13th September, 2024 - Webinar replay

How to harness the power of input and effect bias when you thank clients for referrals with Lee Robertson

Lee Robertson 

Good afternoon all. We’ll just let everyone on. Usual rules apply guys for Friday Live. You’re very welcome to be on screen, if you don’t want to be no problem at all and the usual caveats about background noise and all that kind of stuff but if you want to be on screen, fine. Phil has plenty of time and will be finished by 2pm easily, so there’ll be some Q&A. Phil, do you want questions as we go? What would you rather?

Phil Bray 

Let’s take questions as we go.

Lee Robertson 

Questions as we go. Right, okay, that’s brilliant. It’s nice to see you Rob, how are you?

Rob 

Yeah, good thanks. How are you?

Lee Robertson 

Not too bad thanks, with it being Friday and all that. We’ll get ourselves under way. Thanks everyone for joining us live and obviously thanks to everyone who’ll be watching it on demand, which is pretty popular on Octo too. Today it’s the latest in our Friday Lives, for everyone that doesn’t know, we tend to do them as many Fridays as possible. We have Neil Bage doing Behavior Live on a monthly basis, we’ve got Tech Live, and we’ve got Friday Live, etc. We’re really chuffed to have such a such a good friend of mine, Phil Bray on today. Just to give you some background, we’re going to be talking about how to harness the power of input and effort bias when you thank clients for referrals. I wrote an article that I put somewhere about referrals. I love networking, I love referrals, as people know – someone actually made a joke on LinkedIn the other day about taking that thing of six degrees of separation of how many people would Lee Robertson, know in financial services. I’m just also admitting people as we go, questions as we go, Q&A at the end, for those that maybe don’t want to do questions through. I’m genuinely excited about this session. As I said, I wrote that article, Phil was also writing an article and we started talking to each other about, “Wouldn’t it be great to do a webinar?” Because referrals is something that I think we all think about, and some of us struggle with, I think introverts and networking… I’ve had some conversations recently and it’s great to see other people here that I’ve had those conversations with. I shall stop waffling, because really you’re here to listen to Phil, really, so, over to you Phil.

Phil Bray 

Where do you want us to start? Where should we start Lee in terms of questions? Should we start with why referrals are the most important?

Lee Robertson 

Yes, why do you think referrals are the best type of new enquiry? I guess, is a great starting point.

Phil Bray 

I think for me, and we’re talking about referrals from existing clients here as opposed to professional connections or leads created from networking. They are the best type of enquiry for a couple of reasons. They have the lowest cost of acquisition, there is if you do this correctly, a cost of acquisition, but it’s the lowest cost of acquisition compared to leads from any other sort and they have the highest conversion rate. If we’re looking at a firm’s conversion rate, their blended conversion rate might be 25% as a benchmark to target, but referrals always convert at a much higher rate. Because they have the lowest cost of acquisition, and they convert better than anything else, we imagined a long list of marketing tactics that could drive leads to a business. By the way, this doesn’t just apply to Gavin, Rob, and Lucy, who run financial planning businesses, it applies in the B2B space as well for Michelle. There are two reasons why I think referrals are the best type of new enquiry and there’s a third because the advice firm or the business has almost complete control over the number of referrals they receive. Every other form of marketing, SEO, pay per click, advertising, unbiased, etc. they all have outside influences. PPC, someone could come and bid on your words and bid higher. SEO, Google has an algorithm update that reduces your rankings. Penguin and Panda were two examples of that. Unbiased occasionally put prices up. For all other forms of marketing, outside influences can affect them, but with referrals, it’s your actions as a business which dictate whether you turn a client into an advocate, and then it’s your actions that dictate whether you turn the advocate into being an active advocate. A client is somebody who pays you for a service but doesn’t recommend you on, an advocate being somebody who says they would recommend you on in principle, but hasn’t actually done it yet, an active advocate being somebody who does recommend you on. So I think for me, Lee, the three reasons why a referral is the best type of new enquiry are it has the lowest cost of acquisition, the highest conversion rate, and the marketing channel that you have most control over.

