Episode 92: Referrals From Past Clients and Teams
You work with a client. They have a great team. You part ways. Their team members eventually part ways, too. Then they reach back out.
Summary
Nick introduces the ‘dandelion client’ concept: when a project fails and the team gets fired, they scatter to different companies, leaving you with contacts at seven or eight places instead of one. The episode covers how to maintain relationships with everyone on a project team, how to handle returning clients without skipping your intake process, and the practical CRM habits that turn past project contacts into future work.
Highlights
- A ‘dandelion client’ is a project where failure fires the whole team and sends them to different companies. Nick first heard the term from a partner at his Chicago innovation consultancy, and has used it ever since to describe the referral upside buried inside a collapsed engagement.
- When a contact leaves a company, you get two leads: the contact at their new company, and whoever replaces them at the old one. Kai describes this as a core principle in his referral systems course at referralcourse.net.
- Kai blocks all unsubscribe notifications on principle (anxiety) and compensates with PipeDrive: every past project contact goes in, with a reminder to reach out every four weeks regardless of whether they’re still on his email list.
- Nick’s alternative: pipe the unsubscribe event through Zapier into a CRM without flagging it as an unsubscribe, so the trigger to reach out lands without the negative framing.
- Returning clients still need to go through an intake process. Kai found that skipping straight to payment leads to unset expectations every time. The fix is the same vetting steps as a cold lead, with wording adjusted to acknowledge the prior relationship.
- To get more dandelion projects: collect LinkedIn profiles of everyone on the client team, not just the economic buyer, track their job moves, try to get personal email addresses, and follow up periodically. Nick notes the people who actually do the work are far more likely to switch companies than the CEO who signed the contract.
- Kai is going through three years of Gmail to pull every project contact into his CRM, then plans to reach out to 10 people a month with a simple check-in. Secondary contacts he barely spoke to on past projects have already come back and hired him unprompted.
Read the transcript
So one of my clients that I worked with, oh God, four or five years ago, it was like a one-off project for interaction design. I worked at a big old innovation consultancy. In downtown Chicago, and they were a really great client. It was really fun. And it was for a client. I can’t say a whole lot about the exact client, but I will say procedurally what happened. Basically, they hired this consultancy like 10 years ago to redesign their flagship product. And the engagement went well, but the rollout didn’t. It was actually killed internally due to like political bungling, right? So they came they I miraculously, they came back and rehired this client to try again, but to not go so ambitious. So, um and that was when I was brought in. And it was a different team, which was weird to me. And we went to the clients’ offices. We traveled there. We flew to another city. And I met the team and it was really good. And they very much conveyed the gravity of the situation. They were like, there is no room for screwing this up. We have to do this. And I’m looking around. I’m like, okay, great. Pressure. Fine. I can do that. Wonderful. And we walk out and the principal, one of the partners of this agency that I was working with. They were like, man, that was a dandelion client, if I’ve ever seen it. And I never heard that term before. And if you’ve never heard this term before, get ready because it’s amazing. And I use it all the time ever since. And it’s basically. If the project fails, everyone’s going to be fired. If everybody’s fired, they’re all going to work at different companies. And so you have seven people at seven different companies scattered like dandelion seeds to the wind. And if you stay in touch with all of them, eventually you’re going to end up with a ton of new work. Yes. Right. Which is enthusiastic agreement. Which almost, if you think about it, it almost incentivizes you to deep six the project. But obviously, we didn’t do that. I actually, two years later, saw my redesign work in the wild for this particular home because we’re a very large corporation, national, like you would know them if I told you the name. Rare NDA situation for Nick D. But it was because I was working alongside this other client. I talk about who the client I worked with all the time, the agency I worked with all the time. But they were yeah, it was so interesting. And I think about the idea of a dandelion project so often where it’s about It’s about not only the political wonkeries that occur in corporate America, but also the relationships that you maintain with the whole team, right? If you manage to keep the line of communication open with all seven or eight of these people, then that can potentially have an almost like exponential word of mouth effect for you and your business. I completely, completely agree. Yeah, I find that to be so interesting. So, you know, this is kind of leading into this. Notion of referrals from past clients and past teams. It doesn’t even have to be from the team, right? The fundamental unit is the person that you’re working with who remembers you, right? And they might. Want to work with you again at a new company because other people switch jobs and like I’m stuck at draft for the rest of my life. So, lol, I’ll always be around, which is great for you, right? I think that’s the most important fundamental thing to be outlining here.
