Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: But then, if you can drill that even farther down into the philosophical, which is why is it just wrong that you have to face that? If you communicate to the internal challenge by talking from the philosophical point of view, you deserve and be confident about your retirement plans, you deserve to have a solution to this problem, that’s what will get people to say, “Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. I deserve that.” And then, you’re in a conversation where you become the obvious choice for the person who needs that solved. Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: And so, the external challenge was how do I get enough of a reserve that if anything happened, I wouldn’t immediately be in a big financial problem. And the feeling that went behind that was that they wanted the freedom. They wanted the ability to not have to be nervous about that all the time. And so, what we taught that advisor to say was, “I help young tech professionals in this metropolitan area get their financial freedom by coaching them to their first million and beyond.” And we chose million for a specific reason, and we won’t go into a lot of that, but that was an emotional trigger for them. And so, that was one thing that worked exceedingly well. So, instead of talking about being a financial advisor or providing the education for young professional, we talked about achieving the freedom and using that trigger of that million dollar amount. And it got him in… It was really easy to get into conversations for him once he had mastered that one. Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: There are a lot of advisors who’ve gotten really expert at Social Security planning. Social Security is a hot button for people approaching retirement. So, you get technical expertise at that, that’s one way to set you apart. There are some folks that get expert at a large local employer, so they can talk about, “Here’s how you make the most of the company benefits as you transition into retirement. We know everything there is to know about this company’s pension or this company’s 401(k). We can coach you through that.” Or you can focus on the transition. I know that I want to be retiring in 5 or 10 years, but I don’t know what I have to do. And so, some advisors say, “We have a program where in that five-year period, we will get you totally ready so that when you make the decisions, you could be confident that you’re making the right ones, and it gives you a smooth transition into the next chapter of your life.” So, if you go with a broad target, then you need a focused niche within it. Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: We’ll get back to the show in just a moment, but I wanted to make you an offer in the meantime. This is Steve Wershing from Becoming Referable. With everything that’s changed over the past year, your client’s needs and priorities have changed as well. How has their outlook changed? Their goals? What do they think of what you’ve done well during this trying time and what can be improved? A virtual client advisory board will give you those insights and more. Our proprietary system will teach you who to invite to your board, how to invite them, the best questions to put on the agenda. We’ll facilitate the meeting and give you five deliverables. Just send me a note, steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and put CAB, that’s C-A-B, in the subject line, and I’ll send you my free report, seven tips on making your virtual client advisory board a success. Ask us about our virtual wine tastings too. Send me a note at steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and put C-A-B in the subject line. Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: One thing that you can do also, and this is a little bit more general, but it’s a nice way of introducing the idea of referrals into a conversation, is that whenever a client or whenever anyone calls you and has a little problem that you can solve for them, either on the phone right there or by doing a little bit of research, and then telling them… or even if it’s in a client meeting, giving them the offer that, “I’m happy to help you with this. I’m glad we could resolve this. By the way, if a friend ever says that they’re struggling with this too, I would be happy to chat with them. I’ll be happy to give them 10 or 15 minutes on the phone, no obligation because they’re a friend of yours.” Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: And advisors will often say, “Just send us everybody, we’ll sort them out.” So, that doesn’t help because you haven’t given them anything to remember you by. There’s nothing that you’ve given them to serve as that trigger to say… if they hear something from a friend of theirs, “Oh, geez. I should tell them about Julie.” We said this already. So, that’s why it’s so important. Rather than just say, “Send us everybody, we’ll sort it out.” Say, “If you have a friend who tells you they’re struggling with this, just like we solved it for you, we’re really good at that.” Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: And I love this because my own brother, who has nothing to do with what I do, called me on this. He’s great at calling me out about stuff. I was getting ready to do a presentation. It was out in California where he lives. And first thing in the morning, I’m up and I’m running through the presentation in my mind, walking around his kitchen. And he walked in and he said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I’m running through my talk.” He said, “You have to say it out loud.” Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: You’re doing them a service because you’re helping them clarify what they do well for people. But then, when you talk about what you do… And I’ll go back to one of the early episodes that you and I did on the podcast, it was with Evelyn Zohlen. I just love the way that she puts it because she’s very focused on women going through specific kinds of transitions. And 75% of her new introductions come from centers of influence and it’s because she goes to a lawyer and says, “I don’t want all your clients, but if you have a woman who’s in this situation, we’re your firm.” Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: You and I did… I don’t know if you remember this because it was in 2011, but we did a thing in conjunction with a conference and we brought a bunch of folks together and talked a little bit about business development, and that kind of stuff. And I remember this one advisor who said my staff is my biggest referral source, because what we do is they’re sitting in the appointment with me, and at some point, there’s something I have to go do and I get up and leave the room. And the staff… I think they thought this up themselves. The staff said to the client, “Don’t tell him, but we love working with you. We wish we had 100 people just like you.” Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild:
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. Research shows that advisors who talk most frequently about the description of their target clients get the most referrals. Julia and I, in this episode, will talk about how to talk about your target client. We’ll talk about the importance of talking not just about the description of that client, but about the challenges they face and how you have a unique solution to help them overcome those challenges. We’ll talk about how to give people memory triggers so that you can jog their memory and remind people to refer you when they find someone that would be really good for you. We talk about who to say it to and how? There are lots of good tips in this episode that if you incorporate them, will help you become more referable. And so, here’s my conversation with Julie about clarifying your message.
Hey, Steve. It’s you and I this week.
Hey, Julie.
Looking forward to it as always.
I love talking with you, you know that.
I know, I know. This is some of our best brainstorming when we get to just have these communications.
That’s right.
One of the things which has been an interesting theme through so many different podcasts that we’ve done, whether it’s ours or whether it’s guests, is around the target audience, it keeps coming up as this theme. And I know you and I both see this idea of really knowing your target market. Being able to articulate who they are and what you do for them as maybe one of the most foundational elements of having a strong referral program. That’s the focus for today, but maybe I could just start there. I mean, what do you think? Is this one of the pieces that you need to have in place if you’re going to be successful?
Absolutely. Well, and that’s what we found in the last study that you and I did was one of the things that was most closely associated with getting a lot of referrals is talking about the description of the client that you wanted to get as often as possible. The firms that talked about who their client was most frequently, tended to get the most referrals. Knowing who you want is, yes, I think it’s foundational and it’s supported by that research.
Well, and there’s two parts to what you said, there’s the knowing who I want. I could think about that all day long and I could write it on a white board, but if I don’t tell anybody, then we’ve got a bit of a disconnect. So, why don’t we just start there? What do you think advisors need to think about when it comes… the first thing when it comes to knowing their target. How do they get there?
Well, how they get there is to develop that profile of that client, but I really want to stress something. And in our discover coaching process, we spent a lot of time on this and that’s not just the description of the target client, but the challenge that they face. People don’t respond because, “Oh, I’m trying to communicate with a 45-year old female thoracic surgeon.” But they connect with somebody because you’re communicating an intimate knowledge of a challenge that is on their mind, something that they want to overcome. And that’s what people connect to. And that provides all kinds of opportunities for developing messages and for giving people triggers that would remind them of you. So, it’s not the description of the person, but it’s really fundamentally the challenge that they face.
Yeah. It’s an interesting point. I know one of the exercises we’ve gone through with advisors is just really simple, right? The ideal client at the center, almost a hub and spoke and then around that, just what are all of the key challenges they’re facing? How do you take advisors through that process to really get deep on that?
We are now StoryBrand certified. I’m a StoryBrand certified guide. And so, there’s that process that we use for that. And we talk about three levels of challenge. There’s the external, the internal, and the philosophical. And without going into too much depth, the external is pick something, pick a particular action that they have to take, or a decision that they have to make, or a strategy that they know that they need, that’s the external challenge, that’s where we begin. But then, drilling down into that is how do they feel about it? That’s the internal challenge. Because it’s the feeling that’s driving them, that’s motivating them. It’s not just the left-brained knowledge that they need to solve a problem, but it’s the underlying feeling that’s really driving them.
Yeah. That’s a good point because there are so many internal, emotional barriers and obstacles that people face. And if you can help them even label that or acknowledge it, I think you’re ahead of the game. And I know you talk a lot about getting very specific, right? Is that what you mean or are there other elements? When you think about this ideal target, let’s assume you’ve gone through this process of truly identifying their challenges, what else do we need to do to get specific about that ideal or target?
