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Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and on this week’s show, Steve and I are talking with Kelli Cruz. Kelli is the Founder of Cruz Consulting Group and an expert in all things related to the talent in your firm. She has a unique ability to connect the dots between your vision, your talent and, this one’s important, how your firm actually works. Now, the work that she does today is a reflection of all of the roles that she’s played. But in particular of her previous two roles, first, directing the consulting services and research programs at Investment News, and in particular, as the driver of the industry’s first human capital practice consulting program for RIA advisory firms at Schwab. She’s a consultant, a writer, a speaker, and, if you talk to her for more than a few minutes, you’ll discover she’s also an avid trail runner and a Giants fan.

Steve and I talked to Kelli about the connection between client and team engagement, the role of culture, and, particularly interesting in my mind, the potential for culture clashes within firms. With that, let’s get straight to the conversation. Kelli, welcome. We’re so thrilled to have you here today.

Steve Wershing:
Welcome, Kelli.

Kelli Cruz:
Thank you. I’m so excited to be with you both.

Julie Littlechild:
We’ve had the opportunity to talk a lot about team and culture and how that drives growth, over the many years that I’ve known you. So, it’s great to be able to share some more of these ideas with the folks that are listening to us on this podcast. I think that you’ve got some really interesting takes on things like the connection between team engagement and client engagement and then of course how that impacts referrals, and also how mindset really impacts how you develop a great team. But, I thought maybe even before we dig into some of that, we could just connect the dots a little. And a couple of questions for you. First of all, do you, and maybe more specifically, how do you think that team engagement connects to client engagement?

Kelli Cruz:
Great question, and I think a good place for us to start the conversation today. In my mind, engagement comes about feeling really good and having passion about the company that you’re working for, the meaningful work that you’re doing. I think for some, if not all, we attach part of our own identity with the job. So, it really comes down to employees feeling this connection to the company and the role and the work that they’re doing. I might add that I think the work that advisory firms do with their clients, just fulfills a lot of meaning for people, because the work that you all are doing is so important to clients and their lives and their livelihood. I think there’s just this connection there that happens about feeling really good, and that spills over into the client experience.

When employees are happy and they’re productive and they’re doing work that they love, and they’re engaged with, clients are going to know that. And, Julie, you’ve heard me say this, Steve, I know you have too, a lot about the fact that the secret sauce of our business model is really about that relationship you have with the client. And, the many touchpoints that the client has with your team. That’s the whole point of a team, is that more than one person is interacting with the end client. So, a happy, engaged employee is going to automatically spill over into a positive client experience.

Julie Littlechild:
So, it’s infectious almost, it sounds like in that case. When you feel great about what you’re doing, do you think you automatically then, show up in a different way with clients? Is that the connection that you see there?

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely. I do see that in the work that I do. I just want to take a pause for a moment, so that folks understand. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a doctor, but I’ve read some interesting stuff around the brain and the way it works. As leaders, when we intentionally help the brains of our employees generate things like dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin, we create good feelings about the organization. Now, that may sound a little crazy coming from a human capital consultant, but it makes a lot of sense. Dopamine is sort of that anticipation of reward. Serotonin is feeling good, having well-being. Oxytocin is bonding and feeling connected to others. So, if that’s happening in the work environment and as leaders, we’re engaging the brains of our employees in these ways, it’s going to naturally spill over into all the different interactions, both small and large, that employees are having with the end client.

Julie Littlechild:
I guess the natural question then is, what are the ways in which we can cause that to happen?

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely. And, I do believe that the work that I do with firms around your talent, I like to call it the talent wealth, a little play there on wealth management, talent wealth. It really is about, how are you engaging your team. It’s somewhat about process and structure, so there is a method to the madness. Firms that just manage people, their employees in a looser way, you can get away with that when you’re fairly small for a while. But, the type of processes and procedures that sort of, again, getting back to how to engage the brain in these things that make people feel engaged, it’s really around employee communication. It’s the training and the onboarding you do with new employees.

