[crosstalk 00:01:46].

Bev:
A fan club of one Julie. But I can’t imagine any-

Steve:
Who?

Bev:
There is no one that I’d rather have a compliment more from than you. So there you go, it counts for many.

Julie:
Look, I wanted to ask you a question but let me lead into it and just share maybe a couple of stats because I’d love to get your perspective on this. And we’ve talked about this over the years but we have been doing investor research for a very long time and we always see a similar pattern. We see a massive percentage of clients who say they’re comfortable referring. So 90% plus. And we see about a third of clients who say they have referred and yet when we talk to advisors, they tell us that they get referrals from maybe 3% or 4% of their clients. We see these incredible gaps.

I’d love to just kick off by asking you, what do you think creates that gap between comfort, and intention, and action.

Bev:
So there’s a few things that I think that are at play. But first of all, when you ask a client that question, they are going to answer it from the perspective of I think how happy they are, how satisfied they are, whether they like you, whether they like what you’re doing. So if you say to me how likely would I be to refer to Julie. I’ve worked with her. She’s my advisor. I’m likely going to say yes, I absolutely would. Now in the back of that yes though is if an opportunity arises and I’m confident that the person that I’m referring is a good fit and I am in possession of the right information and the right way to say it and and, and, and, and. I think that the disconnect comes in in that we’re seeing by those responses very satisfied clients. They do believe in their advisor, they are happy, they genuinely are positive and “would refer”. But there isn’t the set up if you will, the tools in place to allow them easily do it.

Julie:
And so if that’s the case, I guess the obvious question is, what do you think some of those tools are? What do you think we need to be thinking about to bridge that gap?

Bev:
So there’s a couple of things. First of all, I think that there’s a mistaken belief that because I like you as my advisor, I’m going to go talk to other people about you. And I think if we think about human behavior and the way that people think, the way they talk, the way we interact with others, it’s an usual circumstance where I would have somebody in my universe that I can say, “Hey, I just really like this person. Just talk to this person.” Now, it can happen. It will happen from time to time that you have somebody who’s a good friend looking friend, colleague and you say, “Look, I don’t if this advisor can help you but you ought to just sit down and have a conversation with him or her.” It’s not the norm, though, for the way we interact. The way we interact with people is somebody says something to us about what is it that they need and we then respond by saying, “I think I have an answer for you.” One of the pieces is helping our clients, almost training them if you will to know who is it we should as clients be looking for. And then the other of it is of course arming them with what it is that we think that we should say.

Julie:
You talked about training at first, maybe we could a little deeper on that. Are you talking about helping them know who’s the right fit for our business?

Bev:
Yes. I think that’s one of the hold-backs. You think about the value of relationships. If I have a friend, if I have a family member, I have a colleague, it’s the advisor’s reputation. But before we ever get there, it’s my reputation. And so, I think there’s a caution that people operate with that says, “This is a good friend of mine.” I could use an example. I have a very good friend, runs a business, does very well from a business perspective, lives in just an enormous home, takes all kinds of expensive vacations and is completely and utterly cash poor. Now we have a good enough relationship that we have these conversations, I know that. But if I was just simply to look at lifestyle, I might say, “Gosh, that person is the right kind of referral that I should be making to my advisor.” But what happens when I refer the person, they go sit down with the advisor. The advisor says, “I can’t work with you. You basically have no money.”

So I think that we have to kind of help the client. The advisor has to help the client with what are the life circumstances, what could somebody be dealing with or encountering, how would I describe the right kind of fit for our firm. What we teach advisors to say, we tell them, “Ask your client, “Who do you know like you?'” I don’t know about you Julie but when somebody says that to me, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Do you mean a business owner, a mother of three, a college professor? Which aspect of me? And no, actually, fortunately I don’t know anybody like me.

Steve:
Yeah. Right. And on top of that, one of the challenges is that it’s not just somebody like you but people don’t refer out of the blue. People not refer just because they’re people like you. They refer because somebody is expressing a need for something. So that’s not even just like you, that’s … We have to give them those tools that you were talking about so that they’d still have them when somebody says someone that says, “Oh, I should bring up my financial advisor.”