Lee Robertson 

Okay, brilliant. That leads very neatly onto the question, why do clients make referrals? And I guess the flip side of that coin is, why do some not?

Phil Bray 

Why do they make referrals? My sense is advisers and business owners think clients make referrals to help them. I don’t think they do and I don’t think it’s a particularly helpful thought process because it puts a barrier in place. My sense, is that a client of a financial planner. So, myself and my wife’s financial planner, is a guy called Tom Morris at Ovation finance, and we have a financial planner despite the fact that my wife is a financial planner as well; you can’t read the label when you’re inside the jar and all that. We get huge comfort, peace of mind, and reassurance from working with Tom, in the short-, medium- and long-term, and when people that I care about either ask me who I use or an opportunity arises in conversation, I recommend Tom. That’s because I want people that I care about, friends, family, work colleagues, to experience the same confidence, peace of mind and reassurance that I get from working with Tom. So, my sense is that’s why people make recommendations, because they want people they care about to experience the same things. Why people don’t recommend on, I think there’s a long list of reasons, some of which would include the following. The thought process that – actually before we get there, our research shows that about 95% or 96% of clients would recommend their financial planner and 52% have done in the past 12 months. That data comes from client surveys that we run. We run client surveys on behalf of financial advice firms that we work with, so those two stats, the 52% and the 95% are anonymised data from those surveys. The vast majority of clients will very happily recommend their financial planner and about half are doing it on a pretty regular basis. Then we ask a third question in those surveys, “What are the barriers to recommending?” And a few selected “Not knowing that the planner or the business owner wants to take new clients on.” A lot of times, I’ll talk to planners and they’ll tell little stories about a client ringing them up and saying, “Is it okay if I recommend John Smith to you?” and they’d say “Of course it is.” The client is sometimes unsure that the adviser, the planner, or the business is open for business and wants more recommendations, referrals, wants more clients. So that’s one barrier. There’s an obvious opposite to that, in that some clients are worried, are concerned that their financial adviser, financial planner, might take on too many clients grow too big and the levels of service might drop, or they’ll get relegated to a different adviser. You get around that by – you get around both of those actually by having honest conversations with clients about how many new clients that you want to take on. E.G. “We have space for six new clients this year.” There’s power in the specificity of the number. If you are specific with the number, it means those clients who didn’t know you wanted to take new clients on now know that you do and those clients that are worried about you growing too big too quickly or taking too many people on, know that you’ve thought about it, and actually the number is reasonable. There’s another reason that crops up in the client surveys that we run, and that is, clients often say they can’t recommend on because they don’t talk to their friends about money. I think you deal with that head-on by explaining that you don’t need to talk to your friends, work colleagues, or whoever it is about money, talk to them about big life events. Talk to them about what’s going on in their world because financial planning really comes into its own around big life events; retirement, bereavement, divorce, business sale, business purchase, that sort of stuff. Guess what? We do talk to our about that, and it’s a perfect opportunity to recommend you. The last thing that we see, not a regular basis because the majority of people are happy to recommend a regular basis, but the other reason we here, the fourth one, is “What if it goes wrong?” Which is a pretty negative mindset, because the client’s got huge value from working with the planner, and that’s the one I struggle most with, because why would it go wrong? But we do see that a little bit so those are four reasons why clients might not recommend you. Sorry, Lee, long winded answer to a short question.

Lee Robertson 

No, not at all. That last point, interestingly, I always found raised its head more when you were getting referrals from professional connections despite the fact often professional connections in the traditional professions aren’t as good at client care perhaps as they might be. They worry about how the adviser might interact with their clients making referrals. I don’t know if others on the on the call have got the same experience and it takes a bit longer to overcome that sometimes, so that that’s an interesting point you raised there about overcoming the reticence of professional introducers. for want of a better phrase, professional connections, and their reticence about, are they a true professional? Are they going to look after the client really well, etc. etc.