Employee communication, let me go back there a little bit, this is really about making people feel like they belong and communicating on an ongoing basis. Not just that once a year, dreaded annual ritual that we’re coming up on for a lot, we call that the performance review process, but regularly engaging with employees around what’s going on with the firm, their role, how they connect to what’s happening and the key initiatives for the firm. Why what they do matters. Why this important task that’s been entered into the CRM system that they’re responsible for. How does that connect? The training and onboarding of new hires just helps to create these touch points, especially for new hires. It’s really important to make sure that they get on board and they feel like they can make a difference, that type of thing.

Motivating performance and getting that feedback, as I mentioned. And, your incentives and your reward systems all play into our natural need to feel taken care of and rewarded for the work that we’re doing.

Julie Littlechild:
When I say this, I’ll probably sound like I’m leading the witness a little, but do you also then see a connection between getting those things right and driving that engagement and growth in the firm? I mean we talk about referrals obviously, but growth in general?

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely. I think this is where if you are a firm that wants to grow, and it’s really hard to find those that aren’t wanting to grow. I have some clients that come to me and the reason why they’ve stopped growth is because they’re at capacity and they can’t, in good conscience, take on additional clients, they need to be servicing their existing ones the best they can first. There definitely can be a point at which you’re like, no growth for right now. But, most of the firms that I work with want to grow. It is every employee’s responsibility, if the organization is going to be healthy, and we have those kinds of healthy ecosystem that we’re living at work in, that the firm continues to grow.

In my opinion, it’s every employee’s job to be helping the firm to grow. Some roles, as we know, have a much smaller impact on that, and others have a much larger one. It’s my belief, and I’ve written some articles on this, that building a business development culture is everyone’s responsibility. So, whether you touch a client directly, or in a small way, you can have an influence on the client and how they perceive the experience of the firm to be. I think it’s absolutely everybody’s role and obviously some in a smaller versus a larger way.

I work with many firms that have a reward system set up, that regardless of who it is in the firm that refers a prospect, refers a friend or family member, someone they know, they’re eligible to receive an incentive off of that.

Steve Wershing:
Kelli, can you clarify a couple of things for us? We talked a little about team engagement, you just used the word “culture” there. Can you tell us the relationship between engagement and culture and maybe describe for us what a healthy culture looks like?

Kelli Cruz:
Sure, absolutely. They are, great question, they are connected. I have kind of a framework that I use to think about running a successful business. In the center of that framework circle, think of it as a circle for those of you that are more visual folks, imagine a circle. In the middle of it or the center of it is culture. What I mean by culture is, it’s the beliefs, it’s the traits, it’s the characteristics of your team, the people that work there. It needs to then follow that your goals, the visions, the values, the strategies, the goals that you have for the firm, really are an offshoot or an output of the culture. What I like to say is the culture is at the heart of every firm. You should then be able to figure out from the culture of the firm, what are some of the core competencies, the traits and characteristics that fit in our culture.

For folks that might be listening where they’re pausing and they’re thinking, hmm, what does that mean for my firm? How would I describe that? Ask your employees how they would describe the firm culture. Ask your best employee, what are some of the traits and characteristics that come to their mind when they think of working in the firm and that connection to the folks that are successful there. That’s at the heart of your organization. So, if you say, for example, we have a team culture, what does that really mean. And, if it’s true that it means making decisions in a collaborative way, always looking out for each other, thinking about what’s best for employees and clients and putting that as the top priority, then when you recruit people in the door, you best make sure that you’re screening for those traits and characteristics of a team player.

Steve Wershing:
What kinds of other words, you just described a few words that you would associate with a strong culture, what other kinds of words would you expect to hear if you’ve got a good culture? And, what kinds of words should you be looking out for that might give you an indication that you’ve got a weak culture?

