Participants:

Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Bob Burg

Steve Wershing: 
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. On this episode, we talk with Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals, and with John David Mann, The Go-Giver Series of Management Parables. Bob is a popular speaker who has shared the stage with business leaders, broadcast personalities and even a former U.S. President. In this conversation, we dig into the philosophy of the go-giver, and that if you want more success and referrals it’s all about how much you give. We talk about how a go-getter is not the opposite of a go-giver and what is. We cover some of the five laws of stratospheric success. We address how one of the secrets of influence is listening, but maybe in a different way than you and other advisors do with clients currently.

We talk about how putting your clients’ interests first is critically important and is also a broader idea than just the fiduciary standard. And listen through to the end where we talk about how to plant seeds of referrals in all of your conversations. This is truly one of those interviews I wish could have gone on a lot longer, but what we cover is really interesting, valuable and it gives us an opportunity to cover more than just the practical tips but to dig down into the philosophy and understand a little bit more about why it works. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as Julie and I did. So with that, let’s get right onto our conversation with Bob Burg.

Bob Burg, welcome to the Becoming Referable podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Bob Burg:
Thank you. Great to be with you both, Steve and Julie. It’s just a real honor and a pleasure.

Julie Littlechild:
Great.

Steve Wershing:
We’re very excited to talk with you today because I have been going through your books and there is a lot of really good stuff in there. We’re never going to be able to fit it in a half an hour, but can you give us a little background? You started with Endless Referrals and then you went on to the whole Go Giver series of books, which has taken off like crazy. Can you tell us a little bit about the premise and where that idea came from?

Bob Burg:
Yeah, well the book Endless Referrals was really … it was a how to book for entrepreneurs and sales professionals who, they knew they had a great product or service. They knew it brought wonderful value to those they served, but they didn’t feel comfortable necessarily in the business development process, going out and meeting people, doing so in a way in which they felt comfortable and in which the other person would feel comfortable.

Steve Wershing:
Sure.

Bob Burg:
So it was really a how to book on how to develop relationships that would cause people to want to do business with them and refer them to others. The underlying premise of that book was simply all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust. That’s what it was about. Now while … and this was the first edition of that book came out back in the 90’s, and I’d always enjoyed reading parables. Because they’re stories; stories connect with people on a heart level, and we take in the information and we can … and I thought how can we take … and this is over the course of 10 years, 15 years … I thought how could we take the basic premise of Endless Referrals and put it into a parable? And I thought well, so what then is the major characteristic of a person who is able to develop these know, like and trust relationships quickly and sustainably?

And the answer is, they’re always giving. They’re giving value to others. They’re always looking for ways to bring value to others. We kind of came up with that title, The Go-Giver, which is not, by the way, the opposite of a go-getter. We love go-getters because go-getters take action, right?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob Burg:
You would say the opposite of a go-giver is a go-taker.

Steve Wershing:
Oh, there you go. That’s interesting.

Bob Burg:
And that, you feel entitled, right to take, take, take without having added value to the process, the person, the situation. I asked John David Mann, who I knew from … he was the editor in chief of a magazine I used to write for, and very few people at that time knew John. Now he’s the ghost writer and co-author of choice for agents and publishers and other writers and so forth. Back then, few people knew him but fortunately I did, and I knew of his brilliance, and I asked him … and when I say asked, I pleaded with him-

Steve Wershing:
That sounds like me and Julie.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, right.

Steve Wershing:
Julie, please help me with this.

Bob Burg:
-to be the lead writer and storyteller and fortunately he did. The main premise of The Go Giver is simply this: that shifting your focus from getting to giving, and when we say giving in this context we simply mean constantly and consistently providing value to others is not only a more pleasant way of conducting business, it’s the most financially profitable way as well.

Julie Littlechild:
You mentioned right at the beginning that part of the issue was that the people you worked with didn’t feel comfortable. Do you find that when you shift your mindset to this whole idea of giving, it almost at the same time helps you be more comfortable as well as making it more pleasant for the other person? It sounds like it’s a two-fer.

