Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Angela D’Angelo
Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild:[crosstalk 00:22:45] Sorry, go ahead. Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: The other place that I’m very surprised is holding a family meeting. The response rate around that one is always huge. Clients want to tie a knot around everything around their life and should they pass away, they want to know that their kids know who their advisor is, how they worked hard for their money, and how they would it to be distributed. The advisor often is afraid of having that family meeting, feeling that they have to divulge to sums of money the parent has, but that’s not the case. Having the family meeting just means being a conduit for your clients to their kids so that they can have the conversation about what they would see as an ideal distribution at death. It doesn’t have to include numbers. Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing: Angela D’Angelo: So, that’s a trend we need to reverse. And so, I say to advisors, “If you want to connect deeper with your clients, stay on their family. Stay on engaging the spouse or the woman in the couple, and being more engaged in making these planning decisions. Stay on having the family meeting. Stay on engaging the young adults in the family and understanding and being more engaged with their money.” Those would be some of the areas I’d explore. Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Angela D’Angelo: Steve Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you become the kind of advisor people can’t help talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild. And today, Steve and I are speaking with Angela D’Angelo, who is the Vice President of Training and Client Experience at National Bank Financial. Now, I have to share that I have learned a great deal from Angela over the years. So, I was just thrilled to finally get her on the podcast. She’s one of those rare people who is not only a visionary, but can really bring ideas to life. We talked to Angela about why and when clients refer, and how you can tap into that motivation to help drive more referrals in your own business through comfortable conversations that focus on value. And we do a deep dive on the need to structure your team in a way that reflects your client base, something that’s helpful for referrals, but also, something that we really need to address in this industry as a whole. And with that, let’s get straight to the conversation with Angela. Well, Angela, welcome to the Becoming Referable podcast.
Bienvenue Angela.
Thank you.
So great to have you here. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Angela for a lot of years and have often thought, every time we have a conversation about the industry, “I’ve got to get you on the podcast.” So, I am thrilled to have you here. Hey, Angela, could you just start with a little context on your role, and how you and your team work with advisors?
Sure, Julie. We’re called the Best Practices Team. So, I think that says it, pretty much, all. But really, I have a fabulous team who help advisors and their teams every day on structuring and defining their practice. But before we get into those areas, we actually help them adopt the right mindset. And the last couple of years, we’ve been working with some pretty serious teams on becoming better leaders and on the team dynamics because advisors are growing their business at an incredible pace, which requires them to build bigger teams of experts in most cases, adding planners and tons of experts to really address their client needs. But that means that they have to become better managers of these teams. We’re often very present in those areas of an advisor’s business.
Yeah. And I do want to talk to you about teams in a moment because I know you’ve done a lot of work in that area. When you talk about mindset, which is an interesting comment, before we even think about growth, is it primarily that leadership piece or are there other elements of mindset that you think advisors need to focus on when they want to grow?
Yeah. Leadership is one of the areas. The other mindset is how do you use technology to leverage the client experience? Because clients are now demanding that. I think of my day-to-day, I can’t live without some of the apps that I use every day. And so, our clients in the financial space are also asking for direct access to information. When your average age of advisors is getting up there, because of the nature of our industry, then, it’s a harder switch. It’s a harder mindset to adopt.
Yeah. It’s an interesting comment because we always think about technology as a skill when I think you’re right. It starts as a mindset, as a shift. I wanted to talk to you, obviously, about referrals and becoming referable broadly. But I have to say that we talked about this at one point, and you talked about, obviously, your hairdresser because that’s natural. Do you mind if we just start there and sharing that story that you shared with me about your hairdresser and why… It was just such a great example, I thought, of why and when clients actually refer.
