The Reluctant Business

Developer’s Guide To
Winning Clients

www.howtomakepartner.com
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

Contents
1. How to grow a £2 million-sized practice within 2 years
2. 4 business development lies you need to stop
believing if you are to quickly grow a partner-sized
client portfolio
3. When is the right time to become a specialist?
4. How to choose what to specialise in, i.e. your niche
5. 5 encouraging signs that your business development
efforts and marketing plan are working
6. How often should I follow-up without seeming pushy?
7. 7 annoyingly true reasons why you are not getting
enough referrals from your network
8. How to ask for referrals from friends
9. 6 tips to get back in touch with old colleagues
10. The DUFF formula to stop wasting time on clients who
will never sign up
11. Need some help to grow your client portfolio?

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

2
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients
How to grow a £2 million sized
practice within 2 years
It is more common than you think
I am often asked for advice on how to win new clients, but a recent request had a twist: how
to win new clients, and grow a £2 million-sized practice within 2 years to justify a partnership
business case.
Whilst the title may seem very far-fetched, there
are firms who want their potential new partners
to have already built a partner-sized client
portfolio BEFORE making it to partner.
I could debate the rights and wrongs of such an
approach; after all, if you are expected to hit high
billing targets it is almost impossible to build a
partner-sized client portfolio without partner on your
business card. However, this is a real situation faced
by many professions in practice. Therefore, I’ll leave
this hot topic for another time!
Therefore, here is my advice to lawyers, accountants,
consultants trying to make partner and needing to
create a £2 million practice within 2 years without
partner on their business card. It also answers the
question “how to win new clients” regardless of what
size client portfolio you need to build.
Go for the low hanging fruit
How to win new clients is a challenge faced by any
lawyer, accountant, or consultant who wants to make
partner. However, building a practice of completely
new clients is a long hard slog. There are easier ways
to build your own practice.
For example:
Can you convince your partners to let you
run several client accounts with a view to
expanding them?
You are unlikely to be given any ‘star’ clients by your
partners unless you’ve made yourself the de-facto
account manager. Typically for you to be given a
‘star’ client, both the client and your firm need to
www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
recognise that you’ve become the person who leads
that account. Any non-star client that you are given
by a partner is likely to be hard work: unlikely to
grow or have a serious problem. After all, why would
any partner hand over a decent client to you? Don’t
despair though: there may be some rich pickings in
one partner’s pass-downs. Sometimes a fresh face
with a different approach may be all that is needed to
turn a stagnant client into a growing account for the
firm.
How far can you expand your current client
portfolio?
Let’s assume you are not starting your client portfolio
from zero. (But your challenge is still very much how
to win new clients.) Selling more to your existing
clients is one of the easiest ways to grow your client
portfolio. Even if you can’t sell more to your existing
clients can you use your relationships with them to
get introductions to prospects?
Can you start a new service and sell to the
firm’s existing clients?
This approach relies on two things: firstly being able
to identify and deliver a brand new service that your
firm’s clients will want to buy, secondly your partners
being prepared to give you access to their contacts
to help sell the new service. You would think that if
there is a strong commercial argument to offer this
new service to clients, partners will be up for it. After
all, creating more profit for the firm overall is good for
everyone. Unfortunately, that can not always be the
case, particularly in the more traditional old-school
law firms, as partners can tightly ring fence their own
clients.
3
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

How to grow a £2 million sized

practice within 2 years
CONTINUED

Can you inherit an exiting partner’s practice? likely that this client win will justify his admission to
the partnership of his firm. However, it took years
Strictly speaking, this option isn’t normally available to
of relationship management to get this opportunity.
professionals in want of a client portfolio. However,
Whilst it can be tempting to only focus on the big
there are times where a partner will leave a healthy
client wins, after all, you do have to quickly build a £2
practice before retirement age. The likelihood is the
million client portfolio, this can be soul destroying.
majority of the exiting partner’s clients will gradually
Big pieces of client work tend to be given to already
follow them to their new firm. However, there will
tested suppliers rather than taking a chance on
always be a 6-12 month window, dependent on the
someone. Therefore, look out for the small jobs you
length of gardening leave AND any non-solicitation
can do for new clients and then use these to get an
clauses, where you have the opportunity to defend
opportunity to pick up the bigger jobs.
the client portfolio in order to retain them for
yourself. Get onto panels and preferred supplier lists

