When your business depends on referrals, you should have a strategy and a process for generating those referrals. (Unfortunately, I’m an expert at screwing this up, having spent years (decades?) not doing anything intentional to generate the referrals that built my business.)
But this doesn’t mean that any way of asking for referrals is good. I’ve been getting LinkedIn spam campaigns asking for referrals. I suspect there are some less than entirely reputable agencies pushing these campaigns to people as a magic bullet that will get them referrals without actually having to talk to anyone.
If you’re in a relationship business, you’re in a conversation business. If your client can’t click a “Buy” button, but has to have a conversation with you, you probably can’t get your partners, or people who aren’t even partners, to click a “Refer” button. Take the time to have the conversations with the right referral partners, and you’ll see much better results than spamming your address book.
If you’re not getting referrals, are you having these conversations? And do you have clear positioning that your referral partners can recall at the right time, relay to another person, and actually make the referral?
(Take advantage of this Cask-Strength Positioning training if you want help working on that positioning.)