Bev:
And Steve, I think that’s a really good point. And that’s another piece of this, what we’re trying in a way to train clients on. I’ll talk with advisors a lot about the idea, we call it reselling or retelling. And that’s the idea that if I’ve been working with this client for a really long time, I assume that they know the kinds of things I’ve done for them, what I can do for them, what kinds of problems we’ve solved together. But again, if we look at it through the human behavior lens ‘course, I don’t remember what you did for me five years ago, two months ago. I know what we’re talking about right now. I think we also have to remind advisors that they have to be always thinking about, “Do you remember when you came to me and you were really conflicted about what the right estate plan was since you’re in the second marriage and et cetera et cetera? Imagine that you have other friends who may be going through a divorce, remarrying that would be experiencing the same types of things.”

There’s one aspect Steve where I think you’re so on point. The friend or colleague comes and tells us, “I’m struggling with this.” But the other piece is you also can prompt clients a little bit by reminding them what you’ve done for them and what their experience is and then segueing into, “Do you have other friends, colleagues etc. who may be going through some thing similar?” So that helps me in my mind to narrow down to who am I looking for instead of the general like me or who do you know.

Steve:
And I think that’s so important too because what I find is that advisors do all this work with the clients upfront. They do the financial plan and they put everything together. And then like you said, four or five years later, now they are in maintenance mode. They’ve been in maintenance mode for a while so a lot of those really significant things are ancient history to the client. What other kinds of ways can you help … I think what you’re saying is, here’s how you can bring back the client to sort of re-experience that again so that it becomes fresh for them in their minds. Is that fair?

Bev:
Well, it is. And it’s also in some ways giving words and creating a picture if you will for the client as to what we’ve gone through together. Because again remember, if I’m sitting in the seat of client, I came to the advisor with an issue, advisor helped me solve the issue. But I don’t necessarily in my mind think about what those steps were. However, if the advisor reminds me, then I have … I call it the aha, right? I have that, “Aha, boy we really have traveled this journey together or we really did overcome a large obstacle here or put something in place over there.” It’s starting to get into this topic that we talk about a lot around story telling but it’s … Instead of assuming that the client knows what the experience was, why it was valuable to them, how it helped them. You’re giving them words and a little bit of a framework for remembering but then just as importantly being able to go and talk about it to someone else.

Julie:
Yeah. It’s interesting because it does both of those things, right? And I’d love to talk about story telling as you’ve brought that up. You’re enforcing the value that you provided presumably and I do think that we need to remind clients a little more quickly about what it is that we’ve helped them do over time. I often think of it as trigger words. What are some of those words that when you’re having a conversation with someone, you’ll go, “Oh yeah, you really need to talk to this person.” Is that what you’re getting that there?

Bev:
Yes. And I love the concept of trigger because to me, that is … Human beings in general, right? We don’t tend to like to move to action unless the pain or pleasure continuum is strong enough on either side. You think about it. Here we’re talking about referrals, what is really the pain to me or the pleasure to me to go out and start to look for people to refer to my advisor? There’s not a built-in trigger, to use your word Julie which I love, not a built in. So we have to create one. Now, if you were though to paint a picture for me and remind me about something. That’s where all over a sudden, a person will pop into my mind where I think, “Wow, it’s interesting. I was just having lunch with so and so. They were talking about … whatever it is, the complexities and the second marriage and the step children and how to best prepare for that. You’re right, maybe that is somebody that I ought to recommend or refer.”

I kind of talk about it sometimes. The mind is like this heat seeking missile. Like it will direct … Just like why we want to … If I want to lose weight, I want to get on an exercise plan, I want to finally take that trip whatever it is. If I set that goal clearly, I’m more likely to move towards it than I am if I keep saying, “Oh gosh, I want to take that trip.” And it’s the same type of thing, if we can paint the picture and more clearly define it for our clients as to what that trigger might be, what that lifestyle event might be, what that person might be struggling with. It’s just going to help my mind to zero in on those people so much more easily than if you just ask me the general, “Hey, who do you know?”

Julie:
It’s interesting. And I mean the nuance I think that you’re bringing out and which I don’t think I hear that often is … You’re talking about the story, the client story in this case and it triggering and a different sort of trigger but a name of someone who had a similar experience. So you remind them, they think of someone. Presumably and what we often talk about I think is the stories that they then go out and tell other people. And those are different sort of tactical approaches if you will.