Bob Burg:
Well, it does. You think about it, when you’re in the … even in the prospecting process, if you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone who let you do practically all the talking, you can kind of come away from that conversation saying to yourself, “Wow, what a fascinating conversation.”

Steve Wershing:
Exactly.

Bob Burg:
I often will tell people when you’re on the phone prospecting, or even just having a conversation or having the next phase of that … have you evernoticed, no one hangs up the phone on you while they are talking? All of this comes from focusing on that other person. When you think about it, what is selling? Selling is really by definition it’s discovering what the other person wants, needs, or desires and helping them to get it. Whether you’re in the actual selling, the presentation process, or just in the initial stages where you’ve just met someone and you can take your focus off yourself and place it on them by asking questions that I call feel good questions, questions which simply make this person feel comfortable, feel good about themselves, and good about you. That’s when we really area able to step that up to another level.

Steve Wershing:
One of the things that I really like about that whole point, Bob, is that so many of our listeners, financial advisors, sort of have this aversion to selling, and what they have an aversion to is bad selling, but just lumping it all under that term it prevents them from understanding what real professional selling is about, which is helping people solve their problems. I love this approach to it.

Bob Burg:
And I love that you say that, because so many people have a misperception about selling. They think it’s trying to convince someone to buy or invest in something they don’t want or need. That’s not selling, that’s being a con artist. That has nothing to do with selling, and so what you said is perfect. It’s not that they don’t like the idea of selling, they don’t like the idea of what they think selling is. When you think about it, the old English root of the word sell, which was sellan, meant to give. So when you’re selling, you’re literally giving.

Now, someone might say, “Wait a second, Burg, isn’t that just semantics?’ Well, think about it. Let’s say you have a prospective client in front of you, and you’re in the selling process. What exactly are you giving them? I suggest you’re giving them time, attention, counsel, education, empathy, and ultimately, extraordinary value. Yes, you are selling financial services and that’s fine, that is what you’re doing. But just look at what you’re doing as selling as something very righteous. You’re helping this person to grow their wealth in the way that they want to, that they would not be able to do without you.

Julie Littlechild:
There’s an interesting process, and I don’t think it’s exclusive to this industry by any stretch, where we spend … financial advisors spend an inordinate amount of time becoming expert. They’re educated, they go deep on technical expertise, and as a result of that effort sometimes we focus a lot on why we might be the best choice. We’ve got the designations, we’ve got the credentials, we’ve got the experience and yet I wonder from your perspective, can that get in the way of that sales process, of the giving process, if we’re focused on why we’re the best choice?

Bob Burg:
You really, Julie, hit that right on the head because what happens is we know, and when I say we know, I’m talking about the financial advisor, knows that they have done a fantastic job in learning their craft. I mean, they study it and they work on it. As you said, they get the designations, they’ve donetheir … and it’s sort of like well, it should be people just understand this.

Steve Wershing:
Right. People should be impressed.

Bob Burg:
Right. But the potential client doesn’t know, and let’s face it if the potential client is not able to distinguish you from any of your competitors, well it’s always going to come down to what, who has the lowest fee or however … depending upon whether they’re fee-based or what have you. But it’s going to come down to the cost of them doing business. And again, it’s not their fault. So what it is, is this. It’s not that they have to understand our value, the responsibility is on us to be able to effectively communicate our value.

The paradox is, that’s not going to happen because you flash your designations in front of them and tell you how much you know. It’s going to be from the way you are able to focus on them and ask the appropriate questions so that they understand that you understand them.

Julie Littlechild:
Right. Well, that’s probably a good segue then into what does work. I’d love to go deep on this, but can you just start maybe with a quick review of the five laws that you and John share in the Go-Giver series? And it is a series, how many are there in that series, by the way?

Bob Burg:
There are four in the series.

Julie L:
Okay.

Bob Burg:
There are three parables, and then there’s one that’s more of a … it’s not exactly a how to, it’s more of an application of the first one.

Julie Littlechild:
Okay. And we start still with these five laws, is that correct?

Bob Burg:
Right.

Julie Littlechild:
That kind of runs throughout.