Kelli Cruz:
That’s a great question. The team orientation, which probably most of the folks listening are interested in, they’re just characteristics of people who are more open, more flexible, more adaptable to working on a team and being open minded about others’ ideas and accepting of different points of views and ways of looking at things that help to create that team culture. So, collaboration, strong communication are things that are really important. On the flip side of that, can be cultures that are more top-down, more dictatorial, have less autonomy. Maybe there’s not a lot of delegation and authority that’s been given out in the organization where people feel like they have responsibility, they have the authority, they can go off and make things happen, it’s not so, again, command and control, top down.

Cultures that really don’t invoke a lot of flexibility and adaptability are really tough for people to work in that are more team oriented. So, I think that, I sometimes think of it as maybe a little bit of old school, where you have to be at your desk to be perceived to being productive and not having a lot of flexibility around flexible work schedules and people being able to work from home. All of that builds a culture that really engages, let’s get back to engagement, that engages the work force. I think we’ve got a big difference going on right now. Let’s talk about it. We’ve got different generations at play in the workplace today. And, that may or may not be working in your favor if you’re trying to create a team and create engagement.

Julie Littlechild:
I remember you talking, and maybe this is what you were referring to, about a culture clash. Is that a generational issue in your mind?

Kelli Cruz:
That’s a great question in terms of is it generational? I think the way that we’re talking about it, in terms of educational sessions and what’s being written, it is being discussed as generational. I think that’s a good starting place, because, let’s be honest, at least we’re talking about it. We’re going to talk about the differences and the similarities. But, largely in today’s advisory firm, we probably have at least two, maybe three or four different generations. We could have some matures, which are before our baby boomers. Most, I think if we look at, and Julie, you’re probably better with these numbers than I am, but the median age of a firm owner, we’re probably talking about a classic baby boomer. Then we’ve got Gen Xers who have come into now really the more of the management ranks, and then we’ve got our millennials, that so much is being written about.

When you look at the characteristics and traits of these different generations, there are some clear differences that can create a clash in the culture. I joke about it and call it this culture clash of the cowboys the collaborators, the cowboys being the baby boomers and the Gen Xers and the millennials being more those collaborators. Baby boomers classically are motivated by traditional benefit packages, and they’re fiercely loyal as long as they’ve got security and benefits as part of the equation. They are folks who like to look at the plaques on the wall and their educational certificates and like that kind of recognition and reward. Most of our firm owners are classic entrepreneurs, they’ve carved their own way. That doesn’t necessarily always make for the best collaboration.

Yet on the other end of the extreme here, we have millennials, most of our new job entrants are millennials, obviously. They are much more engaged by a team approach, working on things collaboratively, not so much sit me in a cubical by myself and let me figure it out. They want to be mentored, coached and brought along. These different work styles, they can clash. And, it can create a different cultural dynamic. Boomers, I’ll put myself in this category, we’re all about production. If I see a butt in a chair, I know you’re doing your work and I’m going to get my eight hours out of you, where that may not actually be the case. So, I’ve tried to really encourage firms to think about, is it really about face time or is it about the work that’s actually getting accomplished. Are there some different ways that work can get done, than the traditional way that we’ve approached it in the past, and that’s hard.

Steve Wershing:
How does a boomer orientation or that boomer mindset–what can an advisor do to make sure that they have a mindset that’s building culture, and what could happen with a boomer mindset that would actually work to damage a culture? Besides what you just said. You talked about, well I only know if you’re productive if you’re sitting at your chair. What are some other ways that that kind of orientation or mindset could hurt building a culture?

Kelli Cruz:
That’s the biggest one that I see. Is this sort of accountability that we’re putting in a lot of long hours, because I put in all of this sweat equity, and I worked long hours, and because that’s the way I did it, that’s the way you should do it. For boomers, we didn’t grow up with technology creating the type of productivity enhancements that it does in today’s work environment. Things can be done so much faster. The classic example I use is the CRM system, which for most firms is the life blood of the organization. Yet, I cannot tell you, as a matter fact before our podcast today, I was on a call with a client and we were discussing this very thing about the baby boomer advisors who just refuse to use the CRM system. It’s not a good use of their time and the time it takes them to enter in a task, somebody else could do it faster. So, they’re relying on emailing the CSA to input the stuff into the CRM system or literally Post-it notes. Or, downloading after a meeting with their client to tell them all of the things that have to be put into the CRM system. It’s just simply not a very efficient way to get work done.

