Participants:

Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Bill Cates

Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast designed to help you become the advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and today Steve and I are thrilled to be speaking to Bill Cates. Now, Bill was the first guest on this podcast, but we wanted to get him back to talk about his new book, Radical Relevance, and all of the insights that he shares in that book.

Bill, as you probably know, is the founder of Referral Coach International, and has really built his career around working with organizations and individuals who want to grow through word of mouth marketing, through referrals, and through personal introductions. So we talked to Bill about the concept of radical relevance, what it means, and the importance of your messaging when it comes to driving referrals.

In the book, he actually shares 17 rules of radical relevance. We didn’t have time for all of those, but we do go into a few of the big ones in our discussion, including ideas and tactics to really understand and communicate the problems that you solve and the role of client experience in driving more referrals. And with that, let’s get straight to the conversation with Bill.

Oh, Bill Cates. Welcome to the Becoming Referable podcast. This is the second time you’ve been with us.

Steve Wershing:
Yep, exactly. Exactly, yeah. I don’t know, Julie, I don’t know if we ever told Bill, but he was the first guest on our podcast.

Julie Littlechild:
That is true.

Steve Wershing:
I’m pretty sure, Bill, you would not have agreed to be our premiere guest, so we didn’t tell you, but you were our very first guest, and we’re very excited to have you back.

Julie Littlechild:
I believe we called him a guinea pig at that time.

Steve Wershing:
Not on the air, but yes.

Bill Cates:
And you know about the guinea pig thing in Peru. They actually eat guinea pigs.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh dear. Oh, well this just took an ugly turn.

Steve Wershing:
There will be no cannibalism on this episode. No marketing consultants were harmed in the production of this podcast.

Bill Cates:
Well, I did not eat a guinea pig, although my fiance did, and there’s not much meat to it.

Julie Littlechild:
We don’t want to know anything

Steve Wershing:
But unlike that, there’s going to be a lot of meat in this episode, so let’s get right to it.

Bill Cates:
Yes, yes.

Julie Littlechild:
I am excited. What we really wanted to talk to you now, although we love to talk to you anytime, because of your new book. So it was excited to see that-

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, congratulations.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. Radical Relevance, which is an awesome name, by the way.

Bill Cates:
Thank you.

Julie Littlechild:
And maybe the best place for us to start is there. What do you actually mean by radical relevance?

Bill Cates:
Well, what I mean by that is most people, particularly in this industry, tend to try to increase the size of their tent a little bit. They expand, and then their messaging gets weaker and weaker. And what I’m all about is targeting, targeting. So picture a target with the concentric rings on it, the target represents a market, a target market. So that’s something we definitely should talk about. And then narrowing into the bullseye. The bullseye is what I call a right fit client, and who they were meant to serve, and who was meant to be served by you. And they appreciate your value for all the right reasons.

And so it’s about how we craft our messaging in a way that attracts the right people to our business, and repels, and that’s a strong word, but it’s the best one I can think of, that repels the people that aren’t a good fit. The people that aren’t a good fit, well, our message doesn’t resonate with them. And so then we’re working with the right people all the time. And that’s really what I mean by radical relevance.

Steve Wershing:
And sorry, Julie, if I could jump in, in terms of that relevance, a lot of people know you for your books about getting referrals, but I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what I learned from this book, your book on strawberry recipes.

Bill Cates:
I don’t want to bore people too much with that. It is a story I tell in the book, and how I learned a long time ago when I had a book publishing company, of having the right product in the right place at the right time for the right people. And essentially I used to publish cookbooks that I distributed through pick your own strawberry farms and apple farms. And I was selling like 80,000 books a year, because it was just a relevant book at the right place, and people just picked all these strawberries and apples, and they wanted to know what to do with these suckers.

And then I started focusing on other types of books, and that’s when I learned the principles of direct marketing, and messaging, and all that sort of stuff. So that’s the strawberry thing. Hopefully, you enjoyed the story, and I tried to turn it into a teaching tool throughout the book.

Steve Wershing:
It’s a great example of being relevant. Being relevant to the audience, and being relevant to the time of year because it’s a short season. So I thought that was a really good illustration of the kind of relevance you’re talking about in here.