Be extremely focused in the type of clients you
want to win
When you have a big client target to achieve, it can
be tempting to diversify your focus and go after lots
of different clients or sectors. Successful marketing
plans actually tend to be narrower in client focus
than unsuccessful ones. Yes, it sounds counter-
intuitive, but the more fussy you are about the type
of clients you want to win and market to, the greater
the likelihood that you will win clients quicker.
If you are in the position where you need to build
your own client portfolio in spite of what your
partners are doing (this is happening to one of my
clients at the moment), then looking for an unclaimed
niche or neglected service offering within the firm is a
great start. Ideally you need a practice focus that you
can quickly call and make your own.
Plant the seeds and then go for the big client
wins
One of my clients recently picked up some lucrative
M&A work, which normally would only go to a partner
rather than a senior associate. However, he had
spent the previous 12 months growing his profile
and reputation within the marketplace and had been
talking with this client for the past three years. It’s
Many big organisations use panels or preferred
supplier lists for the work where they need support
from professional advisors. However, once you
are on the panel or preferred supplier list then
it becomes much easier to get work from these
organisations. Understanding how to win new clients
can often be as simple as finding out what you need
to do to get on an organisation’s panel or preferred
supplier list. It never hurts to ask the question!
Occasionally you may get some work from a client
that hasn’t been given out to their panel of suppliers.
If you do a good job, this is an opportunity to ask to
be added to the panel for future pieces of work.
Have a marketing plan
How to win new clients becomes much easier when
you have a marketing plan which you are working
towards. If you need to rapidly build a £2 million
client portfolio you need to be incredibly focused in
what you will do and what you will not do. It becomes
all too easy to kid ourselves that we are ‘doing’ our
business development, when what we are really
being is busy fools. To stop yourself being a busy
fool then take the time to put together a marketing
plan which will help you build your £2 million client
portfolio.

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

4
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

4 business development lies you need

to stop believing if you are to quickly
grow a partner-sized client portfolio
When I look at the curriculum of ‘high potential’ programmes in many firms, I can get rather hot
under the collar. You may wonder why? Well, they seem to have (at worst) forgotten the fact
that their future partners need the skills to win work. Either that or the quality of the business
development training provided is woeful and stuck in the 1990s.
These are some of the business development lies your little black book is, you will still find potential
that partners in firms tell their staff about how to start clients checking you out online before they make
winning work: contact. If they can’t find you online - and they look
• You have just got to get your name out there further and deeper than just your website - they may
• You can ignore online networking if you have a not make contact at all. In fact the Hinge Research
strong enough network of introducers Institute found that 80% of buyers will check out your
website and 60% will look at your online profile. Fail
• When you have enough clients/business you
to provide a congruent and credible online presence
can stop marketing
above and beyond your website, and you WILL be
• Good client advisors will always pick up more
missing out on potential leads. In chapter 4 of The Go-
work from their existing clients
To Expert, we show you how to build a credible online
1. You just need to get your footprint, so that it doesn’t matter whether you meet
name ‘out there’ a client virtually or physically.

Building your profile and reputation is so much more
than getting your name ‘out there’. If you neglect
some of the very important preparatory work, thinking
about you, the services you offer, and the reason ‘why’
clients should work with you, your ‘getting your name
out there’ will be pretty ineffectual. In Part 2 of The
Go-To Expert, we help you do this thinking and help
you to “package” yourself, and what you do, in a way
which makes you irresistible to your future clients.
It isn’t just about getting your name out there, it is
making sure that you get it out in the right places. Far
too many accountants, lawyers and consultants find
themselves on the wrong networking scene, talking to
the wrong sort of people.
One of the best business decisions I ever did was to
stop networking locally. There were just not enough
of my target clients, or people well connected to my
target clients to get results from the local networking
scene. However, give me the opportunity to go to a
gala dinner or conference of one of the accountancy
institutes or the Law Society and I will bite your hand
off for an invitation. (I know, I need to get out more!)
2. You can ignore online
networking if you have a strong
enough network of introducers
The problem is that regardless of how well stocked
3. When you have enough
clients/business you can stop
marketing
In an ideal world, this would be the case. However,
projects get cancelled, clients go bust... and very often
the professions have long sales cycles. This means if
your sales cycle, i.e the time from when you start your
marketing to the time when new business is signed,
is long, you need to keep the marketing ticking over
month in, month out. If you are too busy to take on
new clients you can then choose the clients you do
want to take on, and ‘resign’ a few clients who are
either a pain to deal with or unprofitable.
4. Good client advisers will
always pick up more work from
their clients
This isn’t always the case. After all, it is not your
client’s responsibility to find you more work,
either on their business or via a recommendation
to another potential client. In fact I have known
many professionals, i.e. lawyers, accountants and
consultants, who are absolutely great at servicing their
clients, but lousy at identifying where there is more
opportunity to generate work through their clients.
Being able to spot opportunities for new business
with an existing client is still a skill.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