But, trying to retrain someone who has been hugely successful building their firm and operating this way, to now adjust to new technology, that’s a cultural change and it’s not happening easily in some firms, frankly.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting to me because in a way you’re almost tempted to go down the path of talking about operational things, like do we or don’t we enter things into CRM, and yet it almost sounds like you’re talking about something that runs really deep in people. If you’re the boomer in this case, you may not even have identified some of these characteristics that you have or values that you hold. I imagine that you find that the conversations that you must have with people run quite deep.

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely. It’s really interesting when you see it. Because I can see this with say a Gen Xer lead advisor owner. They will happily do whatever the CSA tells them. You want me to enter something into the system, great I’ll enter into the system. Anything to be more productive and keep people engaged in the work. But, I think for me, where I think it lies in what people are confident in, and for a lot of boomers technology, this isn’t all boomers by any stretch of the imagination. But, for some, at this point, it’s like, it’s not a good use of my time.

It’s just not what I want to be spending time on, so I’m not going to learn it, or that’s going to be somebody else’s job. We can do workarounds. That’s perfectly fine. If you hire a CSA or even an executive assistant, an admin assistant, God forbid those job titles might become extinct at some point, but they’re so important because if it truly isn’t someone’s, the best use of their time, then let someone hire someone who can do it for them who knows that’s their job. They’re not expecting the advisor to be inputting this stuff into a CRM system and using it. I think this is where I see a lot of the disconnect, is that lack of communication and lack of understanding of what the expectation of the job role is.

But it is deeply rooted, back to the point you’re making, and the key for me is to get it out on the table and get it talked about, and get it discussed, so that you can have people be engaged in the process. One of the things that I see happen with employees is when they’re up against something they can’t solve, they think they don’t have the authority to solve it, or it’s something like this. It’s a behavior of the owner. They tend to then disconnect, and that’s what we were really talking about in the beginning, is engagement and wanting people to be thoroughly engaged.

Steve Wershing:
Can we clarify this and drill down into it a little bit more? I think the CRM example is a real good example. If I understand you correctly, it’s not necessarily about using the technology, whether or not a boomer uses the technology, but it’s whether they set an expectation and then have the respect to live up to it. I’ll give you an example from my background. I used to work for a financial planning company a long time ago, and each year the CEO would bring us all out to do an offsite annual goal setting, and we’d have a full-day discussion. It’s on a weekend, so we’re giving up our weekend, so we have that barrier to overcome. The big thing was, we would come up with a whole list of priorities and a whole list of things to do, and it became very clear that the CEO had no buy-in at all to that exercise.

They were going to do whatever they were going to do, because they were the CEO, and if we all want to get together and feel good about bringing in a facilitator and working all this stuff out, that’s fine, but I’m going to do whatever I feel like. The culture was, that was only one of several things. The culture left a lot to be desired there. I think that whole CRM thing is a reflection of that. It’s not whether or not you use the CRM, but if you set an expectation that everybody needs to use the CRM, and then you don’t do it, that has an effect on the culture. If you say that it’s critical that the CRM be utilized, and here’s how you’re going to use, and here’s how the advisor is going to use it, and that’s all, like you said, communicated and laid out up front, then it sounds like you could maintain a positive culture without necessitating that the advisor learn how to use that system. Is that fair?

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely, and I think it’s all about communicating and understanding and creating the right expectations, because any person, when they understand, if you could see me struggle with technology, you would be like, yeah, Kelli. Let me help you. Let’s hire someone to help you. It’s not worth it to see—my husband does this with me. He’s just like, get out of the way and let me do it. It’s painful to watch you. I think that’s where you get the buy-in from people. It’s like, wow, okay. Kelli really doesn’t know how to do this. I can save her a lot of time. That’s where you start to get the understanding of, wow, but you have to be open and vulnerable to admitting. Let’s be honest. I’m admitting I’m not very technology savvy. I didn’t grow up, especially having a career in human resources. We were the last ones to get computers, by the way, in the workplace. It was like, they’re a cost center. Who wants to give them PCs? We used to have to share a laptop. I’d have to borrow one from somebody else when I traveled.

