Participants:

Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Robert Sofia

Steve Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. In this episode we talk with Robert Sofia, founder and CEO of Snappy Kraken. Winner of the inaugural Fintech competition at the 2016 conference of the XY-planning network, Snappy Kraken is an automated marketing platform that helps financial advisors personalize, deploy and track marketing campaigns and business processes. Since 2005 Robert has helped over 1000 financial companies with their marketing.

He’s a speaker on marketing, branding and entrepreneurship and an author of two books and articles in major financial and business publications. We talk about how marketing financial advice has changed over the past ten years, what role automation can play to help you become more effective and consistent in your marketing, even how you can automate referral generation. If you want to know how to leverage the most current concepts in technologies to better market your firm, this is a conversation you’ll want to listen to.

So, without further delay, here he is, Robert Sofia. So Robert, thanks very much for joining us on the Becoming Referable podcast.

Robert Sofia:
Thank you, I love being here.

Steve Wershing:
Now Robert, you’ve been in advisor marketing for a long time, and you’ve done a bunch of different things. What have you seen … what have been some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in advisor marketing over the past ten years or so?

Robert Sofia:
Oh my goodness, there’s been so many. Unfortunately, not everybody is adapting to those changes, but primarily they’re driven by technology. I think there’s been more resources advisors can use to automate their business and their workflows, of course the advent of social media being more adopted within the industry and digital ways of tracking and measuring results. In the past advisors were very much left to their own devices to just try things and see what sticks and now actually there’s great ways to automate and measure and to grow in very creative ways online and offline and integrate those to work together and so that’s been a big evolution.

Julie Littlechild:
Would you say, has the evolution, I’m sure the answer is probably both of these, but has the evolution been in the way in which we can automate and use technology or have there also been changes, do you think, in the way in which we are connecting with prospects. Is that different as well?

Robert Sofia:
Oh, big time, if you think about the nature of marketing and consumer behavior too, there was a time when interruption marketing was really the thing that people did. It was the phone calls and it was the pop-ups and it was the ads that interrupt your show before you watch them. And there’s still many forms of interruption marketing out there, but advisors were using interruption marketing too. And now we see more … it’s permission-based marketing. You engage with people on the way they want to be engaged and on the channels that they’re using. And it’s not forced upon them but they opt in to it. And so it goes from less of just an outbound self-serving angle to more of an inbound and client focused angle, which is how it should be. So, advisors, instead of just advertising, they have to think more about value now and how they engage with clients and prospects in a way that those people want, with information that they want and that’s definitely a shift in how you think and how you market.

Steve Wershing:
And so, this is related to that Robert. What would you say are some of the top things that used to be true about advisor marketing that are not true anymore?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, well you don’t have to start your firm with a name that starts with A so you can be at the top of the phone book.

Julie Littlechild:
Well that’s good.

Robert Sofia:
Hey, you know there was a time, that was it, AAA was the way to go. So, it depends on what time period you’re looking at, but there’s been a lot that’s happened in the last, just focusing on the last decade, practices that advisors used to use that really don’t work anymore. A very good example of that is spamming people, I mean when I first got in this business we got an email list of everybody in the community and we just started blasting them and holding seminars too. There was a time when we could just send out 5000 postcards and pack three rooms and bring in a bunch of clients and prospects that way. I mean that’s how it was when I got in the business back in the early 2000s.

And both of those methods are going by the wayside. Cold calling is not effective anymore and so now it’s really more about positioning your thought leadership, elevating your profile in a way that people notice you and are attracted to you. It’s about getting involved in things where your ideal client and prospects are in the community. Good old-fashioned networking and salesmanship and the marketing gimmicky stuff just doesn’t really work.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting, because I think the last three interviews we’ve done the word value has figured rather prominently. And do you think that there’s been a shift in how we define value in what we deliver?

Robert Sofia:
Well, I think the market demands it. Maybe there’s been a shift in thinking from advisors’ perspective, I don’t know if it’s been enough of a shift in thinking. I know that consumers in general are overwhelmed. They’re overloaded with advertising and they’re overloaded with marketing messages and they’re overloaded with the ads that are displayed to them online. There’s just so much. And I’m not saying that some of those messages don’t work, I mean we do online advertising successfully for our clients. But it’s the way you do these things, people are on a hunt for value, that’s what they’re actually looking for. They’re not looking for advertising, they’re looking for something that’s going to be additive to their life.