5
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

The 5Ps that always give time for

business development
The dilemma: You have a full client workload and a daily chargeable time target of over 6 hours
a day. However, you need to build your own client portfolio. That is a full job in its own right.
You need some time-effective business development tips. So, is it any wonder that business
development often gets de-prioritised to make way for other stuff?

Therefore, in this chapter we explore the 5Ps that try to do it all at once, either you burn out very quickly
you need to make sure you always make time for or the opposite occurs, and nothing happens. When
business development, and that your business we work with clients we encourage them to work to a
development efforts pay off. 30/60/90 day business development action plan.
Prospect List (particularly if your target market
Business Development Tips
is big business)
Plan
Like many business development tips, often the
It is boring, but if you work to a business
traditional advice still holds. Identify a list of clients
development plan, you are more likely to make the
that you would love to act for. Then you can really
time for business development. After all, as the
focus your networking time around getting in front of
saying goes, if you don’t know where you are going,
these organisations.
any route will get you there. Without a clearly defined
Pass down (or delegate)
plan with tasks scheduled in your diary, it is going to
be hard to make time for business development. You don’t need to do all of your business
development activities. Trainees, juniors and
Prioritise
interns are great for researching prospects and
Life in the professions is all about choices, and how
marketplaces. How about asking junior members
you make those choices. It is all too easy to throw
of your team to help you co-write a blog post? For
your hands up in the air and say you don’t have time
example, one of our clients heads up a sector team
for business development. But the professionals who
in her firm. She asks the trainees who are interested
prioritise their business development activities are
in joining her sector team to research and find good
normally the ones who make it through to partner.
articles to send to clients and introducers. That way,
These people treat their business development
her trainees get a deeper knowledge of the sector
activities with the same importance as client work.
and she gets a series of curated articles that she
What can you do to carve out some time every
can easily send on. When you delegate business
day for your most important client, your future
development activities it can truly be a win-win for
employability? The reality of business development
everyone concerned.
is you can always do more. Therefore, prioritise
Delegation doesn’t necessarily need to be business
exactly what you will do and who you will target, and
development activities. What other stuff can you
you will find you have more time than you realise for
delegate down to others to free up more of your time
business development.
for business development? For example:
Pace
1. Can you ask your secretary to make sure that
At the beginning with business development, there
keeping in touch with the right people in your
always seems to be so much to do, and so many
network actually happens?
business development tips you can implement.
2. How about getting the trainees in your team
Rewrite your LinkedIn profile, blog weekly (or just
to help you with more of the admin type tasks
regularly), speak with prospects, build up your
that come with client work, such as opening a
network . . . The list can be endless. However, if you
file on the system?

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

6
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

When is the right time to

become a specialist?
When should I specialise?
The challenge for any lawyer, accountant or consultant in practice is when to specialise. (Not if
they need to!) Do it too soon and you don’t get the broad base of technical and commercial skills
you need. Do it too late and you will struggle to build your own practice. The sweet spot timing
will be different for each of us, but here are some points to consider.