No, I think you’re absolutely right. Like maintaining those relationships with the people who are also involved in the project, be it People on the client side, other consultants who are brought in, project managers, vendors, anybody that you’re able to initiate a relationship with and then maintain that relationship with. That’s a wonderful opportunity just to consistently stay top of mind. I talk about this in my course referral systems: that if you work on a project or work with a company, well, See if you’re able to get referrals within that company or once that project ends, if your primary point of contact or somebody on the project departs for a different company Congratulations, you have just now doubled the number of contacts you have. You have the person or the old company who has a new person coming in, reach out to them and see how you could help. And you have the new person who you have a trusting relationship with who just moved to a new company. Reach out to them and see how you could help. If you take every project with this view that, okay, there might be five, 10, 15 different people I interact with on this project. Let me build and maintain a relationship with each one of these people. That’s going to pay dividends down the road because they’re going to say, Oh, we need to hire an e-commerce A-V testing consultant. Boom, they think of Nick Disabato immediately.
Yeah, and I mean the the fundamental thing here also is that when this goes into the whole kind of process of education and positioning You’re always staying top of mind for somebody by keeping your mailing list warm and broadcasting a lot of really helpful information. when you revise your positioning and refine your positioning, making that very clear and legible to other people, that increases the likelihood that clients are going to reach back out to you later.
Completely, completely agreed. Yeah, and it all comes down to, I think, maintaining those lines of communication. That a lot of the concepts we talk about on the podcast, be it webinars, mailing lists. Publishing articles on your site, writing books. They’re all forms of creating content that allow you to keep that relationship warm and active. So As you move forward in your career, as people you’ve worked with move forward in their career, you have the standalone effect happen where, oh, they read the guest article you wrote for Shopify and they immediately think of you and reach out. Hey, Nick, we worked on that project two years ago. Da da da, how are things going? by consistently producing content, by consistently producing valuable content, let’s say, and consistently maintaining those relationships with people you worked with on these previous projects, it becomes easier for you to either outreach to them and say, hey, we worked on You know, a podcast outreach project at Xco. Do you need some help with that on YCO? Or hey, now that you’re at YCO, what’s your focus for the next quarters or anything I could do to help? Through maintaining those relationships, you’re able to have that one project turn into a hundred different seeds, and some of those seeds will land and sprout and flower, some won’t. But you’re maintaining these relationships and sort of stimulating the possibility of more projects in the future through referrals or through repeat projects, but at different companies.
Yeah, yeah. It’s always a gift when you want people to come back, right? Like, and you’re not just constantly reaching out to them or doing like a drip campaign or anything like that. You’re already kind of doing that by being on the mailing list or. Another thing that should be noted around that is like if an ex-client unsubscribes from your mailing list You should have some sort of way to be notified of that so that you can reach out to the client in other ways, so that they don’t entirely ghost you. You should do it pretty quickly. And do it about not accusing them of unsubscribing from the mailing list. Just be like, hey, how’s it going, John or Jane? Like.
Well, strategically, yes, completely, I agree with you. Tactically, I have every single means of drip notifying me when somebody unsubscribes, blocked and blacklisted, and black hold. I never want to know when somebody unsubscribes. It just. Increases my anxiety, but I compensate for that by using PipeDrive or another contact relationship management tool to just have a list of: like, these are the people I worked with, these are the people I also worked with on this project. And I just have periodic reminders. Every four weeks, send an email and touch base. They may be on my email campaign. They may not, but I am guaranteeing that I’m at least every four weeks reaching out and saying, like, hey, Jane, how’s it going? How what are you working on? How are things since we worked on that project? So even if they do unsubscribe, I don’t necessarily need to be notified of that. They might just say, hey, you know what? I’m getting too many newsletters. Great, free them, let them go out into the wild, but I could still maintain that communication with the people who worked on that project by Adding them to a CRM, scheduling follow-up, doing outreach to them, providing value, stimulating conversations with them. I think focusing on that part, we’re in complete agreement strategically, like that is what needs to happen.
Yeah, if you can deal with like psychologically with the notion of an unsubscribe, like take my method. But if not, like, I don’t know, on on unsubscribe. Send them over to Pipe Drive or do something with Zapier that doesn’t indicate that they unsubscribed, but that you do need to reach out. And they think, oh, yeah, I need to reach out to that person and not, oh, they unsubscribed. I need to reach out to that person. Like.
But why not always be reaching out to those people that qualify, those best buyers, those past clients?
You could put them in a separate sequence, something like that. Yeah, I don’t get that. Or just do pipe drive.
I think again, like we’re in complete agreement strategically, it’s just a small tactical difference.
