear in your schedule. You've got to build it in.  The good news is, once you do, it's pretty self-sustaining and very rewarding.

Have you been able to follow through on a referral process? Do you have tips to share, or other thoughts about today's challenge or the response? Post a comment.

The Four Legs of Advisor Marketing

In this week's Practice Power Audiocast (turn on your speakers), Joe Lukacs explains that most advisory practices need four marketing legs—four distinct ways to drive business.

Two of these are constants, Joe says: referrals (subscribe to our free Automatic Referrals newsletter to cover that angle) and client upgrades. By client upgrades, Joe means getting more business and assets (free registration required) from existing clients.

What should your other two marketing legs be? Whatever works for you, says Joe.  Work your strengths. If you're a good public speaker, he suggests, it would make sense to try seminars or workshops. If the thought of speaking in front of an audience makes you hide under the dining room table, on the other hand, but you're a great writer, maybe writing a column for a niche publication would be a better approach.

Joe's point is that while getting more referrals and optimizing your existing clients are non-negotiable, marketing is not one-size-fits-all. And in a nice case of synchronicity, I found confirmation of these ideas in this post on Jim Hassett's Law Firm Business Development blog yesterday:

When the Gallup organization studied 250,000 sales representatives over 40 years, they found.... that each successful salesperson develops a unique selling style based upon their particular personality strengths.  ...Think about the the top rainmakers you know. Chances are, some of them have succeeded through public speaking, some through community involvement, some by becoming active in professional groups, and some by playing golf. Each has found how to apply their personal strengths (free registration required).

Jim goes on to suggest the book Discover Your Sales Strengths as a way to figure out what your strengths are and which sales and marketing avenues to pursue.

While you should be open to a variety of marketing tactics, you should limit yourself to just four, according to Joe's audiocast—because often, he explains, advisors get spread too thin and fail to be consistent with their marketing. Patience and consistency are key once you find something that works. He also discusses the importance of tracking your results (using a tool like the Referral Tracking Sheet included in Automatic Referrals). More on this topic in a future post.

Are you working a four-legged marketing strategy?  Are you optimizing your strengths? Do you have a marketing plan? If not, here's a good place to start: How to Build a Marketing Plan That Works (free registration required).

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Center-of-influence referrals require energy and patience

I was struck last week by this passage in Jeff Thorsteinson's Horsesmouth article A 5-Step System For Building Centers of Influence (free registration required):

Some advisors fail to maximize their referrals from professional sources because of their inability to stick with a referral strategy. The fact is, it takes four or five times longer to secure a referral from a professional source than it does from an existing client. If you don't secure a referral from a given source within 12 months, don't give up. Conversely, if you've had some success at first, but then referrals have dropped off, that's not necessarily a reason to change your strategy.

Thorsteinson goes on to explain that you've got to treat COIs like your most important clients. He recommends 20 contacts a year, including a monthly COI-focused newsletter, as well as quarterly events just for COIs.

Is all that effort really worth it? You'd better believe it. For example, take the story of an advisor who started his own business networking group (free registration required). Peter Reuss invested $5,000 and hundreds of hours to get the group of the ground... and his perseverance paid off: he grew assets from $18 million to $55 million in just two years, mainly through referrals from members of the group.

If you understand that referral marketing requires time, patience, and strategic thinking, you can harness its tremendous power. The results will come. Just develop a strategy and stick with it.

Subscribe to our free referrals newsletter.

The ABCs of Automatic Referrals: A is for Action

I am shamelessly stealing an idea from Thom Singer over at Some Assembly Required.  He recently started a series of posts called "The ABCs of Networking" (which I highly recommend, along with the rest of Thom's blog). 

The ABCs of Automatic Referrals... now that's an idea I just couldn't pass up.  So today marks the inaugural post.  And what better way to start than with the concept of action.

There's a reason that Nike's slogan "Just do it" became one of the best-known taglines of all time.   It resonates. We all know deep down that action is the cornerstone of success, and that sitting around wishing our clients would give us more referrals isn't going to get us anywhere.  We've got to take action and start asking.

The interesting thing, though, is that the very act of committing to improve your referral business can have a positive impact, even before you start making tangible changes in your strategy and tactics.  Marketing expert Robert Middleton alluded to this idea in a couple of very interesting articles in his More Clients ezine.  In "An Intention Experiment," Robert asked his readers to do a simple experiment: choose a positive goal or outcome and write it down as if they'd already accomplished it. 