Julie Littlechild:
And so I wanted to… Yeah, now it’s all mine. That’s fine, beyond the strawberries and the guinea pigs, I really wanted to dig in to some of the specifics. Now, the very subtitle of your book just starts with this phrase, sharpen your marketing message. Just by way of definition, is that the same as your value prop or your elevator pitch? What exactly do you mean by that? And then I know you’ve got a model to help advisors down this path.

Bill Cates:
Yeah, so I think a lot of people confuse, in my mind at least, they confuse a value proposition with elevator pitch, with unique selling proposition, etc. The way I see it, is a value proposition is all the value that we bring to our prospects, clients, centers of influence, throughout the entire client journey, through the courtship as a prospect to the on boarding process, to the client engagement as you guys talk about so well. That’s the value proposition.

And then the elevator pitch or the value positioning statement, that’s a subset that reflects the value proposition. So one of the things I help our clients with is actually determining that full value proposition to begin with. What are all the points of value? It’s a great exercise for the firm, because everyone then gets in line with the value they bring, and how to then start articulating that value when they’re out and about.

And it becomes a more uniform message. So I tend not to like the term elevator pitch, only because the way it’s been taught in the past is quite often very trite and overly creative. And here’s one thing we know about the brain. The brain craves clarity and simplicity. The brain’s job is to keep the organism alive and reduce the amount of calories expended. And any time we come to it with a confusing message or overly creative message, it doesn’t like it, and it has to work harder, and it doesn’t want to do that. So it’ll quite often just ignore it.

And so that’s why I call it a value positioning statement. It’s the same basic idea, but we’re just being very clear. We’re using terminology that’s very clear and understandable from our prospects. We’re using words that they use, not the words that we like to use, or we think are clever, or fun, or industry jargon, which a lot of folks who are so close to it, they don’t even realize they’re using industry jargon. So first thing we like to do, is figure out what is the full value proposition that you bring, and then what is the message we want to craft that goes on the website, that goes in an email, that you say in front of a group, that you say in whatever the circumstance might be. Hopefully that makes sense.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. And is there a process that an advisor goes through to figure that out? Or maybe you can even just give us an example of what that might sound like.

Bill Cates:
Meaning getting the full value proposition or how to talk about the value?

Julie Littlechild:
How to talk about the value.

Bill Cates:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. I have a very simple formula, and it accomplishes a lot very quickly. And sometimes we have to be very quick, and then sometimes we have more time. But it depends on where we’re delivering the message. And really, the message that we deliver, will usually have different lengths, because it depends on where we’re doing it. But if someone says, “What do you do?” Or if you have to introduce yourself by telling people what you do, being it in an email, being it in your headline, in your LinkedIn profile, and the formula goes a little like this.

The first step is, my expertise is in… I don’t recommend starting off by saying I’m a financial advisor, I’m a financial planner, or any other term like that, because you don’t know how people are going to react to that. It feeds into any preconceived notions that they may have. And so I believe that financial advisors are experts or have expertise in, some compliance departments won’t allow you to call yourself an expert unless you have very specific credentialing. So expertise displays confidence.

And then the next step is I work with, or we work with, if you’re selling more of a team approach, and so what that does is qualifies and demonstrates your target market. And then I’ll give you the whole thing in a second. Who want to, well, whatever your ideal clients want, whatever the people you’re trying to attract want, is the benefit you bring, the benefit you deliver. And so it’s very easy to incorporate the benefit that way. And then, the final step is a value in action, which is really a for example, it elaborates a little bit on what you said.

So let me give you one very specific example with a coaching client I’m working with. And when I was talking to Vince, he gets excited about entrepreneurs, he gets excited about fast-paced entrepreneurs, and the energy they generate, and he knows they make good money, and he knows they want to focus their time on making money, and then they have someone else handle the money, if you will.

And so this is what we came up with, and he’s tweaking it, but it’s roughly this, “I specialize in financial planning for fast-paced owners and entrepreneurs.” Very clear, kind of defines the market already. So I work with successful business owners who want to focus on what they do the best, running their business and making money. Now you could say and leaving the rest to another professional, whatever.

And then the value in action is, I’m like a financial quarterback for my client. I put the right team in place to make sure they have all the right insurance in place, a benefits package that helps them retain their best employees, dah dah dah. And that’s a little dry. I like them to have a little more of a story.

