 |
 |
|
The Practice Doctor is IN
The Five Key Referral Leverage Points for Gathering Quality Names
Last month, we continued our discussion of the five key referral leverage points for gathering quality names. These points represent best practices in the area of client acquisition and are consistent with many of the referral processes on the market and supported by firms nationally:
We covered Center-of-Influence meetings in January, and the Discovery Process in February. This month, we’ll focus on the final three.
The Delivery Meeting
The Delivery Meeting is the time when you mark the official transition of a prospect becoming a client. This face-to-face event with your new client reinforces the purpose of the plan you’ve developed for them, plants the seeds for the next opportunity, and covers the service expectations you and your team will provide on an ongoing basis.
This is also the first time when you have formally earned the right to ask for referrals. Why? The planning process is complete and your client can look back and see the value you have brought to his or her life. We saw last month that as part of the discovery process, you can collect names of people important to your client’s financial life. Now is the time to start asking for introductions:
I appreciate your confidence in my (our) process. You may recall that earlier we discussed the fact that we have a great many resources at our disposal to help you and those who are important to the execution of this plan we’ve put in place.”
I’d like to reach out to some of those people to ensure that they are aware of their role in your plan and to see if they require or would like additional information on how best to carry out that role to your specifications.”
You named Jane Doe as the executor of your will. Would you mind if I contact Jane? My purpose would be to provide her with a booklet on what an executor can expect and what resources to turn to in the unlikely event of a simultaneous death.
Similar phrasing can be used for trustees, beneficiaries, guardians, powers-of-attorney, and anyone else you may wish to contact. There are documents and checklists for each of these roles that can be obtained from a number of sources.
The Annual Review
As part of the annual review agenda, ask to set aside some time for marketing assistance. In confirming the appointment:
I look forward to meeting with you for our annual review. Would you mind if we take ten minutes at the end of our meeting to do some brainstorming? I’d like your input on some marketing directions I’m considering.
These “marketing directions” are the utilization of the market focus list described in the COI meeting. The annual review piece should be a mini-version of the COI meeting. To recap the four steps:
The objective is to coach your top clients to be on the lookout for good prospects. Executing these four steps each year at the annual review will go a long way towards heightening their awareness of exactly the profile of client you are looking for.
Social and Professional Networking
You interact with people both personally and professionally. An advisor who has children may be part of sports leagues, school activities, faith-based organizations and day-care routines. Other advisors might be involved in the community through charities, volunteer groups, adult sports, and/or social clubs.
When you are meeting people, you should always have an antenna up identifying possible contacts: prospects, potential centers-of-influence, or simply people who might be able to open a door into an organization you are seeking to reach.
The major problem, according to many advisors I work with, is that many of these opportunities get lost in the shuffle and fall through the cracks. Business cards are collected, put into a manila folder and never acted upon. Names are jotted down on scraps of paper and get lost among the stacks of papers on the desk.
This is a potent source of referrals being squandered. Consequently, a system should be in place to process these names, including having a person who is accountable and able to debrief you on a daily basis. Usually, this is an advocate assistant who is empowered to ask the right questions. Marita, an advocate assistant for Terry in Columbia, SC, recalls the following dialogue she had with her advisor:
Terry, you were out yesterday at two events, one for your son’s school and one with the Chamber Committee on Finance. Did you meet anyone who you’d like to establish contact with?”
Terry pulls out a business card and the meeting agenda from the Chamber meeting with two names scrawled on it:
“This is the card for a sales rep that I met at school. These two names are from the Chamber; one is a consultant and the other is the mayor’s contact at the county finance board.”
“Great. I’ll enter their information into the prospect spreadsheet. How would you like to make first contact with them?”
“I’ll call the consultant directly. Let’s send an introductory packet to the other two; I’ll follow-up with a call.”
Marita scheduled the call on Terry’s to-do list and prepared the mailings for Terry’s signature. She put follow-up calls onto Terry’s to-do list five days later. She also had Terry relate any additional information he had collected about the prospects. Usually, she tells me, it’s all in his head and if she doesn’t ask for it, it’ll never get recorded anywhere.
The best practice around processing a networking lead in a CRM program includes:
Referral-gathering is an art, but there’s a bit of science to it as well. The science is to pick the targets, specifically those five we have been discussing in this series. In addition, having a systematic approach to each of the five leverage opportunities is critical.
From there, your success rests on the many factors that have made you “referable” over the years. Our next column will address these often intangible qualities. Stay tuned–what you read next month may cause disturbing introspection!
Until then, the Doctor is OUT.
Al Depman , CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH, a.k.a. “The Practice Doctor”, is mitchanthony.com’s Business Practice Consultant. He is the creator of “The Practice Management Assessment” tool and materials and has authored numerous articles in professional publications on practice management. Al combined his Liberal Arts studies with 10 years of management experience with McDonald’s Corporation to enter the financial services world 22 years ago. Since then, Al has evolved from an MDRT-level sales rep into a full-time consultant specializing in helping others engineer their business practices to the next level. Contact him at al@mitchanthony.com . © 2008 Al Depman |
|
Al Depman, CLU ChFC CMFC BH |
 |
 |
 |
