Participants:
Julie Littlechild
Steve Wershing
John Jantsch
Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: Julie Littlechild: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: If somebody just says what they were going to do – I mean, the price was what they said, they delivered, the experience was great. If we connect at a much deeper level. We all have those companies that we just love doing business with them, we love talking about them. If you’re going to get people to refer you almost automatically, then you have to have a great product, wrapped with a remarkable experience as well. Steve Wershing: The nature of the experience that we have with clients is that it’s ongoing. It lasts a long time. From my perspective, it’s really hard to create a “wow” that lasts 20 or 30 years. What you were referring to is – if you “wow” somebody more than just a couple of times, that becomes the expectation, right? You talked a little bit about developing a little bit deeper relationship and being a company that people just love to deal with. Can you talk a little bit more about that whole creating “wow” versus developing intimacy? John Jantsch: They also saw their job as being an advisor to that client, not just for their financial matters, but pretty much for everything that they needed in their lives. The way they did that was they had a team of experts that in every facet of their clients’ lives, that they could point to and say, when that client built a trusting relationship and said gosh, do you know anybody who does X? They could say, yes and I want to introduce you to that person. Their value ad was also not just bringing their services, but bringing a team of everything that their clients needed. It’s kind of that combination of yeah, it’s nice to do something that just kind of gets people the trick, gets people to talk. Ultimately, you have to have some sort of part of the experience that also really touches them in an emotional level. Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: As you are working with the client, somebody that you might work with – I often tell people, again, you can word this any way you’re comfortable, to start talking about the idea that you tell the client here’s what we agreed upon doing today. We know you’re going to be so thrilled with the results that at the end of the 90 days, we want to come and talk with you about anybody that you know who would also benefit from these kinds of results. Everybody kind of says, okay, sure. We’ll do that. It’s such a strong message. If you think about it, you’re saying, we know you’re going to be so thrilled. We’re going to come back and make sure you’re thrilled and then we’re going to let you get those results or help your friends, neighbors, or colleagues get those same kind of results. Obviously, every profession and industry has a different way that they might word that or go about checking those results or whatnot. I think planting the seed at that point, then when it comes time to ask, it’s really in some ways, already agreed upon. Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: I also like to sprinkle in – and again, industries that are regulated have to adhere to some things that other non-regulated industries don’t necessarily have to – but, I also like to have four or five campaigns that might be going. For instance – and again, I don’t think this will apply very well to financial planners – but we’ve certainly had a lot of luck with just having the gift certificate approach. One of the referral methods might be to once a quarter, send all your clients a $100 gift certificate that they can give to a friend, neighbor, or colleague and for each of those that comes back in, they’re going to get an equal amount applied to some services or products. That kind of low-threshold thing that just makes it easy for people in the moment to say, oh yeah, I was talking to somebody that needs this, so I’ll just give them this right now. Having things like that going. For particularly regulated industries that can’t really do any kind of compensation necessarily for referrals, whether it’s illegal, unethical, or just doesn’t feel like, I also like to think in terms of building a referral champion community. Even bringing your best referral sources together or giving them some sort of special workshop, or information, or just even taking three or four clients out to lunch together who happen to refer. I mean, those types of things of getting those folks that already refer, spending time on them, and lavishing them, so they actually can be motivated to refer more, it’s probably a great use of time as well. Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: To your point, giving people an opportunity to experience you a little bit, could be a great way to get an introduction without actually doing specific work for them. One of the other things that you talk about in your books is referral campaign strategies. Specific strategies for acquiring referrals and has specific projects to it to acquire referrals. One of the things that you talk about is testimonials and how powerful they are. I wanted to see if you could give us a little bit more detail about how a financial advisor might utilize campaigns, given that testimonials are actually prohibited by law in the United States for investment advisors. Are there other ways that financial advisors could have a referral campaign and give us some ideas on what they might do for that? John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: Okay. Thank you for the disclaimer there. I’m sure all the compliance offices in the audience just heaved a heavy sigh of relief. Let me jump over to your new book or your newest book, Duct Tape Selling. You