Like for example, I was with a client yesterday, and here was their situation, here’s what we were able to do to them, not do to them, do with them. A Freudian slip, perhaps. So it’s a very simple way to put it, puts a lot of information in a very succinct way to talk about it. And now you can elaborate, you can go further in social settings, you’d do something a little bit different. But I’ll give you an example of where this kind of formula could be used.

So in a LinkedIn profile, most people put their name, and their credentials, CFP, whatever. And then they’ll say, founder of XYZ financial, or president of, and I know compliance has a role in all this, but what if it would be better if they said, “Helping fast-paced business owners do what they do best, running their business and helping them maximize their investments,” or something like that. So now that little headline, actually, here’s who we work with, and here’s what we do, all in a sentence, right on the LinkedIn profile, rather than something dry that means nothing to nobody.

Julie Littlechild:
And so I love that example, because it makes it really easy to work with. Can you also connect the dots for us between what you’re just talking about, and in fact all of the work that’s within this book, and what we’ve known you for for many years, which is really helping people generate more referrals. Is this work that you’re talking about now an extension of that? Does it make it easier in some way?

Bill Cates:
Yeah. So let me give you a quick evolution, and I think that’ll answer the question, and perhaps be helpful to everyone listening. So first of all, when I first started in this business 25 years ago, most of the time I was hired to do workshops and speeches on how to ask for referrals. How to do it without being needy, without being pushy, or aggressive or all that.

And then I learned, very quickly, that some people were struggling, because guess what? They weren’t referable. They hadn’t become referable yet.

Julie Littlechild:
We should do a podcast on that.

Bill Cates:
Yes, you should. And you do, you do a great one. And so that’s when the whole client engagement thing started to take root. And then I learned about your research, and now I quote you guys all the time. And so we have to become referable. And then, of course, the do not call regulations come in play, and then all the different ways that it’s just so hard to reach people these days.

And so my book Beyond Referrals talks about referrals, but actually then makes the case for not just referrals, but introductions. We have to get connected. So one tip for anybody listening right now, is when you’re with a prospect, client, center of influence, and you’re talking about this idea of referrals/introductions, use the word introduction. How would you like to introduce me to Laura? Let’s talk about how you introduce me to George, because you really want to get connected.

But then I was doing research for a company to deliver a speech at their annual event. And so I interviewed some of the top producers, and I asked them about, “What do you say when you get introduced or referred to a prospect?” And I got to tell you guys, in most cases, the way they talked about their value was very old school, very lame. “I’d love to take you to a cup of coffee, and talk about the work I do.” And I’m like, who’s got time for that anymore?

But what happened, is if they got a great referral, a great introduction, I should say, and there’s high trust there, that will carry you through a weak value proposition. Sometimes all the way through to gaining the new client. But if it’s not super high-trust introduction or a great introduction, somewhere along the line, that borrowed trust starts to wane, and you’d better have a great way of talking about your value, or you’re going to have prospects that seem to be interested, go missing in action. All of a sudden someone you had this great conversation with, they’re not returning your emails or phone calls anymore.

So that’s where I realized the next step for me was to talk about the value proposition, and how we become relevant and compelling to people to attract their attention. And the fastest, straightest line to relevance with anybody, the fastest way to cut through all the noise in the marketplace, and all the knee-jerk reactions that we get, is to be introduced by someone they really trust. And so there’s a total parallel here, of all these messages that have come together for us.

Julie Littlechild:
I love this point about the fact that a high-trust situation can get you through, because I do think that we get fooled into believing that certain things are working. So you might say, “Well, I get X number of referrals a year, and I don’t ask anyone,” well, maybe they were always going to refer, but there’s a bigger opportunity. So really stepping back and looking at it a little more analytically, I think, is really important, and you’re sort of leading us down this path of growing the business. So we’ve got the he important messaging, which we do want to come back to, but there’s like, there’s a couple of challenges that you point out in the book that relate to attracting and winning new clients. Can you talk to us about those before we even dig in further?

Bill Cates:
Yeah, so the two main challenges are this. The first one is the marketing message overload that everybody’s experiencing. And I have a chapter in the book on the neuroscience of relevance. And I had a great time studying the brain, actually hurt my brain, but I was trying to figure out how the brain works, and how that will help us in crafting messaging that will attract the right people.

