# Ed Forteau

Ed Forteau writes about helping consultants and other professional-service businesses win clients through stronger referral relationships. The posts focus on making it easier for others to recognize who to refer, when to make an introduction, and why the meeting should happen.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/ed-forteau/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edforteau
- LinkedIn followers: 12,753
- Topics: client-acquisition
- Based on 16 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Most useful for making referral relationships more deliberate and referral conversations clearer for professional-service firms.

- Best for: A mid-sized accounting or advisory firm wanting a referral workshop and co-created content.
- Not for: A B2B software vendor seeking enterprise IT demo requests and cost per lead.
- Check first: Confirm scope, lead time, price, audience analytics, and recent comparable post performance.

### Takeaways

- A client praised a fractional CFO but could not explain what she helps with.
- A referral can arrive before the prospect is ready to act.
- Who is likely to encounter the problem may matter more than network size.

## Main ideas

- **Build a system around the referral channel that already works**: Forteau starts with a familiar sequence: a B2B business grows through referrals, referrals slow down, and the owner concludes that the answer is ads, cold outreach, or content marketing. They think that skips a question worth asking first: if referrals already produced much of the business, why treat them as something that has to happen by accident? The argument is not that referrals can be forced. You cannot force someone to refer you, Forteau says, but you can be more deliberate about who is positioned to refer you, whether they understand whom they should introduce, and how well you stay connected. That makes referral generation a designed channel, with its own operating decisions, rather than a happy side effect of good work.
- **Who is positioned to refer you matters more than how many people you know**: Forteau separates two groups: people who would happily recommend you, and people whose work puts them around your problem all the time. A satisfied former client may know your work deeply and still rarely meet anyone dealing with the issue you solve. An accountant, attorney, banker, consultant, coach, or agency owner may know you far less yet hear the relevant conversations constantly. Forteau offers a simple test: name the profession of the person who sent your last good referral. In this view, contact count is a weak proxy for referral position.
- **Trust is not the missing piece — usable language is**: Forteau shows clients who trust a specialist and would recommend them without hesitation, yet cannot find the words when someone else describes the problem. The listener has to recognize their own situation in the explanation. "Finance. Forecasting. They help me think through decisions. Honestly, they do a lot" gives the listener nothing to match against. Forteau also shows the reverse: the client remembers the result, but when the same problem surfaces in different words, the specialist's name never comes up. The window closes in seconds.
- **A referral can arrive before the prospect is ready to act**: Forteau treats timing as a referral skill in its own right. A prospect can know the problem exists and is real, yet have gotten used to it. That changes the purpose of the first meeting: instead of solving the problem, the specialist spends the time helping the prospect decide whether it is worth addressing. The referral can be sound — the right specialist, a trusted introducer — and still arrive too early to be useful.
- **The words a client uses can point to the wrong specialist**: Another failure mode: referrers hear a real complaint and route it to the specialist whose subject area it sounds like, rather than the one who solves the actual problem. Forteau describes hearing something genuine and naming it too soon, a natural mistake when someone is trying to help. The specialist then spends the first meeting discovering the client was routed into the wrong lane.
- **"You two should meet" is not a referral**: A warm introduction opens a door, but Forteau argues it still needs to give someone a reason to walk through it. When the introducer recognizes the problem but leaves out the explanation before sending the email, both sides take the call on trust alone, and the founder arrives without knowing why the specialist is there. A referral is more than a connection: it needs to state the problem so the reason survives the handoff.
- **Attraction over chasing: fix how you are perceived before the ask**: In a longer piece, Forteau contrasts hunting for clients with creating pull. They list the standard advice — send more messages, follow up more, make more offers — and argue that the difference lies in how the person is perceived, not in the volume of outreach. If you have to convince someone of your value, you have already lost them; if people only see you when you are selling, you are invisible the rest of the time; if every conversation starts with an ask, you are seen as a taker. The alternative is positioning built on trust before anyone is asked for anything.