Yeah. It might seem a trivial example, but I think the best examples are the things that we deal with every day that make a huge difference in our lives. And so, for me, I finally, 25 years ago, found this amazing hairdresser, this guy who just got me. He got my hair. He just got me. And it was an experience every time I sat in his chair. It was fun. I looked forward to the appointment. I left feeling good. And I remember saying to him one day, very shortly after I had met him. I said, “If every you leave and don’t call me, I will hire a private detective to find you.” And he looked at me with this gaze, but the truth is that when people like something or when they love something, they are prepared to go to great lengths to keep that person, that service, or that offer in their life. And that was me.
Angela, what should people take from that example? How can we translate that into the financial advisor space?
The key is, turn your clients into those advocates. Make sure they can’t live without you, just the way that I can’t live without my hairdresser. And there are so many ways you could do that. One is by being yourselves, obviously, but there are so many things that you could do to turn clients into advocates. Be that person, that go-to person, for those clients, and be that person your client would hire that private detective for.
What do you think, if you think… I agree that sometimes, these are the examples that are helpful because it reminds us of our own behaviors and our own thought patterns day to day. What was it about… I don’t know, was it the way he understood your needs, or how you felt, or was it the experience? What made you feel that way about that particular individual?
Well, it’s funny. It wasn’t any technical thing. While he was really great at cutting my hair, it was more that every time he finished, he would say to me how awesome I looked. And he would admire the creation and the work that he did. He was so proud of his own talent. And so, I was proud of him feeling good about me feeling good. And it was a whole exchange of emotional being that really drove me to want to go there every time. And I looked forward to that finale, that final moment. So, as we’re in that virtual space right now, that finale is really important.
Angela, you’d commented before that you felt that your hairdresser just really got you, which, obviously, goes beyond the technical things that they’re doing. How might an advisor make a client feel like they really got them?
Well, it’s not staying on the surface. It’s going a little deeper in the conversation. In my case, when I met him, I was recently divorced and single again. And so, looking good was one of my priorities. Again, one of those examples that you relate to real life. And he knew that me walking out of there feeling good was critical to my confidence.
You mentioned something that’s interesting there, and I hadn’t particularly thought of it. You said, “Pride in the accomplishment, celebrating accomplishments,” which I can see with being very relevant to advisors as well. Taking those moments to celebrate, to acknowledge what their clients have achieved, which isn’t easy, right? Saving, investing, reaching their goals. I wonder if enough advisors pause and actually do celebrate and acknowledge some of those wins along the way as well.
Yeah. That’s a great point, Julie, because what I tend to see is advisors are still feeling somewhat fortunate and guilty, sometimes, at the money that they earn and being fortunate to be earning that type of money. And I think that it acts as a roadblock to that celebration at times.
It’s really interesting. Hey, I wanted to pivot a little, if we could, because… And you mentioned leadership right at the outset, and I’d love to talk more about team. Now, one of the things that I know you believe is that the makeup of a team, who’s on the team is a really important part of being referable. And you’ve talked about diversity, and gender, and what that team looks. Can you just give us an overview of your thinking on team and becoming referable?
Absolutely. One of the things that we really believe in is voice of client. And I still remember one day, an advisor running down the hall, all proud about showing me their new brochure. And the picture, the front page of the brochure was a picture of the team. And he says, “Look. Look at our new brochure.” And I said, “That’s fabulous. That’s a great looking picture.” And he says, “Yeah, but our clients are starting to say that we don’t have any women on our team.” And so, you have to build your offer around the client of the future. And the client of the future are mostly women because they inherit from their parents. They’ll inherit from their husbands because they outlive them, and they contribute to their own patrimony because 63% of Canadian women today work. So, the truth is what we try to help advisors in their leadership and in building the right team, what we promote is building multi-gender, multi-competency, and multi-generational teams. If you get those three things right on your team, then you’re set for the future client.
Say that again. Multi-competency, gender-
And generational.
… And generational. So, looking at all three. It’s funny you mentioned the voice of the client because Steve and I are, obviously, very big advocates of that. But in a way, we’re talking about the face of the client, not just the voice of the client, right? Truly seeing themselves in your team and seeing it as representative. Is that fair?