And so the brain is scanning six times a second. That’s pretty fast. Am I safe? Where am I? What are my surroundings? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? And three times a second, is there an opportunity? And the brain loves an opportunity. The brain loves to take action, but only when it feels safe. And so another parallel way to think about this, is with this barrage of information that’s coming at everybody, that’s coming at your prospects, is this relevant? Is this not relevant? Do I pay attention to this? Do I want to spend energy on this? Or do I want to move on and look for some other opportunity?

And so that’s why our message has to be totally relevant to cut through all that marketing message overload. And we have to be continually relevant throughout. How many times has anyone on this podcast had someone approach them selling a product or service? Have no clue who we are, what we do, they think they got the answer to the cure for cancer for any business, and they don’t even know who we are. And so they’re not relevant. It doesn’t cut through the marketing message overload. We ignore them. If you’re not relevant, you’re ignored. So that’s one of the biggest challenges that book book tries to tackle.

And the other one, is actually moving people to take action, because it’s one thing to get in and get their attention, but what are you ultimately trying to do? Well, you’re trying to get your email returned, you’re trying to get your voicemail returned, you’re trying to get them set the second appointment or third appointment, or do a plan, or whatever it is. So whatever that action is you desire. And the challenge we face is inertia. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to remain at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. So there’s some people that are doing nothing. They’re stuck doing nothing. They’re ignoring what they need to do. And there are other people that are moving in a certain direction. Maybe it’s the right direction for them, maybe it isn’t, but they haven’t ever stopped to look and see if there’s another way to move.

And so how do we become that outside force to get them to notice us and then to look at a different way to behave and take action? So those are the two big challenges that the book was written to address.

Julie Littlechild:
So how do we become that outside force? Because I’ll take on that.

Bill Cates:
Well, and it’s not always easy, and I don’t have a simple answer, and it’s going to vary a lot. But first of all, having the most relevant possible message you can will make a big difference. So obviously, getting introduced becomes kind of an outside force. You get inserted into their life by an introduction from someone else they already trust. You have an opening message. You have a way of talking about what you do, of asking questions that shows empathy. One of the big things that your prospects want from you is a sense of your knowing this about them, about their world.

So when you target a niche market, whether it’s employees in a large company, whether it’s business owners as an industry, the things you say, the questions you ask, demonstrate that knowing this. And so that starts to open the door a little bit to that. Now sometimes we can go a little further, and we can even become that outside force by being a little counter-intuitive, or even a little controversially, and you got to be careful about that, and it’s got to fit and all.

But so for instance, Steve, I believe you wrote a book, something like Don’t Ask for Referrals or Stop Asking for Referrals.

Steve Wershing:
Yes, I did.

Bill Cates:
And that’s a counter intuitive way of grabbing someone’s intention. What do you mean stop? Don’t ask for referrals? What should I do? And actually, in the book, you talk about referrals, but you’re trying to get our attention. You’re trying to get us to think a little differently. Think in terms of introductions, think in terms of earning the right to those things.

I’ll give you an example. There’s one advisor that I’ve been coaching, and I didn’t help him with this, he came up with this on his own. He says, “I help my clients create indestructible wealth,” and it’s like, whoa. Now what I like about that, is it’s creative enough to grab someone’s attention. Like, “Oh, what’s that? I like that,” but it’s not so creative that the brain can’t figure it out. So I had another coaching client that, until we started working together, used to tell people, “Oh, I’m a financial nutritionist.”

Julie Littlechild:
Oh yeah.

Bill Cates:
And it’s like, “Oh, okay, what is that?” The brain doesn’t know what that is. The brain doesn’t want to spend energy on it. The brain moves on. So it’s that balance between being counterintuitive and creative, and then being relevant.

Steve Wershing:
And then-

Bill Cates:
Yeah, go ahead.

Steve Wershing:
And that’s a really important point, because you’ve pointed out, earlier in this conversation, I think it’s really important that if you’re too clever, then the brain won’t recognize it as relevant, and it’ll discard it, looking for the relevant stuff. And those are two really good examples of where you’re straddling the line on one side or the other. So how can an advisor sort of figure out where that line is? Or how can they refine that so that they end up being attention getting, but without going so far that they lose relevance and people ignore them?

