Six Degrees to Your Next Client

Ask a room full of businesspeople if they’d like more referrals, and every hand goes up. Ask them to name exactly who they’d like referred to, and the hands start dropping.

That gap — between wanting referrals and being able to ask for one properly — is where most people get stuck. Not because they don’t believe in being specific. Nobody’s ever shown them how.

So here’s the one question that solves it, in virtually every case.

In your business, who is your best current or recent client?

Got them in mind? Now ask yourself: if you could get referred to more clients exactly like that, would that be good news? I’m going to guess yes.

So you need to ask for them. Specifically. This works slightly differently depending on whether you’re B2B or B2C — we’ll stick with B2B here (B2C is a post for another day).

Let’s say your best client is an accountancy firm. All you do now is picture another one.

Where do you want them based? Getting your network to promote you should lead to better business, not just more of it. No point asking for referrals in Aberdeen if you only work with clients in the South West. Equally, you might genuinely want national reach — that’s fine too, just decide.

Which firm, specifically? Name one. If nothing springs to mind, Google “accountancy firms in [location],” look at a few websites, check size and specialism, and pick one.

What job title do you need? For a firm that size, probably the Managing Partner.

What’s their name? This is the bit people skip, and it’s the bit that matters most. Referrals travel through relationships, not org charts. Someone in your network might know your target through work — or through five-a-side, or the school run, or their mum’s book club. Leave the name out, and you’ve made it much harder for that connection to surface. A quick LinkedIn search solves this 99% of the time.

Put it together and you’ve got: a good referral for me would be Phil Loveberg, Managing Partner of Citrus Accountants, based in Morpeth.

That’s it. It really is that simple. Though I hear two objections every time I teach this.

“Why would Phil Loveberg want to talk to me?”

He won’t — not directly, and not because you asked him yourself. This is where six degrees of separation actually matters. You’re not trying to leap straight to Phil. You’re trying to find the one person already inside your network who’s a step or two closer to him than you are, and who has a reason to make the introduction. Someone else does the persuading. Phil just takes the call.

“Doesn’t naming one firm rule out everyone else?”

Less than you’d think. Two things tend to happen. First, while the odds of someone in your network personally knowing Phil Loveberg are slim, the odds they know someone at Citrus Accountants — a former colleague, a client who’s used them, a friend from university — are much better. That’s your bridge. One degree closer than you started.

I used to support a networking group in Hertfordshire. Every visit, I’d write down the specific referral requests people made, then email the ten people in my own office asking if anyone had a connection to those names or firms. How many times did I get at least one positive reply? Every single time. Not always a referral — but always some kind of link. Six degrees, tested weekly, over a Tuesday-morning email.

The second thing that happens: your network might not know anyone at Citrus Accountants, but they do play golf with the Managing Partner of a different accountancy firm entirely — one that turns out to be just as good a fit. Being specific doesn’t box you in. It gives people something to pattern-match against.

Every degree of separation between you and a client closes a little faster when you give your network a name to work with, rather than a category. Vague asks leave people guessing. Specific ones leave them thinking, “actually — yes, I know someone.”

They want to help you. Just give them enough to work with.