talk about the person who brings in the business having to think like a marketer. I think this is a really relevant message for financial advisors because as big as the industry gets, we are still persistently a mom and pop kind of a business. Most investment advisory firms are still relatively small and so, the majority of them are people who have to act in both the roles, marketer and sales person. Although, most of them don’t realize that. In my talks, I spent a lot of time talking about the difference between marketing and selling. Can you elaborate a little bit more on your perspective on that and what kinds of things you talk about in that new book? John Jantsch: Then understand that you also then have to figure out a way to have that kind of end to end integrated approach. The marketing component is when you’re creating awareness, but that’s also where you’re building trust. The sales component really comes into that, when somebody’s ready to buy, helping them understand exactly the right thing for them, for their situation. How things are going to work for them. Then obviously, the repeat and refer stages, that’s when you’re providing service, but then you’re also making sure that people get the result that they were after. There are set stages. There are set departments, if you will. In your particular model, they just have to realize that those are separate functions, but that they have to figure out how to blend them as well. Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing: John Jantsch: Steve Wershing:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable. The podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, the Founder of AbsoluteEngagement.com.
I’m Steve Wershing. President of the Client Driven Practice. One of our goals at becoming referable is to bring you guests who can give expertise and perspective from outside of financial services, and get their advice that you may not hear from other industry experts on what you can do to make yourself more referable. Today, it’s my pleasure to talk with John Jantsch, who is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling, the Commitment Engine, and the Referral Engine, and the Founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.
John shares some great ideas about what it means to be truly referable as a starting point. We believe that’s important and he does make that point very clearly. He also talks about how you can stand out among clients and among centers of influence. Perhaps what really struck me the most about what he had to share is that he talks about having a process. A process to uncover what clients think make you referable, a process to structure and leverage a network of experts to 10X your referral opportunities, and – this is an important one I think – a process to help you really understand your own value.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this conversation was, because John works in so many different industries, he had a lot of ideas and a few strategies that varied significantly from what you and I would tell advisors to do and things we’ve observed working really well. I enjoy bringing it to all of our listeners and to let you sort out what you think is going to work for you. With that, let’s go to our conversation with John. Okay, John, welcome to the show. It’s really exciting for me to have you here today.
Thanks. It’s my pleasure.
Let’s jump right into it, John. Like this show, you recommend that business owners attract more referrals by being more referable. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?
Well, I mean, you think about it – when’s the last time that you went home and raved about a perfectly acceptable experience that you had? We need people to talk and share. I mean, that’s how people find things today. They’re neighbors, they go in a Facebook group. We have to do things that really exceed peoples’ expectations, that surprise them because that’s what gets people talking. We also have to have – in addition to having a great product or keeping our promises, we have to also have a great experience, too. I think most of us are wired to make referrals, but if somebody just does what they said they were going to do, unfortunately that’s sometimes exceeding expectations.
Well, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that because one of the things that you hear – you talk to a lot of different industries about getting referrals and I will relentlessly promote your books, The Referral Engine and The Commitment Engine, because I think they’re fabulous. You work with a lot of different industries. Some of what we’ll talk about today is some of the peculiarities of the financial advisor business. One of them is there are a lot of people out there who tell financial advisors that they need to create a “wow” experience, that they need to really surprise their clients.
Yeah, that’s a great point because you can’t always just deliver more than you promise on every engagement, kind of “wow”. I think it’s a combination. I think that you do need to consider, what are some ways that you can stand out? I had a financial planner, a client that would bring their clients in once a year. They would meet more often than that, but they would definitely have the typical annual review of everything kind of meeting once a year. They had these big plate glass windows in their conference room that looked out behind the building to the parking lot. They would bring in a mobile detail truck and they would detail the client’s car right there as they were doing the meeting. That was kind of their “wow”. To do something that people would then go home and go, I’ve got to tell you what happened today. They got people talking that way.
