When it comes to referrals and recommendations from existing clients, our research shows that:
- 93.7% of advisers/planners believe they are the best type of new enquiry
- 95.44% want more of them.
In this week’s blog, you can discover three questions you should include in your client survey which will help you to get more referrals and recommendations from your clients.
We’re also going to explain why we don’t believe you should use Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a way of demonstrating client advocacy.
We’ll not keep you waiting though, let’s dive into the three questions you should include in your client survey.
Question 1: Would you recommend us to other people, for example, family, friends or work associates?
This question identifies the proportion of your clients who are advocates for your business, and their names.
We usually recommend offering three answer options:
- Yes
- No
- Prefer not to say.
The results from this question can be used in your marketing and, when it comes to referrals and recommendations, the answer:
- Underpins your whole strategy
- Helps you to identify the specific clients you should be talking to about referrals and recommendations.
It’s also far easier to use the results of this question in your marketing than a Net Promoter Score (NPS).
If you’re not familiar with NPS, it’s beloved by many marketers, but we really don’t believe it works for advisers/planners.
The question itself is simple: “How likely would you be to recommend us to other people?”, followed by a 0 to 10 scale. However, when it comes to calculating your NPS and communicating the result, life gets harder.
To work out your NPS, you deduct the number of “detractors” (people who scored you 0 to 6) from the “promoters” (people who awarded you 9 or 10) while ignoring your “passives” (who scored you 7 or 8).
When it comes to promoting the result, because many people aren’t aware of NPS, how it’s calculated or what a good score is, you’re forced into long-winded explanations. And as Ronald Reagan famously said, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
So instead of using NPS, we prefer the simpler question: “Would you recommend us to other people?”.
It’s easier to answer and much easier to promote.
Question 2: If yes, have you ever recommended us to other people?
The answer options we usually give for this question are:
- In the past 12 months
- More than 12 months ago.
This question helps you to identify your active advocates, namely the clients who have recommended you in the past 12 months.
The answers to the first two questions help you to understand the proportion of your advocates who actively recommend you to other people. And again, providing you don’t run an anonymous survey, you’ll be able to identify who your active advocates are.
You can also compare the information in the survey with your enquiry records to identify situations where a client has made a recommendation, but that person hasn’t contacted you.
Question 3: If you have not recommended us within the past 12 months, is there anything we could do that would make it easier for you to recommend us or motivate you to do so?
You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know it’s an issue. So, this question helps to identify the barriers preventing your clients from recommending you to other people.
If you find there are common reasons, you can deal with them through bulk communications. If the issues are specific to individual clients, you might prefer to have one-to-one conversations.
So, there you have it, the three questions you should include in your survey that’ll help to increase the number of referrals and recommendations you receive.
3 ways we can help with your client surveys
As we said last week, your client survey will:
- Boost your marketing
- Improve your business
- Underpin your referral and recommendation strategy.
Unfortunately, many firms don’t know where to start when it comes to running a survey project. If you’re one of them, we’re here to help.
We can help with:
- Running the survey
Working collaboratively with you, we’ll agree on the questions, build the survey, and send it to your clients.
- Analysing the results
Once the results are in, we’ll analyse them before presenting them to you, showing you how you compare to other firms. We’ll also help you build a to-do list of follow-up actions.
- Helping you capitalise on the results
Some of the follow-up actions will be your responsibility – for example, discussing the results with your clients. However, others, such as using the reviews to boost your marketing, you can leave to us.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you with a client survey project please email phil@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.