Phil Bray 

I wonder if there’s a legacy issue there about how professional connections…

Lee Robertson 

Yeah.

Phil Bray 

…view what was the financial advice industry and what is morphing into the financial planning profession.

Lee Robertson 

Yeah, agreed. Getting to the meat of this, Phil, and I’ve got some ideas here too, but what are the practical things that advisers and planners can do to make more referrals? I mean, lots of advisers I’m speaking to at the moment are not struggling to get referrals, they’re not struggling to get new business but we all know these things are cyclical, and you go through dry periods and stuff. So, this is really important, what are the practical steps you think they can do for referrals particularly?

Phil Bray 

I think for me, there are – I’ll do a little bit of theory for a second, then we’ll talk about the practical stuff. From a theoretical perspective, there are two gaps that financial advisers, planners, and firms, need to close. The first gap is the gap between the proportion of clients who say they will recommend, the 96%, and those who actually do, the 52%. That’s the first gap we need to close. The second gap we need to close is the difference between the proportion of people who are recommended to the firm and those who actually get in touch. Because if I’m out on a Friday night with a couple of mates and I’m in my mid-50s, approaching my 60s and thinking about retiring, I’ve never used a financial adviser before but I’ve accumulated stuff, pensions, ISAs, share schemes, that sort of stuff, I turn to the person on my left and say, “Who do you use?” And they say, “I use Lucy.” Fair enough, I’ll write down Lucy’s name and the firm name. I’d probably put a little note in my phone. The other one says, ” I don’t know who Lucy is, but I’ve used Rob Mansfield for years. Great guy.” I’ll write your name down, Rob. Now in years gone by, probably when you and I started financial services Lee, I’d have waited until Monday morning and picked up the phone. If you answered first Rob or you answered first Lucy, I’d have probably just booked a meeting. The level of due diligence was really low. Now though, sat between me becoming aware of you, Rob and aware of you, Lucy, is Google. Right between awareness and action is Google. So over the weekend, I’m going to search for you both online. I might use your name, I might use your business name. I first meet you on a Google search results page, start to get to know you on a website, and during that digital journey to your door, I’m scoring up points. So if I google firm A and firm B, and firm A has got bunch of nice, shiny, Google reviews with positive feedback, whereas firm B doesn’t have that, mentally, I’ve scored up a point for firm A. I go onto their websites, firm A tells me about who they work with, they look like me, there are some client testimonial videos on there and they look friendly, it appeals to me. If they empathise with the reason I’m there, I’m scoring up points. So, we need to close those two gaps in the context of that digital journey people take. I think the first thing we need to do is acknowledge that most firms are getting nowhere near the number of referrals from existing clients that they should be doing. We’ve created something called the recommendation rate, and it helps to compare performance between two advisers in the same firm and two different firms. That levels out the playing field, because it’s easier for an adviser with 100 clients to get referrals than an adviser with 10 clients. Your recommendation rate is calculated by taking the total number of recommendations received and dividing it by the number of clients you’ve had. So if someone’s got 150 clients, they’ve had 15 recommendations in the last 12 months, their recommendation rate is 10% it’s not difficult maths. I think the minimum recommendation rate should be 20%. Most firms, most advisers and planners, are down in single figures. The highest I’ve ever seen is about 50% and that’s 50% of the firm’s clients making recommendations during the year, and those people then getting in touch and starting a conversation. The first thing to do is calculate your recommendation rate, create a baseline of where you are now, so you can see if you start to make some changes, the effect of those changes. The next thing to do is sort the digital journey out that people take. Look at what happens when someone Googles your business. People don’t necessarily think – when we talk to advisers and planners about referrals, they often cross their arms and say, “I’m not asking.” And it stops there, they don’t think more widely which is why we try and push people to think about that digital journey to start with. Put yourselves in the shoes of a someone who’s recommended to you. Start Googling, start seeing what they see, and start to make improvements to the results of the Google search page, your social proof, your online ratings, reviews, use both Google and VouchedFor on your new website. Fix that digital journey because there’s no point sending more people on the digital journey until it’s right. That’s job one. Actually, that’s job two, job one is to create your baseline. Then, your referral strategy should be based on client communication and education, and client appreciation. 