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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 today’s episode, we speak to Dan Allison, who is the founder and President of the Feedback Marketing Group, a consulting firm helping organizations and professionals implement a system to duplicate their top clients. Dan’s background is actually in clinical and behavioral psychology. Dan co-founded a large mental health organization that employed hundreds of people and generated $20 million a year, by the time he was 27. After selling that company, he found himself in a strict non-compete clause that had him looking for other opportunities and he found financial services. He found that practitioners in our business can utilize mental health techniques in their own practice.

The Feedback Marketing Group is known primarily for doing focus groups with clients, so over the past several years, he’s interviewed thousands of clients for financial advisors and through that work as gleaned critical and fascinating insights about why people do and don’t refer. That’s the focus of our conversation today. We’ll talk about gold mine clients verses land mine clients. We’ll talk about value proposition versus propaganda. Listen through to the end, where Dan describes how to have a conversation with clients about referrals without asking for referrals so we can avoid all of those terrible techniques that we try to get you to avoid.

It’s a great conversation. There are nuggets and tips almost every minute in this conversation, and I know that you’ll take a lot out this that you can use right in your practice to help attract more folks. So, without any further delay, let’s get to Dan Allison. Dan, welcome to the Becoming Referable podcast, thanks for joining us today.

Dan Allison:
I appreciate you inviting me, thank you.

Steve Wershing:
We’re very excited, at least I’m very excited to have this conversation. I’ve heard you speak in a number of places and I think it’s great material and presented in a terrific way. But you have an interesting way of having gotten here. You have a background that started actually in clinical psychology. Tell us about your experience there and how you ended up coming over to financial services.

Dan Allison:
I definitely couldn’t write a how-to book to get from there to here, because it was a little bit on accident. My background is all in clinical and behavioral psychology. I was really fortunate during graduate school, a partner and I started a mental health firm to help kids who had serious mental health issues and had to be removed from the homes of their families. Essentially, these kids, their behavior became very dangerous and they couldn’t live at home anymore, so they had to live in the facilities 24 hours a day, in some cases for the rest of their life. My partner and I started a company to help families who had that need. What we did, is we were able to build that firm from our first two employees to about 450 employees over the course of four years and we had about 70 locations when we ended up selling the company.

When we sold it, my partner retired at the time, but I had agreed to a five-year non-compete clause in the mental health field. I don’t think fully at the time, when I sold the company, I understood the magnitude and the seriousness of a real non-complete clause, but for five years I could in no way, shape or form be in the mental health field. I ended up looking around at what kind of company I might want to be involved in or purchase or acquire and I ended up buying a couple of companies in the finance industry.

One, specifically, was in the investment and insurance industry and the customers of that company were financial advisors. I really got to work with financial advisors for the very first time and see what it was like to manage wealth and provide financial planning and really became really interested and intrigued with that profession.

Steve Wershing:
How did you get from that initial experience over into working on how to become more referable and figuring out how to support them that way? 

Dan Allison:
It was interesting, because like anybody with a psychology background, the number one thing you want to do is ask everybody a million questions to understand them and what their life was like. I really started focusing on these advisors and what was it like to be one, what was it like to try to grow a company, what is the biggest challenge they had. When it came to this idea of growing a company, I really didn’t feel like I met a lot of advisors that felt they had a solid process for how they grow the company. They all said they wanted referrals as their primary way of growing, but very few could tell me, okay how do you actually do that.

I remember specifically when I would interview an advisor, I would ask, “How many clients do you currently have?” They would say, 200 or 300. I would ask, “How many referrals did you get last year?” And, they would say, “Gosh, maybe 10 or 15.” I would ask a very serious question, “With 300 clients, why did 285 of them trust you with something this important and tell nobody about you? Why did 285 people not refer you to anybody?” I couldn’t get an answer from any of the advisors of why they thought that was, they felt they had good relationships.