Yeah. It’s focusing your messaging on that primary challenge. And we should be clear that does not mean that that’s the only thing you can do for people. But focusing on that particular person, on the particular description, and then extending that to the particular challenge or scenario that you helped them get through, that’s how you open up the conversation. You can do all kinds of things for them beyond that, but that’s how you get into the conversation. And ultimately, that’s how you get referred. It’s like, “Oh, you’ve got that problem. I know a woman who can help you with that.” That just makes referrals so much easier. And so, you really want to get specific about who you’re looking for and that particular thing that you’re really good at solving, because it gets you into those conversations and gets you those referrals.
Yeah. And I think that’s a challenge for… And it’s not just advisors. I know I’ve gone through this with my own business where there’s so much we can do. And even getting down to… for us, it was the four key problems that we solve, right? And it took a lot to get down to that. Can you think of any examples of firms or organizations that you’ve seen really get a good targeted definition?
Well, there’s somebody that I had coached a while ago that we use as an example, periodically. And mostly because it worked so well for him and it worked so quickly. And that was somebody who was in an area where there was a lot of tech industry and his target was young tech professionals. And the tech industry, they have a lot of upheaval, and the ground is constantly shifting, and companies are getting bought and sold. And so, it can be a real challenge for people’s career plans in those industries. And so, what we found was something that people responded to was to have freedom. And so, we really focused on younger professionals who didn’t really have a lot of reserve yet. They’re still fairly young in their careers, and they hadn’t built up a whole lot of reserves, and they didn’t have a whole lot accumulated. They had a great income but they didn’t have a lot accumulated.
Yeah, for sure. And so, a couple of things come up as you’re talking there, I’d love your insight on. One is I’ve often talked to advisors who, as we know, can sometimes be reticent to be too narrow in the definition, but it’s also become clear to me that there are firms whose definition of their ideal is actually quite broad, but they do such a good job of understanding their needs. Let’s take pre-retirees, and I’ve often said it can still be an effective target if you can speak to those fears, needs, anxieties better than anyone else if you have better resources, if you’re better able to. I mean, would you agree with that even though it’s a big target?
Well, absolutely. And that’s why I distinguish between target and niche. There’s a target market, those are the people that you’re aiming for. And then, there’s the niche, which is the unique solution, unique experience that you create. Many people, when we say you have to get really specific, they start thinking about narrowing the target market, and that is perfectly viable. There are plenty of firms that have gotten really specific about a very tight definition of the target market. And then, they can craft an experience where they can attract virtually everybody in that target market. But as you point out, you can still be successful with a broad target market if you have a very focused niche, because you really only have to attract a tiny percentage of that target market to more than accomplish your business plan. And so, you used pre-retirees as an example, there are a number of ways of approaching that. One is you can develop a particular expertise at something.
Yeah, absolutely. And the one thing that I would say certainly as we look at our research is that age and or life stage is something that can connect to what we’re talking about, but wealth rarely does. Would you agree with that?
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. And that’s a big problem that I see out there that if you work with people with X million, to me, that’s just an ideal client definition, it’s an internal filter that you use, but it’s very hard to build a niche around that.
Right. Well, for a couple of reasons. One is that not everybody who has $5 million has the same set of needs. There may be a couple of things that are similar there, but like you point out, we don’t talk about how much we have in the bank. And also, people don’t walk around looking for some solution to the fact that they’ve got 5 million in bank, that’s not on their minds. And it’s not something that we talk about with our friends, so it’s not a good basis for referral, but talking about that particular need. I said it in the last book, a niche is a need. Talking about those needs and challenges, well, that’s something that people talk about with each other, that’s something that, even more important, people respond to. If you can make it clear, “Hey, I know you have this challenge and I can help you solve it.” They’ll respond. It’s better than saying, “I know you have $5 million and I can do something for you.”