It’s an interesting point and I think I just wrote the other day about one advisor that I had spoken to, whose clients actually rejected the idea that they should try to be all of those things. Although at the same time, I’ve done a lot of client advisory boards where people say, what I really appreciate about this advisor is I can ask him anything. If he can’t do it for me, he knows somebody who can. Where are the boundaries to that? How much of becoming referable should be about enhancing your core service and the things that you do? How much of it should be to have that broader relationship that goes outside of your core specialty?
I don’t know if I can assign percentages to that, but I think for most businesses it’s a really great practice because the other thing that happens is that banker, that lawyer, and that CPA that you have on your team and that you maybe collaborate on, on content, in workshops or things – in many cases, they become one of your best referral sources as well. There’s some very, very practical reasons. You become more valuable to your clients because you have that team, but you also are over time, building a referral asset that might actually be your greatest generator of new clients.
That’s an excellent point about not just being a resource for the client, but being a resource for your professional relationships and how that can promote referrals from that other angle, as well as just from your clients.
In some cases, it can be more potent because a law firm or a regional bank might actually have a thousand customers that they could refer you to. Whereas, your best customer might know two or three people that would make a great referral. You really want to be working both of those.
That’s an excellent point. Talking more about attracting referrals, financial advisors are taught that to get referrals, they have to ask for them. What are your thoughts about that approach to it?
Well, there’s no question. It’s not just ask. You have to be easy to refer. You have to look for the right opportunities. One of the mistakes I see a lot of people make is that they have a client, they’ve done some work for a client. Then at some point they go back and say, gosh, I’d like to talk to you about anybody else who needs what we do? I think you really want to plant the seed much earlier than that. In fact, I often tell people that the referral conversation needs to be part of the sales conversation. What you can do if you do that is, actually do something I think sends a really positive, strong marketing message.
One of the concerns that I have and that I write about is, generating referrals by catering to the needs of the client, by satisfying their needs and their reasons for referring. I would worry that something like that might seem a little bit self-serving or a little too much about the advisor and not enough about the clients. What are the results you’ve seen among financial advisors that you’ve coached or spoken to about this?
I’ve seen people use that exact approach and triple the number of people they were getting in front of because of it. The biggest thing is the way you position it. Anytime you’re asking somebody to do something and I think a lot of people resist because they feel like they’re asking their client for a favor. Worst yet, I’ve heard people say it sounds like I’m begging for business. Well, the mindset and the differentiation has to be if you know without a shadow of a doubt that what you’re doing for your clients is helping them achieve their goals and objectives in life, why wouldn’t you want to give them the opportunity to help their friends, neighbors, and colleagues do that as well?
Okay, that’s fair enough.
Don’t look at it as I’m begging or I’m asking for a favor. I’m giving my clients an opportunity to help their friends, neighbors, and colleagues. That starts with you believing that that’s what you really do.
True. That’s a good point. One of your books is called – and I’ll promote it again – The Referral Engine, which by the way, everybody should order right now and read. You talk about creating that engine that will generate a continuous stream. Besides talking with your clients that way, what other kinds of components belong in that referral engine?
Well, the other thing that I like to have people do is identify the moments of truth. Where in the client journey, in the client lifecycle are there opportunities for you to ask? I mean, you get that unsolicited email. A casual conversation where somebody just talks about what a great job you’ve done for them. You want to be on the lookout for those as moments of truth. You want to have review periods built in that aren’t necessarily about referrals, but they’re about results. Anytime somebody is realizing they had a great result, that sometimes can be a place where you have a built-in ask.
What other kinds of ways could you potentially reward those folks? Assuming that monetary rewards are off the table.
