I solved this problem by changing my approach and it has worked fabulously well. My buddies have had fantastic success with it as well. What’s my approach? I ask my best clients to be part of my Client Advisory Board.

I put together a step-by-step manual that my staff and I use 3 times a year. I rotate a group of 8 of my clients through a Client Advisor Board in Spring, Summer and Fall. I run them the exact same way each time so it has become a no-brainer to carry them out.

What I’ve found is that my clients love to tell me how to run my business! And rather than be upset by this… I embrace it! I have been able to implement so many great, and cheap ideas they’ve brought to my attention.

But more importantly, by giving me all of their “advice” their whole attitude about my practice changes. My clients now feel like they have ownership in my practice. Their pride is attached to my success. If I become more successful, they think it is directly attributable to them. And that’s fine by me!

So when I run my Client Advisory Boards, one of the main topics we cover is how to grow my business. What is the best way to get my message out? Past Client Advisory Boards have come up with some great (and profitable) ideas for me. But here’s the thing, almost every Board has also told me that I need to concentrate on referrals… they tell me, I don’t tell them. Then we simply explore the best way to get referrals… and want to take a guess at what magically happens?

I have to tell you, I got more referrals from my first Client Advisory Board than I got from my whole first 10 years in the business! And every following Client Advisory Board has been just as productive. The good thing is, I never run out of clients for my Boards because I just use the clients that have been recently referred in!

Don’t miss out on this no-cost way of bringing on great clients!

There are two kinds of people that advisors are interested in…clients and prospects. You need to understand how both of them think in order to create a trusting relationship.

Fortunately, they both want to be treated almost identically. So if you understand what they are thinking, you are well on your way to a greater number of referrals and clients.

A recent study confirms Seniors wants

A recent Forrester research study found that Retirees want 3 things from a relationship with their financial professional:

1. They want to understand vs. being told what to do. They want an advisor that will take the time to ensure they fully understand something before being asked to sign on the dotted line.
2. They want to feel confident that the advisor is there for them and is going to put their concerns and needs ahead of the advisors.
3. Frequency of Contact—You need to contact them frequently. A CEG Worldwide showed the optimum number of contacts to be about 2 a month. That is with phone, mail or in person. Obviously, most clients don’t want to meet one-on-one monthly so most of the contacts should be via mail and phone.

Many advisors wonder what they could possible talk to their clients about 2 times a month. The first thing you should keep in mind is that the contact does not and should not be about their money. If the only thing you talk about is their money then they are going to assume the only thing you care about is their money. The CEG Worldwide study showed that the contact should mostly be about non-financial things.

Non-financial! What the heck is that all about? It’s about showing that you care about them as individuals. That you care more about them then just their money. Many advisors think this is unprofessional. I guarantee you, it is TRULY professional.

Whenever we work with a professional, a doctor for instance, we want to make sure that they care about us. We assume that they are professional or they wouldn’t have a license, what we don’t know is if they care about us.

One of the easiest ways to demonstrate that you care about someone is with contact. When you first started dating and liked someone, how often did you want to see them? If you love your wife or child, how often do you want to physically touch them? Contact is something we all crave from those that care about us.

Referrals will follow

When you look at the practice of a top producer, a producer that has a lot of money under management, you will see a producer that knows the value of contact. Contact:

• Lowers the clients likelihood to become upset or dissatisfied—making the advisor’s practice much more time efficient. It takes much less time to contact someone with 10 friendly contacts than to handle just one complaint.
• Increases your client’s likelihood of giving you additional money
• Increase the likelihood that your clients will give you referrals
• Increases the likelihood that the children of your clients will keep the assets with you at your client’s death

Contact is one of the easiest things we can do to grow our practices and sadly, one of the most ignored. Do it. Do it now. Set up a contact schedule for your clients and hot prospects and watch your practice grow and your workload shrink.

Which are you? If you are one of the 1% willing to take action then you’ll be able to double your business in a year with this idea.

First put together a list of all your “A” and “B” clients.  Then get a cross directory (a list of people by address).  You can either buy it (www.coleinformation.com) or get it at your local library.  Then each time you meet your clients for their annual review ask them if they would do you a favor.

Pull out a postcard that you have already printed up with verbiage similar to the one below.  Let them know that you would like to send it to their neighbors and ask if they would be OK with it?  I know that the guys that have tried this, NEVER had someone say no.

