Steve Seid:
Welcome to The Whole Truth, where two wholesalers help financial professionals build great practices and thrive in a rapidly changing industry. We'll bring you the stories and voices from those on the front lines of this change, and we'll have some fun along the way.
Kurt Dupuis:
We're building a community of financial professionals who are growing, forward-thinking, and want to get better. Thanks for listening and contributing to the discussion.
Disclosure:
The views expressed herein are those of the participants and not those of Touchstone Investments.
Steve Seid:
And welcome everybody to The Whole Truth from the Bay Area, California. I am Steve Seid.
Kurt Dupuis:
And I am Kurt Dupuis.
Steve Seid:
It's one of those episodes where we've got two great guests on. We've got our good friend Matt Campbell, “Big Country”, our wholesaler friend down in Charlotte, North Carolina. Matt, hello and welcome.
Matt Campbell:
Thank you guys. I'm looking forward to it, and hello all you podcast listeners out there. I've always wanted to say that.
Steve Seid:
Yeah! Listen, that's a great way to start. So, with Matt, what we're going to do, he's going to be “Segment One” here, and we're going to do a segment that's called “Advisor Catnip”. I'll let Kurt do the overview on that, but that segment actually is called “Advisor Catnip”. “Segment Two”, we have a referral specialist on by the name of Stacey Brown Randall. We are always on the look for resources around referrals, and I'll tell you what we're not looking for. What we're not looking for is referral specialists that say, "Hey, just ask better," or, "Constantly ask your clients for referrals." That's out there. If that's the approach you want to take, great. Get your script right, ask, all that.
But we're looking for people that can bring a little bit of a different element than that. That's how we came across Stacey Brown Randall. She approaches it from a little bit of a different perspective. A couple of takeaways, and I will say up front, the conversation with Stacey went very, very fast, so we covered some high level concepts. We didn't dig down deep into those concepts. She has a podcast that you can check out if you want to go deeper on those things and get into the specifics, or just let us know, "Hey, I like this. You should do a follow-up or another episode," and we'll do it.
But here are a couple of takeaways that I walked away from the conversation with. The first was, she was talking about having a roadmap for referral. So if we take the referral process, she breaks it down into three elements, which is lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead conversion. Do you have a plan for each of those elements, for specifically each portion of that journey?
I'll share three other of the concepts that jumped out to me. We've talked on this show about client experience and that being the driving part of driving referrals, is getting your client experience right, and that will result in referrals. I think that's generally our view on the matter. She talks about within that, not only having and creating an exceptional client experience, but being able to identify, pinpoint, look for those referable moments. She calls it the ecosystem, and when they come, how do you specifically address it at that point. So, I thought that was very interesting.
She also talked about who are your referral sources, specifically identifying that, and creating a plan for them each and every year. What is the experience and the process that you're going to take your referral sources through each year? And the last thing, the referral process, a lot of times we make that about us. One of the best compliments you can give me is to give me a referral. It's not about you.
Kurt Dupuis:
I get paid in two ways.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, that's right. It's not about you. The person giving the referral is actually the hero in the story. Because if we think about it, why does someone actually give a referral? Well, they give a referral because they feel good actually helping someone. It's not because they want to increase the ROA1 of their financial advisor's business. That's not it. They're the hero. They're talking to somebody. Somebody has a need, they can solve it by having a good resource. We've all done that, right? Someone talks about, "Hey, I'm looking for a new X, Y, Z," and if you have something you like, you love to talk about that, right? That's just part of that.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. "I've been to that restaurant. Order the mussels."
Steve Seid:
There you go. Exactly right.
Kurt Dupuis:
We know what we're talking about. We've got shared experiences.
Matt Campbell:
Tell him Kurt sent you.
Steve Seid:
Tell him Kurt sent you, exactly right.
Matt Campbell:
They'll give you the non-spoiled mussels.
Steve Seid:
So if we know that the hero of the story is not you, how do we make it as easy as possible on the person referring? And that's a concept we've talked about in an earlier episode about easing referral friction.