We were the last ones to get automated. You realize, and I hear this a lot, because part of my process is, I interview each employee in the engagement work that I do. I ask people, if you could change one thing about the firm, what would it be? A lot of times, people are like, it’s just easier for me to do certain things. I get that this really successful business owner, it’s not really a good use of his time or her time, so let me do it. Let me take that on. I feel like it’s about the communication and being open, and being able to admit what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. Or put another way, what do you want to be doing less of, and what do want to be doing more of? People have different strengths and weaknesses, and different skills.

A team is all about aligning those strengths and talents in a way that compliments each other, because I’m good at some thing and not at others. People on a team help round that out. I do think it’s part of the culture. If you have a culture where you’re going to pretend as the business owner that you’re really good at technology, and you’re going to pretend that you use the CRM system…I have a client right now where the number of tasks is just ridiculous. Their outstanding items is so high that if the partners did nothing but focus on cleaning those up, it would take probably six months. What are you really saying? To your point, Steve, you’re not really supporting what’s important to the firm, which is using the CRM system.

Julie Littlechild:
You just mentioned partners. Are all of these issues exacerbated or made easier when they are multiple partners involved?

Kelli Cruz:
That’s a great question. It definitely becomes more challenging when you have more people as partners, because now you really do have to be open to hearing another’s point of view, collaborating, making decisions together, versus just having to make a decision with yourself, but we know that the most successful firms, and Julie, I know you know this, are ones that have expanded ownership and built a business where there are multiple owners. I think this gets back to culture and making sure that partners are fundamentally on the same page with the culture that they want for the firm. Then, how you go about making decisions is critical when we bring partner teams together, and making sure all the partners are engaged in that process.

Julie Littlechild:
These issues feel so big sometimes, don’t they, when we’re thinking about team? If you were to give advice to anyone listening, as a place to start, to begin to drive that deeper level of engagement or drive that stronger culture, where would you suggest they begin that process?

Kelli Cruz:
I would begin by talking to your employees. Some firms get a little more structured around that. How they do it is actually, they will put together an employee engagement survey. I know Julie, you’ve got experience, obviously, with surveys and engagement. I’ve done a few for clients, and you can do it in a more systematic way like that, and survey people. Or you can just do it in a more casual way in asking people and talking to people about what excites them about working at the firm. Ask them that question. If you could change one thing, what would it be? Nine times out of ten, the answer I get is around communication. Employees want more communication. They want to be kept updated. They want to know what’s going on.

If you’re a culture where, and there’s multiple partners and you’re behind closed doors a lot, you better be reporting back out to your team what you’re being discussed, because they’re talking to each other about why you’re behind closed doors. Even though you may be discussing very relevant things that have nothing to do necessarily with your employees, they don’t know that. They begin to worry and wonder. I get that feedback a lot from groups that I work with, teams that I work with. We just don’t feel like we’re kept in the loop enough. Meeting with employees on a regular basis informally, formally, keeping them updated on the key initiatives of the firm and progress, and how things are going is really critical. In my opinion, I’ve never—here’s what I was going to say. I’ve never worked with a group where they’ve said, we just overcommunicate too much. They just give us way more information than we need.

Julie Littlechild:
That never happened.

Steve Wershing:
Right. I wish I knew less about what they were doing.

Kelli Cruz:
I get complaints about, our meetings aren’t productive. That’s a whole different ball of wax. There’s an idea for your next podcast. Effective meetings for team engagement. It’s definitely, I’ve never heard, we want them to stop communicating with us. There’s too much information they’re giving us.

Steve Wershing:
Can I tie this back to referrals to a minute?

Julie Littlechild:
Yes. Funny, I was going to do that, too. You go ahead.

