Networking mistakes that cost you referrals: lessons from Frank Agin

Most of the networking events I attend are run by a host who teaches networking well, and they are full of capable people. Yet I leave nearly every one with the same three questions about the people I met. Who was that? Who were they trying to meet? Why would I follow up?

None of them were short of information. Best practice for networking is everywhere. What was missing was execution. So I asked Frank Agin, founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections, why so many people still walk into rooms and present the wrong way, and what they should do instead. Frank has spent more than two decades studying business relationships, and he has made most of these mistakes himself.

The short version of Frank's answer: referrals stall for one of three reasons. People do not yet have a relationship with you, they have not learned what opportunities to look for on your behalf, or they do not know what to say when one appears. Most people stall at the second, because a technical, crowded pitch gives a listener nothing to remember. Tell a short story about one client in plain words, and look around the room for the Referral Partner as well as the buyer.

Getting to know Frank Agin

Frank Agin is the founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections, a referral networking organization based in Columbus, Ohio. He hosts the Networking Rx podcast, now running to hundreds of episodes, and he has written a long list of books on professional networking, including Foundational Networking and The Three Reasons You Don't Get Referrals.

He came to networking the hard way. He started as a tax consultant in a large accounting firm, then left to open his own law practice in 1995. Nothing happened. He had no idea how to get clients, so he went to chamber events and asked strangers who their attorney was. The reactions told him that was not working.

Someone suggested a referral group, and it made sense to him straight away. As Frank puts it, "You can lift your whole world up just helping other people." He got deeply involved, eventually bought the organization, and stopped practicing law in the early 2000s.

That background matters. Frank has made the mistakes he describes, and he has watched thousands of members make them since.

Why do people keep making the same networking mistakes?

When I asked Frank why people keep making the same mistakes, he gave three reasons: ignorance, laziness and impatience.

Ignorance is the easy one. Someone new to business does what feels logical, which is to ask the room for work. It feels uncomfortable, the reactions are poor, and they learn.

The other two are harder, because they apply to people who already know better. Frank sees members who have been walked through the right approach step by step, and then default straight back to pitching. "Networking takes time," he said. Somewhere in their head is the hope that this breakout room will be the one where someone hands them a large client, and that they can do it properly next time.

I'd add one point to Frank's list. Information has not been the bottleneck for twenty-five years, and AI search has made it even less of one. Ask any assistant for networking tips and you will get a reasonable list in seconds. The gap is the discipline of applying it, again and again, until you get good. Batting practice is the same. You are bad at the start, and you get better by stepping up to the plate often enough to improve.

Sales breath: what a pitch feels like from the other side

Frank has a name for the moment a breakout room goes wrong. "You can feel that somebody has what I'll call sales breath," he told me.

It happens when someone hears what you do and reshapes their pitch around you. Frank's example is a business coach who meets an attorney, and suddenly they coach attorneys. It lands as a threat, and people respond the way people always do. They become guarded.

The opposite is just as easy to recognize. You relax around the person. They avoid jargon. They tell a short story they have clearly prepared, sometimes reading it from a card because they have not memorized it yet, and you understand it immediately. Frank's advice is to trust that gut feel. When someone in the room is doing it well, take notes on how they do it.

People have a retrieval problem, not a storage problem

One of the most memorable ideas in the interview was Frank's explanation of why stories work. He compares the human brain to an Amazon warehouse, where almost anything you have ever encountered is stored somewhere. "So we don't have a storage problem. We have a retrieval problem," he said.

Somewhere on a shelf in the mind of everyone you meet is the exact client you want to work with. Your job is to say something that helps them find it and connect the dots.

His example was a realtor in his group. Instead of describing her services, she told a story about an older client in a three-story house whose stairs were becoming too much for them. Months later Frank told her he could not drive past a tall house without thinking about who would eventually need to move out of it. One story had planted a trigger he could not switch off.

Compare that to a list of services. A list gives your listener nothing to retrieve with. A story gives them a picture, and the picture brings the right person to mind. Steve Brossman made a similar point when we spoke: arrive with specific ways you help, because "anyone who needs..." gives people nothing to hold on to.

Most of the room will never buy from you

Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic of a networking room. My working rule is that in a room of 20 to 50 people, you should expect one person who is in the market for what you sell right now. You may not even end up in their breakout room.

