How to Triple Referral Conversations by Improving Your Referral Process

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There is no shortcut.

If you truly want to significantly increase the number and predictability of referral introductions to ideal client prospects you need to be involved (both direct and indirectly) in more conversations about referrals.

This doesn’t scale if you only view a referral conversation as when you are asking for a referral.

Many financial advisors, early in their careers, managed to avoid starvation by asking incessantly for referrals from everyone they know…and there is nothing wrong with that.  You might not have enjoyed the process and your clients/friends may have come to expect that any time they talked to you that there would be a referral request made, but, you survived and it's all good.

However, almost all successful financial advisors and especially the ones that end up owning their own business/firm, hate being a #referralbeggar and/or #referralpredator.  We know, inside of our soul, that being a ‘taker’ doesn’t translate to long term success in any relationship.

What is the solution: talk about referrals more in a different way.

There are two ways you do this:

  1. Follow a disciplined and authentic process for how you handle referrals no matter what your role is in the conversation (salesperson, referral source, prospect).
  2. Give more referrals on purpose within a system that I could audit on your calendar and client processes/communications.

Today’s article is going to be focused on #1 because it is the foundation for my entire system of predictable referrals and is illustrated in my latest book.

At a minimum here are the components of a referral process that you should be conducting if at all possible:

  1. Referral source contacts you to let you know they have a referral for you (email/text/call).
  2. You respond with a call ideally (prioritize live communication)
  3. Referral source contacts the prospect and lets them know you will be contacting them and/or initiates referral through a text for example.
  4. You follow up with a call/text to the prospect
  5. You follow up with your referral source updating them on the success of your initial contact
  6. You meet with the prospect and make sure you don’t wreck the car AND make sure you ask the prospect to follow up with the referral source to let them know how well you did.
  7. You follow up with the referral source (immediately after the prospect meeting…schedule this in your calendar so you don’t forget) and give them a brief rundown of how the meeting went and ask for their feedback or help.
  8. Continue your normal prospect sales funnel communication process while adding in updates at every stage to your referral source.

A couple of things to take note of:

  1. This is an increase of time (possibly) on your part and the referral source.  As long as you present this as a strategy to reduce risk and grow relationships for them, you will have great results.
  2. This extra time is all about referral conversations.  Any conversation that is centered on a referral is a referral conversation.  You are at least getting 3x more referral conversations as a normal part of my referral system with this every single time you get, give or are referred.

There are extra steps that can be taken (gifting anyone?) and are part of customizing your own referral process, but the above is non-negotiable if you truly want to have significant results and have a great time doing so.

The secret is to embed follow up and giving into your entire business (after all why wouldn’t you as a fiduciary and all around nice person?!?).  So much of the referral training out there is about having the exact right words to say that will miraculously have someone refer you to a massive client without you having to do anything. (btw, I am all aboard the surprise referral bandwagon…I love them too)

I love working on this process with successful owners of financial services businesses because when the light bulb turns on and they figure out how simple and easy (fun too) this system is to implement with their best clients and COI’s they relax and start doing the process naturally.

Related: How To Lower Risk When Looking to Sell Your Business