Bob Burg:
Oh, sure. They’re called different things depending upon whether it’s the Go-Giver Leader, Go-Giver Influencer. But you know what, they all still come down to the basic five laws of success from the original Go-Giver.

Steve Wershing:
And those are-

Bob Burg:
Sure, those are the laws of value, compensation, influence, authenticity and receptivity. The law of value simply says that your true worth, in the business sense, your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Now, you first hear that, that sounds sort of counterintuitive because it sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy.

Julie Littlechild:
You’re missing the economic argument, Bob.

Bob Burg:
Yeah, right, right. It’s like goody two-shoes stuff but it’s not going to make sense. So to understand this, we simply have to understand the different between price and value. Price is a dollar figure, it’s a dollar amount. It’s finite. It is what it is. Value, on the other hand, is the relative worth or desirability of a thing, of something, to the end user or beholder. In other words, what is it about this thing, this product, service, concept, idea, investment, what have you, that would bring more … that would bring so much in worth or value to another human being that they will willingly exchange their money or their commitment for it or their energy or whatever for this, and in such a way that they feel great about it while the advisor, of course, makes a very, very healthy profit.

On a very basic level, let’s say an advisor is working with a family on their future nest egg, helping them create and manage lots of financial growth, and doing so in a way that this other person feels very safe and very secure, because that’s their needs, that’s their want. And so by the very nature of doing that, just intrinsically by the very nature of what you’re providing as an advisor, you’re giving them much more in value than what you’re taking in payment. And this, by the way, is the essence of a free market exchange. When I say free market, I simply mean no one is forced to do business with anyone else, they do so on their own volition. That is that there are always two profits, the buyer profits and the seller profits. Because each of them come away better off after the transaction than they were before the transaction.

Steve Wershing:
I think this is really important and insightful because in the Go-Giver you talk about the philosophy being totally congruent with human nature, and Julie and I talk a lot about the idea that people give referrals, for example, because they benefit from it, because of what they get out of it. But can you expand on that just a little bit, because I think it’s worth digging into?

Bob Burg:
Sure, and so there are really two sources for this. One is one we’re all familiar with and that is How to Win Friends and Influence People, a great book by Dale Carnegie. What I believe was his underlying premise, and this is really what made a difference for me when I first read it, is where he says ultimately people do things for their reasons, not our reasons, and if we don’t understand that, then we’re really operating from behind the eight ball. We have to understand, they’re doing it for their reasons. And now we say, okay, so what is their reason?

While everybody has their own individual reasons, there’s also an underlying aspect of this, which I learned from a great mentor of mine whose name was Harry Brown. What Harry said is that there are three basic … it’s sort of a three-in-one principle in terms of human nature and why people will do acertain thing. Here are the three. One is everyone seeks happiness. Ultimately, everyone seeks happiness. This is human nature, everyone seeks happiness. Now, we’re defining happiness here according to the dictionary, really, as the mental feeling of well-being. Ultimately, human nature dictates that we consciously or unconsciously move toward achieving happiness, that mental feeling of well-being. Every action we take is based on the fact that we believe it will bring us closer to happiness, which doesn’t mean it always happens that way. People make mistakes, but every act is aimed at bringing happiness.

Now, number two is that happiness is relative. We all understand, people understand happiness differently. Thus, we place different values on different things. What would make one person very happy, what would bring them happiness, might make another person totally miserable or have absolutely no effect at all. So we all seek happiness, happiness is relative, but then three, resources are limited. This is not to imply a lack mentality. I mean, we live in an abundant universe, but when it comes to individuals we all have a limited amount of time, of energy, of money, of knowledge, of what have you. Thus, we must constantly make choices.

Harry summed it up by saying that every decision you ask a prospect to make is always going to be based ultimately on whether they believe it will move them closer to happiness based on how they understand happiness, and based on the limited choices they believe they have. When you truly understand this, now you can approach every prospect from an entirely different frame or premise, understanding what’s ultimately going to move them.