Further, he asked them to reflect on this outcome each day for a week, all the while imagining themselves experiencing the feelings of satisfaction and happiness that achieving it would bring. 

"I got more email back from this than any eZine in memory," he wrote in his follow-up article, "Beyond Intentions." "People reported that they had received unexpected checks in the mail, gained new clients and workshop participants, etc.... When you finally get out of your own way with the endless stream of negative intentions (which include reasons why not, self-defeating beliefs, limited thinking, and lame excuses) you can actually get around to marketing your business." 

In short, simply forming an intention or making a real committment to get more referrals constitutes meaningful action.  Of course, you must then follow up on your intention with more tangible steps if it's going to have staying power.

We got validation of this concept from a top producer who started getting more referrals almost as soon as she began reading the Automatic Referrals report—to the tune of 10 referrals, each worth more than $1 million, all within a month of reading the report. 

"The remarkable thing is, it's kind of like writing down your goals for the year," she told us of the transformation in her business. "You write them down and you commit to them, and all of a sudden they start happening."

Referral success is within your reach. It's all up to you.  Are you ready to act?

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Find the referral formula that works--then stick with it

In a recent Duct Tape Marketing post, John Jantsch put his finger directly on a very common marketing challenge for advisors. He writes:

"There is a Buddhist concept called the monkey mind. The monkey mind is the name for that clamoring in your head that hates the silence, hates the mundane, hates to sit still.

I think small business owners suffer from the marketing monkey mind. They can't stand to listen to the same marketing message over and over, they yearn to bounce off the walls in search of the new, new marketing message and they hate, more than anything, repetition.... Stop changing what you say, what you look like, what you do—stick with something long enough, repeat it over and over until it makes you ill (or becomes a mantra)."

Jantsch is talking about small business owners, but his observation fits advisors to a T—although in their case, it's more typically tactics that change, as opposed to branding or marketing messages.  As long-time advisor coach Joe Lukacs once told me:

"Lack of consistency is a real problem in this industry.  Advisors often stop doing what works out of sheer boredom.  If you want to try new strategies, try small tests, slotting in the new methods without taking time away from proven techniques. You may have to work a little harder for a short amount of time, but don't abandon what works.  Recognize what works, bottle it, and stay consistent."

This advice is true for referral marketing as well as marketing and prospecting in general.  As Jantsch suggests in his post, the end goal of any type of marketing is to get prospects to target YOU, rather than the other way around.  Know which markets you serve.  Be clear about what makes you unique in serving them.  Figure out who your best referral sources are for those markets, and then be consistent in asking them for introductions and otherwise engaging their help to get the word out.  You'll start to develop critical mass in your chosen markets, and the referrals will begin flowing more and more freely.

You can conquer monkey mind and make referrals truly automatic in your practice by remembering Jantsch's and Lukacs' sage advice: "Stop changing what you say, what you look like, what you do. Recognize what works, bottle it, and stay consistent."

Subscribe to our free referrals newsletter.

Referrals in spring

All right!  It's 1:26 p.m.... the vernal equinox.  It's official.  It's spring. (Unless, of course, you're an Australian reader, in which case, my apologies and have a good fall!).

Here in the northern climes, with our six-month winters, we await this season with something just short of desperation.   I don't care that new snow fell last night.  It's spring, gosh darn it.  Those daffodils WILL come up eventually.

We humans love milestones and goalposts.  We need them.  So I'm here to give you one. 

It's spring. Spring is all about abundance, renewal, the promise of what's to come.  GROWTH. 

So don't wait another day.  What can you do today, right now, to start getting the referrals and introductions you deserve?  Give yourself a gift.  Take a look at Automatic Referrals, put together a referral strategy that works, and start planting some seeds that will bear fruit for your business down the road.

Subscribe to our free referrals newsletter.

Why referral success is entirely up to you

Business coach Joe Lukacs makes a powerful point in his most recent Practice Power Audiocast  (make sure your speakers are on before you click), part of his series on the Seven Myths of Success for Financial Advisors.  The myth he busts this week is the idea that external forces play a significant role in your ability to succeed. 

Poppycock, says Joe. "If you look at people in any business, in any area, that achieve at high levels, they take responsibility for their success, and for their failures. They don't blame somebody else, they don't make excuses. They say, 'Look, I achieve, or I fail.'"

