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Do you love/hate social media?!?
I get it and I feel both emotions at different times, but, I love referrals ALL the time. That means, as I have come to believe resolutely, that I need to learn to love using social media to accelerate my predictable referral system and so should you.
This is the first of several articles in a series on social media.
I am luckier than most as I have had the extreme privilege to have been trained on #socialselling by the two best in the business: Timothy "Tim" Hughes 提姆·休斯 L.ISP and Adam Gray from DLA Ignite. Their program(s) are game changers and integrate perfectly with my referral system. Look them up.
Many of my clients don’t particularly enjoy social media when it comes to business and some of them don’t like it at all. I have always, and will always, support anyone’s right to market yourself and your company by your own terms. That being said, I think that viewpoint is becoming more foolish if you want to drive growth in your company and prepare for the next generation of leadership.
Too often, in any marketing (or life) system we get locked into our own cognitive bias and close the doors on new and different things. Truly, social media is often a dumpster fire if you engage it as the consumer (scrolling for entertainment) and you become the product (they are selling your attention).
However, if you work to adapt the mindset, correctly, that social media is a tool and that you are either using it or its being used on you…you open up a new world. To attract enough users (attention) the platforms need to encourage engagement and posting and that necessity is what allows us to interact for our own benefit.
How does this play with referrals? Really well if you have a plan. I repeat: with a plan.
Like it or not, there is no other way for successful financial services professionals to get enough reps and attention to drive predictable referrals in person anymore as the sole ‘platform’ for your referral efforts. None of my clients, highly successful financial advisors and often multi-millionaires, have enough time to do the face to face (and even phone calls) to drive growth for an organization with any kind of consistency.
So, the question becomes how are we ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the world of social media?
The plan is the secret.
I will be breaking down the plan over the next few articles, in detail, but here is the overview as it specifically pertains to financial advisors and financial planners:
- Be personal. Primarily, compliance is concerned when you are selling products/advice. Instead of focusing your social media posts on selling financial stuff…focus it on sharing your life. As Gary V said recently: tell us what you did.
- Be consistent. You need to post a lot more than you realize and you need to accept that you will be uncomfortable with it in the beginning. Referrals require personal development as a fact of becoming a better person to be introduced to. Learning how to post frequently (inside of a plan) is a skill and you will get better at it.
- Be a giver. If you have read any of my stuff (and my latest book) you know that I teach to 3x your amount of referral conversations by constantly looking to give referrals on purpose (within a plan). Nothing is more frustrating and ‘block worthy’ to me than the instant ‘pitch slap’ of accepting a connection request and then getting an immediate direct message badly trying to get me to buy. Every time that happens an immediate sequence of block and then delete occurs.
If you want to do some additional reading on the subject, I must recommend starting with Tim Hughes book “Social Selling”: https://amzn.to/4fkpDq5
If you pair that up with my most recent book “Can I Borrow Your Car? How Successful Financial Advisors Grow Their Business and Love Their Life”, you will have a great combo for growth in many areas.
Related: Who Should I Hire to Boost Growth and Maximize Exit Value for My Business?