Three Minutes That Lost a New Client

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Being a finan­cial advi­sor can be a roller coaster – one week you get a refer­ral that leads to a ter­rific new client, the next you lose a long-standing rela­tion­ship for rea­sons entirely beyond your con­trol. A recent call from a suc­cess­ful advi­sor look­ing for advice reminded of the fine line between suc­cess and failure.

An engi­neer by train­ing, Bob came into the invest­ment indus­try fif­teen years ago, today he runs a grow­ing prac­tice focused on mid and high-level cor­po­rate exec­u­tives in the tech and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. Last fall, he invited top clients to a mar­ket out­look lunch at a pri­vate room at a top local restau­rant. He asked clients inter­ested in attend­ing to call him directly to dis­cuss spe­cific ques­tions they wanted to address.

Bob sent out 50 invi­ta­tions and had about 15 clients say yes, over twice the response to sand­wich lunches in his board­room. (A free meal shouldn’t make a dif­fer­ence to mil­lion dol­lar clients, but expe­ri­ence shows that it does.) After talk­ing on the phone to the clients attend­ing about what they’d like to cover, he men­tioned that while this lunch was pri­mar­ily for exist­ing clients, he did have a few extra spots and asked if they had one friend or co-worker who might be inter­ested in attend­ing as their guest.

Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on an opening

A client in a senior role at a mid-sized tech com­pany brought along a work col­league, let’s call his guest Jim. Both the exist­ing client and Jim had sub­stan­tial equity in their firm, while they might not be huge clients cur­rently, they both rep­re­sent very sig­nif­i­cant future potential.

The lunch went well with lots of inter­ac­tion and dis­cus­sion. Next morn­ing, Bob called his client to get his impres­sions of the lunch and also to get per­mis­sion to fol­low up with Jim. While that follow-up call was politely received, Jim begged off an imme­di­ate meet­ing due to travel and work pres­sures, but did agree that Bob could add him to his monthly email list and then fol­low up in January.

Bob con­nected with Jim early in the new year and they agreed to meet for a casual con­ver­sa­tion over a mid-morning cof­fee at a Star­bucks across the street from Jim’s office. Bob got there early to ensure that they got a table in the cor­ner and was wait­ing when Jim arrived.

After get­ting there cof­fees, Bob thanked Jim for tak­ing the time to meet and said that his goal was sim­ply to get to know Jim bet­ter, then asked if he had any­thing in par­tic­u­lar he’d like to get out of their con­ver­sa­tion. Jim paused, thought for a moment and said, “Not really, no” … and then went on to say: “Before com­ing over, I glanced at your pro­file on Linked-In, was a bit sur­prised to see that the only thing there was your cur­rent role with­out any his­tory or back­ground, so I’d like to hear more about you.”

He then went on to say: “I assume you’ve looked at my Linked-In pro­file, do you have any ques­tions about my back­ground?”   There was an awk­ward pause while Jim waited for Bob’s answer. Bob first of all explained that updat­ing his Linked-In pro­file was on his to-do list, but other pri­or­i­ties had got in the way. And he apol­o­gized that he didn’t have a chance to look at Jim’s pro­file before their meet­ing and asked him to tell him a bit about himself.

Bob and Jim went on to have a cor­dial con­ver­sa­tion. When the meet­ing wrapped up after 30 min­utes, Bob sug­gested sched­ul­ing a time for a more in-depth dis­cus­sion of Jim’s sit­u­a­tion. Jim thanked him for for the offer, but said that while he’d enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tion, given how busy he is, he’s not inter­ested in talk­ing fur­ther at this point. Jim did agree that Bob could keep on his monthly email list and that he could check back in 12 months, but Bob walked away feel­ing that what had seemed a promis­ing oppor­tu­nity had turned cold.