So anyways, I hope you enjoy that. I hope you check out Stacey's podcast. We really enjoyed that conversation, but now we will jump over into our “Catnip portion”, “Segment One”.
Kurt Dupuis:
So this idea is completely ripped from our friend Dan Sullivan on the “Internal Use” podcast who we've done a couple of crossover shows, and the concept is painfully simple. Wholesalers, like financial professionals, are typically trying to get in front of new people. We're prospecting. And a good way to do that is by adding value. Come up with something that's got some sizzle that attracts people that you want to meet with.
So on Dan's podcast, he was talking to a wholesaler consultant who said... This is actually really easy. "What questions do advisors ask?" Cool. Go to Google, go to the library, go somewhere, research these things because inevitably these questions have been asked before and they've almost certainly been answered before. So the idea is we each come to the table with some questions or, better said, maybe some catnip that advisors ask all the time. We've gone out, we've done the research, and we've got some actionable things to take away for answering those questions or solving those problems.
Steve Seid:
Have you guys ever seen a cat actually in catnip? I just want to make sure we're on the same page.
Matt Campbell:
Oh yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
No, I'm not a cat guy. Is that a real thing?
Matt Campbell:
Oh yeah. I'm a big cat guy and I was thinking about this as I was preparing for the podcast. I'm like, "What would the likelihood be that my cat would show up in the background?"
Steve Seid:
It's like a party drug for them. They go in there and all of a sudden they're rolling around in it. They're bouncing all over the room. It's fascinating stuff. Anyway.
Matt Campbell:
My cat likes to roll around on the plate that I put it on.
Steve Seid:
I just want to make sure Kurt knew because I feel like clearly he doesn't understand about catnip and the real implications here.
Kurt Dupuis:
But you do this as a treat? As a reward? Is this a daily occurrence?
Matt Campbell:
I do it because I feel bad, like when my wife and I are sitting around having wine. It's Friday night for everybody, right?
Steve Seid:
Yeah. I don't have a plan for it. Sometimes I'll just be at the pet store and I go, "Oh yeah, catnip," and you throw it down. I don't know, a couple of times a year? Three or four?
Matt Campbell:
I wonder if there's varying degrees of it too. I wonder if this cat's like, "Oh yeah, this stuff came from PetSmart. This is the good stuff."
Steve Seid:
This is the good stuff.
Matt Campbell:
Anyway, you can make those jokes out in California. We can't make those jokes in North Carolina yet.
Kurt Dupuis:
So a lot of corollaries to party drugs. Got it. So that's what we have teed up for you today. So let's get into it.
Matt Campbell:
I want to introduce a “Catnip” idea that actually my intern and I put our heads together on. I was a financial advisor and in a previous life he was a real estate agent in commercial real estate who was in charge of bringing in new business. So most of these ideas I've stolen from him, not unlike Kurt's theme about there is nothing new under the sun and what we're doing is just picking really great ideas. I believe that the best salesman are the best thieves. I also learned a term called “databasing”, which is what he used. So I'm going to refer to this as the use of databases, and he's 24, so it's got to be cool as “databasing”.
Kurt Dupuis:
You saw it on TikTok.
Matt Campbell:
Exactly. This will be a 30-second TikTok sales idea. So no matter what stage you are in your business, you need to either get more out of your existing clients or you need to get new clients and prospects through the door. And even if you are growing by referral, and I put this in to my notes really even before I knew that we would be segueing into a referral specialist too, but even if you're growing by referral, the very essence of that is that in a lot of ways you're relying on someone else to help you grow your business and not really that sweat equity. And in some ways, growing by referral is releasing who that next client is into the universe and taking it out of your own hands, which if you think about it that way, might give some advisors pause. But also I think it's important to understand all the different resources that you have to bring in new opportunities.