85% of advisers don’t ask their clients for referrals. That’s a stat from VouchedFor. Personally, I have a dislike for the word asking. I don’t think you should ask clients for a referral. You’re putting a client on the spot, the adviser doesn’t like doing it, nobody’s keen on the idea of asking so why would you do it? But I do think advisers should have a conversation with clients about their business, where they want to take their business and referrals and recommendations. It’s a conversation that’s based on education and educating the client about three things, who you want to be recommended to, how to do it, and when to do it. There’s an art to having that conversation. I would have the conversation at the end of your annual review process, assuming you see them annually. I think you need to continue that education so find reasons to update your clients and remind clients about those three things who you want to be recommended to, how to do it and when to do it. It’s one of the reasons we encourage a lot of the firms we work with to run charitable schemes. It’s not an incentive, it’s appreciation. So for every referral received, the financial planning firm will donate £50 to the local food bank or whatever it is. Every three months you write to your clients, thank them for the recommendations received, say “We’ve donated £300 to the local food bank.” Or translate that into the number of meals that were bought, It’s more impressive than £300, and then remind them this is who we want to be working with, this is how to recommend us, this is when to recommend us. You’ve got to keep repeating that message. Once you’ve created your baseline, once you’ve sorted your digital journey out, start communicating with clients about those three things, then show appreciation for the referrals that you’ve received. This is where the blogs came in, Lee, that we were writing. There are two points where you show appreciation, when the referral is received and when the referral converts. So as soon as you receive the referral, I would say thank you to the client who made the original introduction. Typically, most advisers – 6% will never say thank you, which blows my mind – but typically, advisers and planners will say thank you by picking up the phone or sending an email, neither of those stand out. We all get lots of phone calls and lots of emails and it’s dead easy to do, so I would much rather do something that stands out and harnesses the power of effort bias. Effort bias is very simple; it’s where the person on the receiving end values something more because it looks as though someone’s taken more effort to do something. For me, the best way therefore of saying thank you for the referral, really practical, is sending a hand written thank you card in the post. It’s one of the things I badger advisers about. Go to John Lewis, whatever Paper Chase is called now, your local craft store, get a stack of thank you cards. You need to reduce friction here, if you get a referral and you’ve got to head off to John Lewis to buy a card, you’ve got friction there. You need to reduce the amount of friction involved so get a stack a thank you cards, and a stack of stamps. Then when a referral is received, hand write the card. It’s really important that you hand write the card and it’s really important that it’s you writing it and you’re not getting your PA, administrator, or somebody else to do it. Hand write the envelope and put it in the post. When the client gets home, there’s a card, a bit of junk mail and a bill. What are they going to open first? They’re going to open the card. And it shows how grateful you are for the referral by the lengths that you’ve gone to to say thank you. The next point when I think you should say thank you to clients is if the referral converts. If the referral converts, I would then send a gift in the post to say thank you to the client once again. What I would avoid here back to effort bias, I would avoid having a stock gift. You know, a bottle of champagne or a hamper, just avoid the stock gifts, and instead send a personalised gift. The personalisation is more important than the value. Send a personalised gift of something you know they will like, and this means you need to take knowing your clients to a whole new level. It’s no longer just compliance it’s about what resonates with them. If you know your client is off to Australia and they make a referral that converts, send them a book, rough guide to Australia. If you know your clients like whiskey, we were talking about whiskey earlier, Lee, send them some little tasters. If you know your clients like the theater, buy them some tickets. The personalisation is far more important than the value of the gift. Those are some practical things that I would do if I was an adviser, to encourage more clients to recommend me, and for you to show appreciation when a recommendation is made.