The new expec­ta­tions for meet­ing preparation

Bob called me later that day to get my thoughts on how he should fol­low up with Jim and also what he could learn from the meet­ing. There were two obvi­ous take­aways from the meet­ing with Jim:

First, before con­tact­ing prospects and cer­tainly before meet­ing them, advi­sors will more and more need to get into the habit of first check­ing prospects’ Linked-In pro­files. This is obvi­ously less rel­e­vant if you work with retirees, but if you work with busi­ness own­ers or pro­fes­sion­als and cer­tainly if you work in the tech space as Bob does, this has become expected behav­iour. More and more, not check­ing someone’s Linked-In pro­file before call­ing them or meet­ing them will send the sig­nal that you’re not seri­ous enough to invest three min­utes in basic research. (Note that Bob could have checked Jim’s pro­file while wait­ing for him at Starbucks.)

Sec­ond, advi­sors need to get seri­ous about their own Linked-In pro­files. I rec­og­nize that some firms still limit what advi­sors can put on their Linked-In pro­files (although I’m not clear as to why there should be dif­fer­ent stan­dards for Linked-In vs advi­sor web­sites), but the indus­try as a whole needs to adjust to today’s real­ity here and do it sooner rather than later.

With regard to how to fol­low up with Jim, I sug­gested that Bob update his LinkedIn pro­file and then send Jim a note, thank­ing him for pro­vid­ing the impe­tus to move this up Bob’s pri­or­ity list. This won’t recoup all the ground that was lost, but per­haps will be a beginning.

For advi­sors who want to know more about how to incor­po­rate Linked-In to your prac­tice, below are links to two arti­cles that appeared last year:

The Game-Changer for Attract­ing Afflu­ent Clients

8 Steps to a Prof­itable LinkedIn Strategy

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Tags: Boardroom, Co Worker, Corporate Executives, Email List, Fifteen Years, Impressions, Investment Industry, Invitations, Local Restaurant, Manufacturing Industries, Market Outlook, Next Morning, Private Room, Referral, Roller Coaster, Sandwich Lunches, Substantial Equity, Success And Failure, Three Minutes, Work Colleague
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What To Do When You Get A Referral

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Drive Practice

I spend a lot of time coach­ing advi­sors on how to attract refer­rals. Let me take a minute and dis­cuss what to do when you receive one.

• Con­tact them promptly. It should be obvi­ous and go with­out say­ing, but you would be sur­prised that some advi­sors receive a name and num­ber from a client and put off con­tact­ing them. Your client prob­a­bly men­tioned you because their friend expressed a chal­lenge they were deal­ing with right now. Don’t waste time. Make that phone call a priority.

• Ask what they need. When you reach the refer­ral, after intro­duc­ing your­self and ref­er­enc­ing the client who rec­om­mended you, find out what’s on their mind. Give them an oppor­tu­nity to describe what prob­lem they have and what kind of solu­tion they look for. Put the spot­light on them.

• Lead with your value propo­si­tion. Once the refer­ral has described their chal­lenge, give them your ele­va­tor pitch. You should be in the habit of start­ing every con­ver­sa­tion about your prac­tice with it.

• Com­pare their need to your unique skill. If things go well, and the refer­ral was sent to you because of the spe­cial solu­tion or exper­tise you rep­re­sent, it will be clear to the refer­ral that what you do answers the prob­lem they just described.

• Set the appoint­ment. Don’t waste time on the phone doing fact gath­er­ing or pre­sent­ing. If you have suc­cess­fully con­nected their need to your spe­cial skill, the next step is to get together.

• Send your client a thank you note. Express your grat­i­tude for their vote of con­fi­dence. Your client takes the risk by send­ing a friend to you – honor it. Update them on the sta­tus of your con­ver­sa­tion with­out breach­ing con­fi­dences. Let your client know that you spoke to the per­son that they sent and you have sched­uled an appoint­ment, or didn’t. Send them a thank you regard­less of whether the refer­ral went any­where or not. My pref­er­ence is to hand write a card and send by mail. Peo­ple don’t do that very often any­more, so it is much more spe­cial than an e-mail. Do it the same day you speak with the referral.