We've all bought lists of high net worth individuals that were angry at their financial advisor or whatever that survey was that they filled out, whatever the reason was that they got on that list. But the problem is chances are they've been sold to everybody and their brother, and by the time you get to that list, everyone's already called it, so you're paying money for inactionable leads or dead leads, if you will. So I started thinking about how to solve this problem and we live in this information age, so this information has to be out there. But the problem, primarily I think, is that it's not all in one place the way that it would be if somebody provided you directly an Excel document that you paid for. I was also pleasantly surprised by all the resources that were out there on the internet where you could find really good and pretty granular information about people, and also maybe a little bit scared too, I guess, in that same regard.
Kurt Dupuis:
I was going to say, yeah.
Matt Campbell:
The issue here is there really is no single website to point to that will solve all of your questions, that will give you all of the answers. But if you use some of these websites in unison with one another, you can really get some very actionable ideas and leads out of it. And I'm going to share with you a couple websites. There's a website called Reference USA, and the actual website is referenceusagov.com. It's a government-based database, but you can see a huge list of, I think it's 84 million US businesses. Let's see, 2.5 job openings or new businesses that have just been started, and it's also 2.2 million healthcare professionals and dentists.
And you can access this information a couple of different ways. There is My Account page where I'm sure for a small fee you can sign up. I was able to use my library card, and this might be different from state to state, but what Reference USA allowed me to see was all the businesses in my area. I could search by a radius, a mile radius, number of employees. There was owner's name, there's number of C-suite executives, years in business, addresses of locations and brick and mortars. In some cases there are even HR directors and their numbers or their email addresses.
Maybe you're going after business owners. I know a lot of advisors do that. Maybe you're going after physicians in a specific area or of a specific ilk or calling. But also if you're a 401K producer, you could search a company that's got 100 employees that's been in business for 20 years. Chances are they've got a nice K plan, and if they don't, they probably need one. So it could be a great conversation or opportunity to start that ball rolling as well with them. So that's Reference USA.
Kurt Dupuis:
We talk about niching down. I remember Dr. Daniel Crosby years ago when we started the podcast, talked about niches get riches. And so the more specific you are there, the more you can specifically look for that data and presumably your message is also going to be specific to that audience. So higher open rates, higher click rates, higher conversion rates.
Matt Campbell:
Another way I thought of to maybe slice this pie is there's a lot of property ownership websites too. And again, a lot of these, they function county by county, but the example I'm going to give you is Greenville County, South Carolina. Their website is greenvillecounty.org. That's the main page. And on that main page, you can look up specific subdivisions that you know to be wealthy subdivisions. In this particular instance, I'm using a place called Chanticleer, which is a high-end community in that area. And so I put in a search in that area and I found-
Kurt Dupuis:
What's the website?
Matt Campbell:
Well this one in particular is greenvillecounty.org. So my suggestion here is property ownership websites are going to be county by county, so whatever county you're in, I would just put “county I'm in .org”, or you can search that county and real estate receipts or real estate taxes, that sort of thing. But I'll get to more of those specifics.
It allows you to search within wealthy zip codes or even subdivisions. You can get the name of the owner, you can get the address, you can get the listing price or the most recent purchase price. So it's sort of Zillow on steroids. There's a link to the left of everybody's name where not only can you find the location of the property, but you can find what that tax value was last year or most recently. And also, for example, there's a gentleman's name here and it says, "Revocable trust." Someone's got a revocable trust that's holding a house.
Steve Seid:
Right.
Matt Campbell:
Chances are they've done some financial planning in the past.
Another tangential idea there is, so now you've accessed owner information, address, even the amount of properties that these folks own when they purchase what the value of these homes are. But if you search with plus tax search, you can gain some extra information. And so that's step one. Step two would be, all right, I have this person's name and address. We live in this information rich age and so everybody else has this information about us, so I want to take advantage of it's,
Steve Seid:
That’s right. It's the business model of all the tech companies, so you're not doing anything that everyone else is not doing.