What I ended up doing is saying, my background in psychology I used to conduct a lot of focus groups to try to learn behavior; why do you buy the things you buy? Why do you do this, why do you do that? I thought, why not go and ask their clients directly? I began, about 12 years ago now, conducting focus groups with advisors’ top clients as the participants. The whole point of the focus group, they were to learn, hey why do you pick the advisors you pick? Where do they exceed your expectations? Where do they fall short? And, ultimately, what does it take to create such a good experience that you want to tell other people about your advisors.

Back then, I was really trying to get in the clients’ head and understand from their perspective why they do and why they don’t refer. In fact, we’ve done countless focus groups over the last 12 years now and interviewed thousands of clients. I would ask every single interview or focus group participant, “Why don’t you refer your advisor to more people?” A very direct question. It was fascinating to hear from their perspective about the topic of referrals. I had read every sales book about referrals, but because I had never been an advisor, I read those books from a client perspective, because I am one.

I tried to picture all the one-liners type approaches that I read, you know, “I get paid in two ways” and “The greatest compliment you could give me is a referral.” I tried to picture myself being on the receiving ends of those approaches and they never felt right. It always felt like if my advisor or my attorney did that, it wouldn’t feel comfortable to me, so I wanted to learn the client perspective about this.

Steve Wershing:
What did they say? Why did 285 of those 300 people say they did not refer?

Dan Allison:
I hear the same, pretty much, seven things over and over and over again. Early on, I think we only interviewed a couple of hundred people over the first year and now, like I said, we’ve interviewed through North America and Australia and Europe. We’ve interviewed clients who have $100,000 of investible assets and $100 million of investible assets, and we hear the same things over and over again. I’ll tell you just kind of in order what clients normally tell me.

The number one response, when I ask directly, “Hey, why don’t you refer your advisor to more people?” The number one response is, that the advisor has never asked or doesn’t ask. The clients kind of look at me and say, “My advisor’s never brought that up to me, they don’t talk to me about it.” What I find fascinating though, is that I go back to the advisor and say, “Hey, the majority of your clients when interviewed, said the number one reason they don’t refer is you don’t even bring it up. You don’t even talk to them.” It’s funny to me that most advisors tell me that’s not true, I do bring it up. I talk about it. When I say, how do you bring it up, they normally are so passive about the topic, the client doesn’t even acknowledge that they’re having an exchange about referrals or introductions or helping other people. So, I find the number one reason that people say they aren’t referring is that the advisor doesn’t ask.

Now, like you, I am not a big fan of an advisor just directly saying, “Hey, will you refer me to somebody?” But, I also believe if an advisor doesn’t have a comfortable method of at least broaching the topic of helping additional people, the clients aren’t going to be active referrals sources. So, number one, the clients tell me, “Look, my advisor doesn’t ask.” Number two, I hear clients all the time-

Steve Wershing:
Hang on, can we just talk about that for a minute before we let that one go?

Dan Allison:
Yeah.

Steve Wershing:
Obviously, I have my own perspective on it and Julie has her perspective from doing the research. You as a psychologist, especially, what’s your perspective on why clients refer in the first place?

Dan Allison:
Well, the funny thing, I look at some of the most popular, I call them one-liners, because they kind of are, that sales trainers say, “Here’s what you should say in a review meeting.” Like I said, “I get paid in two ways”–

Steve Wershing:
Not how an advisor should ask for them, but what’s the motivation for somebody to provide one?

Dan Allison:
I’m getting there.

Steve Wershing:
Oh, okay.

Dan Allison:
My point is, the industry would have us believe that the motivation for a consumer to refer, is to help us. Help me grow my business. The greatest compliment you could give me. Compliment me. When the reality is, when I interviewer clients and I ask, “Hey, have you ever referred your advisor to anybody?” The ones that say, “Yes” I say, “Let’s talk about that. Who was the last person that you referred to your advisor?” “It was my brother.” I ask, “Why? That’s a risky thing to do, because if something went badly, it could hurt your relationship with your brother, why did you take that risk?” In 12 years, I’ve yet to hear a client say, “Because my advisor gets paid in two ways” or “The greatest compliment I could give them, so I wanted to..” I never hear a client tell me their motivation to refer had to do with helping the advisor, it is unequivocally because somebody they care about needed help and they trust their advisor to be the one to provide that help.