Yeah. Something, I’m sure. Yeah. I mean, having a line of sight into how much money I have is not a line of sight into me as a person. And there was one other point I just wanted to quickly note, because you mentioned with the example you used, the million dollars, for example, was a particular trigger. One of the things that I’ve observed is that it’s very easy to make assumptions about what will resonate with our clients and with our prospects. And increasingly, we’ve been working with firms. In fact, we’re doing this for our own business right now, where we’re going out to assess what are the statements? What are the problems? What are the challenges that actually resonate with you? And using that to drive decision making rather than our own assumptions about that.
Yeah. Well, you and I are both involved in that. And that’s why you rely so heavily on the research, and you help advisors in doing that research, and why I’m so committed to doing advisory boards. Yeah. We need to find out from them because it’s not necessarily what we think they need. What’s important is what they think they need.
Let me pivot a little to how we use this information. Let’s assume for a moment we’ve done the hard work of really defining our audiences and their challenges. Then, how do we communicate this? What are the different ways that we should think about communicating this?
Well, once you’ve figured out what challenge is on people’s minds and what things they struggle with, there are a lot of different ways that you can do it. A couple simple ones would be to say… Once you’ve solved this problem for somebody, you can say, “Hey, if any of your friends mentioned that they’re struggling with this, I would be happy to talk with them as well.” And that just reinforces, I’m really good at this particular challenge.
But I think the point to underline, if I could, is that you didn’t say if you know any friends who need a financial advisor, right? It’s really making sure that we hone in on the problem that was solved.
That’s right. That’s right.
Yeah. And the other way that we’ve talked to advisors about doing that is to just… And it requires really active listening to find those moments, to reinforce that you didn’t just solve the client’s problem, it’s something that you do for others to plant that seed, if you will. So, if you have gone through a process of solving a particular problem, it’s along the lines of, “Yeah. It’s really interesting. Here’s what we’re hearing from our clients a lot these days that they’re really struggling with this.” And you’re just reiterating the problem that you solved, but you’re planting that seed as well.
Exactly. And the reason why you want to be forward about that, why you want to have that prominent in your messaging, I wanted to go back to a great example of this, because it comes up in advisory boards periodically. Once we’ve done a few advisory boards and demonstrated to the people on the board that we’re really committed to improving the experience for them, then we get permission to get their help on stuff that’s not necessarily going to benefit them directly, and one of those things is asking them about referral behavior. And every so often, not unusual, it comes up in the meeting, somebody on the board will ask the advisor, “Well, who should we be referring to you? Who should we be sending to you?” Right?
Yeah. I think you have a different name for it, we call it conversation triggers, where you’re trying to use the same words that people use when they’re talking to their friends, right? Because we so routinely say, there’s a website you should go to or an article I read or a TED talk I listened to. And you just want to be in that list, you definitely need, but it needs to be that specific. But this also raises another point, because look, you and I think about this stuff all day long. So, some of the things just roll off our tongue a little bit, but this is a new muscle, right? It’s a different conversation. So, how do you help advisors to feel comfortable with this?
Well, it’s a really important point. And I’m glad you brought that up because there are a lot of times that I’m sure you hear, I hear, “But you’re so good at this.”
Yeah. Let me write that down. Let me write down what you just said, right?
Well, We’re so good at this because we do it all day long, right? And that’s fine if you want to write down what I just said, but unless you say it 100 times, it’s not going to be comfortable for you. Yeah. So, whatever you come up with, you have to practice, you have to make the commitment to doing something uncomfortable for a whole bunch of times until it becomes comfortable. And even financial planning, any advice that you deliver, that’s not natural, that’s not something you were born with. You had to learn how to do it and you had to see a whole bunch of clients before you really got comfortable and confident about what you were saying. The same thing is true in learning referral language.
Don’t wing it.
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
And there’s a gaping chasm between writing something down that sounds a bit script than saying it. There’s an art to writing like you speak. And so, if you don’t naturally have that or you haven’t had to do that a lot, the only way you’re going to figure it out is by trying to say it and realizing that that did not sound natural.
That’s right. And you want to do that with your coach or with your spouse or with your staff and get the discomfort thing past you, because you don’t want to be doing that in a real live situation, right? You don’t want to be standing there with the ideal person in front of you and stumble over your words. You want to have said it a whole bunch of times already. And just something to build on what you just said was it’s hard to write like you speak, that is a talent. So, instead of doing that, don’t write it down, say it into a recorder and then write it down or have somebody transcribe it for you, right?