Bill Cates:
Yeah. A couple of couple of thoughts on this. First of all, the brain wants to get it. It’s got to be clear, if it’s confusing, Donald Miller says, “If you confuse, you lose.” So I think of it this way. I think of a billboard. If you’re driving down the highway and you see a billboard, and you know you’ll see the message, and then like 40 seconds later, you get what the message meant, not a good message.

So when 7-Up was introduced to the market, this is an old example, but years and years ago, there were no lemon-lime sodas before. There was Cola, Coca-Cola, Pepsi cola, RC Cola. And so they got no traction, because people didn’t know what to do with it in their brain, until they started calling it the Uncola. And then when they started calling it the Uncola, people go, “Oh, I know Cola, okay uncola what is that?” And it just got the attention. It became that outside force that kind of meant enough, and created curiosity.

So we never want to introduce concepts to the brain that the brain doesn’t understand, until we’ve introduced something the brain does get. So we always want to lead with things that the brain gets and understands. That’s why we want to talk in language that our clients and prospects use, not what we necessarily use.

So one of the things I recommend, is advisors talk to their clients. We should never create marketing messaging, for whatever it is, without talking to some clients about this, and, “Here’s what I say to the client, what does that mean to you?” And, “How would you say that?” And, “Oh, well, what value did you find from the work we’re doing?” “Well, I found this,” and your clients are going to give you the words, and they’re going to give you these expressions, and you’re going to come up with the right words that resonate with your target market immediately, without using jargon, without using clever things that confuse people.

And then, when you develop it, and you start to write a few things up, then run it by some other clients, and is it clear? Run it by people who have no clue what you do. Is it clear? Do they get it? If they don’t, then then you got to work. I have 17 radical rules of relevance, and one of them is you always give your clients a seat at the table. Never develop any of this without giving them a seat at the table. Giving them input, allowing them to have input on how you talk about what you do.

Julie Littlechild:
I love that concept, obviously, but you mentioned these 17 rules. Can you give us another few of the top rules that you think are important?

Bill Cates:
Yeah. So the first one was the one I mentioned already, which is the straightest line or shortest route to relevance is through an introduction. Number two is give your clients a seat at the table. Number three is value is in the eye of the beholder. It is your job to determine, and develop, and communicate your value in a way that will resonate with prospects. So if they don’t see the value, then you haven’t done a good job communicating it. They’re the ones who determine the value, and that’s also a great reason to check in with clients on a regular basis to make sure they are seeing the value, and then you can take some of that that they say, and use that in your message.

For instance, I had a guy, Michael Schmitz, one of my clients out in San Mateo, California, said, “Bill, you make asking for referrals as natural as breathing.” And I go, “Whoa, that’s pretty good, Michael. I never would have thought of saying that.” Wow, that’s what a guy said… “Great. Can I use that? Can I put your name?” “Oh yeah, sure.” So we learned this from our clients. We get this stuff from our clients.

Another one, number six is differentiation for differentiation’s sake is worthless. The goal of creating a differentiation in the market, the talking about what makes you a little different, it’s a worthless endeavor, unless it’s tied to a real value to your clients, unless they see the benefit, they see the usability of that difference, and most people don’t do that. They talk about, “Well, I do this, and I do that, and that.” Yeah, well, so what? So a bank I’m working with in New England, they do just commercial lending, and one of their, what they thought was a unique selling proposition was we’re 127 years old. And I said, so what? What does that mean?

Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got to translate that to a benefit, and most people don’t. They come up with fun differences, but it’s not useful to the quoting prospect.

Steve Wershing:
And that’s such an important point. As you pointed out before with, with the title of my book, you and I have disagreed on a couple of things. But I think that we’re in total agreement on this whole relevance thing, and specifically with the differentiation that it’s not just enough to be different, you need to be different in a way that’s important to the client. But then-

Bill Cates:
Can I elaborate on that?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, sure. No, no, go ahead.

