In our last article we spoke about why it’s a great idea for accountants to refer their clients for debt solutions and why accountants should be clearly and generously remunerated for such. Ask any of your clients and they will also agree you deserve to share in their success.
Today I want to talk to you about the 3 main ways to generate referrals from your client base.
While there are a million ways to skin this particular cat, I find the following 3 ways the most productive and rewards for both your client and you.
Before I move forward though I have to advise this is and can never ever be a “hit and run” exercise.
It is a long game in which you and your broker partner will foster and develop trust and exceptional outcomes for all concerned.
There must at all times be 3 winners:
- You
- Your client
- The broker
Anytime there is an imbalance we generally find resentment and overall, a poor result for all 3 parties. Please take this part seriously. I spend hours advising brokers on the benefits of sharing in success and most get it. But, some will want everything for free. Which generally equates to nothing. What I mean here is it is very healthy for you to share any the revenue that is generated from referring your clients to a mortgage broker. VERY healthy. And your clients will not only understand it….they expect it!
The 3 most successful ways to generate referrals from your client base:
- Quality conversations
- Ongoing marketing
- Webinars, seminars and workshops
While these may sound regular and run of the mill the magic is in the attention to detail and the practice.
As I stated earlier, this cannot be a “hit and run” exercise but rather a very long game with lots of different messages leading to one outcome. A quality and well prepared referral to your broker who will then deliver exceptional outcomes to your clients and additional revenue to you.
There is a lot to go through, so lets do one at a time.
Let’s delve further:
1. Quality conversations with your clients
Generating quality conversations with your clients is by far the best way to generate referrals to your broker partners.
Firstly you need to understand your clients love you and trust you. This trust and love is generally built over a period of time with great results for them and excellent guidance. And also a strong friendship too in a lot of cases right. Clients can grow from customers to friends on a regular basis.
Anyway.
This enables you to broach conversations that other professionals just can’t with the same level of openness and willingness.
As always questions are the best way to open a conversation. Preferably the best questions are open ones such as;
- how is/are?
- What is/are?
- When was?
- What are?
- Tell me about?
Examples:
- How are you going managing your monthly bills at the moment given inflation and rising interest rates?
- What are your plans to constantly review your finance interest rates in this environment?
- When was the last time you had someone help you with getting a better deal on your finance?
- What are some of the things you think you need to do to assist in improving your cash flow?
- Tell me about your lending/debt and when was the last time they where reviewed?
As you become more practiced with your questions they are likely to become more complex and delve further into your clients goals, ambitions and problems:
- Tell me about your plans around creating wealth for you and your family?
- What are your financial goals for the next 5, 10 and 20 years?
- What is keeping you and your partner up at night regarding your finances.
Generally these conversations come off the back of working on their business with them or their ITR’s if they are payg. So they aren’t stand alone conversations rather they flow into one another.
I do hope this helps with uncovering your clients needs and wants around finance and I look forward to the next component: Ongoing Marketing to be presented next time.
As always, if you’d like more information or to even role play some of these ideas please feel free to contact me directly at your convenience.\
Mortgage Brokers – Book a 30 minute discovery session – click here
Accountants – Book a 30 minute discovery session – click here
Don’t forget about our accountant to mortgage broker webinar, 21st March 2023 at 1.00pm ADST. Click here to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U6ljhF4ESmyOOudzDIpklA
Steve Lake | National Lending Group | www.nlg.com.au
He also owns Referconnect, a marketing company specialising in linking financial service providers to provide better outcomes for their clients and deliver assets and profit to business owners and stakeholders.
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- Nuts and bolts: How to refer your clients - 8 March 2023