So, especially when it comes to financial planning, it’s a deeply personal subject, it has to do with your entire future and your families and your livelihood, your lifestyle. And people want to secure those things, and so when they recognize that this is a person who can help them do that, then that’s where the value is. And I think, when advisors are focused on not just marketing, but on what can I do that will demonstrate that I can serve people. What can I do that will show people that I can offer them true value, true and lasting value?

What can I do that will demonstrate that I care more about my clients’ success than my own success? And when you start to think that way and it comes through in all of your messaging and your branding and your marketing and on a more humanized, personal level, then people respond to that. Because there’s so much digital, there so much disconnection that in this business, we have a nice chance to really stand out as a confidant, as a coach, a consultant, a guide for our clients and when you position yourself that way, people are drawn to it. And that’s value, that’s really the value of the financial planning relationship.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Steve Wershing:
So, I’ve seen the statistic a couple times now in the past year, where advisory firms are meeting less and less and less of their business development goals that, if you go back five years, there were a certain proportion of advisors, a significant portion of them were hitting their goals and that proportion has been shrinking over the past bunch of years. How much of that do you think, may be explained by them not adapting their marketing strategies and how much, maybe other things like just client complacency or those kinds of things?

Robert Sofia:
Well, I don’t know why advisors aren’t hitting their goals. The advisors that I work with are hitting their business development goals. And maybe it’s a different breed, I mean I’m working with advisors who are growing, who want to grow, who are investing in their business, who run their business as an entrepreneur, not just as a lone wolf practitioner. And so, those are the types of individuals that I see thriving because they are meeting their business development goals. They set those goals and they drive hard for them. Now, if advisors aren’t adapting to changes in the marketplace, to changes in technology, to changes in the industry, even things like fee transparency and holistic financial planning and things like that.

If they’re not doing that, no, I don’t think they’ll meet they’re business development goals, because they’re not developing. So, I don’t know what the reason is for that, except maybe the aging advisors, a lot of them aren’t necessarily looking to grow their business that way and they’re planning to exit in a few years and those are the ones maybe that are responding to those studies who aren’t doing those things. But the advisors who want to grow and thrive, they very much can, the resources are there, they just have to put the effort in.

Julie Littlechild:
I’d love to go back to, you made a comment as you were talking about the different definition of value and used the term human. Can you give me some examples of what that means? I mean you could argue that any communication I provide, is by definition human because I’m a human and I’m providing it. But what do you mean when you talk about communications that are more human?

Robert Sofia:
I’ll give you an example, I think it’s best to probably frame it that way with something specific. So let’s say that an advisor meets someone, maybe at the country club or perhaps through a referral, or even if it’s somebody in their community that they happen to know, a fellow business owner through a networking organization or something like that. The old-school way is you put them on your email list and then they’re just going to get those newsletters from you and consultants would tell you that, as long as you’re staying in front of them, that works and you’re going to get business. And maybe that works for some people, but that’s not really humanized marketing.

People know you’re just on a mailing list. And think about how we all view the emails that we get from mailing lists. I mean, sometimes they have value sometimes they don’t, but at the very least we know that they’re not sent by someone sitting down at their desk and composing that with us in mind. So, that’s the old way to drip market to somebody. See the new way you say, okay, how can I humanize this? And that means, in an ideal setting you would sit down at your desk and you would write an email to every person. So, you would have a list of a hundred people and every week you’d sit down and you’d write a hundred emails.

Or send out a hundred hand-written thank you notes or you’d clip something out of the paper or magazine article and you’d mail it to a hundred people. But we know that, that is not possible if you want to scale your business. So how do you accomplish that? Well, in our case, what we encourage advisors to do, is take an email nurturing sequence that is sent from their email address that has perhaps eight weeks of pre-written follow up emails that are written in a casual tone, they’re text based, they have your email signature on them and it’s an eight-week prospect nurturing campaign, that gradually explains the value of working with a financial advisor and invites that person to make an appointment with you.

Now, in that case, what’s happening is, this person is still getting emails from you for eight weeks, you still added them to an email list, but instead of them getting a blast email, what they’re getting is an email that is sent from you. And as far as they know you sat down and wrote that with them in mind that morning from your office. Now they got an email from a human it’s not from a mailing list of XYZ Financial Planning, it’s from John Smith, CFP. And now he wrote that email or she wrote that email and it’s to them, at least that’s how they see it, that’s an example of human automated marketing.

And that’s what we’re trying to help advisors do is, scale their business with technology but do it in a way that feels very authentic and organic.

