Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
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Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and this is one of the weeks I look forward to, because I have the opportunity to speak with my wonderful co-host Steve Wershing. And this week is all about getting systematized. It’s one thing to talk about referrals and another thing entirely to have a referral system in place.
Steve and I discuss how to systematize critical parts of the process, including how you reach out to prospective clients who are referred and how you think, recognize and nurture all of your referral sources. And we examine why it’s also important to not only have a process, but to communicate that to clients in order to reduce the potential points of referral friction. So, we’re getting granular this week by talking about how to connect your big ideas to tangible action. With that, let’s get straight to the conversation. Hey, Steve, it’s good to talk to you.
Julie, always a pleasure. Nice to see you. I love our conversation.
I know. So, we’re going to dig into some detail today. Sometimes we like to talk at a high level and sometimes we want to get really into it.
Low.
Low. So, it’s really about systems and this sort of came out of some things I know you believe strongly in that, it’s one thing to say, “I’m trying to increase referrals and I’m going to try this and I’m going to try that. And it’s just a different adventure every day.” But you’re a big believer in taking a more systematic approach to that. Can you tell me a bit about your thinking there and why you see that as so important?
Well, I do. And you’re absolutely correct. Most of the advisors that you and I talk to say, “This is what I’m doing to increase referrals, or this is how I handled referrals.” Everybody’s paying some attention to it, but I know that you and I are both fans of James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. One of the things that came out in one of his emails sometime ago was his quote, “If you care about the goal, you’ll focus on the system.” In fact, I’ve got that taped to my wall across from my desk here, because I recognize that a lot of the things that I do, I just need to do it more systematically. I need to have a formal process around it. We’ve had guests on who have said similar things that unless you have a procedure around it, unless you’ve got a system built around it first, it may not get done consistently, it may not get done the way you want it to, but also it’s going to involve more work, because unless you have a system, you can’t delegate.
Well. Yeah, exactly. The reality is I think we put some of this off because the first time it’s hard. Right?
Right.
But once you’ve got like, we’ve all had this experience, I had it just this week with something that we do regularly, which takes an enormous amount of time. I did it so quickly, I thought, “Oh, it’s because I put the time in, I get it now. I understand.” So, I know one of the areas that’s an important part of this system is planning and scheduling, getting very consistent and intentional about that. So, when it comes to referrals, what do you think about when it comes to planning and scheduling?
Well, I think of a couple of different aspects to that. First is when we ask a lot of advisors, “When you get a referral, what happens? What do you do with it?” And there are a lot of advisors who come back and say, “Well, I always make sure that I reach out and contact them within the 24 hours, or the first day, or shortly after someone gives me the referral.” Well, that’s great. But if it’s just the one contact and they don’t say yes in that contact, you’re probably missing opportunities.
So, thinking about how you would respond to a contact, there are a couple of different levels of that. So, we talk about planning and scheduling. Well, when somebody reaches out, you might want a sequence of different communications to go out to them. You might want an introductory email, and then you might want to suggest a phone call. Whether or not they decide to pick you up on it, you may want a series of emails or communications to go out that talk a little bit about, “Here’s some things about what we do. And here’s another aspect of this.” Just so that you’re reminding them on a periodic basis and that there are a whole bunch of advantages to that.
First is you get an opportunity over the course of time to describe more thoroughly what you do and what kind of value you can deliver. But you’re also demonstrating that you’re consistent and you stay in touch and that they can count on you to follow up on things.
Yeah, absolutely. I tell you, and we should maybe have a whole episode on this at some point. We’ve invested significant time and brought somebody onto the team to really create our funnels, which is really what you’re talking about, like sequenced communication. It’s life-changing, and it’s not just because it makes it more efficient, it does, absolutely. But you’re adding more value. The one thing that George, who’s on our marketing team, said, we would connect with people and then it would be, “What would you like to meet?” And I think the same is true with referrals. So, “Bob introduced you, would you like to meet?” Most people aren’t ready. We need to date before we marry. Right?
Exactly.