Steve Wershing:
It’s also related to something else that you say in … the most recent Go-Giver book I read was The Influencer and you talk about one of the five secrets is to listen. Financial advisors think of themselves as good listeners, because we ask people what their goals are and ask them what they want to get out of life and that kind of stuff. But this is a little more than that, and it relates to what Harry Brown was saying about achieving happiness, stepping into the other person’s shoes and listening to that. How would you encourage financial advisors to expand on that whole idea of listening to incorporate what you were just talking about?

Bob Burg:
What’s interesting about that is we think well, step into the other person’s shoes. That’s pretty easy to do, right? Then you think about it and you realize that most of us have different size feet, so maybe it’s not so easy. Literally, we can’t step into the other person’s shoes. Figuratively, we can’t step into their heads. Because we’re not them, and we don’t know what they’re thinking. We all come from our own beliefs, our own belief system based on upbringing, environment, schooling, news media, television shows. Everything we touch, taste, hear, all of our experiences.

But here’s the thing, as human beings we believe that everyone else sees the world basically the same way we do. That makes intuitive sense, right? How could it be any different? It’s all we know. So yes, you may be trained to ask certain questions, knowing that certain people kind of want different things, but how deep do we really go with that before we think now we know what this person wants or what they’re thinking. What one of the mentors in the Go-Giver Influencer tells their protégé is listen, not just with your ears. That’s kind of the surface listening that most of us do. That’s listening but it’s really listening in order to speak.

It’s giving them their two cents so that we can then come in and give them our 10 cents. So don’t just listen with your ears, listen with your eyes, listen with your posture, listen, he said, with the back of your neck. In other words, put your entire being into listening to this person in order to really understand where they’re coming from. When you do that, now you’re nine steps ahead of the game in a 10-step game because now you really have put yourself in that person’s shoes. But one more thing about this, and when you do this, when you do this, this other person feels heard. They feel listened to. They feel understood, and when you’re making really an investment with a financial advisor, you’ve got to know that this person, this advisor, really understands you.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting because I think sometimes when we talk … you’re right, it’s about how deep we go in putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, because to some extent it could be well, how are they feeling right now? That could be putting yourself in their shoes, but right now doesn’t take in the context of what happened before… it’s not how they feel about you. It’s what brought them there, and all of those other things, so I love this idea of just sort of expanding the idea of what it means to put yourself in your client’s shoes, and I think that would influence a lot of the relationship, frankly, not just whether they’ll want to work with you.

Bob Burg:
Right, exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
Did we get through … we got the hit list of the five.

Bob Burg:
We talked about the law of value a little bit. One thing I was going to say was this, we talked about just the intrinsic value you provide, which is that you’re giving them more in value than what you take in payment, but all your competitors are basically doing that too. Again, that’s just intrinsic value, so the question is how do I distinguish myself? How do I separate myself from my competition and not only take them but take the fee aspect kind of out of the picture. What you need to do in this case is to be that additional value, what I call extrinsic value, which is everything outside of just what you do by the very nature of the thing.

So you say, “Okay, so how do I do that? How do I become that additional value and provide such an amazing experience that I just become this person’s go to person and the person they’re going to want to refer to others?” There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to communicate this additional value, but they tend to come down to five what we call elements of value. Those elements are excellence, consistency, attention, empathy and appreciation. And to the degree that you can communicate one or more, hopefully all five of those elements, at every single touchpoint. From the time you first meet them to building the relationship to the actual presentation to the referral aspect to the … that’s the degree that you will do this.

Again, we’re still on step one here and I know we want to do a-

-and I apologize for that, but I’ll do the other ones really, really quickly. But I think the law of value is really … it’s the foundational principle, because when you think about it, why are other people doing business with you, and I often … when I speak at a sales conference the first thing I’ll say is, “Nobody’s going to buy from you because you have a quota.” They’re not going to buy from you because you need the money or have your mortgage payment to be made or blah, blah, blah. Or even because you’re a really nice person who knows your stuff and has all the designations. They’re going to buy from you, and as you said earlier, refer business to you because they believe that in some way they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so. So I think it really comes down to value as that foundational principle.