Steve Wershing:
And I’ve heard similar thing … I’ve actually heard feedback like that from clients. And I wonder if you could just go into it a little bit more about what kinds of messages help create that human connection and address the client … the comment that I’m thinking of specifically, well there are two comments, one was in … actually they were both from advisory boards. One of them was, don’t ever send me anything I could find on CNBC, I can go there for that. Send me something that relates more to me. And then the other comment was, if you send something out that looks to me like a newsletter, I’m going to delete it. But, if you send something to me that looks like it’s an email from you, even if I don’t realize you’ve sent it to 200 other people, I’ll open it, because I’ll think it’s from you to me. What kinds of messages work well that way, and what kinds of messages might advisors inadvertently utilize for that, that would not be terribly effective?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, excellent. So, I like the way you asked that question, because there’s definitely ways to do this wrong, where it ends up feeling very disingenuous anyway. I think if you’re going to succeed at this, you have to put yourself in the mind of what you would do if you were just writing an email to a single individual. So, an example would be, what’s one of the values that a financial advisor relationship provides you? Well, let’s just say, it’s getting organized, getting your financial house in order, maybe that’s one of the values.

Okay so, if you were going to send somebody an email about that, to convince them they should work with you, because you can help them get their finances in order, what would you say? You might send an email that says, hey John I’m just reaching out, it was really nice to meet you and I wanted to say that many people wonder if they should work with an advisor or not, but they’re not aware of all the benefits. So, I just want to share one of the benefits with you. And how I have been able to help many of my clients.

It’s by helping them get organized. If you’re like most people, you probably have a box of tax returns and statements that’s sitting there, piling up. You know, one of the things that we do for our clients, is when they bring all that stuff, and even if it’s in a box, disorganized, we’ll put it all into binders for them, separate it, organize, nice and neat. Help them know what things are where and be able to find what they need, when they need it.

And get their financial house in order, if you’d like my help with that, I would love to help you. So, feel free to call or message me anytime. Now, that email, it could be written from one person to another, casually, in fact you should write like you talk. So, there’s an example of how I might write an email like that to a client. Or I could take something else, I could talk about the accountability that an advisor provides and I might email that person again, and say, hey, I emailed you last week, hope you don’t mind, I’m just following up again, because many people aren’t aware that another value that I provide my clients, is that I help hold them accountable. If you’re like people who’ve subscribed to a gym membership for example and you go into the gym, often times in January that new year’s resolution gets you to the gym, but then it’s very hard to go back.

But, people who have a personal trainer often do much better. You could think of me like a professional financial trainer. I help hold my clients accountable to reach their retirement goals. If you’d like to know how I do that, feel free to call or email me anytime. By the way, here’s my cellphone number, you can text me if you’re allowed to do that in your firm, in a compliant way, so side note there. But that’s the idea right? You have to say, how do I create these sequences and these activities and these actions that people will perceive to be personalized and yet, from my side, they’re still pretty scaleable.

Steve Wershing:
So, help me with sorting through one debate that’s out there. And that is the … a string of messages that sounds like, oh, here’s a tip that might be useful to you and here’s something that you might find valuable and here’s another thing to keep in mind, those kinds of things. Compared to what I hear you saying, which is, if I can over simplify and sort of be a little hyperbolic about it, to say here’s one thing that I can do for you, here’s another reason to hire me, here’s another thing that I can do for you. So, what are your thoughts about where the line is, where you cross over from sending out something that’s a value versus sounding like a pitch?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah well, it’s context right? So, something that sounds like a pitch, shouldn’t be used, it shouldn’t sound like a pitch, but let’s face it, this is a service business and we have a service to sell. And we have to sell ourselves, we have to showcase our values. So, it’s what is the nature of this relationship? What is the timing of the relationship? What is the medium we are communicating on? There’s a place for tips and tips should be given freely, when they’re of value and they can help somebody at the right time. For example, sending some year-end tax tips to people, hey, by the way, I just want you to know, as the end of the year approaches, these are some things that you might be thinking about, these are popular tax tips that have saved my clients a lot of money. I thought you might like to know about these. Just consider it a courtesy, if you have any questions about these, call me.

Okay, that’s a good time for tips, but then there’s another time when you just meet somebody and you say, hey, by the way, I want you to know this is the service I provide and I’d like the opportunity to provide this service for you. And here’s my value. Well, there’s a time for that too. And then there is a time to just send out that occasional newsletter-y content, there’s a place for that too. Maybe after you’ve met somebody, you’ve sent those personalized or those quasi-personalized emails for a couple of months, and they’re not doing anything.

