Closing the Referral Gap

Quantum’s Director of Client Acquisition, Scott Drake, helps advisors grow their businesses in a number of ways.

As of Q2 this year, we’ve developed and currently manage more than 20 broadcast radio shows around the country, we provide support for live events, and we work with a number of lead and appointment setting partners. Additionally, we provide coaching and we hold training events here in our offices in Scottsdale and in other areas around the country.

One key element of any client acquisition strategy is making sure every new client becomes an advocate for your business and generates qualified referrals.

Why Clients Refer in the First Place

At Quantum, during our quarterly referral training events with Dan Allison and Feedback Marketing Group, we help advisors develop their own referral process based on clinical and behavioral psychology as well as interviews with thousands of advisory clients around the world to find out why they refer. Dan teaches an approach that’s focused specifically on how to reduce your current clients’ own mental barriers to make it easier for them to provide you with effective referrals.

The reality is that the typical “I get paid in two ways” or “the greatest compliment you can give me is a referral” and similar approaches—which try to guilt clients into feeling like they should be obligated to give their financial advisor referrals—are mostly doomed to fail.

Clients give referrals because they want to help someone close to them, not to help their advisor grow their business.

The Approach

To generate more productive referrals from your clients, there are five key points to focus on in your client relationships.

Making sure that you are really offering the services your clients want and would be willing to refer, recognizing that, unfortunately, not all advisors actually provide services worth referring to in the first place.
Ensuring that clients are well educated about your firm and the full breadth of what you really do, given that clients will often only think of their advisor services based on what the advisor did for them personally and not actually the full range of the advisor services.
Communicating that you’re actually looking to help more people and have the capacity to do so, and what kind of people are a good fit for you as clients.
Working with the client to figure out if they do refer someone, what their introduction strategy will be to ensure that you’ll actually be able to connect with and have a chance to help with that referral.
Categorizing your own clients to figure out who the potential referral goldmines might be, and more importantly, who the referral landmines are that, once identified, you’ll simply know not to ever have the referral conversation with anymore.

Sure, you can always hire an expensive business consultant to help grow your business. The reality is that the best business consultants are your own clients. Let them be your guide. To learn more about our referral training, reach out to your Quantum consultant at 800.440.1088 today.