The number one message I tell advisors is, if you can change your perspective about this topic and realize the client perspective of referrals is very simple, their motivation is people they care about need help and if they’re the kind of person psychologically that is influential and willing to do so, they’ll make that connection happen. So, we’ve got to drop these scripts that are selfish and about us and “help me” and “get paid in two ways” and start realizing a client’s motivation is nothing more than to help other people.

Julie Littlechild:
So Dan- I’m never normally this quiet.

Dan Allison:
Let me have it, Julie.

Julie Littlechild:
Certainly, the research that we do every year supports exactly what you’re saying in terms of the motivation to refer. I’d love your perspective, just going back to where we started this conversation about the reason that clients say they don’t refer, it’s kind of interesting that the first thing that comes to mind for them, is they never asked, when that’s not really a reflection of why they refer in the first place.

Dan Allison:
Completely. I find that if it’s not top of mind from a client perspective, as simple, Julie, as I ask clients, “Is your advisor actively even trying to help more people? Do they have capacity?” So many of the clients that I interview are in the dark about even that. If the conversation isn’t occurring, they’re not top of mind when they’re interacting with somebody that says, yeah, I’m going through this situation. The client is much less likely to say, “Hey, I have somebody I need to introduce you to, to help you with that.” I think the two are kind of connected and I don’t think clients are telling me, “Hey, I want my advisor, every time I see him, to ask me for five names and phone numbers.” I think their response is more indifference, “I guess my advisor doesn’t even talk about that. I don’t even know if they’re bringing on new clients, they seem really busy.” But yeah, the motivation has always been, when I talk to these people, to help others, not to help their advisor.

Julie Littlechild:
So, more keeping it top of mind in terms of how they can help other people that they know, rather than then, can you write down the 10 names of your richest friends?

Dan Allison:
Yeah. Because the reality is, if you ask me that today, I wouldn’t give you a list. And, if you ask me who do I know–

Julie Littlechild:
Pretty sure.

Dan Allison:
It’s just not going to happen.

Steve Wershing:
What does that conversation sound like? How do you talk about referrals without asking for referrals?

Dan Allison:
First of all, I believe that when it comes to referrals there are two different kinds of clients. I utilize the term, you have gold mine clients and you have land mine clients. Gold mine clients are good strong relationships, but they also have this kind of psychological make up that they are influential over other people. They are comfortable declaring to the world, “Hey, I work with Julie and you should too.” They’re more likely to refer movies and restaurants also. It’s just a behavior they exhibit. But there are also land mines. There are clients that feel the relationship with their advisor is private and risky if they refer. Those people are very unlikely to refer.

The problem for most advisors, they haven’t identified who is even comfortable having this conversation, so they’re very passive around everybody. So, specifically, what I recommend advisors do, is learn from the perspective of the client, who is even comfortable having conversations when they come across somebody who might need help. What I might say, I’ll give you the language that I use with my clients. I tell my clients, “Look, our company has grown over the years and we primarily do that by helping our clients and the people that they care about, people that are important to them. But, that brings up a topic that for a lot of people can be uncomfortable. Referring. On one hand, Julie, every time I saw you, I could say, hey do you know anybody that needs help and I could bother you about it. I won’t do that. But I have also learned that if I am incredibly passive about it and I never even talk to my clients about it, my clients can genuinely bump into people that need help and not even be clear if we’re here to help. Do we have the time? Are they the right fit for us? Will we provide some second opinions to them? That option is bad too, because then people our clients care about don’t get help. So, I would simply ask you, how can I bring up that topic with you, if at all. Because if it is uncomfortable for you, we will never, ever discuss this topic. But how do we talk about it in a way that’s comfortable for you?”