Lee Robertson 

Thanks, Phil. Rob’s asked a question that I was going to ask, actually, and I was pulled up on this on LinkedIn two or three years ago by somebody we know really well, Helena Wardle, saying, “Yes, but you’ve got to be careful here.” Rob’s question is, when you thank someone for a referral, would you name the person who got in touch? It makes perfect sense but isn’t there a GDPR issue with identifiable data?

Phil Bray 

I think there’s a couple of ways of doing this.

Lee Robertson 

Thanks, Rob.

Phil Bray 

From a GDPR perspective, your client has already passed your name over if that makes sense, there’s already that link there. So Rob, if I recommend someone to you, it’s not a secret that I’ve made that recommendation. Having said that, would I name the person on the card and on the gift? Probably not but if you’re really concerned about it, ask the person who has been referred. Say “I just want to say thank you to Jane who recommended me and put us together. Is it okay if I just send Jane a bottle of wine or something to say thank you? and what do you think Jane might like?” So, I think there are a number of ways around it. Either not being too concerned, and Helena has said this to me before, but you could be not too concerned about it, you could just not name the person, or you could ask permission. I think there are a number of workarounds that allow you to do that.

Lee Robertson 

Great. Is that okay Rob?

Rob 

Yes, brilliant. Thank you.

Lee Robertson 

Thank you. Interestingly, you were talking a little bit earlier – I’m going to come in a wee bit here – about a couple of things that struck me there. One is, I hate asking for referrals too and yet I was pretty successful at getting them. I always find it was about seeding your conversation with clients as you said, it’s about the conversation. I used to use things like “As a business that’s really proud to have grown primarily by recommendation from happy clients…” and it’s already there. The other thing we did, because I’m quite visual, and I’ve done this for other firms when I go in and help them and consult, is for firms who’ve got a lot of clients and maybe a number of advisers, we did an exercise. If you just imagine a big mind map, everyone knows what a mind map is, and we started with client 001, and then who they had referred to, client 002, 003, and then we branched out. We built this whole big map, and we were able to slice and dice that visual map, and it’s probably easier now with AI and stuff and all the tools that are available, but we did that just on a huge bit of paper, and we colour coded it by client, we colour coded it by adviser. We did clouds purely for one adviser. One of the things we found was that often clients had been great at referrals, and then when they changed adviser in firms where clients get passed down to different advisers, the referrals stopped. Or we got further out, we had client strings of 7, 8, 9, 10 with referrals all the way through and when you got to the end of a string, you stopped getting referrals and quite often, at the end of that string of referrals was a new-ish adviser. So we were able to help them ask them articulate how to find… and I find that a really, really, really powerful exercise. When clients change adviser, did they stop referring? Conversely, sometimes they started referring. So what was that adviser doing that the previous adviser hadn’t been doing? I just like that idea, Phil when of you were talking about benchmarking and getting yourself to a point of understanding where you’re at and how others are doing. And I found that was a really powerful exercise as we grew and took on more advisers and took on more clients.

Phil Bray 

I think that’s fascinating, that the tap often was turned on or turned off at the point the adviser changed. The other thing I would say, for firms, if you have VouchedFor, I’m a big fan of VouchedFor as a business and what they do, if you have VouchedFor, and you’re collecting about four reviews, there’s a section in the back end of VouchedFor, when someone leaves a review. There is a bunch of questions that the answers appear in public, and there’s a bunch where the answers appear in private. One of the questions is, “Has your adviser asked you for referrals?” that helps too for multi-adviser firms to establish which advisers are having the referral conversation, emphasising that it should be a conversation – not asking, it shows which advisers are having the conversation, and it also shows which clients are hearing it. Sometimes the adviser will think they’ve had the conversation but the client hasn’t taken it on board, it’s gone in through one ear and out the other. But that’s fascinating, that the change of adviser was a trigger for more referrals or fewer referrals.

