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When a client refers someone to a financial advisor, something specific is being communicated. And it is not always the thing that is assumed.
The conventional reading of a referral is that it is an endorsement of capability. The referring client has experienced the advisor's work and is confident enough in the quality of it to attach their own credibility to the recommendation.
That reading is accurate as far as it goes. But there is something else being communicated in a referral, something that determines whether the referred prospect actually calls, and whether the first sales conversation converts.
The referring client is describing an experience.
And the specific experience they are describing, the one that made them willing to put their reputation behind the recommendation, is almost always the experience of feeling genuinely understood.
Not the experience of receiving excellent portfolio performance, though that may be part of it. Not the experience of having every question answered quickly and professionally, though that matters too.
The experience that makes a client refer, the thing they remember and want to give to someone they care about, is the experience of having felt, perhaps for the first time in a professional financial context, that someone truly saw their situation.
This matters for how the referral lands.
When a client describes their advisor to a friend as someone who is really good and very experienced and knows their stuff, the friend hears a description of a capable professional they should meet.
When a client describes their advisor as someone who actually listens, who asks questions no one else ever asked, who made me feel like my specific situation actually mattered, the friend hears a description of a different kind of experience entirely.
One they have probably not had with a financial professional before.
Those two descriptions produce different kinds of anticipation in the referred prospect.
The first produces a reasonably warm version of normal. The second produces genuine curiosity and a lowered guard.
And a referred prospect who arrives with a lowered guard has already moved past the first and most difficult stage of the trust-building process.
The implication is worth sitting with.
The quality of the experience created in sales conversations, and with existing clients, shapes the quality of the referrals those clients produce. Not just whether they refer, but how they describe the referral, and therefore what the referred prospect expects to find when they arrive.
If you want better referrals, create more moments in which existing clients feel genuinely seen and understood.
Those moments become the stories your clients tell. And the stories your clients tell are the referral, long before a name and number are ever exchanged.
The referral is a report from the field.
It tells an advisor what the experience of working with them actually produced, distilled into the words a client chooses when they tell a friend about them.
Those words are worth listening to carefully. They reveal something important about what is being built.
Related: The Trust That Brings Them Back
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, “Trust In A Split Second” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a Free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “plug up the holes” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.