And then you say, hey, by the way, I’d like to move you over to my mailing list I send out a monthly economic update or newsletter with some creative financial strategies that you might like to review. Are you interested in that? And you give them a chance to opt in and then they get those, but they said they wanted to get those. And that’s good too, but that’s a different thing for a different phase of the relationship. And so, I think it’s just about what you’re trying to do when and with whom, that determines the best form of marketing at that time.

Julie Littlechild:
Can we pick up on that … so, you gave an example that sounded great and sounded like it would be effective. Are you recommending that advisors segment their clients or prospect list perhaps based on objective or needs? Or would an email campaign along the lines of the one you described to be appropriate for anyone that you just met?

Robert Sofia:
The email campaigns that I was describing there, would be appropriate for individuals that you just met. That was the idea with that, was to gradually establish your value. But the other types of content, you can even have the same type of content for clients, like newsletters and things like that where they know they’re going to get that and they know there’s a certain brand promise of what the value is that they receive when those come through. But there’s certainly, there’s no way to just take one thing and plug it in to every scenario. So, your point about segmenting your list is very important, because you should have a way that you treat new prospects and a way that you treat old prospects and a way that you treat new clients and a way that you treat long standing clients.

For example, you wouldn’t take on a new client and then immediately send them a referral request. That would be too soon.

Julie Littlechild:
Right.

Robert Sofia:
So, within your CRM or your marketing tool that you’re using, having separate, we call them audiences, that each have different … maybe these people came from a certain workshop or these people came from your club or these people are in a certain niche. If you do that, and you have these campaigns that are perhaps similar, but you can just open them up and tweak them a little bit for that audience before you send it. Then that extra effort is going to go a long way towards results and people don’t want to take that time to personalize things. But, by having your separate audiences and doing a little bit of personalization, the time spent on that is well worth it in the actual results it generates.

Julie Littlechild:
Right okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, you’re referring to platforms to automate this. I know you’ve developed a platform. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, absolutely. So, we did build a platform to automate this. And our vision is to automate everything about what advisors do, so we have a goal of automating all the prospecting and all the client service, everything that is required to bring people in and to service them throughout the lifetime of that client. So, we’re doing that by using a variety of integrations and our system is built on an API junction, which basically means, we can interface with any other system. So, we’re interfacing with CRM’s now, we’re interfacing with financial planning software now.

And within our platform there are a variety of pre-created campaigns, each with separate journeys. And each campaign is designed to take clients or prospects along a journey with a certain objective in mind. And there are five different objectives that we have found that advisors need to be able to accomplish in their business if they want to scale and grow. And so we built all of our campaigns around meeting one of those five objectives, to help advisors.

Steve Wershing:
So what kinds of objectives would those be?

Robert Sofia:
So, the first objective is to bring in new leads. So, that’s the first one. Second is to convert those leads into actual appointments, so nurturing existing prospects. The third is to build on existing client relationships in meaningful ways. The fourth is to generate referrals from your clients, or you could say turn your clients into advocates. And then the fifth is to automate your operational workflows, to be more efficient.

Julie Littlechild:
So, maybe we can pick up on the obvious, given the name of this podcast, and ask you a little bit about some of the principles that guide the work you’re doing in generating referrals.

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, and I’m happy to talk about that. We believe, as I’m sure you believe, that advisors are never going to generate meaningful referrals or any volume of referrals if they are not first referable, at risk of sounding like a broken record, because everybody says that, you have to become referable. But we know that’s true, and I think the name of your podcast really expresses that. But the fact is that we cannot also just become referable and then expect the referrals to come automatically, unless we are taking action.

So, our philosophy is A, run a good business, serve people well, do acts of kindness, make them love you, make them respect you and like you and trust you, but also make them love you, turn them into fans. And then once you’ve done those things, then you have to give them lots of different ways, various platforms to help you generate those referrals or, you could say, to empower them to give you the referral. Put them in a position where it’s easy to give you those referrals, where it’s natural, where it’s even automatic to give you those referrals.

And so, through our platform, not only do we provide a number of resources like tips and we have a white paper called, 102 Ways to Surprise and Delight Your Clients, we have 15 ways to ask for a referral. So, those are kind of foundational. But then we also have the automations, the campaigns to help actually generate a referral where you could send out this campaign to your clients and generate referrals as a result. And that’s where the automation gets involved. So, there’s the foundational business practices and then there’s the automations.