Having a broad base of technical
skills is good - up to a point
At the start of your career, your success as a
professional, whether accountant, lawyer or
consultant, comes from being able to pick up a wide
range of jobs. However, your success as a senior
professional comes from your expertise, i.e. being
known for a particular specialist skill set. When I talk
about a specialist skill set, I mean being more than
just ‘an employment lawyer’ or a ‘VAT specialist’. I am
meaning choosing to go a level deeper than that. For
example:
• Employment lawyer specialising in the banking
sector
• VAT expert specialising in retail and
e-commerce companies
Do I really need to commit to a
niche?
I really recommend you commit at least part way.
As with most things, it is about balance. Unless
you qualified into or work within a specific sector
team, a niche needs to be built gradually. Over
time your ‘growing interest’ will become a ‘growing
specialisation’, which will then become a ‘specialism
in’, and then finally become ‘this is what I specialise in’.
Some professionals, particularly those in small firms,
may never get to the last stage - it may be enough
to be a general practitioner with specialisms. It is all
about what is right for you and your practice.
By becoming a specialist for a sector (or two) you will
be more in demand than a colleague who decides to
stay a generalist. Strange, but true. You may wonder
why? Basically, by being a specialist, it’s more likely that
your name comes to mind first when the assignment
leader or resourcing manager decides who to put on
the job. You’ll still get opportunities outside of your
sector specialism, but there you will be competing on
a level playing field with the rest of your colleagues. A
specialism gives you a head start.
Look at the people in your firm who are progressing
their careers quickly, I bet they are known for certain
skills.
So when is it the right time to
start specialising?
As soon as you are qualified, you should start to
think about what is going to be your ‘thing’. Whilst
you don’t need to make the transition instantly,
post-qualification is the time to be researching and
identifying who or what makes you tick. When your
charge-out rate starts to increase, you and your firm
need to be able to justify this increase to clients. Being
known as ‘the specialist’ or ‘the go-to expert’ helps you
to do this.
Building your practice
When your career reaches the point you want to start
to build your own practice - when you are a senior
associate, senior manager or director - you need to
build a strong personal brand. After all, your brand
needs to be strong enough for people to send you
work rather than send it to someone more senior.
This means that when you get to the senior levels, you
should have started the journey into a niche. After all,
it is much easier to win business as a senior associate
or senior manager if you are already known as being
really good in a particular sector.
In summary
How much you choose to specialise and focus on a
niche or two is really up to you. However, the sooner
your name becomes associated with a specialism,
the easier it will become to build your own practice.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

7
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

How to choose what to

specialise in, i.e. your niche
Building your own practice often means you need to be known for something in particular.
This ‘something’ is often referred to as a ‘niche’. In today’s marketplace it is very difficult to
make partner as a generalist. In this chapter, based on an extract from Poised for Partnership,
we explore how to find your niche.

How to find your niche When you are considering your niche you want to
think about three factors:
Some professionals find that by the time they get
to Partner Track they already have a clearly defined • Passion
niche. However, this isn’t the case for everyone.
• Credibility
If your work has been of a very generalised nature up
• Fit
to now, it can be hard to pin down what your niche
will be. Remember your niche can be focused on a All three factors need to be present for the niche to
sector, specific location, technical specialism or even be right for you.
a type of person.
Passion
There are only a few rules about choosing your niche:
Very simply, you need to be passionate about your
1. You need to be able to build a referral network niche if you are going to commit to it for at least the
and highly targeted marketing plan based next few years. Clients want to work with someone
around the niche who is enthusiastic and excited to be working with
them and their personal or business affairs. If you
2. There needs to be enough of a marketplace for
don’t have the heart for what you will doing, you will
you to build a partner-sized client portfolio
never have the commitment or energy to build your
3. By claiming a niche, it needs to significantly profile and reputation within the niche.
reduce the size of the marketplace you are
Credibility
focusing on.
The easiest way to win new clients is when you
Picking up on the last rule: far too many professionals
already have a track record of working on similar
say they have a niche or a specialism because they
types of clients. It is much easier to build up a
focus on ‘owner-managed business’, ‘high net-
client portfolio in a particular niche if you have an
worth individuals’, ‘SMEs’ or ‘Entrepreneurs’. These
established network and verifiable results working
specialisms are not a niche as most of their peers
with this type of client.
will say that they also specialise in these. A true
niche will typically dig one or two layers deeper Fit
than what everyone else says that they specialise in.
Fit means two things. Firstly that your marketplace
As one client found, even though his marketplace
fits your aspirations about fee level. Secondly, you
was owner-managed businesses, he targeted his
may be passionate about a certain niche and have
marketing on owner-managed businesses who:
credibility within the niche, however, you need to feel
1. Had 2–4 directors as if you fit. This means that you have shared values,
you care about what your clients care about, and you
2. Had 20–200 employees
find it easy to socialise with your clients.
3. Were manufacturing companies

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

8
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

How to choose what to

specialise in, i.e. your niche
CONTINUED

If you are still struggling to
decide on your niche then do this
exercise
This happened to one of my clients, who is a litigator.
He had a broad practice and had been known to turn
his hand to most forms of litigation. He was struggling
to identify what his niche was. So I asked him to plot
on a graph the type of work he did. The two axes of
the graph were ‘passion’ and ‘reward’.
After he had plotted 3 types of litigation a light bulb
went off in his head. He realised that he did have
a niche, just his niche was acting for ultra high net
wealth individuals who were entrepreneurs. As
a result of doing this exercise he was able to put
in place a marketing plan to build his network of
referrers who could send him the right type of client.
In summary
Deciding on what you will specialise in will be the
point at which marketing and business development
becomes much easier and less time consuming.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