## Work to read

- [Put a System Around the Referral Channel That Already Works](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_getbetterreferrals-referrals-businessnetworking-activity-7497439633635467264-KUVo)
- [The Invisible Reason Some People Attract Clients Effortlessly (While Others Chase Them Down)](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_%F0%9D%90%93%F0%9D%90%A1%F0%9D%90%9E-%F0%9D%90%88%F0%9D%90%A7%F0%9D%90%AF%F0%9D%90%A2%F0%9D%90%AC%F0%9D%90%A2%F0%9D%90%9B%F0%9D%90%A5%F0%9D%90%9E-%F0%9D%90%91%F0%9D%90%9E%F0%9D%90%9A%F0%9D%90%AC%F0%9D%90%A8%F0%9D%90%A7-%F0%9D%90%92-activity-7337840963173654529-7glA)
- [“What Does She Actually Help With?”](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_getbetterreferrals-referrals-businessnetworking-activity-7497971039373701123-uU3r)
- [When the Problem Shows Up in Different Words](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_six-months-after-a-fractional-cfo-helped-activity-7487824219590844417-4BMV)
- [The Prospect Was Referred Too Soon](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_i-know-our-numbers-are-a-mess-the-founder-activity-7496158488331575296-lWnw)
- [The Referrer Saw the Symptom but Missed the Problem](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_a-founder-told-his-attorney-i-dont-think-activity-7492897649289936897-NzA1)
- [“You Two Should Meet” Is Not a Referral](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_a-founder-told-his-banker-we-keep-landing-activity-7491081661812670465-ZbRY)
- [Think About Who Sent Your Last Good Referral](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/edforteau_a-former-client-thinks-youre-terrific-activity-7503044850498404352-zHme)

## Brand relationships

- **Get Better Referrals** (owned_business)

## Partnerships

Ed Forteau's eight LinkedIn posts about referral strategy, published between June 2025 and September 2026, do not mention a partnership or sponsorship offer. Their calls to action are to read that week's issue of the Get Better Referrals newsletter or answer a research question in the comments. The posts name no sponsor, price a placement, describe a media kit, or link to a booking or inquiry form. They show the collaboration's subject matter and how the audience is engaged, which can help shape a proposal. Get Better Referrals is described as a recurring newsletter, making a newsletter sponsorship or co-authored issue the most obvious format to ask about. Ask Ed Forteau directly about current availability, commercial terms, deliverables, and lead time before committing budget.

## Alternatives

- Jamie Herman, BAS, MTax, CPA, CA: Choose Jamie Herman when the firm wants a working accountant who built a referral-fed practice and can explain the mechanics from the inside, rather than someone who teaches referral thinking as a subject. In one post, they describe offering tax-planning sessions to local bookkeeping chapters years ago for the price of dinner, with no fee. They fielded technical questions afterwards and used the rooms to practise presenting and meet bookkeepers. Those relationships became referrals. The post puts the result at roughly $300,000 of recurring year-end and tax work over three years, earned in their late twenties. For an accounting or advisory firm, that makes for a partner-education session built on firsthand experience: which rooms to be in, what to teach without charging, and how referral volume follows from being the person other professionals call with a hard technical question.
- Steve Wallace: Choose Steve Wallace when referral conversations start but the message does not land — prospects nod, agree and go quiet. The posts tackle that failure. One describes messaging results across financial services, manufacturing, roofing, promotions, marketing, tech and software, and names specific cases: an email that got a small unknown company in front of Goodyear, a financial advisor's rewritten outreach that landed a $100,000-a-year client, and a call that created a $50,000 deal for a five-person startup. The advertised offer is a $500, 90-minute session that rewrites the participant's own language and provides a reusable framework, with examples drawn from messaging taught at Guardian, MaverickApp and B2B Rev Co. For an advisory firm, this is the sharper choice when partners and referral sources can get the meeting but not the follow-through.
- Tom B.: Choose Tom B. when referral flow is steady but too slow, and the firm wants a named list of prospects shaped like its best client rather than deeper referral relationships. One post argues that referral-led firms can name their best client in two seconds but not ten more like them. The fix, it says, is finding companies with the same shape — the trigger that made the best client look, the title of the person who signed, the problem they could not solve alone — not the same industry label. Three close matches beat three hundred loose ones, and the resulting message should read like a referral from someone who understands the business. The offer is a free exchange: send the best client's name and get back three similar companies, who to contact and what to say. A workshop or co-created content piece would extend that logic into the firm's own pipeline.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/