Why 90% of Advisors Get Referrals Wrong

Nick Davies [00:00:00] The agenda, that simplicity, the basics, the jab cross, the fundamentals — they're still there and still important. They just act at a different place depending on where you are in your growth in your business.

Intro Welcome to the Seven Figure Advisor Podcast,

Intro The show for financial advisors ready to scale their business to seven figures and beyond. Each week you'll get proven growth strategies, leadership insights, and best practices from someone that's helped countless advisors break past the million-dollar milestone.

Intro Here's your host, Nick Davies.

Nick Davies As an advisor, you know that there's tons of value that you provide to your clients. I mean, think about just your top clients — your A clients, your platinum clients — how much time you poured into them. And it doesn't matter if your practice is five years old, or 30 years old; you know that there's tons of value in there.

Nick Davies [00:01:00] And more over time, you get to continue to deposit into that relationship account, trust account, and value creation that you're giving to those clients. And so it logically makes sense that there's also other people that they know that you can add value to as well, and they'd want to help you continue to grow.

Nick Davies And so why is it so often polarizing, the topic around referrals, right? And for me, I would like to put that referral language to a side, because it has lots of leverage to it. Nothing wrong with it per se, but perhaps we can start thinking about these as favorable introductions.

Nick Davies And it's not a new thing, but I would suggest with all the advisors that I work with, it's something we continually have to come back to. It's not often that it's super, super dialed into the process. And if that sounds something like where you are — where it could be better — this is probably what you want to start to think about doing.

Nick Davies [00:02:00] What if you took this introduction thing, which tends to be at the bottom of your agenda... And by the way, likely if you're in this spot that an agenda worked for your meeting when you were first starting out as an advisor because you didn't know what you were doing, you really needed that guidance to get through where those things were so you could hit the points and meet your commitment to add the value to your prospects or your clients.

Nick Davies And likely as you started to grow, you kind of pushed the agenda to the side because other things came in, and that's totally fine. And you thought you could get through, and you probably can, and you get to the point where you're good enough, right? You can do the things that you know what to do without having the agenda there as well.

Nick Davies But it's a great time to put it back in because now the agenda, that simplicity, the basics, the jab cross, the fundamentals — they're still there and still important. They just act at a different place depending on where you are in your growth in your business. So bringing the agenda is such a key important thing to bring and to have as part of your client conversations.

Nick Davies [00:03:00] Because now you know what you're doing, you can look at the agenda and say, "Okay, this is what I really need. This is what the right flow is. This is the process." And look, even if you're talking about your A clients, your platinum clients — these clients still wanna know, okay, what's gonna happen?

Nick Davies Even though they might feel the flow of the conversation because they've done it before with you, being able to create an agenda, have an agenda that's tight, sending it to them up front, have them prepare — you start the experience sooner. You send an agenda a week before the meeting: "Hey, excited for our meeting next week."

Nick Davies Or your team's sending this for sure: "Excited for our meeting next week. As a reminder, here's the agenda we're gonna cover. Please let me know if there's anything up front you wanna make sure I can do extra preparation for." You start the value creation right at that moment. It runs through that whole week before you get into them.

Nick Davies And the meeting itself is just like the capstone on it. You already start that value creation from the front end. And so sending that agenda has so many layers of depth to it you could create.

Nick Davies [00:04:00] And so one example would be that in that agenda oftentimes, even if you're sending one, the referral or the favorable introduction piece is gonna be likely low down on that agenda. Maybe even the last thing on there. You maybe not even put it on there even if you are sending an agenda and just think, "Oh, I'm gonna add that to the end as well." Does that work? Can do. Can do. If you're committed to it, will you follow through on it? Maybe. It's a willpower situation, right?

Nick Davies But we wanna set up the environment for success. When this has worked the best, what I've seen from advisors is putting it right up at the agenda — the second point on the agenda. The first point is just, "How are you? What's going on?" Building rapport and trust. Anchoring in everything flows through the umbrella of rapport and straight to favorable introductions.

Nick Davies Straight to favorable introductions. Now, if you're hearing that and you're thinking, "Wow, that sounds a bit pushy," or, "I'm not sure if I wanna lead with that," well, think about it in a different way. If you're committed to helping as many people as you possibly can, if you know who your niche is — like, what's the area that you really shine in terms of people that you can help — and you know that this person in particular you've added tons of value to over years, you trust them, they trust you, you know that there's gonna be many more years of that as well, you know how your business is growing, you know the market that you're focused into — aren't you committed and convicted that you must ask them for an introduction in order to continue to grow and have the impact you had?

Nick Davies [00:05:00] Because let me offer you this. If there's any reluctance in thinking, "Well, I don't know if it's the right thing to do," maybe that's part of what value you think that you're providing there. And oftentimes just reminding yourself, associating to the fact that, like, do you really believe you're adding value?

Nick Davies Nine times out of 10 the answer's yes to that. So bring that back to that favorable introduction and be compelled to ask your most important clients for help: "Help me. Help me. We're growing something amazing here. Look at all the impact we've had. You've been a big part of that over the years. You are now getting all of the extra value that we've created by growing.

Nick Davies It's given us more resources. We'll be able to get back with and offer that to you. We wanna continue to do that. Help me. Tell me who else that I have a email here that I can send to you that you can send to them in order to add the value. Would you be willing to do that?"

Nick Davies And so I offer that in terms of, okay, what could be possible? And shout out to my client who's doing that and having very great success by doing that. And there's many ways and variations to do the same thing.

Nick Davies [00:06:00] But the point is, what you focus on is what you get. If you take introductions and make them something that's significantly part of your day and every single conversation, guess what's going to happen? That's going to expand. It's going to expand and lean into.

Nick Davies Now, there's some resistance around, okay, who do I have this conversation with? Is it with everyone? Be pointed, be prepared, be upfront about it. Stop asking for referrals and stop asking for help and create favorable introductions. Have a process around it.

Nick Davies Be part of your agenda. Be part of that conversation every time.

Nick Davies Here's the kicker. Worst case scenario, it's a feedback conversation. You can lead with that. What is it you like about the work that we're doing together? I want help as we turn it to grow. What do you like? I hear the things I think are really important.

Nick Davies What do you think about that? What else would you like to see? It's a great opportunity to add even more value, deepen the relationship with that client that's already a platinum client. It's a no-lose situation. Be bold. Go forward on this and think about this as being part of your leadership journey.

Nick Davies [00:07:00] If this is showing up for you, if you're getting resistance from asking for help here and adding more value to your clients by having them make introduction for you, where else is that showing up for you?

Nick Davies Where else are you not showing up in the right way that you want to show up for yourself, your business, your family? And maybe there's something to deal with, right? Maybe this is a guide that guides you to somewhere else. What is it you need to fix to give yourself the certainty to go and ask for these introductions and add the value?

Nick Davies Think about that. All the people out there right now that you are perfect for, that absolutely need your planning, that absolutely need your certainty, absolutely need the relationship that you have — not to mention the fact that you're going to grow in your revenue, you're going to grow in your AUM, you're going to grow in the fact you can support your family and the impact that your business has.

Nick Davies Go out there, honor them, do what you need to do.

Outro [00:08:00] Thanks for listening to today's episode. Hit the Follow button to be notified of new episodes and visit seven-dash-figure-advisor.com for more resources and to connect directly with Nick. See you next time.