I let the client tell me, “Look, I feel like our relationship is kind of a private one, I don’t talk about it.” And, that’s perfectly fine. I tell them, that’s excellent. You’re an important client, I don’t want to bring up something uncomfortable, but I also don’t want clients, like I said, bumping into people that need help and not even be clear because we’re scared to have a conversation with you to let them know we’re here to help. That’s identifying a land mine. Whereas the gold mines are going to tell you, “Oh yeah, I’m comfortable talking about it. Help me understand, what kind of people would you like to help?” It opens up a conversation about helping other people versus this one liner that I’m going to throw out there that may or may not work, that may blow up in my face, may reject me. So I believe advisors should really understand which clients are comfortable being good advocates and getting people help and which ones just aren’t likely to talk about it.

Julie Littlechild:
Your raise a good point, that again, we see in the data all the time, which is one of the number one reasons, and I do want to get back to those other six reasons by the way. One of the reasons we hear people don’t refer, all the time, is that they just don’t know who to refer. If that was the case, now you’ve identified your gold mine, they’re open to hearing, to what extent then do you feel it’s important to really get clear on who you help and how you help, so that they actually recognize that there is an opportunity when they do stumble across someone?

Dan Allison:
Julie, it’s interesting you say that in the same sentence as, I want to get to the six points, because the second point is that most of the clients we interview have absolutely no clue who their advisor wants to help.

Julie Littlechild:
Right.

Dan Allison:
What I ask the clients, is I kind of do a little role play situation. I ask, “Do you even value what your advisor does enough that you’d be inclined to refer?” The majority say, “Yeah, sure. Absolutely.” I role play asking them for referrals, so I’ll tell the client, “I’m going to be your advisor, you be you, let’s hear what this would sound like. Will you refer me to somebody?” Most of the clients say, “Well, right now, I really don’t know anybody who needs help.” So, the question I ask is, “Let’s take a step backwards, who would that be in the first place? If you and I were to walk into a room full of people, get to know everybody in that room, everything about them. Their family situation, what they do for a living, their age, what’s going on in their life. We could pull anybody out of that room and we could hand them to your advisor as an ideal client. Somebody who’d really benefit from your advisor’s help, somebody your advisor would love to meet. Who are we looking for in a room full of people?”

The clients stare at me and say, “When you put it that way, I guess I don’t really know.” And I tell them, “So, it’s not really fair to say you don’t know anybody who needs help, you don’t have clarity around who would that even be in the first place. You could interact everyday with somebody who needs help and you don’t even think about it.” And they say, “Yeah, that’s true.” So, I try to tell advisors it is so critical to know who you serve and to be able to describe those people in a way that makes me think of people that fit that criterion.

The sad thing is, which I know you guys know, a lot of advisors can’t articulate who they serve. So, how would we expect our clients to be able to find those people if we can’t even describe who we work well with?

Steve Wershing:
How specific should an advisor get? Because I know that one of the challenges is, that most advisors describe their target client so fuzzy and so amorphously. I think what you just said is brilliant, that whatever you say should bring somebody specific to mind. So, how does an advisor get there? How do they get specific enough?

Dan Allison:
It’s a tough thing to answer, because everybody is at such different phases of their career. Yesterday, I gave a speech in San Diego and the guy that I had lunch with, his target market, he only works with people who have a minimum investable asset of $5 million and he does not compromise his firm. They only work with people who are in the oil and gas industry, they’re in Montana. They are so dialed in with, this is who we work with. Another guy it was physicians, it was incredibly narrow.

The reality is, those guys can afford to be very narrow because they have grown a large firm, they can afford to say no. You’ve got other advisors who are saying, “Look, I’ll talk to anybody” and cast a very wide net. But, I think having some kind of guidance for your clients about the things that they know about their best friends. We primarily work with people in this industry, in this age group, that have these family situations, they have these life events that are going on. So, at least I think, yeah, I know somebody who is going through that right now. Or, I know somebody who owns a company that’s a business owner. Some kind of labels that can at least let me think, I know people that fit that criterion.

Again, I tell advisors to picture walking into a room to try to locate people that fit a certain description, how do you describe people?

Steve Wershing:
That’s a great exercise, that’s brilliant. So, what would then be number three?

Dan Allison:
Number three, is normally throughout the conversation, that the clients, to save their life, cannot explain what their advisor does for a living. I ask two different questions: Number one, overall why is your advisor different from everybody else within ten miles of here that says they do what your advisor does? Clients really struggle to even explain the basics. Meanwhile, when you go to the advisor’s website, they’ve got, we’re an independent, fee-only, fiduciary firm and the clients don’t use any of the same words.

