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pHave you ever met one of those people who says that they get all of their business by word-of-mouth?/p
pThey have no need to advertise. No need to roust themselves out of bed for those early-morning networking meetings. No need to pick up the phone to make a cold call. None of that. They can just focus on doing their work./p
pOne of my relatives fits this description perfectly. He#8217;s been running his remodeling business on word-of-mouth for many years. Some of his clients like and trust him so much that they#8217;ve given him keys to their houses./p
pHowever, such admiration and trust did not prevent him from enduring two months without work back in January and February. Good thing that his wife and son both have steady, year #8217;round jobs, or that family would have been hurting.span id="more-21428"/span/p
h3Two Sides of the Coin/h3
pIn just three paragraphs, you see both sides of the word-of-mouth coin. /p
pOn one side, you see how easy it is to run a referral-based business. You just do your work. People are happy with it. They send you more clients ? and hire your for more of their own projects. Life is good!/p
pThen there#8217;s the other side of the coin. Where life isn#8217;t so good. You find that your golden repeaters have run out of projects. And those wonderful referrals have come to a screeching halt. Do you wait for business to pick up in the spring like my relative did?/p
pIf you can#8217;t afford to wait for winter to turn to spring, pick up the phone and start calling those inactive clients. Ask them if they have any projects coming up. I#8217;ve just finished doing this, and guess what? Some of those inactives do have forthcoming gigs. But nothing right now./p
pSo, I#8217;m back on the cold-calling phones, and guess what? Two possible projects. I#8217;d like more than just two possibilities, which means that I#8217;ll keep on calling./p
h3Another Look at Referrals/h3
pIn your conversations with the Word-of-Mouth people, you#8217;ve probably experienced a feeling of inadequacy. /p
pAfter all, if you were a really emgood/em freelancer, you#8217;d be getting all of your business through referrals, wouldn#8217;t you? Clients would be so excited about your wonderful work that they#8217;d be calling, texting, tweeting, and shouting your name all over the world. And you#8217;d be booked-solid busy for the rest of your career./p
blockquote class="pullquote"pYou can do good, no, make that great work for clients and nary a referral from it./p/blockquote
pSorry to say it, but the real world doesn#8217;t work that way. You can do good, no, make that emgreat/em work for clients and nary a referral from it. Not even if you ever-so-politely ask clients to share your name with others who might need your services./p
pWhat?s the solution? Well, it?s as simple as backing away from the emreferral altar/em. Accept the reality that you can?t depend on word-of-mouth to grow your business. Because people have many other things to talk about besides you and what you do./p
pI?m of the mind that I?m not owed referrals. If the clients offers them and if the work looks like a good fit, I?ll go for it. Hey, it just might lead to a career-making project./p
h3Alternative Plan to Referrals/h3
pIf the client isn#8217;t forthcoming with referrals, here?s how I approach things: I finish a job, the client?s happy, and I can think of a whole bunch of others who could use my services. (This one of the side effects of being a perpetual collector of leads lists.) Since I have no qualms about picking up the phone, calling strangers, and asking them for their business, I?ll ask the happy client if I can use his/her name as a reference./p
pYes, it?s name dropping. And here#8217;s an important caveat: The happy client and the people you#8217;re calling should be acquainted. As in, being members of the same academic department if the happy client is a university professor. Or, if you have a happy commercial client, try calling people in the same local business community. You get the idea./p
pOf course, there#8217;s always a chance that your client will furnish a name or two to call. But don#8217;t expect it. After all, your client is a busy person with lots of other things to do besides thinking of who your next client should be./p
h3Drumming Up Business/h3
pOkay, that#8217;s it for me. Need other ideas for drumming up business? How about 101 of them? Here#8217;s Cyan Ta#8217;eed with a FreelanceSwitch classic, a href="../finding/101-ideas-to-get-more-freelance-work-and-generate-new-client-leads/"101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads/a./p
pstrongTip:/strong Don#8217;t stop at the end of Cyan#8217;s article, read the 300-plus comments. Lots of good advice in them!/p
pemPhoto credit: a title="Attribution License" href="http://photodune.net/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing-terms/"Some rights reserved/a by a href="http://photodune.net/item/back-of-mans-head/420428"iofoto/a/em./p
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