• Next time you see the client who sent you the refer­ral, ask about the cir­cum­stances that led to it. It leads your client to relive the sit­u­a­tion, and makes it more likely they will make another refer­ral in the same sit­u­a­tion. Know­ing what the client said will give you valu­able infor­ma­tion about what the client val­ues and how to teach other clients to do the same. It gives you a chance to con­firm that they under­stand your value propo­si­tion and teaches you how they describe it. It enables you to dis­cover a new trig­ger phrases that prompted your client to refer.

Receiv­ing refer­rals is more than an oppor­tu­nity to bring in a new client. It is an oppor­tu­nity to reward a refer­ror with grat­i­tude. It is an oppor­tu­nity to learn more about when clients refer, which helps you attract more. It rein­forces your dif­fer­en­tia­tor, and dri­ves it fur­ther into the clients brain. And all of this helps lead to more referrals.

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Tags: Appointment, Contact, Elevator Pitch, Express, Gratitude, Habit, Lot, Mail, Opportunity, People, Phone Call, Preference, Priority, Referral, Referrals, Risk, Spotlight, Value Proposition, Vote Of Confidence, Waste Time
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What Not to Tell Clients About Referrals — The Private Bankers Rule in Action

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

There’s no short­age of advi­sor coaches and con­sul­tants on how advi­sors should oper­ate,  which means you have to be dis­cern­ing about who you lis­ten to. One expert whose arti­cles I read with inter­est is John Ander­son, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Head of Prac­tice Man­age­ment Solu­tions for the SEI Advi­sor Net­work, based in Penn­syl­va­nia.  Recently, though, I found myself dis­agree­ing with some of his advice on the topic of referrals.

Help­ing clients iden­tify your value

An arti­cle by Ander­son described a refer­ral to his prop­erty and casu­alty insur­ance agent that he’d pro­vided to a col­league. Based on that expe­ri­ence, he rec­om­mended that advi­sors ask clients some ques­tions to help high­light the value they’re receiv­ing and to increase the chances of them pro­vid­ing refer­rals sim­i­lar to the one that he’d just made. Here’s how he con­cluded his article:

The next time you have a meet­ing with one of your bet­ter clients, instead of the usual, “If you’re happy with my ser­vice, please refer me,” take five min­utes at the end of the con­ver­sa­tion and ask:

• Why did you select me as your finan­cial advisor?
• If some­one asked you to describe how I’ve helped you, what would you say?
• What was the trig­ger that made you decide to get finan­cial advice and/or change advi­sors? Was there a prob­lem you wanted to solve?

By get­ting clients to answer these ques­tions, you are help­ing them script answers that they may use with friends and fam­ily — and maybe even help them iden­tify oth­ers that are in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. More impor­tantly, you are hear­ing from them what they value in their rela­tion­ship with you. And that’s bet­ter than hear­ing “I can’t think of any­one right now; I’ll get back to you.”

What dri­ves referrals

I have a some­what dif­fer­ent view on referrals.

Let’s begin with the fact that your con­ver­sa­tions with clients around refer­rals are much less impor­tant than you might think. My recent research with investors on this sub­ject indi­cates that the large major­ity of refer­rals aren’t ini­ti­ated by a request from advi­sors; instead most come, as John Anderson’s did, when some­one your client knows men­tions a prob­lem or asks for help. This is con­sis­tent with the 2008 research study on The Eco­nom­ics of Loy­alty spon­sored by Van­guard and con­ducted by Advi­sor Impact, in which only 6% of refer­rals resulted from a direct request by an advi­sor. (Click here for the full report)

So what does lead to refer­rals if not requests from advi­sors? When I talk to clients who’ve pro­vided refer­rals and to advi­sors who’ve received them, the most com­mon theme is that the advi­sor has gone the extra mile to pro­vide a con­crete solu­tion to sig­nif­i­cant problems.

Two recent arti­cles described instances where advi­sors had gone above and beyond and received refer­rals as a result. One fea­tured an advi­sor who offered to help his top 50 clients sum­ma­rize all their finan­cial infor­ma­tion; he asked them to bring in all of their state­ments and in 30 min­utes  cre­ated a spread­sheet con­sol­i­dat­ing all of their accounts and other finan­cial infor­ma­tion. The other arti­cle pro­filed an advi­sor who last fall called his retired clients and sug­gested that they meet to cre­ate a cash flow forecast.