I always tell advisors, if your value proposition doesn’t come out of the mouths of your clients, is it really your value proposition or is it just propaganda on your website? I find that not only can they not explain what makes their advisor different specifically, the average client cannot list more than 20% or 30% of the services their advisor provides to people. If they bought life insurance from that guy, for the rest of their life, in their mind, they’re an insurance guy. Life insurance. They might provide disability, long-term care, 401(k), investment management, but because I don’t use him for that, I don’t perceive the firm as providing that. So, I always say that it’s not about cross selling, it’s about good cross education. Most of our clients are not aware of all of the things that we do. The third problem I find is that most client don’t understand what makes us different and specifically all of the things we do and that makes it difficult for them to refer people.

Julie Littlechild:
As part of that, and maybe this is inherent in what you’re saying, there’s what makes you different, but it’s also just what you do. What the value is that you deliver, right? Technically, I don’t know, does every client have to be able to explain why you’re different from every other advisor? Maybe, maybe not. But, at a minimum, I would imagine they need to be able to explain clearly the value that you deliver, why you’re good.

Dan Allison:
Yeah, they’ve got to be able to articulate something, right? Here’s why this person is different and why you might want to think about talking to them. But, for instance, a good example, if I’m working with my financial guy and he manages my money, right? In my mind what does he do for a living? He’s a money manager if that’s all I use him for. Now, I’m having an interaction with my brother who says, “Hey, we’re restricting our buy/sell agreement, we’ve got to get $10 million bucks of life insurance, do you know anybody that you trust in that industry?” Well, my only answer now is, “No” even though my advisor very well could provide that service, but if my stereotype of him is he’s a money manager because I don’t use him for insurance, I don’t visit his website and click on the Our Services tab to study up on all the stuff he does.

He has just missed a referral opportunity because that doesn’t fall into my paradigm of what he does. I always tell advisors, we educate a client about who we are and what we do when they’re a prospect. But then they say yes to us and become a client and we never re-educate them again. We don’t talk about all those great things again, we don’t remind them of everything.

Steve Wershing:
How do you remind them of the things that you do that they may not be using?

Dan Allison:
There’s a lot of different ways, but one simple thing I recommend every advisor have, is a simple, one-page document, that’s obviously professional, that lists out here are all the different services that we provide to people. So, you’ve got your accumulation services, investment management, 401k. We’ve got your protection services, life insurance, disability, long-term care. Distribution services, so when you start taking money, annuities. Have one sheet that kind of lists everything.

What I recommend they do, every time they end a review, is to pull that out and say, “Here’s a reminder, I wanted to send you away with this for two reasons. Number one, I’ve highlighted all the things that you use us for. Because what that shows the advisor and the client, most clients only use about 10% of the advisor’s capabilities. They’re not even utilizing 90% of what the advisor does. They probably don’t need that help today, but they should still know those things are there.

I give them the one-pager and I say, “Look, I want you to be reminded of these things for two reasons. Number one, I never want you to have a need, a problem, a concern that doesn’t get addressed because you don’t know we’ll even provide guidance in these areas. As a client that’s just bad service. Number two, I don’t want somebody you care about to have a need in one of these other areas that are not highlighted and have them not get help because you don’t know this stuff is here for them.” I ask advisors, “How often do you talk to a 35-year-old about the importance of long-term care planning?” Yet, they’ve got parents that they can probably refer in. How often do we talk to 65-year-olds about the importance of college planning? Yet they have kids that probably should think about it for their kids. We don’t cross educate, so clients don’t cross refer services very often.

I just think it’s critical to have something that is clean, easy to understand and keep it in front of those clients, because something they don’t care about today, nine months from now, may be very important to them. I lost my father-in-law 30 days ago, and long-term care was not a big conversation for me six months ago. It is today. It’s a huge concern with his wife and she’s aging and it’s become a big thing in my life. Now, if I don’t look at my advisor as somebody to guide me on that, he doesn’t get the phone call and I probably meet some other guy that helps me with it. Does that make sense?