Lee Robertson 

I mean, that was one of the things. It also helped me as a business owner, because as you grow, not distant – that’s too strong a word, but as you grow a little bit remote from some clients that perhaps you used to look after you’re not quite as in touch with them so you don’t know if they’re still referring. So it was a great way to keep that visibility of them doing it, and we sliced and diced. I’ve got a word of warning, by the way. The other thing I’d say on that was the old pareto principle of 80/20, the advocates that fifth of your client bank love to refer, they are people pleasers, great networkers, they love to introduce their friends and family or colleagues or whatever and that was pretty strong. But my word of warning for multi-advice firms is, if they go through that route, you’ve got to frame it really well with your advisers. The advisers who are not good at generating referrals, I had one in particular who took it very badly that we’d highlighted that problem and felt there should be remedial work with her. Remedial is too strong, but you know what I mean, helping them articulate in a way that others had done. She took it , really personally and felt that it was almost a personal attack. That was a character thing so if anyone’s on here thinking about doing that, I learned loads of lessons through that and I’m really happy to share them with you offline. Anyway, I digress a bit.

Phil Bray 

It’s a good point. I think the other point that comes out of this and your mind map that you were talking about, is you can only do that if you’ve got good quality data. One of the things that we recommend all firms do is to record every single new enquiry that comes in the business. You might put on a spreadsheet, and there’s an enquiry recording template spreadsheet on our website that you can download for free. You might put a spreadsheet, you might put it on IO, you might put it on a more sales-based CRM, depending on the size of the business. A spreadsheet works fine but you really should record every single new lead that comes in the business, not just the good ones, every single lead from any source. That helps you understand how many referrals and recommendations you are getting from existing clients and then you can start doing your mind map for which clients are recommending you. If you don’t have that data in the first place, you can’t do the mind map, you can’t calculate your recommendation rate and you’re completely in the dark.

Lee Robertson 

Thanks, Phil. I’ve got a question here. Nobody ever believes this, but I’m a natural introvert. It’s quite hard for introverts, especially at the beginning of their career when they start a new business on their own when they’ve moved away from working within some somewhere else. Have you got any tips or thoughts around not just the conversation, but how introverts might address these issues?

Phil Bray 

I’m no expert on introverts versus extroverts, but for me, the time to have the referral or recommendation conversation, again, conversation not asking, is at the end of your annual review meeting, your forward planning meeting, whatever you call it. If you go in with a written down agenda, then your last point on the agenda should be the words “business update”. At the start of the meeting, you say to your client, “Once we’ve gone through everything we need to get through today, I want to spend five minutes giving you a bit of an update about everything that’s going on with the business. Is that okay?” They’ll always say, “Yes” so you work through what you’re talking about with them, last point, business update. And that business update is structured, talking about what’s going on in the business, two or three things, because clients are more interested than often advisers think. Two or three things that’s going on the business, your plans for the business, how many seats you have got on your bus, your plane, car parking spaces, whatever analogy you want to use, because that deals with two of those objections for referrals 1) it’s getting too busy, 2) I didn’t know you’re taking clients on. Then getting their confirmation that they’re happy to recommend you because if they’re not, you need to have a different conversation with them. Then start explaining who you want to work with and and how to recommend you. Some advisers are very happy to have that conversation, not scripted, but they can have that conversation really naturally. Others, and I don’t know if this correlates with introverts, others prefer a little presentation. I can think of one financial planning firm we work with who’ve just got four or five really informal slides with information on it. That does a couple of things, it helps the client if they’re more visual – we talked about that earlier – second thing, it helps the adviser stay on track, and thirdly, it means they don’t miss any points out. It’s about, like so many things in marketing, and referrals, is marketing, it’s about process and habits. Process and habits. Really dull but when you have the two together, it creates consistency, and it it works. It genuinely works.

