Most advisors have had the occasional experience of receiving an unsolicited referral from a client or another professional.

And any advisor would want to make that happen more often, but it appears random. It happened, but you don’t think you did anything special to make it happen.

What if there was something special you could do that would drive many more of these to you?

In a 2022 survey supervised by Julie Littlechild of Absolute Engagement, her team determined that 98% of “engaged” clients had referred at least one new prospect to their advisor during the course of the previous year.

To get results like this from your clients, you need to understand how to turn them into “engaged” clients.

Whether or not a client is engaged depends on how happy he or she is with your service, but, more importantly, how they feel about their experience as a client. That experience is the one factor that moves them from being merely satisfied to being raving fans.

There are several factors that go into that experience, which starts with hearing about you and learning about you online and continues through onboarding, and all their interactions with you over a span of years. It includes:

• How you communicate with them
• How they’re treated
• How accessible you and your team are
• How they are treated by your team
• Whether or not they’re being “wowed”
• Whether you have a great story to share with them
• Whether they have great stories to share with others about you
• What’s special about your service

Imagine this:

Your clients come to your office for an appointment and there’s a Welcome sign at the desk with their name on it. Your assistant greets them by name and tells them that you’re expecting them and will be with them in a few minutes. She asks if they’d like some coffee and brings them the coffee on a silver tray with china cups. You then come out, greet them warmly, and walk them into the conference room. Your assistant carries the tray to the conference table and asks them if they need anything else.

How does that compare to the experience you offer to your best clients?

Or this:

You talk with your ‘Top 20’ clients, the Smiths, enough to know that next Tuesday evening they’ll be celebrating their anniversary at their favorite Italian restaurant on Main Street. They have 8 pm reservations. You call the restaurant and order them a bottle of prosecco, to be delivered to them when they’ve been seated. While they’re perusing the menu, the waiter brings over an ice bucket and starts to open the bottle. Mr. Smith protests, “We didn’t order that.” And the waiter explains that it’s an anniversary gift from their agent or advisor—you.

When the Smiths go home, friends and relatives are likely to ask how their anniversary celebration went…and they’re telling everyone about the “magical” appearance of that bottle of prosecco from their advisor.

A common response might be, “Your advisor did THAT? Mine takes 3 days to return my phone calls. Tell me more about yours.”

We can wait a very long time until someone our clients know asks them if about getting help with their 401(K) or for someone who can help them get more insurance. But if their client experience has them talking about you, unsolicited referrals are just around the corner.

Contact me if you’d like help creating an experience that will engage your clients, and keep REACHING…