Julie Littlechild:
That makes a lot of sense for sure. I’d love your perspective, Dan, on this variation of what you’re saying, I think, and it’s the idea that I think when you’re talking to your family or you’re talking to your friends, you often don’t talk about products and services, right? You talk about situations and how those two things connect. So, if I’m, let’s pick up on your unfortunate example recently, unless you become an advocate for that and you’re out there telling people you need long-term care, it would probably require two friends to be talking about, I’m afraid I just won’t be there for my kids. Or, I had a kid late in life and I worry because I’m going to age. Those are referral opportunities, but nobody ever said the word “long-term care”.

Dan Allison:
That’s a very good point Julie. They do have to be somewhat educated about what life events trigger the need for those things. Because a lot of people probably think college planning happens when your kids are 16, you know you’ve got to start thinking about college. Any education you can provide, but I find that at least having a list of all the things you’re able to help with increases the likelihood that during that conversation they say, “You know what, you ought to talk to my advisor, I know he does all kinds of different stuff in this area,” versus if I stereotype him as a money manager, it’s not even going to cross my mind because this isn’t a money management conversation.

Steve Wershing:
Yup. Are we at four or five?

Julie Littlechild:
Where were we on the list?

Dan Allison:
Number four.

Julie Littlechild:
We will get there.

Dan Allison:
Number four is the majority of clients think they actually are referring today. They say, “Oh, I do refer my advisor” and I always ask the audience, “Raise your hand in the last twelve months if you’ve heard a client say, ‘Hey I gave your name out to somebody the other day, they’re going to call.’” Everybody in the audience raises their hand. Most clients don’t understand how to effectively refer and most advisors don’t say the right things when a client even tells them, “Hey, I gave your name to somebody.” Most of them say, “Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks” knowing full well that client is never going to call or that prospect.

In fact, yesterday I was giving a speech at Dimensional Funds and they wrapped up their benchmarking study, which Julie, I’m guessing you’re familiar with their work there. Their results showed that 98% of the 19,000 clients that responded, 98% said they would refer their advisor, 23% said they had once in the last 12 months, 13% twice in the last twelve months. So, if you added all the numbers up that the clients said they referred, a guy with 100 clients got 98 referrals last year. Made no sense when you added up the data. It showed that 81% of the people, their method for referring, was giving their advisor’s name and phone number out. So, most of those clients, even when they have somebody that they think needs help, their approach to getting that person help is ineffective. They don’t know how to make the right referral.

Steve Wershing:
How do you help them become more effective that way?

Dan Allison:
Again, this is one area that your listeners, hopefully this is a really good take away for them, because I’ve had a lot of people really adopt this conversation and get more effective at it. Again, it happens to me. I’m sure it happens to you two all the time as speakers. Somebody hears you speak, they say, “Hey, our broker/dealer has a conference, I’m going to give your name and number to the committee and tell them call you.” You go, all right. I won’t plan on getting that phone call most of the time.

What I say is, first of all, we’ve got to remember why did that person give our name out? Because somebody needs help. It wasn’t to help us, it was to help somebody else. What I recommend advisors do is say, “I appreciate you doing that, can we talk about it for a minute.” The client says, “Sure.” I’ll say, “I’m assuming that you did that because somebody you know or somebody you probably care about, might need help, is that accurate?” One hundred out of 100 people say yes and they elaborate, yeah, we were at dinner the other night and they said this and that. I simply tell them, “Here’s the problem with that. They don’t know or trust us like you do. As a result, very rarely does somebody reach out and as a result rarely do those people get help.  So, if your real intent was to potentially help them out, can we simply have a conversation about a method of introduction that is going to be comfortable for you, comfortable for them, but will increase that likelihood that that person gets help? It might be coffee or lunch. You might be there, you might not be there. It could be an email.”

