Beverly Flaxington on the Magic of Story Telling

Show Timeline:

1:58 The referral gaps
Differences in comfort, intention and action in client referral behavior
4:01 The tools you can use to bridge these gaps
How an advisor can start to help clients understand whom to refer
7:33 Training clients to refer by ‘re-selling’ and ‘re-telling’
Using client stories to focus on specific needs with which you can help
11:52 Using triggers in your referral strategy
Understanding the psychology of what makes people take action, and using it to your advantage
16: 50 The art of story telling
Crafting your stories using Beverly’s sandwich analogy
20:45 A three-step process to arming your clients with the right stories for the right people
Making sure your clients know exactly whom you serve, and how
22:49 How to integrate these stories comfortably into conversations
An approach for addressing referrals in your review meetings
27:51 Engaging the team in the same activity
Crafting stories together, and giving the next generation the tools to continue driving referrals
33:44 How an advisor can start implementing these strategies
Building the habits within the firm and through client conversations

Links:

Website: www.the-collaborative.com
Books: The Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors, Self-Talk for a Calmer You, Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets to Human Behavior
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverly-flaxington-2154871/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BevFlaxington

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

Julie:
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. And on this week’s show, Steve and I are speaking with the wonderful Beverly Flaxington.

Bev co-founded The Collaborative which is an organization that helps financial services firms with both their business development and their organizational needs. She actually holds two patents on practice management programs that she created for one of the world’s largest mutual fund companies and not many people can say that. She has spent over 25 years in this industry with roles in banking, institutional sales as well as institutional investment product development. She’s a three-time best selling and Gold-award winning author. And she’s also a Certified Behavioral Analyst and Certified Values Analyst.

Today, we bring all of that experience to bear on a conversation that focuses on something that both Steve and I consider incredibly important to the referral process and that’s story telling. We talk about the role of a good story, the components and the structure and of course, we talk about how stories can fuel referrals. And with that, let’s get right to the conversation.

Well Bev, welcome. So happy to have you on today.

Bev:
I’m so happy to be here.

Steve:
Yeah. Welcome Bev.

Julie:
Well Bev, in addition to her expertise, I have voted one of the nicest people in the industry by the way. I don’t know if that’s relevant to our conversation but I think it might be.

Steve:
It’s an award now. You’re our first

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.

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