Bill Cates:
Well, so I see a lot of branding exercises, going out there with advisors, and now someone’s into fishing, so he or she brands their website and everything around fishing, or whatever, their horses or race cars. And I’m not saying you can’t do that, and I’m not saying your personality shouldn’t show through, but that in and of itself isn’t going to attract anybody to your business. It might humanize you, which helps a little, but because you’re into racing or fishing or horses or whatever it is, that’s not really usable by your prospects and clients, unless you can figure out how it is usable, and make that differentiation. I don’t know.

Steve Wershing:
It might separate you from other people, but it’s not as strong as if you could directly link what you’re differentiating on to something that relates to their wealth. So if you can relate to them, like you’re saying, that may help a little bit, but if you can relate to them in a way that relates to the advice that you want to give them, that’s even better.

But to drill into that a little bit further, you talk in the book about strategic relevance and tactical relevance. Can you distinguish between those two, and tell us a little bit more about the role that each plays?

Bill Cates:
Yeah, so strategic relevance is essentially the big decisions. Like what is your target market? Or do you even have a target market and should you? And the answer is probably yes. And then who is your right fit client? Who is the person you really want to serve and attract? How do you want to talk about your differentiation? What does differentiate? Those are kind of strategic decisions that we make, and we need to make those before we get very tactical. Because most people, unfortunately, if they’re having a problem, they just go immediately to the tactics, without even realizing they might have a flawed strategy in the first place.

But then then we need to get tactical. And tactical is really how we prepare to deliver our message to specific people. So when we’re sending an email to a prospect, or when we’re doing a presentation in front of potential prospects, or however we’re communicating our value, which is in everything we do these days, what words do we choose? What research do we do before we reach out to them?

So that’s kind of the tactical stuff. All geared towards having the right message for the right person at the right time, communicated in the right way. All of that is the work of tactical, and strategic relevance. So the what you do thing that we talked about earlier, that falls in the category of tactical relevance. How you specifically talk about what you say in front of a specific person, or group of people. So that’s essentially the difference.

Julie Littlechild:
Can you breathe some life into all of this, and maybe just put the spotlight on some examples of companies that you’ve seen really exhibiting some of these characteristics?

Bill Cates:
Yeah, and I’ll tell you, the one thing that really does need to be talked about, and these are the examples I’m going to give, and how it’s really helped these folks, is making that decision to have a target market. And it’ll vary depending on what your geography is, because if you have a smaller pool of folks to pull from, you can’t be quite as narrow as if you’re in a larger metropolitan area. But you can also develop a national reputation, and do work long distance without even meeting people, if you have that kind of reputation.

So I’ll give you three quick examples. Todd McDonald, strongly successful at Albany, New York. He works with closely-held, family-owned heavy construction firms. His clients build roads, runways, bridges, large commercial buildings. And if you go to his website, the first thing you’re going to see is heavy construction equipment. So he is showing that he knows them. They see themselves in his website, through the photographs that he uses. And he’s going to start developing some videos where he talks about some of the work he does in video form, actually at some of these work sites of his clients.

So they will identify with him, and they will then they will see the kind of work he does for the types of people. So he’s developed a national reputation in this industry, and people come to him all the time. And you know, when I went to his website, I kind of joked, I said, “Todd, this is great, because I can immediately tell whether I fit or don’t fit in your world. You’re attracting the right people, and repelling the wrong people. It’s perfect.” But I kind of miss the clip art of that retired couple walking.

Julie Littlechild:
… with the writing on the sand?

Bill Cates:
Yeah. And so let me tell you about Adam. Adam is in Carmel, Indiana. I don’t know how to pronounce his last name. I got to ask him. But he made, recently, to go all in with optometrists. And so he helps up optometrists gain clarity around their financial lives and financial future. And what he told me, and I’ll read the exact quote that he wrote to me, he says, “Since making the decision to go all in and exclusively serve optometrists, my only regret is not doing this five years ago. As I’ve become exclusive, sorry, opportunities to become greater and greater in both quality and quantity.” So his message is perfectly tailored for them. They see themselves in his message. It creates that empathy. And of course, optometrists know other optometrists, sometimes they’re part of group practices, and it just has become very easy for him.