9
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients
5 encouraging signs that your
business development efforts and
marketing plan are working
When you start a marketing plan, clients don’t normally fall out of thin air. Nor will every
meeting instantly turn into a golden relationship. It takes time to build your brand, form
strong introducer relationships, and generate awareness within the internal and external
marketplaces.
The early days of marketing yourself are particularly
hard because you need to convince clients and
introducers to trust you without having a strong track
record. As a result, you often have to plug away at a
marketing plan without feeling any fruits from your
labours for many months; potentially even longer
if your ideal client has a long sales cycle. It is only
natural to wonder if your marketing is working?
In this article, I explore what signs to look out for to
show that your marketing plan is paying off before
the leads start to flow in.
Is my marketing working?
Marketing when you are trying to build up your own
practice and win your own clients is very much a leap
into the unknown and ‘betting’ on what will be the
right thing to do. This is why it is very natural, when
you are just a couple of months into your business
development strategy, to wonder, ‘Is my marketing
working? Why haven’t I seen any tangible outcomes?’
Unless you are doing it wrong, it almost certainly is
working, here is how you can find out.
1. Measure both activities and
outcomes
The journey to win a new client involves many twists
and turns. It is often difficult to say what actually
caused a client to decide to work with you. As a
result, it is often nigh on impossible to connect what
you post on Twitter (for example) with winning a new
client. It is just too big a jump. Therefore, track and
monitor the impact of all your business development
activities. This way you will be able to see the early
signs of your business development strategy paying
off.
+44 (0)1234 48 0123
10
2. Watch out for people starting
to come to you rather than you
having to go to them
When you are a ‘nobody’ you have to do all the
running. It will be you requesting the meetings, you
requesting opportunities to blog on the firm website,
you having to travel to meet someone. However,
when you become slightly ‘hotter’ property and the
awareness of what you do builds, you will find that
people start to come to you. You’ll find the marketing
team approaching you to write a blog, introducers
requesting to meet you, rather than the other way
around.
3. Your ‘tribe’ or network starts
to build
Probably the earliest sign that you will see that your
business development strategy is working is an
increase in connections made via social media. After
all, if you are ‘getting out there’ and ‘have something
to say’, it is only natural that people will start to follow
and connect with you on social media.
4. Your partners or business
development team may start
to include you in more business
development activities
This isn’t always a given! However, recognition that
you are doing the right things with your business
development can often come first from internal
sources. This may be something as small as
being asked to join in a discussion about account
management for a client. Or something much bigger,
such as being asked to join a pitch team or come
along to a business development/marketing group’s
regular meeting.
www.howtomakepartner.com
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

5 encouraging signs that your

business development efforts and
marketing plan are working
CONTINUED

5. People start engaging with In summary

your content Do keep the faith with your business development
One of the best signs you are on the right track with activities. Remember it takes more than just one
your business development is if others start engaging meeting, one blog, and one tweet to make a sale or
with your content, e.g. sharing it with others, liking it generate a referral.
or commenting on it. In fact, this phase of engaging
with your content is the precursor to leads coming
your way. The more others spread your message for
you, the easier it becomes to strengthen your brand
and awareness.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

11
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

How often should I follow-up

without seeming pushy?
Many senior fee earners hate the thought of selling, as this is not why they joined their
profession. Consequently they have a very hands-off approach to their Leads, and potentially
lose many potentially good Clients by this approach.

Your aim when managing your Leads through
your Sales Pipeline is to let them set the pace, but
also design into your sales process little acts of
commitment from them to take them to the next
stage in the process. These acts of commitment
enable you to focus on the Leads who are committed
to proceeding, and eliminate the ‘tyre kickers’.
Tyre kickers is a name often used to describe the
professional’s equivalent of the people who are ‘just
browsing’ in a shop.
Unfortunately tyre kickers can sometimes be
mistaken for a genuine Lead, because they will
exhibit some of the same signs that an interested
Lead will; i.e.
• Be very interested in what you charge, and
what they get for that
Here are ways of getting your Leads to commit to the
next stage in the process, whilst also weeding out
tyre kickers:
• Ask them what they see as the next step.
• Check very early in the sales process that they
have the budget to afford your services.
• Before writing a proposal ask the Lead to
commit to a quick conversation to talk through
the draft outline. This allows you to find out
which Leads are actually bringing the sales
process to an end by asking for a proposal.
• Ask them how and when you should follow up
with them if you have not heard anything.

