One of the biggest challenges the advisors I work with bring to me is their terror of asking clients to introduce them to their business associates, friends and family members.
I’ve been present during appointments where a financial advisor asked a client, without flinching, for $500,000–and received it. that same advisor, however, could not muster the courage to have a simple conversation about helping their clients’ friends and associates.
What could cause this terrible visit to Wimp Junction by otherwise successful professionals? Part of the answer is fear. Obviously, they’re afraid.
But afraid of what? Would the clients be so offended by the request that they would take back their check? Would the relationship with those clients be damaged in some way by offering to help people they care about? Is there some disloyalty in the asking? Do they feel as if they’re saying, “Here I’ve been helping you and taking care of your problems, and you’re paying me, but now I’m asking for something more for me.”?
Maybe they’re seeing it like this:
Joe Professional is walking Betty home after at the end of a fun evening together.
He turns to her at her door and says, “Betty, I had a really great time tonight.”
Betty looks at Joe with moonlight in her eyes and says, “I’m glad, Joe, because I did, too!”
And I then Joe says, “Betty, it must be obvious I like women. Who else do you know that
might like to go out with me? How about that friend of yours we saw tonight…”
Is that what these professionals who cower away from requesting introductions are thinking it looks like? If fear is the issue, the problem is that they have the wrong mindset. In my workshops I tell attendees to “STOP ASKING FOR REFERRALS…and start deserving introductions instead.”
Here’s a reminder you can post at your desk:
I DESERVE INTRODUCTIONS
- I provide a great service to my clients.
- All of them have business associate, friends and family members who need this service.
- If I don’t help those business associates, friends and family members, somebody else will.
- I deserve to be the one to help them.
Introductions will help you build your business, but they are also beneficial to the people to whom you are referred and to the client who makes the introduction. Make sure you deserve to be introduced and then talk to your clients about the people in their lives who could use the same kind of help you are giving them.
Contact me NOW to learn how you can increase your business by 30% or more this year through easy, comfortable introduction conversations and, in the meantime, keep REACHING…
