I’ve spoken to clients before who seemed like they’d done their research, read my website thoroughly, and knew they were going to hire me before we even got on the phone.

But today took this to the max.

I had a call with a prospect who was referred to me by a great client. This prospect said:

John says you are an amazing writer and you take all of his crazy ideas and turn them into awesome blog posts. I’m in. Let’s get started.

I definitely laughed out loud. Then we chatted about prices and logistics. When I hung up, I realized the whole conversation had lasted 8 minutes.

I think this is what happens when we work with ideal clients. They sell our services for us—to other people with needs similar to theirs.

I wrote about this topic of getting better referrals years ago and I can say without a doubt that my assumption was true: Ideal clients refer more ideal clients.

The opposite is also true: Crummy clients refer more crummy clients. When people aren’t in our target market, they refer us to others who aren’t in our target market. When we are doing less-than-ideal work for a client, they refer us to others who want that same kind of work done. These referred prospects can be equallyas ready to work with us…but doing so just keeps us heading down the wrong road.

This whole idea makes it even more worth it to keep in touch with (but not stalk) our ideal clients. Because once they become our clients, our likelihood of qualified referrals goes up too!

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Hi, I’m Deidre. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a web copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning as I go (with Marketing Mentor as my guide). To keep in touch, sign up for my un-newsletter here. 

*Yes photo, courtesy, Shutterstock.