One of the things I think a lot of times people just like recognition. Telling people that X, Y, Z, person in your newsletter has been your greatest referral champion, sometimes people really enjoy that kind of recognition. Having special events or special content, or special training or something that only your referral circle gets to participate in. Another very common approach is to reward that person’s favorite non-profit with some sort of monetary gift. A lot of people can be very motivated for that kind of support.
Oh, okay. Very interesting ideas. In The Referral Engine, one of the seven stages of referral development that you talk about is try. I wanted to get a little clarification from you on that because we’re in the business of providing financial advice. The whole idea of try is kind of difficult. What kinds of ways could people offer a little sample or is there any way of implementing that in the financial services business?
Well, probably the best way and you see a lot of financial services related folks doing this – it doesn’t have to be trying a product, having a low cost intro offer. It can simply be a workshop. A workshop is a great way for somebody to try because what they’re able to do is establish, do I trust this person, do I like what they’re saying? Maybe they’ve given me three or four great tips for some things that I can do to lower my taxes or to reevaluate my portfolio. That in a lot of ways, can be – obviously, within what advice you can give, maybe it’s regulated. That type of free training or free information that’s not salesy, but is purely educational, is a great way for somebody to try anybody who is kind of a knowledge type of worker.
That’s a really good point and interesting. I’ll reinforce that by again, another advisory board I did recently. We were talking about client events and educational events, and those things. We were asking the clients, what draws you to these and what do you find valuable about these? Especially ones that you’ve gone to that have not been from this particular advisor. One of the things that they said was, it teaches us a useful skill. Not just lecturing at people, but covering something that they can go home and do for themselves. Clients have told us that they find a lot of value in that. That sounds like first, a great way to get a feel for an advisor, give them a try that way. Also, to contribute some value without actually providing them direct advice.
Well, I think you’ve realized in a lot of listeners, advisors realize too that a lot of this information is just blah, blah, blah. The financial stuff is like, they said this and they said this, they’re all saying the same thing. A lot of it comes down to, do I trust that person? Do I relate to that person? Do they seem to have my same ideas and values? I think that is a lot of what you can demonstrate more so than some incredible, crafty financial strategy that you might put together.
It’s an excellent point. One of the other people that we are having on the podcast, runs GuideVine, which has been described as the Match.com of advisor search. One of the things that he’s talked about is the big divide between people reading an advisor’s marketing literature and actually, getting a sense of who they are. He talks about a friend of his who had gone out and interviewed something like ten different advisors. They said about most of them, if we had any sense of who this person was, we never would have wasted the time going to see them because we could just tell that the personality is not who we wanted to work with.
Well again, check with your compliance department before you take the advice I’m about to give you. They are illegal to solicit from your clients to put on your website, directly to you. What you can do is there are third-party review sites. Google, Yelp. There are probably some in the investment world that I’m not familiar with. Getting Google reviews that are glowing reviews and testimonials, is again as I said, you might check this, but I’m pretty darn sure that that’s compliant. A client of yours going to a third-party site like Google and writing a review about their investment advisor is something that would actually fly.
Well, I think the biggest thing and that book was actually written for the person who realizes that their job title is sales and that that’s what they’re told they’re measured on. My point in that book was to say that I believe the opportunity to kind of expand your thinking of what sales is, where sales starts, and where it ends is something that folks that are really sales folks particularly, that are really doing well today, realize that they have to get involved in the customer journey much earlier than when marketing tells them a lead is scored high enough to go try to close them. They also have to stay I think much later. I think that in a lot of ways, as you suggested, financial service providers sometimes have a hard time realizing when they’re separating marketing sales and service because they provide in many cases, all three of those. I think that it’s important to have that distinction of what is marketing, what is sales, what is service?
Just because I hear from a lot of advisors who are confused about this, how would you differentiate selling from marketing?
Well, I use seven stages of the customer journey. There are no like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. For me, marketing is building no like and trust. Sales is try and buy. Service is repeat and refer.
Got it. Okay, that makes sense.