Steve Wershing:
There’s another concept that I’d love you to relate to that, and that’s in the original Go-Giver. The character Joe talks with Sam, the financial advisor, and Sam talks about creating walking ambassadors. People who have a personal investment in seeing the main character succeed. You’ve discussed the whole idea of walking ambassadors and endless referrals as well. So can you relate what you were just talking to, to that whole idea of creating walking ambassadors and what things advisors should be thinking about doing if they want to have those kinds of folks themselves?

Bob Burg:
Well, we certainly know that it’s a lot easier to build your business in a way that’s rewarding emotionally as well as financially, and that it’s easier, and that there’s less stress when you have really good people, your clients, who are out there telling others that yes, this is the person you need to be doing business with. I have a financial advisor like that, Phil Bluemell, and he does such a fantastic job that I just … I want to tell the world about Phil. I want to tell people about him. When people confide in me what’s happening financially, what they need and so forth, I refer them to Phil.

Not everybody does that because it’s not in everybody’s nature to be a referral source. Some people just … they don’t think about it. It’s not they don’t love you, it’s they just don’t think about it. It’s just not in their DNA that that’s … but other do. So the people who are the … my friend Rick Hill used to call them nominators. They were just people … they wanted to nominate you. They wanted to tell the world about you. These are the people who, when you have relationships with those people, it just makes your business a lot more fun, a lot less stressful and a lot more profitable.

Steve Wershing:
How would an advisor go about cultivating some of those ambassadors?

Bob Burg:
You know something, by being the kind of person who is just worthy of that. Again, I think it comes to … you know, in Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take, I don’t know if you ever read that book-

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Bob Burg:
-it was a fantastic book, and he cited a study of Australian financial advisors, and these were the cream of the crop. These were the highest producing of the highest producing. They looked at what was the determining factor? What made them so successful? Of course it was … financial acumen had something to do with it. Very, very important. But again, we also know that is the entry fee, in a sense. That’s the entry level. They worked hard. Well, again that makes perfect sense. But none of those … those weren’t the determining factors. The difference maker was that these financial advisors placed the interests of their clients ahead of themselves and ahead of the firm.

Because of this, they were the people who themselves made the most money, the highest income, from serving the most people. When you have law number two, the law of compensation that says your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them, well that quantity comes from having personal walking ambassadors who are singing your praises. But then we go and the study that Adam pointed out really, I think, underlies is that law number three, the law of influences, your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.

Steve Wershing:
Excuse me, this is one of those things I really wanted to dig into because I think this is really something that you could help advisors with. There’s a big conversation or argument going on in our industry, and has for a while, about the fiduciary standard, meaning that there is a big portion of the industry that is not held to the legal standard of putting your client’s interests first. Then the other big group in the industry are the people who have adopted or accepted the legal requirement to put their interests first. And yet, many of those folks who are even some of the most vocal advocates of the fiduciary standard oftentimes have trouble getting referrals. What are we missing there? What’s the difference between adopting the legal fiduciary standard and that whole idea of putting your clients first in a way that translates into referrals and business development.

Bob Burg:
I think in a sense it’s kind of two different areas, although they’re certainly related. To me it’s, and not being directly in the field as a financial advisor, for there to need to be a legal standard to put your client’s interest first, that fiduciary, to me it makes business sense to put your client’s interests first. First of all, anything that would not be putting your client’s interest first, at best you’re going to be ineffective, because they’re going to know that, at least if they’re paying attention. And if they’re not, someone’s paying attention, which they should be.

But it’s obviously such good business to place the interests of your clients first because again, that’s why they’re doing business with you. In terms of how that translates into referrals, obviously to the degree that you place your client’s interests first, and I just want to make sure to point out when we say place the other person’s interest first we don’t mean that in terms of being a martyr or being self-sacrificial.

Steve Wershing:
Right, sure.

Bob Burg:
We just mean you understand that it’s by placing their interests first, you’re doing the best job for them which ultimately comes back to you in terms of reputation, in terms of continued business, in terms of that next generation doing business with you, in terms of your referability. But in terms of not receiving referrals even when you place their interests first, again I think that comes back to not everybody thinks of that, and that’s why I’m more for having a more proactive approach to attaining referrals.