What I do is take that, I gave your name out, and tell them the truth. I’m assuming you did that because somebody needs help and that is why they did that. They’re unlikely to get help and what it does a lot of times is turn, I gave your name out, into a conversation and an action plan for an introduction. Which now, the client is accountable to that action plan and it really increases the likelihood that the advisor meets the prospect and ultimately helps him.

Julie Littlechild:
So, just tell the truth seems to be a theme, running through your comments.

Dan Allison:
Yeah. I always say you can’t script honesty. I think the problem is too few advisors, I think, really take the time to think through how valuable what they actually do for people is. Truly if somebody I care about is my client and they’re trying to refer me to a 42-year-old that’s got three kids and no insurance in place, it’s my job to meet that person and help them. It’s not a sales script or commission opt, it should be a real, honest conversation. Unfortunately, I’ve seen enough tragedy personally in my life with young friends and parents alike, that I have a really strong perspective on what people in this financial industry do for a living and there’s too few of them that just will be honest.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, what I really like about that approach, one of the things I believe is that advisors don’t talk more about this kind of thing because they have doubts about their own value. That they’re nervous about how that conversation would come across. But, what I really love about what you were just describing is that it’s not one of the strong-arm methods, and it’s not telling the client to do something, it’s engaging in a conversation to say, let’s help each other here. I think that’s a great way to approach it.

Dan Allison:
You bring up a great point that I continually remind people, is like, you’ve got to wake up in the morning and truly believe that you help people. It sounds simple, but if you honestly believe that, none of these conversations are about you. No cancer surgeon wakes up and says, I’m going to go prospect. They believe they treat and help people and that consumers are genuinely better off after they’ve been treated. I continually try to get these guys to remember, you’re not that different from that. If you do your job well and you genuinely have a heart that is focused on serving people the referral conversation should never be awkward, because it’s not about you.

Steve Wershing:
Well, one conversation that you inspired as you were talking about that was that it may be that advisors assume that clients are uncomfortable making referrals because they’re uncomfortable talking with the client about it.

Dan Allison:
Yeah. If there’s one underlying problem, and I’m sure you’ve seen them all, that referral trainings, the majority of them, were developed 30 years ago when the industry was very transactional. And, if I made you feel uncomfortable by my script, I didn’t have a lot to lose because I already made the sale, I made a commission and you’re either giving me names or I’ll move on to the next one. The industry has changed now where the relationship is the focus, not the sale or transaction. Yet, the majority of the training focuses on transactional methods of having a really important conversation, which is why I told you guys before this, I love reading the content you put out there. Because it focuses, to me, on the real reasons people refer and the real conversations that these advisors have to have happen between them and the client. But, first they have to get comfortable with the idea that it’s not a conversation about them, despite what everybody trained them in the last 20 years about referrals.

Steve Wershing:
So, what do we have one left? One last one to talk about?

Dan Allison:
Actually, the last three are super easy. The fifth one is people tell me they don’t refer because it’s a private issue. I don’t talk about money, it’s nobody’s business who I use. Six, they say it’s risky or some version of that. I don’t refer. What’s in it for me? If it goes badly, it’s my fault. The least common thing I hear people say is that my experience hasn’t been good enough to refer, some variation of that. Most people, are totally happy with their experience. Enough that they would refer. Now there’s definitely people who aren’t happy, but I find for the most part, it’s more I would refer, I don’t really know who to refer. My advisor doesn’t talk about it. I don’t know what to say, I don’t how to do it. It’s these simple things that are pretty easy to fix.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know Dan, I would like to continue talking about this all day long, this is just so much good information that you’re giving us, but we do have to wrap up and I regret that. However, if people wanted to purse this, how can they find you?

Dan Allison:
Yeah, they can just go to our website, feedbackmarketinggroup.com. They can email me directly, dan@feedbackmarketinggroup.com or, they can just reach out to us at 402-350-2532.

Steve Wershing:
Well that’s awesome. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. I’ve loved this conversation, maybe we can have you back at some point, because there’s all kinds of things I’ve got on my sheet here that I wanted to ask that we never got to because what you were talking about was so great. Thank you for joining us on the podcast and thanks for sharing all that wisdom with us.

Dan Allison:
I appreciate the time very much.

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.