Joe points to the bear market of 2000-2003 as an example.  He says that many of his coaching clients simply ignored the things they couldn't control and were able to grow their businesses by 20%, 30%, and even 40%.   We found the same thing at Horsesmouth through our interviews with advisors.  While many FAs were crying in their coffee about how the market made it impossible to do business, a select few advisors were busy stealing their clients and growing like gangbusters.  Take Scott Carr, for example: using a targeted referrals approach, he more than doubled his revenues (free registration required) and increased AUM by 60% between 2001 and 2003.

So don't use external forces and events as reasons not to succeed.  If you want more clients or more assets, decide today to take responsibility for making that happen.  Make a commitment to learn how to ask for referrals effectively. Decide you won't "forget" to ask anymore.  If the idea of asking makes you anxious, commit today to overcoming that fear (the Automatic Referrals report devotes an entire chapter to this issue). 

Success really is there for the taking.  All you need to do is reach for it.

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Consistency drives referral success

I played basketball in high school. I didn't play well, mind you—but I played. The one area where I did stand out a bit was in free-throw shooting. I routinely made 85-90% of my foul shots, both in practice and in games. I didn't get to use my one skill in games very much—that would, after all, have entailed getting out on the court—but it was still a comforting skill to have.

That's why I was so thrilled when I heard about Deb Remmerde, a sophomore at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. She did something no one else has ever done in the history of basketball, at any level (including the NBA): she made 133 free throws in a row in competition before missing for the first time.

The CBS Early Show decided to put Remmerde to the test earlier this week. They put in her a gym full of supportive fans and asked her to shoot free throws for two hours. When it was all over, she had made 580 out of 585 attempts. What I found most striking was her consistency of form. Her timing and motion were absolutely identical from one shot to the next. And she said as much when Harry Smith asked her what her secret is: I don't think there's really any secret," was her response . "I think it's... having a routine that works and just having a lot of repetitions."

I was also struck by the fact that those exceptionally rare occasions when she DID miss didn't seem to phase her at all. She'd made 256 in a row when she missed one. That would rattle a lot of people, but Remmerde just got right back in the groove and made another 100+ in a row before missing again.

What does this have to do with referrals? A lot. Lack of consistency is one of the most common referral saboteurs for financial advisors. Once we find a referral approach that works, we need to apply it systematically and consistently. When we do that, the referrals will start to flow. And no allowing "missed shots" to throw you off your game. Get your routine down and stick with it (free registration required) and it won't be long before you start blowing away your own personal best.

Referrals: how often can I ask?

We got this email not long ago from Terry, an independent in Houston:

I have been trying to incorporate referrals for my business plan. However, I am not sure of two things: 1. How often can I ask a client for a referral and 2. What about clients I have not worked with for a long time (less than a year)?

We hear variations on these questions quite a lot.  Here's what we told Terry.

There is no hard and fast answer to how often you can ask a client for referrals. Like many things, it depends entirely on the client, your relationship with the client, and what types of referrals or introductions you're asking for. Some clients will have a helper mentality—either they'll be very interested in helping you, or very interested in helping the people they're referring. Those people can be approached with more frequency.

In general, though, it's better to be safe than sorry.  Target your referral requests very carefully, so you get maximum "bang for the buck," and don't ask any one client for more than a few referrals or introductions during the course of a year.

If you target your requests properly, you'll have a better chance of actually getting a client as a result. You'll also be raising the client's awareness that you're interested in referrals, so he or she may be more likely to start offering them proactively. Also, if you're focusing your efforts too heavily on any one client, that probably means you're not fully investigating and maximizing referral opportunities with other clients and referral sources. As with investments, it's good to stay diversified!

As for the second issue, it's critical to have a solid relationship with any potential referral source before asking them for something. Give first, get later, is a good golden rule.

If your business is mostly transactional and you've been in close contact with a client but not written any tickets for a while, it may be just fine to ask for a referral or introduction.  If, on the other hand, you literally have not spoken or met with a client for 6 months, your first conversation would not be the appropriate time to ask--unless you're able to deliver some serious value (free registration required) in that conversation ("Mrs. Jones, I just called to let you know your portfolio is up 20% since July") and feel VERY comfortable that they're feeling warm and fuzzy about you.

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