Steve Wershing:
And can you give us an example of how those referrals get automated? So, when you trigger that process, when you’re at the right spot in the relationship with the client, what does the automation do that would get people to start doing the referrals?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, great. So, there’s actually two different examples I can give you. One is, we have something called a new client onboarding campaign that over the first 90 days with that client, it gradually sends them communications from you and then it surveys them, and it does all these things, so by the end of 90 days, at the conclusion of that period and you make sure the client is satisfied or hopefully they’re a raving fan by this point, then you are able to introduce the referral concept to them in an initial communication. So, that’s one thing that … and it actually asks them if, based on their experience so far, they would recommend your firm to others. And if they say yes, then it actually gives them the opportunity to recommend someone or to share your business with somebody.

So, that’s one example. Another example would be, we actually have a referral generation campaign. And what we do with that campaign is we actually flip around the whole concept of a referral from the client doing you a favor by giving you a referral. We just turn it on its head and we position this as a gift, the referral is a gift, that they can give to their friends and family. And it’s something that we offer our best clients. So, what we say is, clients like you are wonderful, you’re one of our favorite clients to work with and we find that birds of a feather flock together. And so, for our very best clients we give them the chance to offer a complimentary service to their friends or acquaintances, because we find that usually their friends fit in well with us.

And so, we leave a spot open in our schedule each week for the referrals of our best clients, and they can receive an unpaid portfolio review, an investment risk analysis or a tax minimization review, a fee analysis, so we have these segmented offers. And so, what the person can do, the client gets this, they say, oh, I would like to gift this to a friend and they actually click on a link that says gift this to a friend and then that landing page is sent to a friend that says, a client of ours has gifted this to you. You have the option to get a free tax analysis or a free fee analysis and it goes with an auto-populated message from the client to the referral, where they actually introduce you and they can personalize that message. So, you send this campaign out to your clients a few times a year. They each get these opportunities to gift this, you could do it each quarter or every few months, however you want to do it. And then the clients will actually share this with their friends, and the friends can request that gift.

And so, we just changed the whole concept of giving a referral into a very generous act that your clients can perform toward others.

Julie Littlechild:
How much of that, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Steve Wershing:
I was going to, just real briefly, we were talking a little bit before we started recording it. So, Robert, of course, you have to tell us what the name of the system is, because it’s so fabulous.

Robert Sofia:
Well, Snappy Kraken.

Steve Wershing:
Snappy Kraken, there it is.

Robert Sofia:
That’s our company, Snappy Kraken.

Julie Littlechild:
It makes me smile, that name. It does.

Steve Wershing:
When we were at XYPN and we were exhibiting like just diagonally across the aisle from you guys, I have to tell you, the staff member and I who were there, the whole way home we were saying Snappy Kraken, Snappy Kraken and coming up with different stuff that it sounds like.

Julie Littlechild:
I was just going to ask something, it’s a bit of a detail, but as you described the different campaigns, how much of that, if any, is customized in terms of the messaging by the advisor versus being something you’ve created.

Robert Sofia:
Yeah, that’s one of the things that we felt was a problem with a lot of the marketing out there, was that the advisor just couldn’t personalize it. It was all like you take it or leave it, this is how it comes. And we wanted to change that too, so all of our campaigns, each element of the campaign, the advisor can open it up and he can change the verbiage and he can change the headlines and he can rewrite the emails and they all get personalized with his logo and everything. So, we have two types of users, we have the types who just use it as is, because they’re in a hurry and they like what we did and they don’t want to mess with it, and, that’s okay, it works for them.

And then we have the types who are very interested in personalizing everything, and they spend time doing that and they can, but there’s already a template there, which makes it much easier to do than starting from scratch.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah that makes sense. So, advisors can obviously use systems like yours and we’ll make sure that we include a link to that in the show notes. For those that are just dipping their toe in the water thinking more about automation or value. What would you suggest they do as a first step?

Robert Sofia:
Well, I’m obviously partial, so, I mean it’s almost unfair for me to answer that question, because I would say, well, go to SnappyKraken.com and sign up for a 59 dollar a month membership.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, that’s an option.

Robert Sofia:
So, I mean yeah, that’s the easiest way. But I don’t want to just be shamelessly plugging my company here. So, I mean if you wanted to do this-

Julie Littlechild:
They can also sign up for the more expensive version as an alternative.