Example postcard verbiage:

Do these names ring a bell?   <Your Client’s name>  <Your Client’s address>

They are your neighbors and they heard that we were doing all the things that other advisors forget to do!  At first they thought, “What things?  We’ve got all our financial concerns covered!”  Ooops! Contrary to their attorney, CPA and financial advisor’s assurances, they found out that they were missing important documents that these professionals had never discussed with them.  They had not protected themselves from ID theft and their professionals had missed over a dozen important details that could have caused major problems for them or their family.  In one short visit we filled all these gaps and they left happy, sure that now their finances truly were in order.

As our way to introduce ourselves, we would like to send you our “Financial Survivor’s Guide” that is a comprehensive guide for you, your spouse and your family should anything ever happen to you.  Call right now for your free, no obligation guide, on us!  You and your family will be glad that you did!

How hard is it to just ask your clients this simple question at your annual meetings?

What do you get?

About 1 in 4 cards that you send out will call you for the free guide which costs you about a buck to mail to them.  You then simply continue to drip on them with handwritten cards or invite them to your next seminar.

It’s not a matter of “if” they’ll become a client but instead, “when” they become a client.

As you tell your clients:
“You don’t plan to fail, You fail to plan.”

So let’s take a thorough look at referrals and how to set up a simple method to drive your number of referrals through the roof.

1.  Why are referrals so important?
In today’s environment, it is becoming more and more difficult to get in front of people. Regulators and over-saturation make seminars more difficult and less productive.  Broker Dealer compliance departments have turned into sales prevention departments.  The public and press have become much more skeptical of us and what we do (more people are becoming do-it-yourselfers than ever before).

Referrals are no longer a luxury but are becoming a necessity.  They are important for many reasons:

• There is no more effective way to see a prospect than from a referral.  They are already pre-sold on you thus making the sale much more likely and the process, from start-to-finish, much faster.
• They are the least expensive, highest quality leads you can get.
• You build a clientele that all knows each other making it harder for people to leave you.
• You are protected from problems outside your control that would interfere with your lead generation e.g. A mailing that misses that causes you to cancel a seminar, an advertisement that is faulty because a product changes its interest rate after the ad is already placed, paying a lot for “qualified leads” that have you driving around town only to have the lead pull down their shade when you pull up to their driveway.
• For regulatory purposes it is a lot better for a prospect to call you than for you to solicit business from them.  Let’s face it! The regulators believe us guilty until proven innocent.  You are insulating yourself from regulatory questions by the fact the prospect made the first move.

Advisors that have not put formal referral programs into place may soon find themselves wondering where their next deal is coming from, and that is not a successful business model.

2.  What type of referrals are best?
I have to laugh at 90% of the referral systems I see.  They all revolve around asking for referrals.  PLLEEAASSEE!  Who do you remember that asked you for referrals?  The window salesman?  The siding salesman?  The car salesman?  (Probably not your doctor!)  And what did you tell these guys?  How did it make you feel?  Embarrassed and uncomfortable?

Do you want to put the clients that you worked so hard to get in a situation where they feel uncomfortable around you?  Oh, by the way, if you don’t think it makes your clients feel uncomfortable when you ask them point blank for referrals you had better work on your empathy skills.  But Mike!  They smile and say they would love to give me referrals when I ask them!  I believe you.  Can I ask you a question?  When one of the above salespeople asked for referrals did you yell at them and get angry?  Or did you smile and ask them to let you think of some names?  Just ‘cuz they smile doesn’t mean they are happy.

Besides, if they do give you names when you ask for them, what do you think they do after you leave?  They call those folks and apologize for giving their names out and say that you may be calling, “But don’t feel any obligation, I mean, I probably shouldn’t have given him your name, sorry about that.  Just tell him you’re already taken care of.  I don’t know what I was thinking giving out your name.”

Great referral, huh?

The best referral is one given of their own volition.  Given the same way that they rave about a new movie or restaurant unsolicited to their friends.  Given in the same way they recommend their mechanic that they just love when their friend is having problems with their car.

You see, when they give the referral because they truly want to help their friend, not just to satisfy your request, they will try to “sell” their friend on you.  Think about this.  Do they really care whether a friend of theirs goes to a movie they liked or not?  No, but think about how they start promoting the movie telling their friend how great it is and that they would love it.  When you recommend a restaurant you start telling your friends all the reasons they should go and if they resist, you start to sell it harder.  It’s weird. It’s almost as if you have a vested interest in their accepting your referral.  In a way I guess you are vested.  If your recommendation is rejected, then you feel somewhat rejected.

The only referral worth having is one that is given by somebody that thinks enough of you and their friend to have them come see you…WITHOUT YOU HAVING TO ASK DIRECTLY.