The third example is Russ Thornton out of Richmond. His company is called Wealth Care for Women. And so even in his company title, you know what he does, and all of the verbiage on his website are the words that his clients use, and the challenges that they face in the way that they face those challenges. And he has his client-focused why right on his homepage. Here’s why this guy, Russ Thornton is focusing on women and their issues, and it has to do with the fact that his mom got divorced, and she had some financial trouble, and he just has a lot of empathy for that world. And so when you target like that, your message is so much more powerful.

Now real quick, since I’m on websites, real quick, you may have more than one target market, and that’s fine. You can, especially if you’re in a smaller geography, and not one is wide enough, deep enough. Make sure on your website the first thing you do, practically, is to have them self identify who they are. Small business owner, or CEO executive, or woman in transition, or whatever they might be. And then they click that button, and then they go to the part of the website that is totally relevant for them. So you’re not trying to hit three different types of people on one page with a message that just gets watered down, and doesn’t speak to them. So that gives you an idea of people who are doing a great job with this sort of thing.

Julie Littlechild:
Just to tie this to referrals, so we’ve got this powerful target, a clear target, which allows you to have this powerful message. When you talk about having message that’s critically compelling, is that what you mean?

Bill Cates:
Well, a message that’s compelling, is a message that strikes the emotional component of all of this. And a couple of thoughts. First of all, science has discovered, the work of Antonio Damasio, among others, using a technology called magnetic resonance imaging, say that three times fast, has discovered that in the part of the brain that feels emotion, if that part of the brain is damaged, and that person can’t feel emotion, they can’t make a decision. And so no emotion, no decision.

Now a lot of advisors, very analytical, like to use statistics and all this. And I’m not saying we don’t do any of that, because the right statistic can actually create emotional response. At the bottom line, though, they make a decision that they trust you, they like you, it feels right. And that’s a feeling. And so we’ve got to make sure that we touch on the emotional aspects of the work we do, the fears, the doubts. The brain’s looking for fears, and doubts, and concerns about twice as much as they’re looking for opportunities.

So we start with what the brain’s looking for. We make sure they’re not making the mistakes. We make sure that we’re speaking to their fears or concerns. And then we come in and we talk about the opportunities, and the things that they might aspire to. That’s how we start to have a more compelling message.

I’ll tell you, I got this great model from a guy in Boston, Michael Skok, he’s a venture capitalist, and he has this chart. It’s in the book that talks about, are we focusing on the right problems? Because if a client has, let’s say, if they have an aspirational issue, something they really want to do that they’ll get to someday. Well, they won’t usually spend a lot of time, energy and resources on that.

But if the problem is critical and blatant, and they know they have it, then they’ll spend time and money. So what we need to do, what advisors do quite often, is educate prospects, so that they see that what they thought was aspirational… “Yeah, I’ll get a financial plan one of these days,” or, “I’ll buy life insurance when I get around to it,” whatever. That they demonstrate that what the prospect thought was aspirational is actually critical.

In other words, what’s the cost of not taking this action? And that can elevate an aspirational issue into a critical issue almost instantly. And so we’ve got to focus on the right problems and talk about the problems in the right way, and that will drive people through the decision process.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s such a great point. I think we make so many assumptions about the problem that our service solves, and it may or may not be right. I’m so thrilled that you wrote this book. It’s important, I think, for this industry, and I just think everyone in this industry who’s working with clients needs to read this. We’ll definitely include links, but Bill, where do you recommend advisors go to learn more about, not only about the book but the work that you do?

Bill Cates:
Thank you. Well, certainly the book, amazon.com, and the paperback’s available there now, and probably by the time this podcast airs, the audio will be up, and the Kindle will be up as well. But as far as me, referralcoach.com, referralcoach.com, we have a lot of resources on the page which are complimentary. It’s a way in our world that we can serve you. And if our message resonates with you, and you want to go a little further, then we’re happy to chat with you.

Steve Wershing:
And let me just add, Bill, my compliments along with Julie’s. I really enjoyed reading the book, and well, every chapter, I was finding stuff that was, “This is great.” I really wish I had written this book myself, so everybody should read it. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there.

Bill Cates:
Thank you. I’ve read books like that, too, and I go, “Darn, this is-”

Steve Wershing:
Exactly.

Bill Cates:
I take that as high compliment. Thank you, bud.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Steve Wershing:
Thanks, Bill.

Bill Cates:
Oh, you bet. My pleasure.

Steve Wershing:
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.