Making Yourself Referable

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Tom Perrone.

How do you feel when you meet some­one who just nat­u­rally makes you feel at ease? There are peo­ple who seem to have the gift of engen­der­ing trust. Tom Per­rone is one of those peo­ple. One of the things I have learned in work­ing with Tom is that his abil­ity to make peo­ple feel com­fort­able is based upon two things: 1. Effort, and 2. Skills. Tom really makes an effort to ensure that the peo­ple he meets feel at ease and safe. Over the years, he has honed skills that he applies in a seem­ingly effort­less way in his inter­ac­tions with others.

Tom focuses on the Seniors Mar­ket. One of his core val­ues is that seniors feel safe. It is impor­tant to him that his clients feel safe finan­cially and emo­tion­ally. The core of his Value Propo­si­tion is that his clients make the right deci­sions long term. Tom has been known to say “I would like a nickel for every dol­lar of com­mis­sion I gave up to do the right thing.” Tom takes the Long View. It starts when he meets a prospec­tive client for the first time. He focuses on get­ting to know them through ask­ing feel­ing ques­tions. Tom under­stands that peo­ple treat facts as fac­tors, but make deci­sions based upon feel­ings. All deci­sions are val­ues based.

The ini­tial meet­ing is a Dis­cov­ery i.e. an in-depth explo­ration of what is impor­tant to the client(s). He fol­lows up each of these meet­ings with a hand­writ­ten Thank You card in which he reit­er­ates what they want in life. Later, many clients tell Tom that this per­sonal touch affirmed their deci­sion to become a client. Tom includes per­sonal notes at each stage of the client inter­ac­tion e.g. before send­ing the Engage­ment Agree­ment, he sends a per­sonal card. If a client or fam­ily mem­ber gets sick, Tom will send a per­sonal note. He believes in small acts of kind­ness. Clients who have been sick will receive tick­ets to go to the movies and have a night out. As a result, his clients feel very well treated.

After each meet­ing, Tom asks his clients to com­plete a brief Sur­vey. In the Sur­vey, he high­lights that his busi­ness is refer­ral based. A sheet is included where they can add the names of peo­ple whom Tom would ben­e­fit from meet­ing. In some instances, clients will include eight to ten names. Tom assures his clients that the peo­ple whom they refer will always be in con­trol of whether or not they talk to him. Then, a let­ter with an arti­cle of inter­est goes out to each refer­ral. His sec­re­tary includes a flyer that says if they do not want to receive this infor­ma­tion, they will not be sent any­thing fur­ther. Every­thing that goes out includes a ref­er­ence to the per­son who rec­om­mended them. Each refer­ral receives 8–10 high qual­ity let­ters or emails a year. Four of them are unique newslet­ters that include recipes, sto­ries about clients and arti­cles of inter­est to seniors. The intent is to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the newslet­ter from the typ­i­cal finan­cial piece that advi­sors send out.

Tom believes that if you pro­vide peo­ple with good infor­ma­tion and stay in touch over a three to four year period, peo­ple will expe­ri­ence a Trig­ger Event that will lead them to call and book an appoint­ment. Recently, a prospect whom Tom had in his sys­tem for over three years, sold his busi­ness and called Tom for help in man­ag­ing the new wealth. Through ran­dom acts of kind­ness and thought­ful ges­tures, prospec­tive clients get a feel for Tom as a warm and car­ing human being. Recently, Tom sent a get well card to a prospect recov­er­ing from back surgery. The cou­ple called and soon after, became clients.

Each quar­ter, Tom will iden­tify 50 clients and send them a sur­vey. The incen­tive to com­plete the sur­vey is par­tic­i­pa­tion in a draw. The prize could be a $100 gift cer­tifi­cate for din­ner at a restau­rant of their choice, tick­ets to the the­atre or a sport­ing event, etc. Typ­i­cally, he gets a 50% response rate. Just last week, he received 18 refer­rals from a recent client sur­vey. Over the last year, Tom spent more time focused on clients. He hand­picks two or three clients a week to take for lunch or din­ner. Each client is given a sur­vey to com­plete. Tom has learned that it is less stress­ful for every­body if his prospects do not feel as if they are being solicited.

Tom’s goal is to add 150–200 intro­duc­tions per year to his DRIP sys­tem. At any point in time, he will have 250–300 prospects receiv­ing infor­ma­tion. The impor­tant thing to note is that Tom has a sys­tem that con­sis­tently gen­er­ates 15–20 new clients per year. He calls this con­cept “Friends help­ing Friends”.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Acts Of Kindness, Client Interaction, Core Values, Decisions, Depth Exploration, Discovery, Do The Right Thing, Family Member, Feelings, Nickel, Norm Trainor, Perrone, Personal Card, Personal Note, Personal Notes, Personal Touch, Prospective Client, Seniors, Small Acts Of Kindness, Value Proposition
Posted in My Practice, Norm Trainor | Comments Off