In nei­ther case did the advi­sor have to ask clients to describe the ben­e­fits they’d received – the value was so clear cut that spon­ta­neous refer­rals fol­lowed. Click here to see: 30 min­utes that yielded three clients  and A con­ver­sa­tion that tripled refer­rals.

There is one other require­ment for above and beyond effort to trans­late into refer­rals, your clients have to know you’re open for busi­ness. One approach that has worked for some advi­sors is to con­clude reviews by ask­ing clients if you could take three min­utes to high­light the qual­i­ties of the clients you work with most effec­tively and have found you can help the most, should they be talk­ing to friends who might be a fit. No stress or pres­sure, but it lets clients know that you are tak­ing new clients on.

This arti­cle describes how one advi­sor saw a big increase in refer­rals, just by ini­ti­at­ing a low-key con­ver­sa­tion with clients: 2011’s # 1 Strat­egy — Five Words that Tripled Referrals 

The pri­vate bankers rule

There’s one final prob­lem with ask­ing clients to artic­u­late our value, and that’s the risk that it posi­tions us as sales­peo­ple rather than pro­fes­sion­als.  We all want to be seen as pro­fes­sion­als, equiv­a­lent to lawyers, accoun­tants and pri­vate bankers. Well, if you want to be viewed like accoun­tants and lawyers, you have to act like accoun­tants and lawyers.

Can you imag­ine a part­ner in a Big Four account­ing firm say­ing “Why did you hire me? What did you like about the job I did?” Can you visu­al­ize a suc­cess­ful lawyer say­ing: “How did I help you? What prob­lem did I solve?” Or can you see a pri­vate banker deal­ing with multi-million dol­lar investors say­ing, as one refer­ral coach advises: “Please don’t keep me a secret.”

There’s a sim­ple test for every con­ver­sa­tion, whether with exist­ing or prospec­tive clients. That test:  would a suc­cess­ful accoun­tant, lawyer or pri­vate banker say this? Call it the pri­vate banker’s rule – if you’re con­sid­er­ing doing or say­ing some­thing that a high end pri­vate banker wouldn’t, then think about whether you’re jeop­ar­diz­ing your posi­tion­ing in the minds of the peo­ple you’re work­ing with.

Even though John Ander­son and I may dif­fer some­what on refer­rals, over­all I do find his insights valu­able.  Click here to view his arti­cles and to sign up for his emails:   http://​seicblogs​.com/​a​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​e​-​m​a​n​a​g​e​m​e​nt/

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Tags: Casualty Insurance Agent, Colleague, Conversations With Clients, Expert, Financial Advice, Five Minutes, Friends And Family, Insurance, John Anderson, Managing Director, Pennsylvania, Practice Management Solutions, Private Bankers, Property And Casualty, Property And Casualty Insurance, Property And Casualty Insurance Agent, Referral, Referrals, Relationship, Sei
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Securing Valuable Introductions

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

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Tags: Asser, Client Description, Client Relationship, Colleagues, Confidence, Covenant Group, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Services Industry, Five Steps, Groundwork, Introductions, Latter Situation, Momentum, Norm Trainor, Prospects, Quality Customer Service, Referral, Referrals, Salesperson, Sectors
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Niche Marketing Will Become Mandatory For Clients To Find You

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

Back in March, Lisa Gray posted an arti­cle on Advisors4 Advi­sors enti­tled “The Big Refer­ral Myth: How The Inter­net Has Changed The Way Advi­sors Get Busi­ness.” In it, she sug­gests that refer­rals are no longer the most impor­tant way advi­sors get new clients, but that search­ing on the web has become the sin­gle most crit­i­cal way to attract new clients.