Steve Wershing:
Kelli, I want to pick up on something you had said before, where you were talking about the team, and how the team interacts with the client, and how that effects referrals. Julie and I just recently did a study on referability. Two of the things we uncovered were that when advisors engaged with their teams about the needs and the identity of their target market, that that had a positive effect on referrals, and that firms that tended to give training to their staffs had more positive referability. We’ve talked a lot now about culture. Could you talk a little bit about how that culture and the nature of the interactions between the team and clients can be translated into referrals? What role do you see for culture in the referability of a firm?

Kelli Cruz:
Sure. Building a culture where—I was talking about this a little earlier, where it’s everybody’s role to be on the lookout for client referrals and the next prospect is important. It’s not that everybody has to be a business development specialist, but you hit on some things. Understanding the ideal client profile, and being able to give the elevator speech on the firm, and really knowing how to respond when you meet someone, even at a cocktail party and you talk about, I work for XYZ firm, and here’s what we do for clients. Our clients are so excited about the work that we do for them. Our client retention is super high.

Those kinds of things, if employees aren’t aware of what to say and how to talk about the firm, and who your ideal client is, then they can’t help you always be on the lookout. I think that the marketing and the branding is an important part of that, because we really do want employees to have a clear understanding, because they are such an important piece in your client experience. If you want to have this seamless, end-to-end brand experience, your employees have to have, they have to be trained or have the tools and resources to be able to do that. And they have to have a client-centric mindset. They have to be motivated to keep your existing clients happy. Client retention is the key to the business model. I think from that comes that ability to be referable.

Steve Wershing:
Even more than just providing good service or doing your job well, what you were describing a minute ago was just getting everybody on board with what the whole firm is out to do. I’m reminded of a story of a journalist who was writing the story of NASA back in the ‘60s, when they were still scrambling to fulfil JFK’s vision. He’d been interviewing engineers and the people who were designing the systems and all that kind of stuff. He found himself in a hallway at one point at NASA, with nobody to talk to a little bit, except that there was a janitor out there, sweeping the floor. He decided, what the heck? He went up to the janitor and he said, excuse me, sir. Can I ask you what you’re doing? He looked at the reporter, and he says, well, of course. I’m putting a man on the moon. It goes all the way. It’s not just what them carrying out their roles well, but then really being engaged with the mission, and having the whole culture revolve around that.

Kelli Cruz:
Yeah. I wonder if I could turn this around a little bit and ask the two of you a question. I’ll try to connect my thinking here with what we’re talking about. Lately, I’ve been having this thought with employees and motivating them and engaging them, how many firms actually do financial plans for their employees?

Steve Wershing:
That’s a really good question.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. How many advisors have financial plans? We could ask that.

Steve Wershing:
That’s another really good question.

Julie Littlechild:
That’s another really good question. It’s fascinating, because you think about—it’s something you need to experience to understand. Two things come to mind. The short answer, I know, on my end, I don’t know about you, Steve is, I certainly haven’t even heard any particular examples, although I’m sure that it happens, but certainly no statistics on that. At the same time, I wonder if there would be an element of, who’s going to do the plan, and how much information do I want to share with my boss, or that sort of thing? But the notion of giving them the ability to go through that process would seem to be so important.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. I totally agree. My answer is, I have no idea how many firms do that, but I also don’t ask. I think in a lot of my consulting relationships, I think I’m going to ask, just out of curiosity. We’re going to call that the Hair Club for Men approach, to make sure they’re not just financial planners, but also a client.

Kelli Cruz:
It’s interesting to me, because what I’m reading now about—just to shift a little bit. I’ll connect the dots for you. What I’m reading more broadly, not just specific to our industry, about millennials and millennials as employees, and what they want in terms of their incentive package and their compensation package. Part of what firms are beginning to help them with is around just that, financial planning, getting a handle around how to plan and save for their future. It just struck me when I was reading some of this that, who’s better positioned than if you’re working for a financial planning firm? Obviously, when someone’s first starting out, they don’t need a full financial plan, but life gets complicated pretty quickly once you decide to partner up with someone, have a family, buy a house, and your career starts to take off, and especially for folks in our firms that maybe want to be an owner someday. How do you financially make that happen? It just strikes me as, they’d be better ambassadors out there in the universe of referrals if they understood what it’s like to be sitting on the other side of the desk from that financial planning process.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Giving them direct experience and the client experience that the firm provides, I think that’s a great idea. That way, they’re not just saying, I’m working really hard to do my job, but they’re in a position to say, when I transferred my accounts over, or when I went through that market downturn and my advisor, who’s across the hall here had to explain to me and calm me down and those kinds of things, I think it’s a really interesting point to raise.

