Only 22% of professionals on the partnership track have a regular routine to keep their network warm.
This episode is about closing that gap; not with more coffees that go nowhere, but with a deliberate strategy for building and maintaining the relationships that generate your own client work.
Using the five-step Networking Strategy framework, this episode gets practical about how to stop wasting time on the wrong people, how to deepen the relationships that matter most, and how to use the SERVICE framework to turn your network into a reliable source of referrals.
This episode is about closing that gap; not with more coffees that go nowhere, but with a deliberate strategy for building and maintaining the relationships that generate your own client work.
Using the five-step Networking Strategy framework, this episode gets practical about how to stop wasting time on the wrong people, how to deepen the relationships that matter most, and how to use the SERVICE framework to turn your network into a reliable source of referrals.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why only 35% of professionals have a strong internal firm network that regularly sends them work, and what the rest are missing
- The five-step Networking Strategy: Aim, Audit, Find, Build, Maintain, and why most people skip the first one entirely
- How to use A, B and C lister categories to decide where your networking time actually goes
- The SERVICE framework for generating referrals: what it is, and the three elements most professionals underuse
- How Emily went from being told she was two years away from partner to landing a £5 million contract in eight weeks
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
Free to complete, 15–20 minutes, and gives you a personalised report across all 12 key indicators, including exactly where to focus your first ONE BIG FOCUS. Take the assessment here.
Buy Poised for Partnership
To buy a copy of Poised for Partnership, click here.
What help is out there for you to progress your career in the professions?
Inside the Referral Network indicator, you’ll find practical support to help you build the relationships that can lead to better conversations, stronger opportunities and more of the right work.
You’ll find resources to help you strengthen your business development activity, including:
• How to Go from Coffees to Instructions
• How to Get Confident on LinkedIn
• What You Need to Be Successful with Your Business Development
• How to Structure Your Business Development Activity
• How to Go from Coffee to Instructions
• How to Create a Team of Introducers Who Regularly Refer You
• How to Turn a Conversation into Business
These resources will help you:
• Move beyond one-off coffee meetings and build relationships that lead somewhere
• Use LinkedIn with more confidence and purpose
• Structure your business development activity so it becomes more consistent
• Build a network of introducers who understand who you help and when to refer you
• Turn good conversations into real opportunities
If Referral Network is where you need to focus, this section of Progress to Partner will help you stop leaving referrals to chance and start building the relationships, habits and confidence that help bring the right work to you.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership. Click here to join.
Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
Emily had been told she was two years away from making partner. Not because her work was poor. It was excellent. But she wasn’t bringing in enough of her own clients.
So she did something very simple. She built a spreadsheet of her top 100 contacts — people she had worked with who held decision-making positions. Every week, she updated it. Who to meet. Who to email. Who needed a nudge. Two months in, she landed a contract worth £5 million over three years.
That is what a Referral Network, properly managed, actually does.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. This is episode seven in our series on the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness, and today we are talking about Referral Networks.
New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss one.
Let me start with a stat that I think will surprise you.
The network within your own firm — your colleagues, partners in other departments, people in other offices — is likely to be the best source of new business you have. And yet only 35% of professionals who have completed our Partnership Readiness Assessment say they have a strong internal network that regularly supplies them with good quality client work. Just 35%.
And it gets worse. Only 22% have a regular daily, weekly and monthly routine to keep their network warm.
So most people on the partnership track understand they need a strong network. They just aren’t doing the consistent, intentional work to build one. And the gap between knowing and doing is where partnership cases stall.
Here is the reality. You could be the best professional in your field — technically brilliant, great with clients, strong track record — and if the right people do not know about you, none of that matters. Referrals are how senior professionals win their own work. They do not come by chance. They come from relationships that have been deliberately built and deliberately maintained.
So how do you build a Referral Network that actually works?
There are five steps, and the first one is also the one most people skip entirely. That is Aim.
You need to be clear that the purpose of your networking is to win your own client work. That sounds obvious. But if you do not have that aim front of mind, it is very easy to fill your diary with coffees that go nowhere, events that feel productive but deliver nothing, and LinkedIn activity that gets likes but not instructions. Your aim shapes every decision about where you spend your networking time. Without it, you are just busy.
Step two is Audit. Before you start trying to build a bigger network, take stock of what you already have. Most professionals significantly underestimate the value of their existing contacts. Robert, a long-term member of his golf club, sat down one day with a fellow member called David — and discovered that David was a senior decision-maker at a company he had been trying to get in front of for years. The gold was already there. He just had not looked for it.
Your internal network is part of this audit too. Who in your firm, if you had a stronger relationship with them, could open up a steady flow of new work for you? Which partners in other departments have clients who need exactly what you do? Map that out before you go looking externally.