3.  How do you create the best referrals?
There are two ways to create an environment that encourages spontaneous referrals.  First is to create what Tom Peters calls the WOW! Experience.  The second is by creating an effective, proactive referral system.  Either method on its own is very effective.  When the two are combined together it becomes a referral machine.

As I said, creating the WOW! Experience for your clients is a very personal thing.  It all revolves around creating a practice that people can’t believe.  The dentist that has an Italian café for a waiting room and has foot massages for clients during the exam.  Notice that neither had to do with dentistry per se.  People expect great service, WOW! goes beyond service and does the unexpected.  WOW! is a subject all on its own so won’t be covered in detail here.

However, creating a proactive referral system is something that I would like to explore briefly.  You have to make a spontaneous referral easy for your clients and the professionals you work with (see our white paper on CPA and attorney referrals).

How do you make it easy?

• Create a referral system and formalize it by naming it.  We use Friends Helping Friends™.
• Explain to your clients how the referral system works through brochures and in your newsletter.
• Remind them constantly in gentle, non-invasive ways that the program exists via your newsletter, posters, brochures, and letters.
• Reward them AND their referrals for taking action.
• Reward publicly to utilize the Principles of Influence Consensus and Scarcity.  By letting your clientele know in subtle yet public ways that other clients are referring and they are getting special things because of their referrals…the powers of INFLUENCE kick into over drive.

By providing both a WOW! Experience and a formal and elegant referral system you will be well on your way to a conveyer belt of new clients being hand delivered to your door.  Get busy!

Not because people won’t give them to you (most won’t…I know I don’t give referrals when asked.) The real reason they don’t work is nobody asks for them, I know I won’t. It is way too uncomfortable for me and the client.

Some of the industry’s top advisors receive more than 100 referrals a year…but they don’t ask for them. The referrals they receive are given freely by their clients and the professionals they work with. How?

To a one, when asked, they credit it to the relationship they have created with their clients or referring professionals. The clients just feel the urge to constantly tell people how great they are because they don’t like their adviser…they love him or her. They rant about them. They brag about them. They want to introduce them to everyone they know!

I know all of our clients like us or they wouldn’t be working with us, but how many of our clients love us so much they feel the need to tell everyone about us as some people may do about a fantastic new restaurant they’ve tried or movie they’ve seen?

I think most advisers would find those kind of clients quite rare and yet some advisers have legions of those people. How did they create these raving fans?

Study after study, research after research has shown that the one thing that creates raving fans is contact…not contact about financial matters but contact on how much you care. To create raving clients and referrals you need to contact people 2 or 3 times a month.

You may be thinking, “Are you crazy! 2 or 3 times a month? They don’t want to be contacted 2 or 3 times a month!”

You are right and wrong.

Right, they don’t want you calling and bugging them about their money 2 or 3 times a month.

Wrong, they love to be contacted on a personal basis two or three times a month. What do I mean about personal. Simply think about how you do it with friends and family…after all, don’t you want them to consider you as part of their circle of friends and family?

Here are some ideas for those of you that don’t have friends and family and therefore don’t understand how those of us that do, find so many:

• An emailed joke, funny story or weird news story
• A phone call just to say hi
• Handwritten birthday cards, holiday cards and anniversary cards
• A client party—PARTY…fun only! No business mentioned
• A client outing to a minor league baseball game or gardening center
• A client focus group asking for their opinions
• A call after a big storm checking in with them to make sure they are all right
• Etc. etc. etc.

If you do these types of things, you will have more referrals then you ever dreamed of without asking once.

A businessman who owns three restaurants sat down recently and hand-wrote a postcard to everyone on his customer list, inviting them to join his rewards programme. He had a 20% sign-up rate from that mailing alone, according to customer retention expert Michael Kaselnak.

By contrast, during the previous six months, the same restaurateur has sent out two other postcard-based mailings that were printed (rather than hand-written) and had seen a response rate of only 5%. mkaselnak This article is copyright 2007 TheWiseMarketer.com).

The rare personal touch
According to Kaselnak, receiving a genuinely hand-written note is such an unusual, novel, or even exciting event for today’s consumer that it completely eclipses all other marketing messages it happens to be competing with when it arrives.

Kaselnak told The Wise Marketer: “There is no magic pill for attracting and retaining clients. It takes work, and it’s a job that many businesses today still fail to invest in. Nobody spends time writing personalised handwritten notes or making personal phone calls – it takes too long. Most say it’s quicker, easier, and cheaper to just send an email. But when you’re trying to create loyalty and increase customer retention, easier is not always better.”