Julie Littlechild:
Pivoting slightly, but on the idea of firms that are doing things, the stuff that you were talking about earlier around business development culture and referability, have you seen firms who are doing a particularly good job at that? And anything in particular that they were doing that really resonated for you?

Kelli Cruz:
There are some firms that are doing good things. I would say a couple things that I see, and these aren’t any brand new ideas by any stretch, but they’re actually ideas that people are doing something with, they’re taking action on. You can’t make progress if you don’t actually implement. One of those is really around training. We can call it sales training, which is probably not the best way to label it for a relationship management driven business. Training, and training everyone in the firm. That can be in a more formalized, there’s vendors out there doing it, but I just encourage the partners, usually one of whom is an awesome rainmaker, start to begin to socialize what you do, how you do it. Over brown bag lunches or a pizza Friday or something for lunch, where you begin to share some of the ways in which you go about making rain and starting to do it that way.

I know that there are a lot of firms out there doing just that, and some that have found some good vendor training programs to help. Then, reinforcing whatever that activity, let’s just start with activity. Let’s not jump straight to results on day two of this creating a business development culture. Let’s start with activity, and then reinforcing that and rewarding that activity. Then, once you get enough activity to see results, then you can move to actually rewarding just the results if that’s appropriate. I do see firms that are doing that. There’s larger firms that can afford to have, let’s just say, more of a dedicated business development or marketing person, where they’ve made that role be more of an in-house coach for the rest of the team so that, again, there’s a resource for building that new muscle, that business development muscle, that relationship management muscle.

Like a personal trainer, I guess what comes to my mind, inside the organization, or an outside consultant that can have that role with folks and be the mentor and coach. I do see that, and then connecting, I can’t reinforce enough. Connecting the dots with your reward system. The reward system of not only what hits someone’s paycheck or bonus paycheck, but also just celebrating when there is activity to celebrate. Some prospect meetings and debriefing. What went well in that prospect meeting? What didn’t go well? Just again, socializing and communicating around the activity and what’s working. What do want to course correct next time?

Julie Littlechild:
Right. Kelli, we could chat all day, and sometimes we do, because I can go on for ages with you, but I know we’re at time. Just before we wrap up, where can listeners find you, and find out more information about you?

Kelli Cruz:
You can find me. My website is cruzconsultinggroup.com. I know it’s kind of a long one, cruzconsultinggroup.com. I’m kelli@cruzconsultinggroup.com. Shoot me an email. You can always call me. That’s so old-school. How baby boomer of me.

Julie Littlechild:
Do people do that?

Kelli Cruz:
I actually answer my phone. I had someone just the other day, when I answered it, they’re like, oh, my God. I don’t even know what to say. You answered your phone. I’m like, hello? You can say hello and who you are.

Steve Wershing:
That’s kicking it old-school.

Kelli Cruz:
It’s 415-381-2087. I even have some people text me. 415-235-3292.

Julie Littlechild:
We’ll put all those links in the show notes as well so that people can get to you. Thank you so much. This has been great chatting with you. I love that we’re examining all of these different angles, and interesting how they all ultimately connect to growth and referability, which is, of course, what we’re talking about. So, thanks again for your time.

Kelli Cruz:
Absolutely.

Steve Wershing:
Yes, Kelli. Thanks very much.

Kelli Cruz:
And thank you both for the great work that you do. We appreciate it.

Julie Littlechild:
Thanks.

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. Until next time, so long.