Step three is Find. Not everyone in a network is equally valuable. Some people will shortcut your path to the right clients dramatically. Matan was hired to build the planning practice at his law firm. In his first ninety days, before he had won a single piece of external work, he spent time identifying the senior associates in the real estate and private client teams who were best placed to spot planning opportunities. He ran lunchtime learning sessions for them, teaching them how to recognise the signs that a client might need planning advice. Within two years, his department was generating £500,000-plus for the firm, and 70% of that work came from the people who attended those internal sessions. He did not wait for work to come to him. He went and found the people who could send it.
Steps four and five are Build and Maintain — and this is where most professionals make their biggest mistake.
They spend all their energy finding new contacts, and almost no time deepening the relationships they already have. New contacts are exciting. Existing relationships feel less urgent. But it is the relationships you have already started that are most likely to generate referrals in the short term, and they will wither if you do not tend them.
A simple way to categorise your network is A, B and C listers. Your A-listers are the people most likely to help you achieve your goals in the short to medium term. These are the relationships that warrant a Relationship Plan — a structured record of what you know about that person, what you want to know, how often you want to be in contact, and what you would like to achieve from the relationship. For your A-listers, you want to be speaking with them in person at least once every three months, actively finding ways to help them, and making at least one introduction or referral their way in that same period.
Steph, who was determined to make partner, did a regular audit of the people in her referral networks. When she added someone strategically important, she halved how frequently she saw someone lower down the list. It was not ruthless — it was honest about how much time she actually had. Within a relatively short period, the quality of her contacts was one of the strongest points in her business case.
The key to maintaining relationships is regular communication. Think about your friends from school. The ones you can still call out of nowhere — why is that possible? Because you never fully lost touch. The same principle applies to your professional network. Without regular contact, relationships cool. And a cool relationship does not send referrals.
Now let’s talk about how to actually generate referrals once you have the network. Because having good relationships is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
The SERVICE framework gives you seven ways to turn a network into a referral machine. SERVICE stands for: Specific, Extraordinary client service, Relationships, Visibility, Initiative, Collaborate, Educate.
I want to pick out three of those that I think are the most underused.
Initiative. Most professionals feel awkward asking for referrals. It feels pushy. But you are not asking someone to hand over business — you are asking for their help. When a client tells you the project went well, that is the moment. “I’m so glad to hear that. I wonder if you know anyone else in a similar situation who might benefit from the same conversation?” You are not selling. You are inviting them to do something generous for someone they know. Most people are very willing to do that, if you make it easy.
Collaborate. Who shares your niche market but offers a different service? The solicitor who works with owner-managed businesses but does not do employment law. The IFA who works with the same high-net-worth clients as you but needs a private client lawyer. These are relationships worth investing in properly. In the early days, quote them in an article, share their content, recommend them when you can. As trust builds, you can run events together, create joint guides, introduce your new clients to them as a matter of course.
Educate. Your network can only refer work to you if they know exactly what to look for. Tell them specifically what the warning signs sound like. For an accountant, it might be a client saying “I’m not sure what my accountant actually does to justify what they charge me.” When your network can hear those words and instantly think of you, that is an educated referral network. And educated referral networks are the ones that keep sending.
Your action for this week. Open your contacts and identify five people you have worked with in the last two years who you have not spoken to recently, and who are well placed to either send you work or introduce you to someone who can. Reach out to each of them this week. Not to pitch, not to sell. Just to reconnect.
That is how you start building the routine that 78% of people on the partnership track do not have.
If you want to understand how your Referral Network scores — and where you sit across all 12 key indicators — the Partnership Readiness Assessment is the place to begin. It takes 10–15 minutes and gives you a personalised report. The link is in the show notes.
Inside our Progress to Partner Academy, the resources are curated by key indicator. If Referral Network is where you need to focus, everything relevant is in one place. In particular, you will find our course How to Go From Coffees to Instructions — which is about how to win work from your network — and also our course on How to Create Your Business Development Plan, so that your networking activity sits inside a business development plan which is aligned with your firm’s strategy and your goals.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership: https://www.howtomakepartner.com/get-progress-to-partner/
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. It helps us reach more people who need this.
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Thanks for listening!
Links
Complete my FREE Partnership Readiness Assessment – to see where you have gaps in your own development – you’ll get a personalised report with actions for what progress your career forward
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Join Progress To Partner Academy and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
Buy your hard copy of Poised for Partnership or buy the Ebook here
Buy your copy of How To Make Partner And Still Have A Life
Buy your copy of The Go To Expert
Buy your copy of The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking
Join my Progress To Partner Academy and access all my courses and use the code PODCASTBP10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
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