That changes what the room is for. Almost everyone else knows people who look like your ideal client, or works alongside them. When your message is clear, one of them says, "I work with exactly that kind of person. We should talk." That conversation has nothing to do with selling to the person in front of you. It is the start of a Referral Partner relationship, and one Referral Partner can open the door to many of your ideal clients at once. The 1:1, 1:More, 1:Many Leverage Model explains why.

Most people go to events looking for a client, and miss the Referral Partner sitting across from them. Deciding in advance which kinds of businesses you want to meet is the work of the Ideal Referral Partner Profile Builder. And because what a partnership is worth to a partner is a different question from what your service is worth to a buyer, that conversation needs its own message, which is where the Value Statement Builder comes in. For more on spotting the right people, see how to identify and recruit ideal referral partners.

You can sound smart or you can get referrals

Frank makes this point in The Three Reasons You Don't Get Referrals, and he learned it as a lawyer. He would explain what he did in technical terms, people would nod, and he would leave thinking he had impressed them. They were thinking that he seemed impressive and that they had no idea what he did. In his words, "You can sound smart or you can get referrals."

I had the same experience in one of those breakout rooms. A participant introduced themselves with a job title I did not recognize, and the explanation that followed made it less clear, not more.

The fix is simple and hard. Say who you help, the problem they have, and the result you deliver, in words a stranger would use. Then wrap it in a story. Lead with the problem and the outcome rather than your product's features and functionality. In the Referral Marketing Formula™, this is the territory of Message-to-Market, Storytelling, Offers and CTAs.

Frank's three reasons you don't get referrals

Frank's book reduces the problem to three causes. In his framing, if referrals are not coming, it is one of these.

1. You do not have the relationship. People need to know you, like you and trust you. His earlier book, Foundational Networking, is a deep dive on this.
2. You have the relationship, but you have not taught people to recognize opportunities for you.
3. They have the relationship and know what to look for, but they do not know what to say when the moment comes.

Frank's view is that most people are reasonably good at the first. Making a point of helping others gets you most of the way there. Where people fall down is the second, because jargon and information overload stop anyone working out what to look for.

He also made a point about repetition that every business owner needs to hear. People tell him they finally got a referral from someone after saying the same thing for months. That is normal. You cannot assume anyone was listening. They might have been thinking about their own pitch, a problem at the office or an argument at home. It is not personal. Keep saying it, and keep saying it well.

What to do before your next networking event

• Write a 30-second story about one client, the problem they had and the result you delivered. Practice it until you can tell it without notes.
• Strip the jargon. If a stranger could not repeat your story to someone else, simplify it.
• Listen for people whose work puts them next to your ideal clients, and ask for a follow-up conversation for a specific reason that is worth their time.
• Go into that follow-up asking how you can help them first.
• Tell the same story, well, at every event. Most people need to hear it more than once before it sticks.

Common questions

Why don't I get referrals from networking?

Frank Agin says there are only three reasons. People do not yet know, like and trust you, they do not know what opportunities to look for on your behalf, or they do not know what to say when they see one. Most people stall at the second, because their message is too technical or too broad for anyone to act on.

What is sales breath?

Sales breath is Frank Agin's term for the feeling that someone in a networking conversation is pitching rather than connecting. The usual giveaway is a pitch reshaped around whoever is listening, such as a business coach who suddenly coaches attorneys after meeting one. People sense it as a threat and become guarded.

How do I make my networking introduction memorable?

Tell a short, specific story about one client, the problem they had and the outcome you delivered, in plain words. Frank Agin's point is that people have a retrieval problem, not a storage problem. A story helps them recall the right person later, which a list of services does not do.

Should I look for clients or Referral Partners at networking events?

Both, but expect only a small share of any room to be ready to buy right now. Most people in the room know or work with people who look like your ideal client, which makes them potential Referral Partners. One good Referral Partner can introduce you to many ideal clients over time.

Who is Frank Agin?

Frank Agin is the founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections, a referral networking organization based in Columbus, Ohio, and host of the Networking Rx podcast. A former tax consultant and attorney, he has spent more than two decades studying business relationships and is the author of books including Foundational Networking and The Three Reasons You Don't Get Referrals.

Using Refer2u

A good introduction is only the start. Refer2u, the Referral Partner Ecosystem, lets you track every referral, see what happens to it, and close the loop with the Referral Partner who made it, so they know their trust was well placed and keep introducing you. Start here.

Watch the full conversation with Frank above, or on YouTube. To learn more from Frank, visit frankagin.com and subscribe to the Networking Rx podcast. Which of these mistakes do you see most often in breakout rooms? Let us know on LinkedIn.