Robert Sofia:
They could. They could. There’s a lot of ways to do this, I mean, you don’t need Snappy Kraken to automate your business. You can go out, and you can get a Mailchimp account and you can get a Leadpages account and you can get a Facebook advertising account and a Google AdWords account and a Wistia account and you can buy a camera and start producing your own videos. And you can do all this on your own, I think it’s overwhelming though, and it’s time consuming and you have to be a marketer and a technologist to do all this effectively. So, if an advisor was getting started, I would say that you should start with one channel or one resource, commit to it and do it well before you add another.

And that could be video, it could be email, it could be online advertising, but whatever it is, start with one thing, stick to it, master it, and then add the next. Now, the sad part about that is that, if you do that you’re never getting your message across on every channel. So, a truly effective strategy is going to be omnichannel and so, that’s why using a tool like Marketo or HubSpot or Infusionsoft to build omnichannel coordinated campaigns is very good, but that’s several hundred dollars a month, and there’s no content, you still have to add the content. So, the easiest way is really to hire a company like us to do it or if you want to do something very high end and very custom, you could go out and get an expensive agency and pay them to do it all for you.

But again, that’s also a big expense. So, all roads lead back to Snappy Kraken, frankly, it’s a quick and easy way to automate your business.

Julie Littlechild:
Love it.

Steve Wershing:
So, before we close up, let me just ask you one more question Robert. You talked about the Snappy Kraken enables you to create some of your own messages, or you can take some of the messages that you already have in the system. Assuming that an advisor were inclined and able to do it. What do you think is the ideal mix of content that the advisor generates versus taking the messages that you’ve created? Let me put a little context behind that too, one of the objections that I have, as a marketing consultant, to allow the packaged offerings that get made to advisors is that the advisors can’t differentiate themselves that way. By necessity, you have generic messages and evergreen messages and so, there’s a big benefit to personalizing to at least some of what you put out. What in your mind is the right combination of that?

Robert Sofia:
It is such a good point that you make. And you’re absolutely correct, there is no substitute for 100 percent original content. And when you do everything 100 percent original, then you are truly differentiated, and you never look like anybody else. So, if you can afford to, then that is the way to go. And I absolutely would support somebody who said, I’m not going to use Snappy Kraken, I’m doing it all from scratch. In fact, I’ve told people. And they’re willing to make the investment in their business.

Steve Wershing:
I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. Let’s say somebody goes to Snappy Kraken and part of what the system lets you do, is to create your own personalized messages in there. What level do you think would help them hit the highest effectiveness level without … what’s the point where they reach a point of diminishing returns. Is it ten percent custom messages or 20 percent or 30 percent. Where do you think that balance is?

Robert Sofia:
Yeah okay, that’s good, that makes sense. So, yeah, obviously you should customize everything a little bit at least, and I think the diminishing returns happen when you’re taking time away that will be better spent somewhere else on your business. So, if you can get something like this set up and personalize it once, you don’t ever have to do it again, you just personalize it then you’ve got your campaigns ready to go and you can add people and that’s a little time investment that you put in upfront.

But, advisors should be especially cognizant of the fact that the highest value activities for them, are always going to be when they’re in front of somebody, face to face, interacting with them on the phone or in person or through video chat. But it’s that personal touch and so, we never want them to be stuck behind the computer screen. If you can delegate it to an assistant or if you can just invest that time once, maybe you put a few hours into it initially. That really should be all you have to do, because we’ve engineered everything to be effective, we’re benchmarking, we’re refining, we’ve got hundreds of advisors running different campaigns around the country and we’re looking at the results and split testing things. And the result of that is a good product that works.

So, I would say, personalize it enough, so it feels right for you in your business and fits. But don’t obsess over making everything different.

Steve Wershing:
Okay great. Well, that’s great advice and Robert, there’s lots of other questions I’d like to ask, but we are coming up against our time, so, thank you for joining us and when people want to find out more about Snappy Kraken. Where do they go to find out?

Robert Sofia:
SnappyKraken.com. S-N-A-P-P-Y-K-R-A-K-E-N, that’s kraken, K-R-A-K-E-N no C.

Steve Wershing:
That’s great, we’ll make sure we put a link to that in show notes as well.

Robert Sofia:
Thank you.

Steve Wershing:
And Robert, thank you so much for joining us today, it was a great conversation.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Steve Wershing:
It was absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Julie Littlechild:
Hi, it’s Julie again, it was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes, it really does help. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth and connect with our blogs and other resources. Thanks so much for joining us.