Why people who love your work still don't refer you
The cheapest growth channel you have, and the one most often slightly broken.
Last week, in the first edition of this series — Five ways to get clients — I asked you a question.
If five clients walked into your inbox, would you actually know which kind you’d want?
I asked it because if you can’t answer it clearly, the rest of this is harder than it needs to be. Especially this week’s piece, which is referrals.
The introduction that never happens
Here’s a scene I’ve seen many times. Both in IMMA Collective and in myself.
You’re sitting in a coffee shop with an old work colleague you haven’t seen in a long time. They ask you about you, about what you’re up to. And when it comes to describing what you do now, the words don’t quite arrive. Something close, but not exact. You watch their face slightly zone out. They wait politely and then change subject.
Or maybe you’ve done the work on this and the description lands. They nod and actually respond with “this sounds like something for…”
And then after the conversation, nothing.
The friend who could have helped still doesn’t really know what you do. The person with the problem gets help from someone else.
This happens all day, everywhere, to all of us.
It isn’t motivation. It’s friction.
We assume referrals fail because people don’t care, or don’t value our work enough. Most of the time, that’s not it. The people who care about you want you to do well. They just don’t always know how.
Referrals stall because referring you is slightly too unclear, slightly too hard, or slightly too easy to postpone.
“I’m not sure this is actually the right fit.”
“How would I even explain what they do?”
“I’ll sort it out later.”
Later doesn’t come.
So the real problem isn’t motivation. It’s friction. And friction is something you can remove, one piece at a time.
When I started looking at this more closely inside IMMA Collective — the ecosystem I run for experienced independent consultants and founders in climate and impact — I noticed four things show up every time someone gets referred well.
1. Clarity
Who you help, and just as importantly, who you don’t.
If your description is generic, no one can match you to a real person they know. “I help mission-driven leaders” makes it hard to think of a specific person.
“I work with founders of early-stage clean-tech companies whose growth is bottlenecking through them” — that one calls a specific person to mind. Rather than a category, a name surfaces.
The test: read your description out loud. Can the listener picture an actual human they know who fits it? If not, it’s not specific enough yet.
2. Situation
When should someone think of you?
A trigger phrase someone might actually say in a real conversation, that makes them connect your name to the situation someone is describing.
Nobody wakes up thinking “who can I refer today?” So we need to give people something recognisable to listen for.
“Everything still ends up on my plate.”
“We got funding and grew the team, but we’re not getting more done.”
“I’m thinking about leaving my job, but I don’t know what I’m leaving for.”
Without a trigger like this, your name comes up at the wrong moment. Or not at all. With one, your name surfaces in conversations you’re not even in.
3. Proof
When someone refers you, they’re putting their reputation behind yours.
It’s not simply an information transfer. It’s a reputation transfer. The person making the introduction needs something concrete to lean on — evidence they can trust that this will go well.
This is what makes it feel safe to introduce you.
Vague: “She’s great at leadership development.”
Repeatable: “She worked with a founder who was involved in every decision. Six months in, the team was running weekly ops without him.”
You don’t need a long case study. You need one or two specific outcomes or stories someone else could repeat easily.
If you’ve worked with well-known names or organisations, that’s another kind of proof. It buys you authority quickly.
This isn’t about impressing people. It’s about reducing the uncertainty around the quiet question every referrer is asking: will this introduction reflect well on me?
4. Ease
A simple, explicit path for making the introduction.
Without it, people mean to refer you but don’t. Or they say they referred you, but you have no way of following up.
So how do we make the introduction as easy as possible?
The most reliable format is still a two-line warm email. Ideally, you give them something they can copy.
Try this next time someone offers to mention your name:
“That’s really kind, thank you. The easiest thing is a quick intro email so I know who to look out for. If it helps, I can send you a line you can use.”
That sentence converts more vague mentions into actual introductions than any other thing I’ve tested.
Clarity. Situation. Proof. Ease.
That’s the four.
If you take only one thing from this newsletter, take this:
The people who already love your work want to refer you. They mostly aren’t, because you’ve made it slightly too hard. Removing that friction is more valuable than any new marketing tactic you could try this year.
Why this is the first thing we do inside IMMA
When members join IMMA Collective, the first thing we ask them to do is make themselves easy to refer. This way they can activate their existing network, and tap into the network inside IMMA.
Inside, that happens through monthly cross-pollination sessions, where the whole point of the hour is getting to know each other’s work and opening doors for each other. Most members work in the climate and impact space, all with ten to twenty years of experience. Because we spend time together, we know each other’s work well enough to refer each other with confidence. Between us, we hold networks that span the globe.
The fastest way to get clients is almost always to activate the people who already know you, rather than reach for strangers. Why?
Because people buy from those they know, like and trust. Referrals are how that trust gets transferred.
Something concrete for you
We’re running a free live workshop: How to get clients through your network, by making yourself easy to refer.
If referrals have felt passive — something that happens to you, or doesn’t, and over which you don’t feel you have much control — this is the session to join. You’ll leave with the four pieces above worked out for your own business.
This is part of an ongoing series of free sessions on relational business development. The first one — How to get clients on LinkedIn without posting or cold outreach — brought over a hundred people together in May.
This was the first of five ways to find clients I’m walking through in this series. (If you missed last week’s intro, it’s here — short version: I run IMMA, and we’re building five systems to bring aligned clients to our collective, so no one has to do business development alone.)
Next week: the second system. How to stop hunting for opportunities alone, late at night — multiple browser tabs open, hours invested, very little to show for it.
Including the kind of opportunity that turned into a £22K engagement for one of our members. (If you are looking for some, here is a round-up).
Take care,
Lilli from IMMA Collective
P.S. I read every reply. If one of the four pieces above is the one you’re stuck on, hit reply (or drop it in the comments) and tell me which.