Lee Robertson 

Yeah, exactly. So we’re wandering towards the close, and as just to repeat, all questions are welcome, and feel free to come on screen, whatever you want to do, guys. Just to wrap up then, the benefits of advisers and planners getting more referrals compared to generating leads from elsewhere, I know you touched on it at the beginning, but just to summarise why and the real benefits.

Phil Bray 

The first benefit is you will spend less money on marketing the more referrals and recommendations you receive from existing clients, the less you need to spend with the likes of Yardstick. If advisers were really good with referrals and recommendations, they’d need to spend less money with us. Therefore, that improves your bottom line. Spending less improves your bottom line. Secondly, you will work more operationally efficiently as a business if your conversion rate is higher. We know there is a link. The conversion rate, if you get a basket of 10 referrals, you might convert four or five of those, if you get a basket of 10 leads from SEO, Google Ads, or Unbiased, you might convert one, in my experience. You therefore, are operationally more efficient on the referral side of things, and it makes you feel good. If you think back to your advising days, Lee, if someone is ringing you up and saying, “John Smith has been saying really good things about you, can I come and see you?” It makes you feel good, it’s a vote of confidence, it’s that dopamine hit. So, I think those are the three reasons, operationally more efficient, more profitable, and it feels good.

Lee Robertson 

Absolutely. I mean, I wrote in my article “I love getting to yes.” that was, for me, the big thing. I was never the most technical adviser, but I loved getting that buy-in from a new client, moving from prospect or introduction into becoming a client. With the dopamine thing, you’re absolutely right. So, thanks Phil, and thanks everyone for turning up on a Friday. The sun is shining, I know everybody wants to clear the decks ahead of the weekend. Are there any final questions or comments or feedback for Phil or myself while you’ve got us both, but particularly while you’ve got Phil?

Unknown 

Yeah, if I could jump in here? I’ve put it in the chat but… On your lead enquiry recording spreadsheet, thanks for that, Phil, I’m using it for my new business. How would you suggest defining a lead? For example, I get enquiries through VouchedFor, but I’m finding that I’m not actually getting into contact with a lot of them, so I’m tending to not record them. Would you expect or would you advise everything to be recorded, even if I don’t speak with them?

Phil Bray 

100% because that’s still telling you something. It’s telling you something about either the quality of the enquiry, the number of touch points, number times you’re trying to contact them, the quality of that follow-up. I’m not making any comment about either those, but I’m just saying you need to understand that data. For me, they go on to the enquiry recording spreadsheet if they make contact with you. So they ring you up, they send an email, they complete an enquiry form on your website, it comes through VouchedFor or Unbiased, something like that, one of those systems. That’s when they go on, when you know their name and they’ve made a request to have a conversation with you. Conversely, an existing client says, “I’ve recommended John Smith onto you. Has he been in touch?” “No.” that doesn’t go on,  because it’s not an opportunity. When somebody makes contact with you to start a conversation.

Unknown

Okay, thank you.

Lee Robertson 

Great. Thanks. Thanks Phil. Hi Gavin, nice to see you, hi Lucy. Anything else while we’ve got Phil? Gavin, you look like you’re about to say something. I can’t hear you, are you on mute? It doesn’t look like you are but can anyone else hear Gavin?

Gavin 

Can you hear me?

Phil Bray 

We can now, Gavin.

Lee Robertson 

We can now, brilliant,

Gavin 

Right, okay. One question with regards to getting the wrong type of referral. I had a situation recently, I completely buy in with Phil’s they’re referring to help their loved one, and despite having previously had a conversation with the clients about sort of people I’m looking for, they went and referred me to their son in law, who was completely the wrong sort of client. How do you deal with that tactfully?