The extra mile
The things that catch Kaselnak’s eye about any service provider is not the easy things they do – the hygiene factors like good service and reliable products or services – but the things they do that he perceives as “going the extra mile”: Going out of their way to do something extra for him.

Kaselnak’s favorite example of the conversion of an at-risk customer who was likely to defect into a loyal advocate comes from his own experience: “After successive price increases and poor service from my local cable service, I had come to detest them. I would have sworn my prejudice was so ingrained it would be impossible for them to overcome. Yet, I melted with just one personal gesture on their part. My cable box died, and the company sent someone over two days later and replaced the box. So far so good, but the next day I got a handwritten note from the cable repairman, thanking me for being a customer.”

Six notes to change minds
As a result, Kaselnak suggests that any retailer, customer account manager, or business owner can help turn customers into advocates by writing notes, start with six loyalty-winners:

1.  Always have a stack of Thank You notes ready on your desk
Write at least one a day for anything or anyone that takes your fancy. Just get it written and in the mail. Even if they’re not a client (yet) – you would be surprised how writing a thank you note can sometimes work its way back to you in very strange and positive ways.

2.  To promote your latest idea, send some personal invitations
Send out a handful of notes asking people to lunch or breakfast to run an idea by them. Ten of these a month is a good number to start with.

3.  Birthday and holiday cards
Don’t send a pre-printed one, or a card with just a signature. Most people will ignore them (at best) or even take them as an impersonal slap in the face (at worst). Take the time to write a brief message, and then sign it personally. Press hard with the pen so they can see it’s hand-written – you’d be amazed how many people actually check the back of the paper or card.

4.  Attach a note to an article of interest
Nothing makes a person feel more important than when you send an article to them about an interest of theirs with a personal note attached. People like to work with other people that take an interest, and do extra little things like this.

5.  Send a “haven’t seen you in a while” note
Sending a note to check in with someone can result in business you never dreamed of. A lot of people have problems to solve, and the company offering the solution that presents itself at the right time is often the most likely to get the business.

6.  Send something to make people smile
A joke, a funny news story, or personal anecdote can change your whole relationship to that of a friend rather than just being a supplier or an acquaintance – and that’s a much stronger foundation for lasting loyalty. But one word of warning: don’t send too many – and don’t send your clients religious-themed notes, as business and religion seldom mix well.

Writing a note is one of the simplest, easiest and most cost-effective ways to build loyalty and retain your most important clients – even if it’s only your top 500 clients segmented from the whole database. The handwritten note is arguably the most under-used marketing tool in business today.

Source: http://www.thewisemarketer.com

1. Always have a box of thank you cards open and ready in your desk drawer
2. Always have stamps on hand
3. Come up with a list of reasons to thank people: A client’s CPA for speaking with you, a closed sale, a prospect meeting with you, a general thinking of you thanks for your continued trust, a thank you for a referral…etc.
4. Commit to writing just 3 cards everyday, first thing in the morning. NO EXCEPTIONS! If you don’t write them first thing you will put it off until tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter to who or why, just do it!

After just one year you will have written over 750 personal thank you cards.  If you don’t think that will generate a ton of business for you, you had better have another idea to replace it.  This does work.  If only 1/2 of 1% generate a sale, that is still 3 or 4 sales a year.  Not bad for such a small marketing system.

How do you get referrals when you don’t ask for them? Easy (in theory), make your clients advocates. Have you ever seen a movie or gone to a restaurant that you then started to tell everybody about regardless of whether they asked for your opinion or not? Create a client that excited about you and you have created advertising that cannot be bought.

How do you go about creating a client like that? Experience. No, not your experience or expertise in the industry but by giving them an experience they cannot forget. Paddy Lund, an Australian dentist. He works 21 hours a week and earns $400000 (Aus.) per year. He does this while not spending a dime on his marketing. Instead, he puts it all into the experience his clients have with him every single time they go to see him.

What does your office look like? What kind of amenities do you have? Several types of tea and lattees or cold coffee?

I hear so often, “I’m not in the coffee business. I’m in the investment advice business.”

Sorry guys, in order to survive and prosper in the environment in which we live today, you are in the experience business. Not customer service. Not investment advice. Clients expect those things. You need to provide an experience that your prospects and clients do not expect. Only then will you get clients that are so excited about you that they recommend you unsolicited.

Give the your clients accountant a call during their down season (May-September). Let them know that you are <client’s name here> financial advisor and that you wanted to introduce yourself and let the accountant know that if they needed any help with your client’s investment information that you would be glad to lend a hand.

How many broker’s take the time to do this with their accountants? Very few and it can really pay dividends when done regularly and properly.