While there’s always going to be those people like me who go out of their way to refer people to those that I know, like and trust and who I’m grateful for, there are more people that just aren’t going to, and they need the gentle, helpful nudge in order to do that.

Steve Wershing:
I also suspect that when you say putting your client’s best interests first, I think that one of the challenges, one of the potential mistakes that advisors make is that they talk about that standard, and they talk about putting their client’s interests first in terms of the products and strategies they recommend. But in the Go-Giver it’s a much broader concept. What other ways beyond just the recommendations would you suggest advisors put their clients interests first?

Bob Burg:
I think it goes back to aside from the excellence in understanding what you do, there’s also an excellence in how you make people feel every time at every touch point, and that is whether it’s with you or with the people in your office who answer the phone, or it has to do with getting back … for example, my advisor makes himself very available to me. He’s not going to jump through hoops and so forth to do something that he shouldn’t be doing in terms of getting back, but I know that when I contact him with a question, I’m going to get a response. It’s not going to take a long time.

I feel very secure that way, and so forth. The people that I have referred him to … he handles my whole family. Everybody just loves this guy because of the attention he provides. That’s another one of the elements of value. When you’re working with Phil you kind of get the feeling that your family is the only one he’s dealing with, and yet you know he’s not because he’s got a hugely successful practice. The empathy he has … again, one of the elements of value, it’s you know that when you’re telling him certain concerns that you have that he’s feeling that along with you. Now, he may not know exactly how you feel because again we don’t necessarily know how the other person feels, but empathy is really more, I think, communicating that you understand they’re feeling something, and that you’re not going to stop gently digging until you really grasp the underlying issue they have.

So I think it’s all those things we can do. And then it’s gratitude, it’s appreciation. It’s how you let people know that you really appreciate them. People who live in that … and you know a chestnut, you hear the attitude of gratitude. It’s an old saying. But it’s old because it’s true. When you operate from a sense of gratitude you are more attractive to others. People want to be around you. People are comfortable with you. People want to do business with you. People are more likely to refer and introduce you to others. All these things we can do. There’s no big secret.

This is why when we talk about the elements of value, excellence, consistency … consistency is so important because as human beings … and this dates back to the cave person days when every day was literally, not figuratively, but literally a matter of life and death, surviving the day, things in your world had to be consistent. You had to know what that bent twig meant, or that footprint in the mud meant. We don’t have those same challenges today, but it’s been hard-wired into our DNA, so not only do we want to be consistent and appear that way to others, we demand it with people we do business with.

We’ve got to know … your people have to know that the same advisor they talk to one day is the same advisor who’s going to show up the next day and the next week and the next month, and the next year. All these things are what help you place their interests first and cause them to be your personal walking ambassador.

Julie Littlechild:
Bob, a couple of the … the last two laws I’d like to ask you about in particular and it’s authenticity and it’s receptivity, and as I read about those I thought absolutely, and at the same moment I felt how easy it is for us to lose those things when we’ve got our head down and we’re building a business and we’ve got the weight of the world on our shoulders, and we’re just go, go, go. It almost was like a hand up saying just pause for a moment. I’d love to know how you see those two laws.

Bob Burg:
That’s such a great question, because with authenticity … in the story, Deborah, who was the very successful realtor and what she shared was that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills and people skills, as important as they are, and yes, they are very, very important, but as she said, they’re also all for naught if you don’t come at it from your true authentic core. But when you do, when you show up as yourself, as we like to say, people feel good about you, they feel comfortable with you, they feel safe with you, they’re much more likely to want to be in a relationship with you and refer you to others.

So it begs the question, if showing up as yourself, if showing up authentically is so beneficial just even for you in your business, why do some people not show up that way, but rather instead as kind of a … I guess the correct Latin term would be phonus bolonus. Not authentically. We may default to the idea of well, they’re just dishonest or they want … you know, it’s a big world, there’s lots of people out there, we’ve got to be wary of those types, but that’s not usually the case. I’d say 99 times out of 100, when someone doesn’t seem to show up authentically, it’s really a matter of they don’t have the confidence in themselves to show up that way.