At the time I thought she was wrong. The idea that web search replac­ing refer­rals in impor­tance was over the top. While I still believe refer­rals are the most impor­tant way to attract new clients, I real­ize the point she makes is more impor­tant than I thought at the time. Four days after her post, Michael Kitces pub­lished an arti­cle called “In The Future, The Best Firms Won’t Find New Clients; The New Clients Will Find Them.” In it, he refers to a Rydex/SGI advi­sor bench­mark­ing sur­vey of the dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing meth­ods employed by advi­sors in 2011 ver­sus 2010. While the pic­ture painted by the sur­vey shows invest­ment advi­sors strug­gling to under­stand how best to use the Inter­net and social media for mar­ket­ing, it led Kitces to the con­clu­sion that if advi­sory firms want to suc­ceed in mar­ket­ing they must be more “find­able” on the web. And that requires that they have a more clearly defined niche and that they cre­ate con­tent more specif­i­cally tar­geted to that niche. The impor­tance of tar­get mar­ket­ing was another point made in Gray’s post.

Then, on April 2, Reg­is­tered Rep mag­a­zine pub­lished the arti­cle “Call In The Spe­cial­ists.” The arti­cle con­tains four case stud­ies of finan­cial prac­tices that have found mar­ket­ing suc­cess by spe­cial­iz­ing in the unique needs of a spe­cific group. Inter­est­ingly, the arti­cle dis­cusses niche mar­ket­ing as a spe­cialty within a more gen­eral advi­sory prac­tice. It quotes Danny Sarch of Leit­ner Sarch Con­sul­tants Ltd dis­cussing how you to pay to add that spe­cific exper­tise to your advi­sory team. Advi­sors who pur­sue this strat­egy missed the point – the whole idea is that the spe­cial­ized knowl­edge cre­ates value and the biggest rewards will come to the advi­sors who ori­ent their prac­tice toward that spe­cialty rather than main­tain­ing a gen­eral prac­tice and hir­ing a spe­cial­ized team mem­ber. While there may be an issue of how to pay to acquire some of that exper­tise, the whole idea is to grad­u­ally develop the entire team to be spe­cial­ists in that niche.

One of the things I find most sur­pris­ing about this arti­cle is that it presents niche mar­ket­ing almost like it was a new idea. The ben­e­fits of tar­get mar­ket­ing have been doc­u­mented and dis­cussed for years. What holds most advi­sors back, how­ever, is their super­fi­cial under­stand­ing of the con­cepts. To be most effec­tive, advi­sors must describe their niche in enough detail to iden­tify spe­cific issues that group faces that are dif­fer­ent from the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. And that is, in my expe­ri­ence, a lot more spe­cial­ized that is com­monly under­stood or discussed.

I still dis­agree with Gray on one fun­da­men­tal idea – that web search will sup­plant refer­rals in impor­tance. Advi­sory firms who can suc­cess­fully describe their niche thor­oughly enough will real­ize far more refer­rals as well as more prospects through web searches. Sophis­ti­cated tar­get mar­ket­ing will bring more clients from all channels.

I believe the future of finan­cial advi­sor busi­ness devel­op­ment will be the real­iza­tion that to really suc­ceed requires a spe­cial­iza­tion. I can envi­sion a time when the trade press no longer runs arti­cles like the one dis­cussed here about the ben­e­fits of tar­get mar­ket­ing because dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion through unique exper­tise will be widely under­stood as a require­ment for estab­lish­ing a viable business.

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Tags: Advisory Firms, Advisory Team, Benchmarking Survey, Case Studies, Consultants Ltd, Financial Practices, Investment Advisors, Leitner Sarch Consultants, Lisa Gray, Marketing Methods, Marketing Success, Myth, Niche Marketing, Referral, Referrals, Rydex, Sarch, Specific Group, Target Marketing, Web Search
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A Passive Way to More Referrals with Golf

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

A Pas­sive Way to More Refer­rals with Golf

As a for­mer advi­sor, I can’t remem­ber a time when I did not feel awk­ward about solic­it­ing clients to make refer­rals. I found its eas­ier if you do some­thing, some­thing valu­able and sur­pris­ing, that causes them to say “Wow!” so they talk about you when­ever the invest­ment topic comes up with their associates/friends.