I mean, in most places. So just what you’re talking about nurtures the relationship, it’s comfortable. Like you say, it gives them a sense of who you are. And then they may be ready to meet. But I think we lose a lot of people because we just jumped straight there.
Yeah. You may want to send them something first before you reach out and ask for that. If you have a book, if you have a book that you didn’t write, but you think is really valuable, or if you have, I don’t want to say an information kit, because I don’t want it necessarily to be about the advisor, but something about the value of planning or something, as you were saying, something of value. So, your first reaching out may not necessarily be an email or a phone call. Your first reaching out may be a gift. It may be… “Joe mentioned your name to us and suggested that we may be able to do… That some of our work might be valuable to you. We would like to have you for this, because if that’s on your mind, you might find these things helpful.”
Yeah. Yeah, right. And it’s not about the advisor at that point. It’s not, “Here’s how wonderful I am.” It’s about the process. The other thing that comes up for me on that, and this is a big part of our referral program, is the fact that you don’t meet most of the people who refer. So, as much as you want to say thank you, frankly, you don’t know who most of those people are. So, we’ve been focusing a lot on how you can actually acknowledge the intent of the referral. You may not have had an introduction, but you still want to say thank you to those clients who are helping you to grow the business. So, yeah. So, sequencing, I guess, and then, do you think about that also with centers of… Because we talk a lot about client communications and having a calendar, but I guess the same would apply then to centers of influence.
Right. Exactly. Well, it’s centers of influence and more broadly your referral sources. So, the first thing you need to do is when someone gives you a referral, you need that system we were just talking about to reach out to the referred person and keeping in touch with them. But you should also be systematically keeping in touch with that referral source.
If they’re a consistent referral source, one of the things that you and I found on that study we did a few years ago was that firms that spoil their referral sources get more. Not surprising. It’s pretty obvious when you say it out loud. But there are a lot of folks who don’t do it. So, first thing, a handwritten note, or a typewritten note, not an email. So, that’s pretty much table stakes at this point.
But then, it would be good to follow up with them. Two levels of following up, one is that when you reach out to the person that they referred over, give them a quick update. Now, you can’t disclose anything confidential, but you could say, “Hey, thank you for referring to Joe over, and we talked about that before, and I just want to let you know we’ve got something on the calendar.” And keep in touch with them a couple of times, because if they’re referring, they have risk. They’re taking a personal risk by referring someone to you. They have a stake in the outcome. They would like to know how it turned out. So, keep in touch with them and let them know how it turned out.
Then, also, keep in touch with them on a regular basis, apart from any individual specific person they referred over just to reinforce how much you value their loyalty to you and how much you value their assistance in building your business by sending you folks.
So, I mean, logistically, I guess, we need to make sure we’ve got this tagged in our CRM. We need a segment there, so that we can communicate effectively. But yeah, I like the idea of going beyond when they’ve provided the referral, because that feels almost obvious, of course, we’re going to say thank you. But it’s the in-between. I think the in-between also gives you an opportunity to reinforce. I mean, I could send you something and say, “This is something we’re doing for the people who’ve helped support the business. It’s not a thank you for that referral, but it’s a gentle reminder that we’re doing this for a reason and that we appreciate it.” Because I think we do, we’re so grateful for referrals.
Right. Right. Right. And to reinforce that point you just made, it’s critically important that you not make it transactional, that you don’t want to give a little gift because someone referred something over. That actually… One risk, of course, is that you give them something that’s worth a whole lot less than the referral itself, and that would create all kinds of bad messages. But even if it’s an expensive gift, you don’t want to do that because even a really nice gift demeans the relationship. You want to express your gratitude for their overall support, for their overall loyalty, for their relationship with you.
But one of the challenges that we have, and this is where we bring systems back into it, is that if we don’t have a reminder, at least in my case, if I don’t have a reminder of something like that, it’s probably not going to get done consistently.
So, we want to make sure that we sit down and in a particular referral sources, whether it be a client or a center of influence, if they give us referrals more than once a year, we want to make sure that we’ve got an activity scheduled in the CRM to reach out to them, to touch base and just maintain the relationship or do something nicer or something like that. We want, at the beginning of the year to sit down with that planning calendar and plan out when we’re going to do special events. Some would be client appreciation, but others may be just special events for referral sources.