Absolutely. Clients will react, and hopefully, you’re giving them a forum to be able to do that.
Angela, how could an advisor pursue that goal? How can an advisor work on developing that team?
Well, first, it’s picking the right… Advisors have a tendency of picking talent because they had a great conversation with the person. And what we try to get them to do differently is to look at the offer, where they are today, where they want to be in terms of the offer they want to provide their clients. And if in that offer, there are gaps, and in that team, there are competencies to fulfill those gaps, then what we help them do is find the right profile or build the right profile to hire that person so that they fill that gap. We’re not trying to find people who are alike. We’re trying to find people on a team that will fulfill the gaps to provide a better offer to clients. For example, if I’m a great advisor, and I have good success, and I’m really good at business development, but I hate estate planning, and I hate financial planning, and I’m not going to go out and get my license, then you know what? It’s definitely somewhere and something I want to offer my clients. I might hire an expert in that field.
Well, and beyond that too. You made a really important point that when people hire so often, you feel like you have good chemistry with somebody, you feel like you had a good interview with somebody, and my suspicion is, if I extend what you’re saying is that, that leads us to hiring people that we get along with, hiring people that are like us. And so, you’re talking here about mapping out, first, the set of skills, which is an important first step. But then, how would you incorporate things like gender diversity, and age diversity, and those kinds of things into that process as well, so we’re not just hiring more copies of ourselves?
Yeah. That’s a great point. And that’s always a little trickier. Biases play a big role. I even have biases. And companies have started to do a good job at identifying some of those biases and making people more aware of them. But the truth is, I believe the best hires are not hires that are made uniquely by an individual interviewing them. I think you need to have a small group, a subset of individuals interviewing the people that you want to hire so that you have a more diversified opinion about the candidate fitting into the team. So, that’s how we’ve been able to intervene and to make better hires.
What do you say to advisory teams who would say, “Well, I hire the best person for the role.” And it might be man, it might be women, it might be older, it might be younger. I think what you’re talking about is… And correct me if I’m wrong. Acknowledging that this kind of diversity is important in order to attract the right clients and do the right thing for our clients, and that we need to, perhaps, behave differently.
Absolutely. And I don’t question people’s genuine intention, but there are things, processes, things you could put in place to make sure that you’re not falling into the sand traps.
How would someone go about that?
Again, I would definitely set up a committee of people to interview candidates. And I would probably want to be the last one to interview them if I was the hiring manager or the hiring advisor. Some companies are going really far now. They’re removing names on CV’s to remove gender biases. I think it’ll take a long time before companies start doing that 100%, but those are ways and areas that can be explored. But at the end of the day, we are a people business, so chemistry plays a big part in everything we do. I think there’s a little bit of all of that, but certainly, the committee, for me, has been a huge benefit in the hires.
How can an advisor put together a committee that might assist that? I’m thinking, if one of the challenges is that the financial business is too much middle-aged white guys, that if we put a committee of our team together, we’re going to have a committee that’s a lot of middle-aged white guys, and we want to get past that. So, are there ways, if you find yourself in that position, where you need more diversity in your firm, are there ways that you can… How do you overcome just the demographics of the population you’ve got internally?
I practice what I preach, and what we preach is multi-gender, multi-competency, multi-generational, and that applies for the committee as well.
So, even if you have to go outside of your team to find others.
Absolutely.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And so, we focus, obviously, on becoming more referable. How do you think structuring the right team with gender, age, and competency makes advisors more referable?
I think clients notice. By itself, it becomes a natural thing. Anytime a client notices these things, anytime a client sees the agility, the competency among these team members, you become referable by nature.
Yeah, absolutely. When we think more broadly about referrals, Angela, what do you think advisors are doing right, and maybe, wrong when it comes to generating referrals?
Interesting. I think what they’re doing right is they know they should be asking for referrals, but I don’t think they’re comfortable asking for referrals. I think we need to get them more comfortable in asking for referrals. That’s an area I think a lot of advisors need help with.