• Want some free advice from you (rather than

actually pay for your service).

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

12
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

7 annoyingly true reasons why you

are not getting enough referrals
from your network
I’ve been spending a large proportion of my time recently helping lawyers create their business
and personal case for partnership. As a result of doing this work, I have asked all of them, ‘how
much is your referral network worth to you and the firm?’ (By the way, do you know the answer
to this question?)

This then led me on to wonder why so many
professionals, not just lawyers, miss out on referrals
from their network. Given that referral generation
is the cornerstone of most professional services
marketing or business development strategies, it’s
still surprising how many lawyers, accountants, and
consultants miss out.
In this chapter, I identify the 7 reasons why you
are not getting the results and referrals you need
to implement your professional services business
development strategy.
Reason 1: You are your network’s
best kept secret
They say that if you do a good job then your clients
will become your best sales team. Unfortunately,
far too many of us fall into this trap. Of course,
there does come a point when you have a critical
mass: when referrals from existing clients are all you
need to grow or maintain the size of your practice.
However, most professionals who want to grow their
practice don’t have that critical mass - or they are
getting the wrong type of referrals from their clients.
(See point 5.) If you don’t get out and about physically
or virtually and spend time with your network, how
on earth will they remember you when they are
asked for a referral? In other words, unless you get
your name into the front of people’s minds, it is nigh
on impossible to win clients via your network.
Reason 2: You don’t keep in
touch consistently
If you go to an event and have 5 great conversations,
and then don’t do anything to develop those leads,
you may as well have stayed at home. A lack of
consistent follow up is often the biggest barrier to
winning work via your network. When I talk about
following up, what I mean is consistently staying in
touch so that you are always the first person they
think of when asked about the field you work in. I
don’t mean just add them to your email distribution
list either. Take the time to create positive personal
conversations and ‘touch points’ whether by email,
social media or face-to-face.
Reason 3: You haven’t
differentiated yourself
Differentiating yourself in the professions is hard.
After all, so many lawyers do what other lawyers
do, and so many accountants do what other
accountants do. And don’t get me started on the
auditors! However, if you are going to consistently
win business and create work-winning opportunities
via your network, you need to have something which
makes you stand out from your peers. Of course,
doing a great job and keep-in-touch consistently is
one way. But, to really get the referrals for the clients
you want, you need to make a case in the person’s
mind to refer you and only you . This is where having
a niche or specialism can pay real dividends (sorry for
the pun!) If you need help to differentiate yourself,
then I recommend you pick up a copy of The Go-To
Expert. (40+ five star reviews on Amazon.)
Reason 4: You have ignored your
online footprint
My team is expanding and I am on the look out for a
associates to join me on the ‘How to make partner’
side of what I do. My own network gave me names
of people who might be suitable. Before I contacted
them I looked at their LinkedIn profiles, Googled their
names, checked out their websites, and generally
did a great job of online-stalking them. As a result, I

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

13
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

7 annoyingly true reasons why you

are not getting enough referrals
from your network
CONTINUED
didn’t contact everyone. Your potential clients will do
exactly the same as I have done. Regardless of how
strong the recommendation is, they will check you
out online to confirm (or refute) that opinion. If you
have ignored your online footprint, especially your
LinkedIn profile, you could be losing nearly half of
your prospective clients. (Nearly 50% of all prospects
will check you out on LinkedIn)
Reason 5: You haven’t been clear
about the right type of client for
you
It is not enough to just get referrals from your
network. You need to get the right type of referrals.
Are you sending the right messages about what you
do and who you do it for? Or are you still claiming to
be able to help everyone? The content you create or
share, as well as your website, will help educate your
network who is the right type of client for you. Rather
paradoxically, the more specific you are about the
right type of client for you, the more referrals you will
get from your network. If this is the reason you are
missing out on referrals, you need to go back to your
professional services business development strategy
and do a rethink.
Reason 7: You have the wrong
professional intermediaries in
your network
The problem is that most accountants, like many
other professionals, have the same usual suspects
that they get referrals from: bank managers, IFAs,
and lawyers. Your network’s networks are likely to be
similar. They just don’t know the type of clients you
want. Not every professional intermediary is created
equal. Your aim is to choose very carefully which
relationships you will invest in to produce regular
referrals.
In summary
Networking and having the right people in your
network does not always equate to a steady stream
of referrals. The messages you consciously and
sub-consciously give out to your network are just as
important as the company you keep.

