The conversation rate is 30% higher in referral leads as against other leads, states data released by Invesp, a digital marketing company. In fact, many MFDs believe that many people trust recommendations when received from known people.
Cafemutual spoke to Dipesh Sethia, Sunil Tukaram Dalvi, Viral Bhatt of Money Mantra and Vishal Mahajan of Rupee Express to understand how they acquire new clients through referrals. Over 60% of their clients have come from referrals.
Sharing their experiences, these distributors have some interesting tips and insights to offer. Let us look at them.
Asking for referrals
The best time to ask for referrals is when your clients express happiness with your services.
Sunil regularly asks his clients who have achieved their financial goals to share their feedback and experience with their investing journey. “When satisfied clients talk about their smooth investment journey, it makes them appreciate the role of MFDs/advisors and motivates them to share some references on their own.”
Dipesh asks for referrals indirectly. He requests his clients to share his articles and posts having his contact details with their friends and family members.
Prepare referral note for clients
Clients may not have time to introduce you to their friends and family members. Hence, MFDs should make things simple for them by preparing a referral note, believes Sunil. He said that such a note could capture your brief description, services you offer and areas of expertise.
Dealing with referrals
Vishal does homework about referrals before meeting them by finding out their likes, dislikes and family information. He speaks to referring clients to know more about his referrals along with browsing their social media accounts.
While referrals have some idea about advisors and their working style, Viral ensures that he sets reasonable expectation right from the beginning to eliminate any scope of misunderstanding. He also takes his referrals through what he can do and can’t do for them.
Dipesh breaks the ice by talking about his relationship with the referring client.
Following up
Sunil and Viral wait for a week after the first meeting before making their next call whereas Dipesh fixes the next meeting in the first meeting itself.
Conclusion
It is not easy for MFDs to ask their clients for references. While some may be natural at it, it may be difficult for some to ask for their customers' referrals. Hence, it is better to integrate a formal referral system in your business practice. To start with, you may include these four tips to convert referrals into clients.
Let us know in the comment section on how you have converted your referrals into clients.