I’m going to let Steve jump in there because he [crosstalk 00:17:53].
Don’t want me to do that. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I want to be nice to our guests.
No, it’s usually semantics, I find.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, exactly. Yeah. We’ve had a number of guests, Angela, who advocate asking some way or another… And we’ve had a bunch of guests who advocate a different approach that’s not as direct as asking for referrals. So, can you set up for us the scenario, what would the circumstances be for asking for referral, and how would you propose that advisors most productively approach that?
Yeah. There are different schools of asking for referrals. I, personally, like to create a connection with the ask. And for me, the ask goes along the way of, “How am I doing? We’ve been working together for the last year. How would you describe how I’ve been able to add knowledge, insight, and value to your family? What would you say are some of the areas that you felt I did really well for you this year?” So, anytime you get a client and ask them to express themselves on how you’ve done means that you’re also understanding the value that you’ve brought and whether or not that value was actually received properly. So, when a client is talking on those items, guess what they’re thinking? I want to help my advisor. I want my advisor to have more success because he or she is awesome. Just like my hairdresser. When my hairdresser created that emotional connection with me, and at the end of every sale and said to me, “You look fabulous,” he created that moment in me that made me want to recommend him to everybody. That’s my take on asking for referrals.
One of the things that we talk to advisors a lot about is the idea of helping clients to write their own referral script. And it’s interesting. The conversation, the tactic’s not dissimilar. The focus is slightly different, which is about how have we done. Do you think it’s that, equally, some of those questions could be about the impact of working with the advisor to help them, to help clients think about people that might also need that advisor? If you see what I’m saying. They could go down two paths. How have I done? Or what’s the impact been on you?
Yeah. Absolutely. And creating that conversation, it’s less about the form of asking for referral and more about the feeling of asking for a referral.
Not to beat the hairdresser example too much, but I think it’s a good one. I could imagine two responses to this experience. One is, “You’ve made me feel so great. I want to help you build your business.” Or, “You’ve made me feel so great. I want other people I know to have that same feeling.” Right? And it’s a subtle difference, but it takes you down two different paths, almost.
Absolutely. Because you know what? In my mind, he didn’t need my referral because he’s busy all the time. And most clients probably think that advisors aren’t open to taking new business. That could be the impression we, sometimes, give. But I want more of my friends to get a sense of what I go through, and I hope you can make room for them.
What are some good ways of communicating that to clients about… It their assumption is that you’re so busy, you’re not taking new folks on, are there skillful ways that advisors can communicate to clients that they would like to receive referrals?
Yeah. It goes down to creating that… I call it that feeling of, “I can’t do this without you,” approach. And I go back to my basic question. It’s, “What have I done well? And can you describe to me where you think I’ve had the most impact on your family?” Family is a really big element for people. They could talk for hours when you ask that question.
And why do you think I do this differently? I would imagine that your friends who have advisors must get the same thing. Oh, no, we talk, and that’s not what they’re getting. Or it’s just creating the conversation. It’ll naturally turn into a referral.
Naturally, you’re saying, by having that conversation, you’re letting clients know you’re open for business, so to speak, that you welcome that kind of thing.
Yeah.
You also talk about starting with a really deep understanding of why clients would refer, and you’ve talked about this conversation. Is that the process you would recommend to gain that deeper understanding? Or are there other conversations that they should be having?
Yeah, no. I believe any time you walk into a meeting on the client’s agenda is where you’ll walk away with your client feeling the best. Now, I think as experts, as advisors, we need to be leading some of the topics and some of the themes that we want to talk about. But one of the things we did in our firm is we launched the Voice of the Client survey, thanks to you, Julie. And we are making such strides with that. The response rate is so amazing, and it allows us to get really granular with the expectations of clients. And so, what it does is it allows advisors to actually build the agenda for their meeting and subsequent meetings around what the client wants to talk about. The advisor still struggles with feeling like they’re being paid to be the expert. The client is not paying them not to be the expert. And so, any time it’s a bottom-up approach could feel that way, sometimes, for advisors. But what I encourage is, you could still be the expert, but just drive that expertise through the agenda of the client.
