Good clients. Every business needs them but focusing on yours could be the way to boosting your sales quickly.

A good starting point is to think about is how you got your last six quality clients. What do I mean by quality clients?

These are clients that you like working with. Perhaps they always pay on time and are efficient communicators? Perhaps they have the kinds of problems that you’re good at solving?

Maybe it’s all of these things. Once you have your six, look at how you came to do business with them.

Let’s imagine that they came from the following mix of platforms:

• 3 client referrals
• 1 article on LinkedIn
• 1 networking event
• 1 speaking event

Using this mix, I’ll suggest ways you can get six new clients in 90 days, or two new clients a month, for the next three months. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

1. Activities to encourage more client referrals

Here are a few ways to even out the random nature of client referrals and increase the number you receive:

• Ensure that you close the feedback loop to your referrers – reinforce the effort they took to refer you and make them feel good about it, e.g. send an email explaining what you did for the company and what positive outcome occurred as a result of the introduction.
• Make it easy for them to refer friends and colleagues to your business, such as something they can give out on your behalf or a link to your latest article that they can share.
• Take them out for lunch or dinner and get to know them better – what are they concerned about, what do they like to do in their leisure time (this can be a source of ideas for gifts in the future as a thank you for referrals).
• Analyse what traits your best referrers have in common and brainstorm how you can find more people like them.
• Target your referrers with extra focus and keep them up to date with what you’re doing in your business. This could include new services or products that you’ve created that they should know about or new team members with particular expertise or experience with a certain type of client that is unusual.

In terms of your 90-day plan if, as in this example, half of your new business has come from referrals then you need to devote time to it each week.

Action: Allocate 3 hours per week to focus on referrals

2. Content Marketing

Analyse the successful article – what was it about the article that connected with the prospect that became your client? If you don’t know, ask them.

Some tips to help improve the chances of getting referrals from LinkedIn:

• Long form posts perform better on LinkedIn, the longer the better.
• Be sure to add your bio and a link to your website at the bottom of the article, this will build traffic and your personal brand authority.
• You need to write articles consistently if you want to acquire referrals from LinkedIn.

Check out more LinkedIn publishing tips.

Action: Write 1-2 articles per month

3. Networking

Which function was effective and why? Try to find more like that and book your spot.

With networking it’s important to remember why you’re doing it, i.e. to develop relationships with people that, over time, lead to a mutually beneficial exchange of referrals. It’s not about seeing how many business cards you can give out.

Here are two tips to make the most of your networking event:

1. Focus on quality, not quantity, you want to talk to people who are relevant to your business and interests.
2. Focus on how you can help the person, rather than trying to sell them something. The ultimate outcome is that they’ll remember your generosity and try and help you in return, i.e with referrals for your business.

Action: Attend 1 function per week

4. Speaking engagements

Often when people think of speaking engagements they immediately envisage keynote presentations at major conferences but you don’t need to jump to the big time to make it effective. Chambers of Commerce, industry associations, networking groups as well as organisations that are targeting the same target market as you, but offer a different service, are all potential sources of speaking opportunities.

To get those opportunities you’ll need to have a number of meetings with potential organisations or partners each week to discuss possible speaking gigs. The amount will depend on your experience as a speaker and your existing network but set a target and aim for that.

Action: Arrange 4 meetings each week with potential partners and aim to do 1-2 speaking engagements per month.

The key to getting more regular client referrals is to set goals and then commit to taking steps to achieve them. Keep an eye out for more ideas along the way on how you can expand what you’re doing. You should always be thinking about developing new ways of attracting good clients to your business. Marketing doesn’t have to a big onerous task, it just needs a bit of foresight and planning.