Bev:
Yes. And I would talk about it as two halves to a whole. If we think about the … The picture I have in a mind, right? We’re sending the client out. We’ve just met and we’re sending them out into the world to go find who’s going to be the good referral for us if we’re the advisor. There’s the piece where we have to help them identify who those people are. Now sometimes, an advisor can do what we’ll sometimes call the link and connect. So I’ve gone on Steve’s LinkedIn page and I’ve seen that one of the people that he knows is a CEO of this large firm in my town. Next time Steve comes in for the meeting, I say, “Hey, I noticed that you were connected to this person Steve. What do you think about setting up a coffee that we could all have together.” So there’s that where I’m identifying and then I’m being more direct on who I’m looking for.

But in some cases, and especially with clients … At least this is what we hear from advisors, if you’ve worked with a client for a long time, you may be a little less comfortable or depending on the personality etc. being that direct. So in those cases, I think you have to paint the picture a bit, right, the trigger, and help the client have an idea in their mind who are we looking for? Who would it be best that you might be able to facilitate an introduction with. So that’s one half of it but Julie to your point, then the other half of it, we have to give them something to say. Because in a lot of cases, just saying, “You got to talk to my advisor, he’s a great guy.” It’s not enough. And especially wealthy people tend to be busy people, tend to be successful people, tend to be people who don’t sit around and just schedule coffee unless they believe that there’s a meaningful reason for doing that. So we do have to give the client the story of what’s the meaningful reason for me to spend my time talking to my advisor.

Julie:
Can you unpack the whole concept of story telling a little and talk about maybe what … I mean, what does a story sound like? What constitutes a good story that can be shared?

Bev:
Yes. I love this topic because at one level, I think it’s probably the most simple thing that I think we can teach people. At another level, there really is an art if you will and a finesse to it. If we think about it very simply, a story, to use the old adage of a sandwich, it has the bun on the top, the meat in the middle and then the bun on the bottom. What does that mean? The story opens somehow. And actually, the word we often use is trigger event. Something has happened to start me into the story. What does that mean from an advisor’s seat? Well, you may want to think about for example, what a common experience that a lot of people who come to you as prospects and end up becoming clients walk through the door with

Let’s say, I find in my practice that it’s people that have been burned by working with somebody who is not a holistic wealth manager. It’s all been about the investments blah blah blah. Okay, so that’s the trigger event. We find that a lot of people who have worked with an advisor for a while and become frustrated by the fact that they’re not looking at their whole picture, come to us and want to talk about their financial situation more broadly. Okay, so what’s my trigger? How do I start it? Then the meat is what happened then when they came to me. That can take many different forms. So you do want to make sure you have some sort of easy way to talk about your process.

But let’s say our process, just for this example, is that we meet three times. We do nothing other than ask you questions. We ask you to bring in all of your documents etc. etc. I’m going to explain that and say, one of the things we’ve found is there’s a real magic to these three meetings. So we always have three meetings. We ask people to bring in these documents and we go through this process so that we can create a whole plan. Then the last piece of the sandwich is the what happened. And I like to say this is where people live happily ever after but they don’t from a lifestyle perspective because advisors are dealing with somebody who’s been widowed unexpectedly, the drug addict child, the broker or advisor or financial planner who did them wrong, whatever it may be. It’s not that the situation ends happily. But what ends happily is that the advisor is able to solve whatever the issue was for that client.

So trigger event, why do they come to us? What brings them in here? What life experience are they having? Meat in the middle. What is it that we do that is different and special to solve it? And then happy at the end. What is it … Even though this person lost their spouse very young, we took them through this whole process and they left with this clarity and confidence that, we can’t fix the sadness of their experience, we can give them a lot of confidence around their financial process.

Steve:
That’s a great way of putting together a story for sort of a general approach to describing the kinds of things the advisor brings to the table. Should the advisor just have the one story that they work real hard at refining or should they have multiple stories that may address different things?

Bev:
Let’s think about it as almost like a stage process. Number one step, I believe firmly you do need to identify who is that niche market. You don’t have to have only one. You can have two or three but it’s the difference between we work with women and we work with women who are business owners, who are also mothers who are trying to figure out best way to pass the legacy of their business to their children as an example, right? Just two dramatically different. One is very general, one’s more specific. If I’m able to describe again the niche, that takes us back to what we talked about earlier in terms of illustrating for your client.