Reason 6: You are networking in

the wrong places
Now I am not meaning you are in literally the wrong
room. I mean that when you network you are not
meeting enough of the right type of people. In other
words, your networking strategy, or professional
services business development strategy, is flawed.
One of my clients stopped networking at general
SME type events and only started attending industry
specific events. He got a significant upturn in the
amount of referrals from ‘working the room’ as well
as from his network generally.

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

14
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

How to ask for referrals

from friends
When I ran my Networking for Life workshop with accountants and lawyers I pointed out to my
delegates that the people they trained with and worked with early in their careers are probably
the best place to get referrals from. However, so many people struggle to ask these people for
referrals - probably because in many cases they have become personal friends. Have you ever
felt awkward, or wondered how to ask for referrals from friends? Is it worse (or better?) if your
friends are best placed to give you referrals?

This is a question I have been puzzling for a while
as I was recently asked by an excellent lawyer with
many business contacts who had become friends
over time. He felt like he was stuck between a rock
and a hard place, he was expected to get referrals;
but didn’t know how to ask for referrals from friends
without feeling bad.
After all you don’t want to jeopardise a friendship just
for the sake of a referral. In this chapter, I consider
how to ask for a referral from people you consider
your friends.
What to consider when deciding
how to ask for referrals from
friends
How to ask for referrals from friends may be easier if
you consider:
• Assessing or re-assessing the line between
friend and colleague.
• Being in the position to ask for referrals,
without it seeming mercenary
• Prioritising, so that you focus on those most
likely to help.
The boundary between friend
and colleague
Like you, I wouldn’t want to upset my friends by
pestering them, in case it damaged the friendship.
The point where you draw the line is a personal
decision. At the end of the day, each of us have to
make a judgement about who we will, and won’t ask.
However, have you noticed that more people veer on
the side of not asking, even though the other person
would be happy if they did? Let’s be honest, most of
our good friends do want to help us. It’s interesting
that we are often more prepared to ask for help
from our friends when we need a new job, but more
reluctant when we want an introduction or referral
from them.
The reticence is often in the mind of the requester,
rather than the friend. If the friendship has
developed from a business connection, there’s a
business relationship which is normally more than
happy to help with referrals. How to ask for referrals
from business colleagues might be easier than
asking friends. Maybe reminding yourself that they’re
originally business colleagues will help.
Asking, without being mercenary
Sometimes your partners seem to suggest that
all you need to do is to pick up the phone and ask
your friend for a referral. To pick up the phone
and ask may not be the best option. To develop
the relationship, so that you can turn chit chat into
business chat and then asking is a better option.
There are a couple of things that often help:
Start talking more regularly
• Always be on the lookout for ways in which you
can help them
• Look out for referrals for them
• Introduce them to people in your network who
they would benefit from meeting
Focus and maintenance of the
right relationships
I’ve worked with several people on the Excedia 5
level relationship model. The word that comes back
very often is focus. It helps people to focus on the
important and “likely to pay off” relationships.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

15
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

6 tips to get back in touch

with old colleagues
Getting back in touch with people and old colleagues is something that many of us find
difficult. Regardless of whether your motive is driven by a commercial need or you are just
curious, it doesn’t make it any easier to get back in touch. However, for most of us, there is
a huge amount of benefit of getting back in touch with our university friends and people we
trained with. Why? These people are probably now in a position of influence. Who better to
help them, than their old drinking buddy?

This chapter gives you some tips on how to
successfully get back in touch with people you have
lost touch with.
1. Just do it
That’s right. Just do it. After all, what’s the worse
that can happen? They don’t return your call? This
is a scenario where it is nothing ventured, nothing
gained.
then hold off with your requests until you have re-
established the relationship on a stronger footing.
4. Find them on Facebook
Very often the person you want to get back in touch
with will be in contact with some mutual contacts –
potentially on Facebook. You may find that a search
on Facebook is the quickest way to find an old friend
or colleague.