Yeah. Yeah. We’ve been talking a lot about that. I think it’s important, because you can say, “This is just for you and just for this group of clients.” One of the things along those lines that I’ve often recommended, because I do get that question a lot, is, “Should I send a gift when I get a referral?” It just doesn’t fit with me. I mean, It’s one thing when am I going to get a Starbucks card or something? And it feels like a throwaway. But the idea, even if it’s a gift of just doing it once a year, completely disassociated from the referral, that feels different, that feels comfortable to me.
Right. Exactly. And we did that episode with John Ruhlin all about gifting-
Right, those are great episodes.
… and you can go back to that episode and listen to all about that. But one of the things that he says is, “Your gifts should be scheduled and planned out and should not be over the holidays.” And the people receiving the gift have no idea you’ve got it on a calendar someplace. To them, it looks like it’s totally out of the blue. But from a system standpoint, you need to have that locked down in a calendar someplace.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve gone through that where it’s like, “I should really send a gift to so-and-so. Hey, team, what do you think we,” it’s just, nothing gets done. Let’s face it. So, when it comes to appreciation and gifting, then schedule it, have some things in mind and do something special. I mean, is there anything else around appreciation that you think is important?
Well, I mean, for the purposes of this conversation today, it’s really just about having a system around it. Just making sure that you don’t wait until it occurs to you, you don’t wait for some other kind of a prompt, but that it’s a thought out process that you’ve programmed and planned and that you’ve got systems and processes around it, that makes sure that it happens and that makes sure that it happens consistently. So that that, it reinforces the message and you’re systematically building those relationships.
Yeah. Going back to the episode you mentioned, he talks about the branded mug is not an appreciation gift and just having an event around investments, not an appreciation event. So, we’ve got to just be really careful. One way to think about that.
I was reminded of that last night. I got home, there was a little box in the mail for me. It’s a company that I have been with now for 10 years and I do a significant amount of business with them and they sent me something with their logo on it. And I realized, if it’s got your logo on it, it’s not a gift, it’s a marketing promotion item. It’s only a gift if it’s meaningful to them and nothing associated with your firm anywhere on it.
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s tough for people to do. But let’s dig into the process, because you’ve mentioned that, and I think that’s really the key part. So, I briefly mentioned CRM and making sure we track, but are there other elements of leveraging CRM that you think are important?
Well, there are all kinds of things that you can leverage in the CRM. And the CRM, that you should live in your CRM, that should be where you go for everything. So, if someone makes a referral, the fact that it was a referral and the source of the referral should be tagged in that person’s record. And if someone gives a referral and you have a process, which you should, the person who was referred to you, that should trigger a workflow. So, it’s a series of tasks that are scheduled in the CRM.
Today, we send letter number one, tomorrow we send box number one, then we send email number two, and that all should be built out. Similarly, there should be a workflow triggered in the referral sources record. If you are recording those things, you should be able to run a report every quarter, or at least every year, where you’ve run out a report that says, “Okay, who referred who? And how many people did each person refer?” So, you can identify who are your top referral sources? How many referral sources do you have? And for the next year, you look at the top referral sources, well, they should be the ones who get the special recognition next year.
Hey, it’s Steve. We’ll get back to the show in just a minute. But first I’d like to make you an offer. Every week I send out a tip or an idea to help you become more referable. It might be something I’ve picked up during an advisory board meeting. It might be an idea from one of our amazing guests. Every other week, I announce a new interview on the podcast, so never miss an episode. Or maybe it’s something I picked up from a new research report and I deliver it right to your inbox. Would you like to become a little more referable each week? Then send an email to steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and I’ll even throw in my latest alert, Five Reasons You Need to Listen to Your Clients Now Before Someone Else Does. Just put five reasons in the subject line. That’s steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and put five reasons in the subject line. And I’ll send you your free guide right away. And then a little tip about how to become more referable every week. Now, back to the show.