Again, if we are talking referrals, who are you looking for? What’s the niche? Who am I going after? Step two, what is it that we solve for? How do you explain what it is that we do for that particular niche? And then third step is how do I arm my client with a story that’s comfortable. It’s the difference between at a cocktail event, me saying, “Hey, I have this great advisor. You’d love her.” And me saying, “Boy, as a business owner with children who’s trying to figure out this legacy blah blah blah and you are too. We really ought to sit down and have lunch with this woman I’m working with. She’s been great.” If we think about those three steps. I’ve got to know who it is, got to be able to paint a picture for who they are, got to know the what am I saying I do. What’s the easy portable story that I can give the client? And then third, how do I help the client be able to go tell it to the right people and find the right people.

Julie:
Do you find… there’s this piece in the middle that I’d love to explore which is I think a discomfort we have when you’re being asked to talk about things in a different way. In this case, if as an advisor I’m being asked to share stories, that might feel different. I imagine the question and I have heard this question as well, when do I tell these stories? How do I lead into that naturally? Do you have any advice on integrating this in a seamless way?

Bev:
Yes. And again … and it’s, absolutely. First of all, we’re asking advisors to consider something that they’re not right now doing. So like anything, it feels awkward at the outset. If you take up some new exercise program, your muscles in whatever you’re working them now, they don’t feel so good the next morning because it is something new. You’re asking your mind, your body to do something differently. So I think in fairness, yes, we have to acknowledge this does take some conscious thinking and some practicing because it isn’t going to flow naturally. I tell advisors, you can in the mirror in the morning, when you’re putting on your makeup or you’re shaving, talk out loud. I remember a time where if you were talking in your car, you were crazy because who were you talking to. Now we’re all gabbing-

Well, now we all gab in our car non-stop so who knows who you’re talking too. So practice this, right? That is such a key thing because the more you practice it, the more comfortable it is. But then the second thing is, I think you do have to … I call it setting the expectation. Let’s say the two of you, you’re business owners together and I’m your advisor. We’ve been working together. Julie and Steve partnered up, they come in, we’re going to have a meeting on the business financials. At the outset, I have to be able to say, “So good to see you. We’re going to go through all of your financials. I hope that … expect I’m going to be able to answer any questions that you have.” Before we leave here today though, also want to break up an initiative, business initiative that we have going on right now. Some things that we’re doing. I just want to save about 10 minutes to talk with you about that.” Okay. We go through the meeting, hopefully all is well. You’re very happy, you’re going to make some business decisions.

Then I have the opportunity to say, “We’ve been looking at …” And Julie to the point you opened with, you could talk about it as survey results. You could talk about it as an internal meeting you’ve had. You could talk about it as just a different way of thinking about the business. But here is where I start to say we’ve … let me use the survey example. “We noticed in our survey, a lot of our clients would like to refer us blah blah blah, haven’t been. One of the things we’ve realized is, we haven’t done the best job of really explaining what is it that we do and for whom and how. So I’d like to take a step back, go through that a little bit with you. And if we could brainstorm together and again, if I have someone that I can ask for that’s great. If I don’t it can just be a brainstorming session.”

So I do believe you have to get deliberate about it but you don’t necessarily push the client up against the wall and say, “Who do you know?” You say, “Here’s an important thing we’re doing. This is something we’ve noticed. We haven’t done as good of a job at. We really want to fix that. Let me explain what we believe our story to be or process to be. And then if we can talk about… Do you think that there’s someone you know or that you could talk with? Or again, I know you’re in this business owners’ association, Julie and Steve is there somebody in that association etc. etc.”

Steve:
And Bev what I love about that is that you’re … On one level, if you tell somebody a story, you’ll make it more memorable. But on a different level, if you sort of persuade them to engage with you on breaking apart your value and those kinds of things, they’ll remember it way better. Getting them to brainstorm with you about, “Is this a good reflection of your experience with us? Is this a good way of explaining what you think is different about us?” It’s a great idea because it drives it so much further down into their mind. And what would you think about engaging your team in the same kind of activity?

Bev:
Yes. Steve you’re right on. Because think about too, this whole idea of referrals puts me as advisor in the position of wanting something. Say in my example, from the two of you as these business partners who are my client. The nuance is I want to be like we are all on the same level and we’re working this together. So you almost own part of it too which is the extension that comes out of doing it that way.

But yes, I mean a huge affirmative yes. I think this can be an incredible team exercise. We were just at a firm this morning and they inside their firm have seniors of course and then the juniors working together. And they’re finding that preparing for some of these discussions is just helping them as partners and as team members working with a client, just think and talk about the client so differently internally, right? So instead of just, we’re going to pull the reports together on what we’ve done on the portfolio. They’re talking about, “Who is this couple and who do they know and what story do you think we should tell and how should we represent it to them?” So it’s created this different level of comradery inside the firm too.