You have to do out-of-the-ordinary things for your clients at var­i­ous times of the year to let them know how impor­tant they are to you. We do it for our loved ones all the time, so why not for clients?

Idea: In the sum­mer, activ­ity in our indus­try tends to slow down. So what can you do to keep your refer­ral fun­nel going?

What if you could offer clients a four­some (theirs, not yours) when­ever you like, so they can play golf, with­out feel­ing like you have to be there? No golf club mem­ber­ship required, and no addi­tional greens fees.

The other day, I was talk­ing to Golf Hunter’s (Golf Hunter, Inc.) Founder and CEO, Sean Manias, whose com­pany (now in its 5th sea­son) pro­vides an intel­li­gently crafted cor­po­rate golf mem­ber­ship boast­ing a fully trans­fer­able four­some of golf to over 25 courses in Ontario.

It’s a pretty sim­ple offer­ing — you get about $60,000 (one tee time every day for the entire sea­son!) of golf for a frac­tion of the price. You pick a home course where 75% of games will be played and you’re pro­vided cer­tifi­cates for the remain­ing 25% non-home courses.

Also, the mem­ber­ship can be split any way you like, e.g. you can split a mem­ber­ship between 4 advi­sors (about $3,000 each); that would pro­vide each advi­sor with roughly 7 foursomes/tee times each month.

In the midst of our con­ver­sa­tion, I real­ized that this could be a smart way to reward your clients, get their valu­able pub­lic­ity and gen­er­ate good­will for you. Real good­will. By the way, you can also use it to reward your team, and even your branch manager.

Take it or leave it. It could be a pretty nifty way to give a lot for a little.

For more infor­ma­tion, and mem­ber­ship details, you may reach Sean directly at 705−331−4540, or
visit their web­site at www​.golfhunter​inc​.com.

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Tags: Ceo, Certificates, Corporate Golf Membership, Entire Season, Foursome, Foursomes, Fraction, Funnel, Golf Club Membership, Goodwill, Greens Fees, Investment Topic, Manias, Midst, Ordinary Things, Publicity, Referral, Referrals, Tee Time, Tee Times
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Understand Why People Make Referrals and You Can Attract More

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

I specif­i­cally say “make a refer­ral to you” and not “give you a refer­ral” because, when it hap­pens nat­u­rally, a refer­ral is not some­thing a client gives you; a refer­ral is some­thing he gives a friend.

You prob­a­bly make refer­rals every day. I know I am mak­ing them all the time, although I would usu­ally call them sug­ges­tions or rec­om­men­da­tions. Here are a few that I have made recently or make fairly regularly:

• Since I work with finan­cial advi­sors, I will often get ques­tions about tools and resources. I am happy to rec­om­mend the client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment sys­tem I use, Red­tail.
• A client of my retail prac­tice needed some short-term financ­ing, and I was happy to rec­om­mend and coor­di­nate a loan through a regional bank.
• I love the soft­ware appli­ca­tions Ever­note and Nozbe. As a busy con­sul­tant and exec­u­tive who strug­gles with ADD, I have found that these pro­grams improve my life.
• I am a fan of Mark Sis­son and The Pri­mal Blue­print. If I get into a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one about diet or health, I will fre­quently direct them to Mark’s book or website.
• I rec­om­mend my auto mechanic pretty reg­u­larly. There have been many times when he has directed me back to the deal­er­ship because he believed that my prob­lem was cov­ered under war­ranty. Other times he has talked me out of repairs on a beat-up Jeep or van I used to own to carry things around for home improve­ment projects because they were too expen­sive rel­a­tive to the value of the vehi­cle. I believe he won’t charge me to do some­thing unless it’s necessary.
• My wife and I love food and wine and fre­quently talk about local restau­rants and vine­yards in the Fin­ger Lakes area of New York where we live.