Because let’s face it, it’s hard to show up authentically when you don’t really feel you have anything to show up authentically for. That’s why it’s so important that we understand two types of authentic value that we have. One is just intrinsic authentic value. That’s just being a human being. We bring value to the table in and of itself, that’s fine. But we also have what I call market value, and I define market value as that combination of strengths, traits, talents and characteristics that allow you bring value to others to the marketplace in such a way that you are well compensated for. And we all have these. We all have our strengths and those talents.

But what happens is because we’re human beings, we’re so emotionally close to ourselves that we often can’t see it. That’s why it’s so important to be able to have someone, whether they’re a coach that you’re paying to help you, or someone at the office, or a mentor or whomever, someone who knows you well enough that they can help you to really see that greatness that you have, that market value, those things, those strengths that you do so very well. But they’re not so close to you that they also can’t see, because they’re too emotionally involved with you. When we really understand our strengths, then we can lead with them, and that’s when we tend to lead authentically. We show up as ourselves because we understand that we ourselves bring great value to the table.

Steve Wershing:
Julie and Bob, I know that we’re already over time, but there’s at least one other how to question I’d like to ask, if that’s okay with you two before we wrap up?

Julie Littlechild:
Mm-hmm.

Bob Burg:
Oh, sure.

Steve Wershing:
One of the things that you talk about in your books, Bob, is planting seeds of referrals. Before we wrap up, can you give us that sort of practical advice on what planting seeds is and how advisors can do it?

Bob Burg:
This is just within the presentation itself, or it may be … let’s say somebody calls you and when they do, maybe you just … one of the things you ask is, “Oh, were you referred to me by one of my valued clients,” if they haven’t offered that first. What it does is right there that kind of plants a seed that you operate referrals. Or when you’re in the first initial consult with them, and they ask you a question. Your response might be just kind of framed with, “That’s a wonderful question.” In fact, just recently, one of my newer clients asked me that question, and it’s such a good one and now you kind of rephrase the question a little bit and now you give the answer.
Of course, this assumes that you were asked that question. When you do that, what you’re doing is you’ve just framed the answer within a referral mindset. Again, later on in the presentation … and again, or within the interview, let’s just say that an objection comes up and again, you congratulate them on the question. On the objection, you turn that objection into a question or concern and you say, “That’s a question that many of my clients asked before they became clients.” In other words, their concern was what if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and it’s a great … it’s a concern that’s very worthy, and here’s what we’ve … boom, and now you answer the question. But when you did that, you simply framed it by planting the seed of referral that this is how you do business.

Julie Littlechild:
Makes sense.

Steve Wershing:
Julie, anything else you want to ask before we wrap up?

Julie Littlechild:
No, I think that’s great. I think we’re really … I mean, it’s so interesting because we talk about referrals tactically but you’re really getting under the skin of that a little, kind on the becoming referable side. I’m glad you asked that last question, which is more about how do we transition that to referrals, so thank you so much.

Steve Wershing:
Bob, thank you. Julie knows I’ve got another page and a half of questions I’d really love to ask you but we were only able to get you for our little half hour interview. But I think everybody should read the Go-Giver series. It’s, as you said, they’re parables and I was telling you before that can be kind of a tricky thing to pull off without poor storytelling, but you guys do it really well and it’s a great series of books. So if people want to learn more about what you do and the Go-Giver philosophy, where should they find you?

Bob Burg:
Probably the best place is just to go to thegogiver.com. On that page there’s all sorts of goodies, and one of the things they can do is read chapter one, chapter two and excerpts from the different books to see if they like where they’re heading. Then they can always click through to purchase if they’d like.

Steve Wershing:
Bob, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being a giver this morning, and sharing some of your insights with us. It’s been a great conversation. We’re really grateful for you having the time to join us today.

Bob Burg:
Thank you both so much. I enjoyed it immensely.

Julie Littlechild:
Hi, it’s Julie again. It was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really does help. 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. Thanks so much for joining us.