Working with strangers - Robert Flint

How referrals can supercharge flows of work across extended networks in the modern workplace

Recommendations, introductions and networking are widely recognised as the surest ways to build a career, grow a business and create multidisciplinary teams. Referrals are the human links that turn collaboration into a superpower.

For all their potential, however, they regularly founder on the difficulties that we all have when working with strangers. Trust is easily lost, networks lose their purpose, systems break down and everyone returns to the comfort of their own silo.

In the modern workplace, you can't just leave referrals to chance. They won't happen automatically and no one teaches us how to make them. So how you can do it differently? how does a modern referral strategy now look? How are dynamic small practices using them to grow their operations?

In this book, written by the founder of a global referral network of over a hundred specialist professional firms, you will learn how to supercharge flows of work across extended networks by creating a referral strategy, following four key metrics and using tech to automate the connections you are making.

After reading Working with Strangers, you will be able to identify the different types of referral partner and know how to work with them, so you can:

• • Grow your business with the high-quality clients you really want.
  • Identify your best referrers, measure their impact on your business and convert more referrals into clients.
  • Collaborate better with other service providers.
  • Make the most of networking events by targeting referrers
  • Exploit your website and marketing budget as part of your referral strategy.
  • Use technology to reinforce human interactions, not replace them.

The book includes template emails and strategies for you to use in building your referral strategy.