Julie:
So you’re talking about actually crafting the stories I think with the team, which I can imagine, yeah would be … which would be a great exercise. What about also engaging the team? Are referrals also the responsibility in your mind of other people on the team? Have you seen anyone doing that effectively?

Bev:
Heck yes. I completely … and I’m sure the two of you are also of this mind. We have this… I don’t want to characterize it as a crisis but let’s just say it’s a big looming change coming where you have a lot of the founders and leaders of firms who are wanting perhaps to wind down, thinking about working less, maybe even wanting to retire someday. But in many cases, they are the people who are bringing in the new business and are practicing the referral language etc. etc. The beauty of stories and engaging a team like this is you’re giving your next gens, those younger folks who’ve not had as much client exposure, stories that they then can somewhat own as their own. So it’s really powerful from that perspective because you… It’s almost like instead of making them spend 30 years building their own stories, you are giving them stories that they then can turn around and use. So powerful to extend the team.

Steve:
If I could riff on that a little bit, it seems like there’s really another good reason to do that. And that is that the founders are the ones who had to take a risk. Most of them had to start something on their own and they probably had some passion, some reason for doing that, some motivation and that’s what kept them going through the tough times. It’s also what made them persuasive and enabled them to bring folks in. Where a lot of the next gen, a lot of the g2, they’re competent and they’re diligent and they’re enthusiastic. But they may not have that passion because the way the got into the business is they went to work for somebody. And so, having those institutional stories … And what do you think about the role of those institutional stories as a way of sort of passing down the original reason or the passion for having started it in the first place?

Bev:
Yes. I think that’s a fabulous insight and I also think about if you were a newer member of a team, maybe you haven’t had as much exposure. You’re still on the learning curve but you start to hear these stories about what our firm does for clients and how we solve things and the types of people we work with. There’s also that engagement aspect, right? “Now, I’m really part of something and helps me to understand a little bit more about our culture and what we stand for.” So it is… It’s a very unifying type process and can also be in some ways a bit of a training process. To your points, “I’ve learnt something that I just simply didn’t know before from these stories.

Julie:
I often remember working with newer people on the team and we’d be going out and delivering workshops. And to a person, they would always say, “Julie, I started off by using exactly what you were saying. I was just telling your stories and it worked. That was great. But there was this day I realized I was changing them or ditching them completely and using my own.” “That’s good. You know what I mean, it’s like … But it was that leg up and then that’s when you knew you were just immersed and you could … You had your own stories to tell.” So that’s pretty cool. Hey, I know we’re kind of hitting up on our time. I want to make sure I ask you a couple of questions before we end. And maybe just to wrap up a lot of what we’ve talked about. If someone is listening today and then wanted to get started, is there a place you think an advisor could get started in thinking about the stories the they can share?

Bev:
I definitely do recommend if you have more than just an advisor and a firm, talking to others in the firm. And going through that process of talking about trigger. Why do we think people come to us? How do we solve for whatever it is? What do we think is different about the way we go through it? And then what it is we’re able to gift them, give them as the take away, the happy take away at the end. I think it can absolutely be done where you’re brainstorming internally to do that. I think that if you’re an advisor just working on your own, I absolutely believe you can engage your clients in this process. One of our firms, they do a client advisory board and what they ended up doing was just picking a couple of clients that were very active and engaged on the board and just having over lunch this conversation. How would you describe it and what words do you use?

You can use your internal team but you can go to the horse’s mouth, right? Go to the source and you’re going to want to be selective about which clients it is but if you have a strong enough relationship, you can actually have them help you feed those stories.

Julie:
Right. Great advice. And just really quickly, if advisors are interested in learning more about the work that you do, where can they find you?

Bev:
They can come to our website. It’s the-collaborative.com. And we do have a lot of … There’s free resources and a lot of information of what we’re talking about here, blogs and what not there. So the-collaborative.com.

Steve:
Yeah, thank you Bev.

Julie:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking some time today. It was great chatting.

Bev:
My pleasure and it’s such an important topic. So thank you both for doing such great work with this podcast.

Steve:
Thanks. Take care.

Bev:
Thank you.

Steve:
Hey folks, Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes, it really helps. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at BecomingReferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth and connect with our blogs and other resources. So until next time, so long.