Yes. It’s true. It’s so true. Try saying it out loud. You can get apps like Otter or different tools that you can just speak into your phone and it’ll transcribe it and send it to you. And so, we’ve talked a bit about getting crystal clear on the challenges. And then, building that into the way you talk about the problems that you solve. Are there other places you think that we can integrate those challenge statements to really reinforce it?
Well, one of the most obvious places that an advisor can use it is with a center of influence. If you’re telling your clients that, “I’m really good at solving this.” Then you ought to be telling centers of influence the same thing. And in fact, it’s not a bad idea for you to ask them that same question. We always want to make sure that we’ve got a good current vetted list of people that we can refer our clients to. What are the problems you think you’re really good at solving?
And they think about her probably 100% of the time, right? When that situation. Yeah.
Well, when they see that situation. Exactly, exactly.
Such fear gets in our way of narrowing the focus. It’s an interesting human way of thinking, right? As soon as I do this, I’m going to miss out on all of those opportunities. They were never real because nobody thinks of you 100% of the time.
And it’s even beyond that. If I restrict myself that I will starve to death, right? I mean, the fear is not I won’t get opportunities, the fear is I’m going to starve to death. So, it’s a scarcity mentality. And everybody’s heard enough about scarcity versus abundance and you know that the much more productive path is abundance. So, just recognize if you’re concerned about limiting your scope and narrowing your focus of your target market, then you’re thinking about a scarcity mentality, think about abundance.
Yeah. Well, and the other group that I’d like to make sure we talk about is the team. We saw this in our research very clearly. I think that the advisors who were getting most of the referrals not only had the definition, they were talking about it and they were talking about it to different groups, and the team was a really important part of that process. What are you seeing in that area?
And I’ll just say, when you and I looked at the results of that survey, what I was fascinated by was that the advisors who made it a practice to talk with their teams were the ones who got the most referrals. And it was a survey, so we can’t exactly know why that works, we have a couple of ideas. But I found that really fascinating that it wasn’t getting out in the public or even COIs, but it was the people who talked with their team members the most. And I think that there are two things behind that. One is if you’re saying it to your team, it’s probably because you’re saying it to everybody. Practice, practice, practice. The more you say it, the more comfortable you get with it, the more compelling you get, the more refined you can get about it, keep saying it. But the other thing is that people forget that everybody on the staff can help with business development. It’s not their job but they can help.
Isn’t that great?
And so, if you can teach the staff the challenges that you’ve faced, there are a lot of different ways they can reinforce that in their conversations with clients. And the more you can remind clients about what you do and that you’re looking for people like that, the more people you’ll get.
Yeah. I’d have to agree. The practice thing is what came to mind first is you’re just doing it. And it creates a bit of a culture of referability, I think, when everybody is now saying the same thing. And it sounds easy but it’s not, and it has to be reinforced over time. The other thing that comes to mind, and we talked to the team at Summitry a while ago on the podcast. And they talked about the persona that they’d created for the business. And what I remember most of all is this statement of every strategic decision. And it’s like, what would that persona do? So, they were filtering… And so, I do think that as this becomes more entrenched, it starts to become a filter for how we think about communications and how we think about strategy. And that just feeds on itself and drive success, so it’s everywhere. The business is now built around this client, you’re not just trying to shoehorn it in. That’s great. Hey, anything else you think you want to leave with advisors before we wrap up on this?
No, I think that’s… Well, we have a checklist that people can get if they want to, we’ll put the link in the show notes, but a checklist you can use with any of your communication that goes out to just… You can confirm whether or not you’re reinforcing that differentiator, that would be the big one, but just be specific about the challenges and practice, practice, practice. How about you?
Yeah. I think that’s… I mean, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think we’ve really honed in on the difference between just saying I have a target and actually building the business around that. It’s all about the challenges, it’s all about the needs. And maybe we can provide some links to those couple of podcast episodes that we mentioned as well to make that easy. We’ll do that in the show notes. Thanks, it was great talking to you.
Good to talk to you. I look forward to our next episode.
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.