2. Use LinkedIn 5. Keep the first contact very

LinkedIn is a great place to find people who you used
to work with or go to school with. (That’s if you can
remember their full name!) You will find that most
professionals will maintain some kind of presence on
LinkedIn. Your best bet, after checking their profile, is
to send them a request to connect, with something
similar to this:
“Hello James,
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you but I
came across your LinkedIn profile. It was a real
blast from the past. Is it really x years since we
were at xxx together? It would be lovely to catch
up over a drink to find out how you are doing. Let
me know…”
3. Work out your reasons for
getting back in touch
Now your reasons for getting back in touch could be
many and varied. However, the more aware of your
motivation for getting back in touch, the more likely
it will happen. If you do want something from them,
‘light’
When you are re-establishing contact, keep it very
light touch. Don’t instantly assume that the other
person will become your best buddy overnight
again. Ideally the tone of your first communication –
whether by email or social media, ideally needs to be
warm, open and friendly. Can you recall any shared
experiences to use on your first communication,
particularly if they were of very happy or successful
times?
6. Pique their curiosity
Your aim is to quickly get the communication flowing
between the two of you. Therefore, don’t write war
and peace with this first communication. As I said
before, keep it light, and offer an incentive to have a
phone call. For example:
“It would be great to have a phone call to properly
update each other on what’s happened since we
last talked! You may be surprised at some of what
I have been up to”

+44 (0)1234 48 0123 www.howtomakepartner.com

16
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
 The Reluctant Business Developer’s Guide To Winning Clients

The DUFF formula to stop wasting

time on clients who will never sign up
It’s quite common to be asked to help a client improve their ability to close a sale. I.e. get a
client to actually commit to starting a piece of work. In my experience, it is never about your
ability to close, it is always about your ability to qualify the right type of prospects in the first
place. Rather than wasting your time following up with prospects who are never going to
become a client.

Here is an extract from ‘The Go-To Expert’ which talks a piece of business, you need to make sure that
through the DUFF formula as a way of qualifying your the prospect intends to make a purchase and has a
leads. specific timeframe for doing so.

When you are pre-qualifying a lead, and before you Funds

spend large amounts of time writing a proposal,
you want to be finding out about the following four
things:
• D - decision maker
• U - urgency
• F - funds
• F - fit
Decision maker
Very often the person who enquires about using you
may not be the ultimate decision maker. Whilst they
may seem to have the right title to take the decision,
it may not always be the case. For example, when we
sign up clients who are sole practitioners or aspiring
partners who decide to pay for our services from
their personal funds, we often find that they need the
approval of their spouse before committing to work
with us. As much as possible you need to be talking
to the individuals who are the budget holder, and
have the authority to allocate funds. When you are
talking with a prospect you will need to investigate
who else may need to be involved to hire you.
Urgency
When someone buys a professional service this
normally represents a considered purchase. I.e.
there is normally a high level of risk (be it money or
reputation) if as a result of using your services; the
desired end result is not achieved. Therefore, before
you allocate a large proportion of time to developing
As early in the sales process as possible you want to
ascertain that the prospect has the financial capacity
or access to the funds to buy from you. If they state
that they don’t have a budget for your services, this
may not be a ‘game over’ sign, but indicates that you
will need to decide whether you want to educate
them as to the value of your services. In an early
conversation with a prospect it often helps to let
them know what your services are likely to cost. In
this early conversation, try not to be too prescriptive
with your fees, but let your prospective know the
likely range of fees that they may need to fork out for.
For example:
“Clients with problems similar to yourself typically
find that it will cost them between £5000 and
£30000 for my assistance to solve these problems”
Fit
Not every client and professional advisor is a match
made in heaven. Many a professional has become
a cropper on an assignment or lead due to a lack of
rapport between them and the client. As well as a
good level of rapport, you need to make sure that the
prospect has specific needs that you can solve. When
you first speak to them, these needs may not be
easily visible. In fact, the initial ‘presenting problem’,
is often not what, after some investigation, what you
end up solving. However, you have to determine
whether your potential client is truly interested
to learn what is possible as a result of using your
services, and is motivated to achieve this.

www.howtomakepartner.com +44 (0)1234 48 0123

17
© HEATHER TOWNSEND
Want more help
to win clients?

Then grab a copy of our best-selling book

The Go-To Expert
(published by Financial Times Publishing),
and read chapter 4 and 5.

BUY THE GO-TO EXPERT

www.howtomakepartner.com