Yeah, yeah. Do whatever you want that makes you feel comfortable, basically, as long as you’re nothing. Well, your pants should already be off. You’re running an independent business. Like, you don’t know my pants status. That’s why we run a podcast and not a webinar.
I tell you, I’m going to, here’s the biggest, not even a segue, just like the biggest. Damn it, what’s the phrase for a thing out of nowhere? Non-sequitur. Biggest non-sequitur ever. Thank you so much, my friend. A prana. Oh, I love everything prana makes. I went to REI right before the burn and bought two pairs of these prana, like, men’s workout pants. Holy fucking shit. They feel like pajamas. I could wear them outdoors. They’re the best fucking pants I own in the world. The product.
Oh, is this like Lululemon for people who hate the CEO of Lululemon?
Yeah, pretty much. Yoga, travel, and adventure clothes with a conscience.
Yeah, this is like the lift of Lululemon. It’s the thing you go to when you hate the big thing.
Yeah, we don’t have a Lululemon in Eugene. We have an REI that sells Prana stuff, and I like the Prana stuff. I’ve been wearing it for like four years now: some hoodies, some pants, good stuff, anyways. We have 18 Lululemons. You want one? Yeah. Yeah, I actually need two Lululemons for a dish I’m cooking tonight. Cool. Preserved Lululemons. But jumping back at Red, man, maintaining those connections, maintaining Communication with the people you worked with on those projects, it’s so, so, so valuable. And it turns into future projects and future work. And what I’ve even been amazed at is I will work on a project, and somebody might be a secondary person on the project, so I don’t have direct contact with them, but we might be in meetings together. They leave the company. I’m not even thinking of them, but they’re at the new company, they’re in a new role. They say, Oh, we need to do a thing like we did with Kai. They reach out and say, Hey, can do, are you available? Let’s chat, we’d love to work together. And that’s what’s always amazed me. And it isn’t always the people you’re thinking of or the primary people on the project who spawn these dandelion projects. It can very much be somebody who is loosely associated with it. That then goes ahead and says, Oh, we need to bring out a consultant. Why not Kai? Why not Nick? Why not you, dear listener, and turn it into a second project.
Yeah. I mean, it’s so funny to hear about all of this because I’m kind of historically lousy at this. The overture should be like, How’s it going? And then when you get a reply back, is there any way that I can help? and then give them free stuff and then move into the paid stuff because you have to assume it’s not quite like a cold lead because you’ve already worked together. But maybe kind of treat it like it is, and you’ll be more likely to close it as my hunch around this. Because even when they’re they’re coming in like, oh, we definitely need you, don’t jump the gun on it. Because if you do, you could have like phantom stakeholders deep six the sales process or um I don’t know. Like you’re not doing due diligence on the rest of the business. And I think that that can be potentially problematic and challenging.
One of the issues, I guess it’s not an issue, but one of the challenges I’ve always run into with these types of dandelion projects is exactly like you outlined. Somebody comes in and they’re like, hey, we just want to skip the queue. Could we just not wait in line, not do that, and we just pay you the money right now? And I’ve accepted the money right now a couple of times. And each time it’s never really worked out. And it’s not really a their side thing. It’s not really a my side thing. It’s more like expectations weren’t properly set. And it just has reinforced the idea that. When somebody’s referred in, or when somebody comes in, be it a cold lead, a warm lead, a referral, a past client, a dandelion project, there’s so much value in sending them through the same systems you used for absolutely cold leads, who knows where they came from. Great. Tell me about your project on this form. Great. We’re going to set up a call and I’m going to ask some questions. Great. I’m going to send you across pricing. Not skipping straight to, yeah, sure, it’s going to be X dollars. Because it allows you to vet the project. Since they might be coming in thinking they have the same problem that you helped them solve two years ago, but maybe your business has moved in a different direction. Or maybe they think the problem is a certain problem, but through the application process, through that initial phone call, maybe even through a road mapping session, you discover: oh, wow, this is a completely different problem. This might be outside of my skill set, or this might be something that I don’t enjoy working on. By enforcing, even for dandelion projects, people going through those same steps, applying the welcome packet, getting on an initial call with you, and then moving forward to payment in terms. I think that’s the best way to structure it, just so there aren’t any, as you pointed out, hidden stakeholders, objections, unknowns. You’re getting everything clear and out in the open, just like you would with a cold prospect or a cold lead that came to you.