So, there’s all the workflow around saying thank you, communicating with the referral source. Would the fact that someone referred come in in different ways throughout the year, would you communicate with them differently? I’m just wondering if there are other workflows that you need to consider.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Well, what I’m thinking is, for example, if you were sending out some content of interest, links to an article or something along those lines, if you know that someone provided you with a referral, you could customize that slightly, right?
Right.
Where, again, the intro is, this just, “I know you’ve been kind enough to provide referrals in the past. And if you would like to share this, you can just click here.” So, that to me is an automation, because you’re just, you need to be a little more advanced in your use of email automation systems for that. So, hopefully you have someone, a 20 year old on your team who can do all that for you, but you can really personalize communications differently that way.
Yeah. Yeah. So, your CRM has the… Most CRMs have the capacity to personalize those communications. So, you can create fields in those emails or fields and letters and things, where it’ll pull other information from the contract record and stick it in there. So, it looks like a personalized individual letter or email from someone to someone. Yeah.
Yeah. And whether it’s in CRM or whether it’s in, we use ActiveCampaign’s, for example, for communication, you can link there as well. I mean, the tools are so robust now, you just need to think through what you’re trying to do and start small. I mean, there are so many different things you could do here, but it seems to me that just having a two-step process to say thanks for referral might be a pretty good place to start.
Yeah. Well, or making sure that you fill in the field, source of the client and who made the referral. If you’re not doing that, that’s where you start, right?
Yeah.
So, you don’t even have to worry about workflows and procedures yet. First start keeping track of it.
Yeah. One of the things that we’ve talked a bit about recently is making sure you also communicate your process to clients. So, there’s this lurking fear I think we have, and I don’t know if anybody articulates it as such, but if I refer someone to you, are you suddenly going to, well, worst case you don’t even follow up and I don’t know if it’s worse or better, you follow up too much.
Yeah, right. Or you call them over dinner, or something like that.
Right. You don’t expect that from people, but you don’t know. So, it’s one of these unspoken points of friction that can happen.
Yeah. Well, and you wrote something about this recently. So, I wanted to ask you to sort of walk through this. We both believe you shouldn’t be asking for referrals, but you should be talking about referrals. And one great way that you can talk about referrals is to just make a point to sit down with clients and to say, “I don’t know if you ever mentioned us to people or if you’re inclined to, but I wanted to let you know, if you did, this is what would happen.” So, can you go through that, what you wrote about that?
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I guess the first… I was talking about communicating your process, but of course that begs the question, do you have one to communicate? So, we start there. And really it broke down into a single conversation, but multiple parts, I guess. So, one being just starting with appreciation. We’re so lucky to have grown our business through referrals. And I know that from time to time, I’ve asked you or suggested that if you wanted to make an introduction, a mutual introduction, that we’d appreciate that. So, start there.
But then I think just actually stating the unspoken concern or the potential. So you might say, “At the same time, I realize this might just raise some questions as to what we do with that information when you make a referral. And I know I wouldn’t want somebody following up too often with the people I know. So, is it okay if I just talk you through our process? And get permission?” If that’s the case, then, I mean, I would keep it incredibly simple. I’d be saying, “If you make an introduction, we will reach out, we’ll share a little bit of information and we’ll see if they’re interested in connecting. If they do, we’re off to the races. If they don’t, we’ll let them know that we have a blog that they can subscribe to and if they want to continue to connect and get to know us that way, that’s fine. But that’s the last thing we’ll do.”
I mean, you have to mean it, but it’s a good litmus test for your process, because if what you’re saying, and say it out loud, “Well, and then we’ll call them monthly,” all of a sudden you’re going to think, “No, that’s not sounding so good.” So just share that process and then make the commitment and then that’s it. We won’t follow up again. I think we can also, when we’re having those conversations, we can use it to reinforce referrals. “Thank you so much, we’ve been really focused on working with this kind of client to solve this kind of problem.” And now you can start telling your stories. So it’s just a nice, comfortable way to do that.
