~by Haley Lynn Gray~
In the home care industry, we learned that it takes somewhere between nine and thirteen contacts with a referral source before they send you a single lead.
Not nine to thirteen contacts to close a client. Nine to thirteen before a professional who could send you work sends you any at all.
Think about how many people give up long before that. Most, is the answer — and it’s why referral partnerships are simultaneously the most valuable source of work and the one almost nobody builds properly.
Why referral sources are a different game
Following up with a prospect and following up with a referral partner look similar and aren’t.
With a prospect, there’s a transaction waiting. They have a need, you can meet it, and the follow-up is about timing.
With a referral source, you’re asking them to risk their reputation on you.
When a doctor, a solicitor or a financial adviser refers someone, they’re staking their own credibility on you being good. If you disappoint that client, the referrer hears about it, and it costs them something real.
Which explains the nine to thirteen. They’re not being slow or difficult. They’re waiting until they’re confident enough to put their name on you — and no amount of enthusiasm shortens that, because it isn’t a decision about enthusiasm.
What those contacts need to contain
Here’s where most people fail. Nine to thirteen contacts of “just checking in” is not persistence, it’s harassment, and it makes them less likely to refer rather than more.
Each contact has to give them something:
Be useful to them specifically. Information relevant to their work, a change in regulations, something their clients are asking about. You’re demonstrating that you understand their world, not just wanting access to their list.
Refer to them first. This is the single most effective thing available and it’s remarkably underused. Send them a client. Now the relationship is real, reciprocal, and they know what it feels like to be on your list.
Show competence rather than claiming it. How you handled a difficult case, what you do that others don’t, the standards you hold. This is what they’re actually assessing.
And be consistently, boringly reliable. Turn up when you said. Reply promptly. Do the small things properly. They’re extrapolating from how you treat them to how you’d treat someone they sent.
Removing the wrong ones early
Persistence applies to the right people, not everyone.
Some referral sources are never going to work out — wrong client base, existing loyalty to a competitor, a fundamental mismatch in how you work. Work that out early and spend the effort elsewhere.
The same applies to prospects. Some are obviously not a fit, and recognising it quickly is a kindness to both of you.
What deserves persistence is a good fit who simply hasn’t got there yet.
Why most people stop
I won’t pretend it’s easy. Continuing to contact someone who hasn’t yet given you anything, repeatedly, over months, requires a particular kind of stamina — and it feels uncomfortably like imposing.
Two things make it bearable.
Expect the number. If you know it takes nine to thirteen, then contact four isn’t failure, it’s the middle. Most people give up around three because they’ve silently decided that three is when it should have worked.
And make each contact genuinely worth receiving. If you’re bringing something useful every time, you’re not imposing. You’re being a useful person who happens to also want their referrals, which is a completely different experience on their end.
The rule, stated plainly
Follow up until one of three things happens: they tell you to stop, you establish they’re not a fit, or they die.
That last one isn’t a joke in senior care — we genuinely do have prospects who pass away, and obviously we stop then. It’s also a reminder that the timeline belongs to them.
Absent those three, keep going. The people who succeed at this aren’t more talented than the ones who don’t. They just stayed politely present past the point where everyone else concluded it wasn’t working.
More on following up with prospects, which is a different thing and getting referrals from clients you’ve already served.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