Once you reflect on it, you will likely real­ize that you make refer­rals pretty reg­u­larly. Your clients do, too. They likely refer peo­ple to you more than you real­ize. In her study “Anatomy of the Refer­ral,” Julie Lit­tlechild found that 91% of clients were com­fort­able pro­vid­ing a refer­ral to their finan­cial advi­sor, and 29% had made a refer­ral. I am intrigued by the 29%. Most of the advi­sors I know would be thrilled to receive refer­rals from almost one-third of their client base. What por­tion of your client base do you think referred some­one to you in the last year?

The study found that the top two rea­sons for offer­ing a refer­ral is because a friend asked for a refer­ral or a friend expressed a finan­cial chal­lenge. In his book The New Art and Sci­ence of Refer­ral Mar­ket­ing, Scott DeGraf­fen­reid deter­mined through social net­work analy­sis that peo­ple make refer­rals to improve their stand­ing among their peers. Your client is telling his friend about you not because he wants to ben­e­fit you, but because he wants to ben­e­fit the friend and to ben­e­fit himself.

Who have you rec­om­mended to friends over the past month? Why did you do it? Why do I tell peo­ple about my auto mechanic, or those soft­ware appli­ca­tions, or Mark Sis­son? My mechanic does not pay me to tell peo­ple about him; he pro­vides me no incen­tive to rec­om­mend him—no dis­counts or coupons or cer­tifi­cates for a steak din­ner if I send three peo­ple his way.  And I assure you Mark Sis­son does not even know I exist, much less that I am a fan. I encour­age friends to patron­ize those busi­nesses because I care about them, my friends. I do it because I want them to have a bet­ter expe­ri­ence tak­ing care of their car, because I want them to avoid get­ting ripped off, and because I want them to be health­ier. And I want them to think bet­ter of me for hav­ing turned them on to some­thing that was use­ful to them. That is why we nat­u­rally make referrals.

So, if peo­ple want to real­ize the ben­e­fits of pro­vid­ing a refer­ral (obtain social cur­rency, expand influ­ence, etc.) and can accom­plish that by direct­ing a friend to you because they believe you will help them solve a prob­lem, they will refer peo­ple to you. Attract­ing refer­rals, then, becomes largely a mat­ter of train­ing clients to remem­ber to men­tion you at the right time. It’s all about help­ing peo­ple remem­ber you when they can ben­e­fit from men­tion­ing you. It’s not about giv­ing you names when you ask, it’s about remem­ber­ing to refer you when the oppor­tu­nity arises, so you have to pre­pare clients for the oppor­tu­nity to refer. “Who can you think of that could use my ser­vices?” is about ask­ing your client to help you. “I know some­one who can help you solve that prob­lem” is about a client help­ing a friend.

Think­ing about it another way, when you ask for a refer­ral you’re essen­tially ask­ing your clients to sell for you.  And that’s not the role they signed up for.  Con­sider it in your own expe­ri­ence.  Is there a pro­fes­sional you work with, or have used his or her ser­vices, that you would hap­pily refer any­time some­one expressed a need—a car mechanic, a plumber, a lawyer?   Most of us have at least one or two peo­ple we deal with on a reg­u­lar basis that we would be thrilled to refer.  Let me ask you this, who will you call about that per­son today?  Well of course you’re not going to wake up and ask your­self, “Who can I call to tell about this great mechanic I know?”  That’s not how it works.  How many clients will you com­mit to attract­ing for those peo­ple this year? None, of course—that’s not why you rec­om­mend them. You do it because it ben­e­fits you, not the per­son you are refer­ring some­one to.

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Tags: Auto Mechanic, Blueprint, Client Relationship Management, Conversation With Someone, Evernote, Financial Advisors, Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes Area, Home Improvement Projects, Julie Littlechild, Local Restaurants, Mark Sisson, Provi, Referral, Referrals, Regional Bank, Relationship Management System, Short Term Financing, Software Applications, Study Anatomy
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To Get Your Clients Referring, Teach Them the Trigger Phrases

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

The new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion is about inter­act­ing with our clients the way friends would inter­act with each other or enlist their help in problem-solving. What­ever approach we take, it should be a con­ver­sa­tion that deliv­ers ben­e­fits to the client.