Phil Bray 

You’re right, it it does create a dilemma, because somebody has made the referral and kept their part of the bargain. So I think it’s about explaining why you are not the right adviser for them, Gavin. I’d make it about you, “I’m not right for you.” rather than them not being right for you, if that makes sense. It’s you, not them. I’d be really clear in how you communicate that, and I would make sure that you are not a dead end. Signpost them  or introduce them on to somewhere else. Let’s say someone came to you for a mortgage Gavin, I’ll keep it really simple, because you don’t do mortgages. A first time buyer comes to you, “I’m not right for you, I just don’t do mortgages but I have somebody that I know that’s really good. Do you mind if I introduce you?” Then, send good introducing habits, send the prospect and the mortgage adviser an email introducing the two of them. For me, I think it’s about really clear communication, that it’s about you, not them and these are the reasons why I’m not right for you, and then sign-posting them on elegantly so they get the help that they deserve. Then you might, if there’s an opportunity within the GDPR conversations we’ve had, etc, go back and just thank the client for the referral, but just explain why you weren’t right and what’s happened. So those are the two things I definitely do and the one thing I might do.

Gavin 

Okay, thank you.

Lee Robertson 

The other thing I’d add there, if you, if you pick up referrals from professional connections, there is a hangover, I think, with particularly some of the accountants. Often they used to have financial advice in house, and they were commission based and all that kind of stuff, very transactional, and I think it takes a while to to re-educate them. Does that sound a little bit North Korean? You know what I mean, to reinform them of the way you operate and why you take on clients in a particular way, the sort of clients that you’re looking for, the ways that you can help. So, I think there’s there’s that there too, but I wholeheartedly agree with Phil that don’t do dead ends. Sometimes you’d get, as you said, children of or sons-in-law of, and what they actually needed was debt advice or mortgages or whatever that was, as opposed to savings and investments and financial planning and all that kind of stuff. So, don’t be the dead end, and sometimes it was citizen’s advice even that we used to refer people to.

Phil Bray 

Whoever comes to you, and this applies not just to referrals, but to leads some other sources, they’ve got to feel heard and helped. Then, you will enhance your reputation, and who knows? You might get a Google review, because it is possible to get Google and VouchedFor people don’t work with you. But what you do is make sure that your reputation is not tarnished, is not reduced. Your reputation is enhanced if they feel heard and helped.

Lee Robertson 

I love a bit of alliteration, you can tell Phil’s in marketing. Heard and helped, there we go. I love alliteration, brilliant. So I think we’ve covered quite a bit today. Phil and I will do more of these if you want guys. We didn’t get into one of the things I used to do, it was what I called scarcity marketing. Particularly with clients, saying, “In this in this year, we’re looking to take on a number of clients, because we refuse to diminish our services by having too many clients.” There’s a whole discussion there that perhaps Phil will be much more qualified to talk about, but people, maybe there’s something we can talk about there. But for today, thank you, Phil, thanks for everyone for turning up. Visualisation, benchmarking, thanking and different ways of thanking, and the GDPR bit. Thanks for the questions guys, final call, as they say, before we close the bar. No? Okay. Thanks everybody and have a great weekend. We try and do these things as many Fridays as we can, across behavior, marketing, tech, practice, development, and all that kind of stuff. I think the next one we’ve got coming up, I think it’s next Friday actually, and we’ll be talking about loans against portfolios. It’s not for everyone, but some of you may be interested. Another one coming up soon will be Chris Davies talking about what to do if you get the dear CEO letter. We all know that the dear CEO letters are coming down the scale. We’ve got another next one, of course, we’ve got Neil Bage, who’s monthly on behavior live, Gavin’s a regular there and I think we all get loads out of those so we’d love to see you at those too. Thanks everybody for joining, thanks for your questions, have a great weekend, and we hope to see you again. Thanks, Phil.

Phil Bray 

Cheers, Lee. See you soon, bye bye.

Lee Robertson 

Thanks everyone.

Lucy 

Thank you very much.

Lee Robertson 

Thanks Lucy.