Can I refine that a moment and say like, so yes, have the intake process and have a different intake process. And it should be slightly different because it’s not I don’t want somebody to be like, Welcome to draft new customer Herfidurf at Earth. I’m Nick Disabato. I self-identify as a designer. Like, you know that. You already know that. Rather, it should be welcome back to draft. Here’s the intake process and welcome back. It should audit the same objections, same issues, go through the same stuff for a different business. Exactly like you’re saying, but the wording needs to be finessed, right? It needs to address the fact that we’ve been down this rodeo before, and I know it’s a little bit weird that I’m asking you to go ahead and do this again. Because otherwise, it’s gonna it’s not gonna it’s not gonna land from a A tone standpoint with the client. And you want to be as subtle and careful with your tone with any prospective client as humanly possible, especially one that trusts you already enough to come.
You ever go out on a first date with somebody, it didn’t really click? Or maybe you dated for a bit, you broke it, no, never. And then you went on a second date with them like a couple of years later?
Yeah, I’ve been married for so long. 39 years.
So, I mean, like, it’s very, very similar where you sort of gone through the small talk already, you kind of know each other, but you’re still. Figuring each other out. And I think it applies directly here. Like, you don’t want to be like the hello, let me introduce myself to you, spiel. You want to go through something that’s more tuned to what they need and what they’re looking for.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s like that. It’s you’re making sure that you are giving somebody you want to give them as automated a process as humanly possible because how many heartbeats are you going to give to sales, really? But you definitely don’t want to come off as lazy, right? I saw this was so funny, a prospective client of mine who actually became a draft revised client. They hired me recently, and then they reached out to a colleague of mine whom I trust well to do the work that they do, and they slotted them into an autoresponder sequence. And they did it while this particular client was evacuating for Hurricane Irma. No, God. And they came back to an overflowing inbox on all fronts, and one of those fronts was not a good look. So don’t beat like please don’t be that. You don’t look okay by you need to make sure you’re managing this is an extreme example of mismanaging the tone, but it’s the same kind of fail, just as a different magnitude, right? And you want to make sure that you are not simultaneously not taking the new business for granted because you are recognizing it as new business and not more of the same business. And you are um you know giving them the same kind of like What looks like full service white glove attention that you would typically give somebody through e. g. , a welcome packet. Or yeah, that’s kind of what I’m thinking here.
So how do you get more of these dandelion projects? If a listener is saying, I want more dandelions, what do I do? What should they be doing?
Remember all of the names of the client team and not just the economic buyer. Get their LinkedIns. LinkedIn. I don’t know what the pluralization of LinkedIn is. Microsoft. Oh, God. No. If there’s ever multiple LinkedIns, I’m done. Reads Hoffman. Get their LinkedIn profiles. Keep them around. Watch as they go from one to the next company. Follow up every so often. Try and get their personal email addresses if you possibly can. and make it not seem weird. That way you stay in touch with them. Because it’s usually the case, like I’m I’m usually paid by the CEO of a company and then I’m introduced to their director of growth or CTO or COO or somebody like that. And that’s 90% of my work is with them, right? That’s been every one of my clients over the past year. So, you know, the CEO is always usually going to be the CEO of this client, but everybody else is going to quit and do something else.
Right. Not even think to my own history working at day jobs, and I transition companies and then take vendors along with me. Or hire the vendor at the new company because I’m like, they already understand how to work with me. They understand what the expectations are. It’s 90% the same project. Let’s see if they have a spot open. And it was super, super valuable for me. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense for consultants to be pursuing that. I actually have a course on this. If people want to learn more, they could go to referralcourse. net. R-E-F-E-R-R-A-L-C-O-U-R-S-E dot net, and it’ll teach you how to build referral systems for your business to get more dandelion projects, one-off projects, or just Actually, have a documented, systematized process for getting referrals. Yeah.
Yeah. I appreciate that. Definitely not shameless self-promotion there. In no way. Yeah. Very shameful. Yeah. So, I mean, that’s pretty much it. Like, you try and maintain the relationship, you follow through, you keep dossiers on everybody. You try and assess how enthusiastic they are about working with you, and you don’t forget them. And you hope that they don’t forget you.
Yeah, just simple things like. Following up every couple of months, or yeah, every month or two with past people that you’ve worked with can be so, so, so valuable. I’m just in the process of going through three years of my Gmail inbox to pull out a list of like all the different projects and all the different clients I touched. And move them over to my CRM. It’s been sort of slapdash up until now. And I’m excited to say have 80% coverage of the people and projects I’ve worked on in there. So I could just start reaching out and saying, hey, how are things? How is business? And they might say, business is great. And then it could turn into a dandelion project, or they might say, like, hey, business is sucking, or hey, we shut down and started a new company, or who knows what could come out of it. But just by building that list and starting the simple process of saying, hey, 10 people a month I’m going to reach out to and say, hey, how are you doing? It could produce amazing things for your business.