One aspect of the new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion is that it can nat­u­rally grow out of edu­cat­ing the client. You have worked hard to deter­mine who your ideal client is, what prob­lems they have, and what kinds of solu­tions or expe­ri­ences they seek. Ide­ally, you would have reviewed your ser­vice mix and made some adjust­ments to more closely tai­lor it to that ideal client. So, the nat­ural place for the new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion to begin is in describ­ing the prob­lem you have decided to focus on solv­ing or the need you have deter­mined to fill. By exten­sion, you will be draw­ing a pic­ture for your clients of your ideal prospect. Our objec­tive is to iden­tify and rein­force expres­sions the client may hear that we hope will prompt him to men­tion you. We want to be teach­ing the client how to know who a great refer­ral would be.

In The Refer­ral Engine, John Jantsch says “I believe any sales­per­son worth their salt has devel­oped a list of phrases, sit­u­a­tions, and ver­bal clues that, if heard dur­ing a sales pre­sen­ta­tion, sig­nal it’s time to take the order. The same idea is true of a qual­i­fied referral.”

What are your trig­ger phrases?

• I was just awarded another allo­ca­tion of stock options, and I’m not sure exactly what they can do for me.
• Our com­pany just moved to a cash bal­ance retire­ment plan.
• My best friends hus­band was just diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s.
• We went to my son’s high school last night to you the guid­ance coun­selor talk about finan­cial aid.
• My sis­ter just had her first child.

Take some time and talk with your clients about who you have real­ized your ideal client is. And dis­cuss those ideal clients in terms of needs they might express that you are par­tic­u­larly good at ful­fill­ing. Teach your clients those trig­ger phrases so that when they hear them again you will pop back into their mind.

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Tags: Alzheimer, Best Friends, Cash Balance, Experiences, Expressions, Financial Aid, Focus, Guidance Counselor, Ideal, Objective, Phrases, Referral, Retirement Plan, S High School, Sales Presentation, Salesperson, Stock Options, Verbal Clues
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Do You Have the Guts to Set Yourself Apart?

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

In a recent post, Seth Godin points out that cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage takes guts.

A few days ago, I wrote about the impor­tance of iden­ti­fy­ing a niche mar­ket­ing to it. It makes you more attrac­tive to prospec­tive clients, and makes you refer­ral. I noted that it is counterintuitive.

It is more than that. Mar­ket­ing guru Seth Godin noted in a recent blog post that it takes guts.

Like oth­ers before him, he points out that work­ing harder is not going to make you more suc­cess­ful any­where near as much as work­ing smarter or dif­fer­ent. He also made a point I had not con­sid­ered before – that sim­ply get­ting more effi­cient at your work turns intel­lec­tual work into fac­tory work. And that engages you in a race to the bottom.

He noted that over­com­ing the iner­tia to get bet­ter at your craft, or to be dif­fer­ent in your pro­fes­sion, and to cre­ate a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage takes guts.

Why are we so insis­tent on describ­ing our­selves and our prac­tices exactly the same as all other advi­sors? Why do we describe what we do and for whom we do it the same way so many oth­ers in our indus­try do? You would think that we would under­stand that using the same words as every­one else will be utterly inef­fec­tive at giv­ing prospects a rea­son to choose us instead of any­one else. Part of the rea­son is because being cre­ative is really hard. And part of the rea­son is prob­a­bly because it is scary to do some­thing dif­fer­ent than every­one else.

It is tempt­ing to believe that every­one has cho­sen to do some­thing one way because it’s the best way. It is not – it is the aver­age way. And it takes a mea­sure of courage and self assur­ance to make a dif­fer­ent choice than your peers.

So, as you lay out plan for the com­ing year, be brave. Be dif­fer­ent. Achieve more.

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Tags: Competitive Advantage, Courage, Few Days, Guru, Guts, Inertia, Intellectual Work, Niche Marketing, Peers, Profession, Prospective Clients, Prospects, Race To The Bottom, Reason, Referral, Scary, Self Assurance, Seth Godin
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