Your job really as a, particularly in this case as an advisor, is to move people, as many people as you possibly can through those stages.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Good idea. The time is flying along and I’m going to need to let you go pretty soon and get back to your day. Before we do that, first, what are some of the things that you’re currently working on?
I have built – Duct Tape Marketing is actually kind of my methodology for installing a marketing system. A lot of the things we talked about are components of that. I have a network of independent marketing consultants around the world that license our methodology and our training, and actually a very formal network. We do a lot of work together. Building that network and giving me the ability to bring Duct Tape Marketing and Duct Tape Marketing System to thousands or approaching tens of thousands of small businesses around the world, is really kind of a big part of our work right now.
Okay. Great. We’re going to let people in the audience get their pencils ready, so that they can figure out where to find you. Before we do that, one thing we like to ask everybody before they finish here is – and this can relate to stuff that you work on. It can relate to things we talked about today or it can relate to something totally outside of that if you think it’s important. What are three things that you think financial advisors can do to get their clients talking more about them?
Well, we talked about a couple of these things. Number one is set up a – I don’t know if you do it quarterly or annually – but, set up a time where you can sit down with eight or ten of your best clients – not at the same time necessarily – individually and just kind of pick their brain about what it is that you do that’s different. What it is that makes them stick around with you. Especially if they refer you. Why did they refer you? What are the actual words they tell somebody when they refer you? That is, in my experience, one of the best ways for any business really, but for a financial planner to understand the simple message that they need to be sweating to attract more of those ideal clients. Spend the time listening to and speaking with your clients. Not always about their financial manners, but to really turn them almost into an informal marketing advisory board. That would be number one.
Okay.
The second one, we talked a little bit about. I think actually minding strategic relationships. I don’t think enough folks spend enough time doing that. They have a lot of people in their network, people they played golf with that they say, hey, we should do something together some time. I hear that from people all the time and then we get busy chasing our business and things around. We never get around to it.
Right.
I would advise anybody listening today that one of the most powerful things you can do is to start trying to identify your team of experts that could provide best of class services for pretty much anything your clients need. Instead of just trying to immediately launch into this referral partnership, what if you started thinking about ways that you could actually produce content for each other, you could interview each other, you could have your own podcast, you could see them as kind of your first potential guest. You kind of build this fortress or team of folks that you’re really getting to know and your clients are starting to get to know. Then you can start thinking about, are there events we could do? Could we do a half day webinar or something? Where everybody can present their particular topic. What will happen is I think if you spend the time to build that formal structure like that, you’ll find that you’ll end up being – those folks will end up being a great source of leads.
That’s great. Then number three?
I guess I would go back to another thing that I suggested today. Start talking about referrals. Wrap your head around the value that you truly bring. In fact, that might take actually going out and assessing the value. A lot of times I think why people are afraid sometimes to ask for referrals is because they don’t truly understand how much value they actually are bringing to peoples’ lives. In my world as a marketing consultant, if I was charging let’s say, $25,000 a year, but I knew consistently year and year out I was producing half a million to a million dollars in new revenue for that business, it would be very easy for me to say who else needs another half of a million dollars for $25,000 spent? I think that’s what financial advisors needs to do, or really every business needs to do. They need to understand the true impact they’re having because I think that gives you the posture in many cases, to turn the tables of not being asking for a referral as a favor, but actually being an opportunity for that person who gets to refer you.
I totally agree with that. One of my favorite questions for advisors to ask their clients is, of all the things we do in our relationship, what’s most valuable to you? What do you get the most value from? That’s great. Those are three great ideas. John, thank you so much for joining us today and before we go, where can people find you? On the Twitter-sphere and on the Interweb, where can people find you?
The easiest place is just Duct Tape Marketing. That’s D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E-marketing.com. Same with Facebook. Twitter is actually just Ducttape. Starting at Duct Tape Marketing, you can kind of see any direction you want to go in terms of how much information and all the free tools and resources that we have there.
That’s great. John, thank you so much for joining us today.
My pleasure.
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.