Right, right. Now, that brings up the idea of different ways you can talk about referrals and we’ve talked about that before. But for the purposes of this conversation, when we talk about systems, one way that you can systematize that, however you talk about referrals, you can make a point to talk with your clients about your referral process. So, just what you were describing. You could make a point of talking about some other aspect of being referred or telling people how many new clients you picked up by referral last year. But the point is not that you’re talking about those, the point for this conversation is that you need a system to prompt you to do that.
So, what I’ve recommended to a number of firms is that they have a standardized client meeting agenda. And that for a period of time, it might be a quarter, it might be a year, that that standard agenda has an item on it that is that conversation about referrals. So, you might say, “Well, this year, for this next round of client meetings, we’re going to describe our client referral process.” So, you would have a template on your server, that is the client meeting agenda, item number one, two or three would be describe referral process.
So, that when you get into the meeting and you open the folder, there it is. It’s a lot harder to forget when it’s right there in the bullet points for you to talk about. So, part of that system is systematization, is to build it so that it’s not just left to your memory to do it, but that you incorporate it into the formal meeting preparation procedure. And if you have a piece of collateral you want to show them as part of that, your assistant should be sticking that in the client folder along with the agenda before you walk into the meeting.
The whole idea is to create a procedure around it, delegate it to somebody else, that will make sure that if you, every once in a while, talk about referrals with people, well, if you can create a process around it, you can remember to talk with all of your clients about that.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting with referrals, because you can go down two paths. One is what you’re talking about, and it’s the easiest, and I think it’s where we need to start. One of our coaches, Lisa, has talked to a number of advisors about the idea of building in what she calls a business update into the meeting, where it’s just, “Hey, this is what’s happening and I’d love your input on how we might grow the business.” Again, it’s a simple, comfortable way to do it.
Well, what I was going to say is the more difficult process, and this will be a conversation for another day, is listening for the cues from clients to then tell the stories that you want to tell. That requires some skill and some training and connecting the dots. But I think you’re right. If we wait to build those skills, we might do nothing. And just making sure that we do this, I think we’re all guilty, frankly, of not doing it.
Right. Right. And I’ve talked with lots of advisors lots of times. And we’ll say, “In the next bunch of client meetings, why don’t you ask them this question or do this?” And so often we have the follow up meeting and they say, “Oh, I forgot.” Well, that’s a systems failure. That’s not a personal failure. That’s a systems failure. So, if your system for preparing for a meeting doesn’t have whatever you’ve decided built into it, then your system is broken. So, that’s how you can improve that and make sure that it happens systematically.
Yeah. And in a shameless plug for client input, because I live and breathe it all day long. One of the things that we’ve really been focusing on with advisors is how can you gather direct input from clients that help you have those conversations? So, that you’re not just starting from scratch, you’re actually inviting some input that helps you have those specific kinds of conversations, which I think is a really powerful thing to do.
So, if you were starting from scratch. So, let’s assume you were like most advisors, frankly, because this is just how we operate. And I’m going to say it’s most of us, not just most advisors, you’re thinking, “Well, I get some referrals, and I rewrite the process every single time it happens.” What’s step number one?
Well, step number one is to review your CRM and to look through your client contacts. Find out where they all came from, so that you can make sure that if they were referred to you, you’ve identified who the referral source is. Because where it all starts is by identifying, counting, and then making a plan around your referral sources. The ones who’ve referred to you in the past are most likely to refer to you in the future. And they’re also the ones most deserving of appreciation.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Listen for those who tell you they’ve referred, even if you didn’t meet them. I can’t tell you how many people I talk to, they say, “I refer you all the time.” And I, “Thank you. I’ve literally met no one.” But the reality is, I appreciate the intent. So, they should be tagged too. It’s not because it worked, frankly. We just want to acknowledge that behavior.
That’s another conversation that should be one of these episodes, because that happens with advisors all the time. Right?
Absolutely.
But the point is that you capture it and that you build a process around it. If you want it to happen, there needs to be a process. So, that’s where you can start is just capturing all that information, making sure that it gets into the CRM, so that you can build some processes or workflows around it.
All starts there.
Yep.
Well, that’s awesome. Thanks so much for your time.
Yep. Nice to see you, talk to you again soon.
Take care.
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.