What are some of the most significant or interesting things that you’re learning from that Voice of the Client project that you’re working on?
You always have this feud between the banking and the advisors thinking that they’re paid to give investment advice, not banking advice. Looking at both sides of the balance sheet is really important for clients, and it comes up time after time in the responses in the survey. Clients want to know more about dealing, perhaps, with the private banking division of your firm. They want to know about getting a mortgage, perhaps, for a second property or for their own property. Yet, advisors don’t feel they should play a role in the lending side or the other side of the balance sheet. That surprises me every time.
If we pick up on that, and I had wanted to ask you broadly about becoming referable and the other aspects of the experience, and I think this is one of them, the idea of really focusing across generations. What are some of the obstacles in the minds of advisers to having those kinds of meetings? It seems to me, it’s a big leap for many.
Again, it’s one of those soft conversations. It’s one of those conversations that doesn’t include the expertise of the advisor. And my take is, when an advisor feels uncomfortable, just like, maybe, providing insurance through their offer to their clients. And human nature, not just advisors, when you don’t feel comfortable in a matter, in a topic, in a theme, you’re just not going to offer. You’re going to take the road less traveled. But these are the important issues on clients’ minds. So, my advice is figure it out. And if it’s not you having that conversation, pick the right team member with the right competency to be a part of your team to have it.
It sounds a number of paths that we’ve gone down have led to a different form of conversation, when we talked about referrals, we talk about other opportunities, about the family. Is this a soft skill area that you think advisors need to be working on?
Absolutely. One of the things advisors do really well is they’re very close to their clients. The length of time clients stay with advisors in the full service industry is very high. So, they already have that advantage. If they could just find the courage to go a little deeper and connect a little bit more emotionally with the client and stay on the client’s agenda, wow, it would just probably create huge advocates, and it would open the taps to referring.
Angela, do you have a suggestion or two beyond that conversation you were just describing about the next generation? Are there other kinds of conversations you can describe that would help them drive that deeper like you’re suggesting?
Yeah. I give a lot of conferences to women investors, mostly, because women investors are not engaged enough. Only one in four women are actually engaged in making financial planning decisions, which has a huge impact on their retirement. So, when I give these conferences at the time where we used to give them live, I always had a couple of women huddle at the end, and come up to me, and say to me, “Boy, I wish my daughter would have been here tonight. I really wish she could have heard everything you said because she’s one of the ones that you use in your example of how the next generation of young women is delegating financial planning decisions more and more.”
Is that an educational approach that you’d advocate and that it providing resources? Have you seen particularly good examples of advisors connecting with the next generation even before they are prospective clients for them?
Yeah. Before they’re prospective clients for them, they’ll usually try to… Now, they’re doing a lot more virtual meetings, and they’re including different generations, but yeah. Advisors are attempting to get closer to the next generation and the children of their clients because they know it’s important. And the ones that try it, I still think we could increase the speed of that happening, but the ones that have tried it always feel compelled to call me to tell me because it’s been such a positive experience.
Right. Right. For advisors, just to wrap things up, that are thinking about growth through referrals, we’ve talked about a number of different things today. Where do you think they should start? What’s that first thing that you like to recommend?
I think they should do a survey. I think they should hear out their clients, figure out what the client wants. And I think they need to build their client meeting around that insight and make it more personalized. That’s where they’re going to really naturally add value, is if they’re working on what the client wants.
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah. Thank you, Angela.
It was great to have you here, and it was a real pleasure hearing from you today.
Thank you. Thank you, Julie. Thank you, Steve. Pleasure.
Hey folks, Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really helps. You can get all the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, three referral myths that limit your growth, and connect with our blogs, and other resources. So, until next time, so long.