Matt Campbell:
So in any case, if you find business owners, property owners, maybe somebody you met at a cocktail party, there's somebody you had a conversation with that you wanted to follow up with or maybe put them on a mailer for some sort of future event. There's two websites that work in this regard that I found at least for my searching, was www.officialusa.com. And I'll say these twice, www.official, (like a referee), usa.com and at the splash page of this website, it won't look very relevant because it says "Enter government business or name of business." But as you scroll down, about two thirds of the way down, you'll see Officialusa.com People Directory.
It's organized a little funky. It's in alphabetical order by first name and then last name, but I tried to look myself up on it and I was able to find my information and it was accurate. And so what you would do is you scroll down to People Directory, you search alphabetically, you can find these names, you can find emails, you can find dates of birth, which also would be good if you were doing a social security presentation or something where age specificity was important. And not everybody's going to show up in this directory, but if they are on the site, the phone numbers, at least that I have looked up and I looked up a couple of my family members, they were accurate. They were exactly what they were in my phone.
Kurt Dupuis:
No kidding.
Matt Campbell:
And so this is kept up to date and more accurate than the second website I'm going to share with you. But the reason I share this one with you is chances are if they're not on one, they may be on the other.
The second one is called fastpeoplesearch.com. It seems a little bit more like a White Pages, and you can put in somebody's information, their address, which you could have gleaned from those tax documents. Search by address probably more so than name, because I've noticed some folks in here aren't necessarily by their given names. It might be Matt instead of Matthew, it might be Chip instead of John or whatever their first name is.
So I guess finally in summary on this, I think you could use this information for a couple of different reasons. You could fill some seats at seminars, prospecting events that you needed additional folks to join. You could use this to learn more information about people that maybe are in your country club that you might want to partner up with at the next golf outing event. Maybe lose somebody's business card or maybe you wrote down the wrong number. But I think that's my catnip idea. It's not all in one place, but if you were so inclined, you could really find some interesting information and I think with some cutting and pasting and a few hours' time in an evening while you're watching football or something, you could compile a decent little prospecting list here and you don't have to pay a dime.
Kurt Dupuis:
To me, this is almost an older school version of what social media claims it can do, highly specific targeting. And then the question is application to this. And I mean, your idea about seminars and just targeting people is I think fantastic. You could set up a drip campaign that's automated and they click through and get filtered down the funnel over time. So this is a need to have, I think, if you're a financial professional, not a nice to have, and these are great tools to be able to build that or enhance the one that you already have.
Matt Campbell:
I agree with you, and I think the birthdate is particularly powerful too. I mean, people love to receive things on their birthday, whether it's a coupon for a buy-one-get-one-free ice cream or whatever it is, and people will often either mention their birthday to you in passing. It's an important day to everybody regardless of how much hoopla they suggest that they want or don't want around it. And so it's a great impetus to send something to somebody, say, "Hey, I was just thinking about you. There was an interesting story that came out in the paper on the day in which you were born." These are powerful things you can use.
Kurt Dupuis:
Awesome. Good stuff there. I've took several notes on that.
Steve Seid:
There are many, many different Steve Seids that exist in the country. I want to let both of you guys know that. There are a few of them.
Matt Campbell:
Oh, there's only one Steve Seid. Come on.
Steve Seid:
There are three. I am totally lost down this rabbit hole, Matt, obviously. And what I find-
Kurt Dupuis:
Seid's blacked out now.
Matt Campbell:
There goes Steve's weekend, right there.
Steve Seid:
It is amazing, just as you described, the data that they have here. They have phone numbers, they have email addresses, they have properties. You said all this stuff, but just seeing this is very, very interesting. When you were a financial advisor, this is just different type of information than what you typically get. That's the point.
Matt Campbell:
Absolutely.
Steve Seid:
Share your email address for people that are listening that may want to contact you to talk through this.
Matt Campbell:
Sure. It's matt.campbell@touchstonefunds.com.
Steve Seid:
All right, so we're not going to have time for three catnip ideas, so I'll save mine, but I know Kurt, you're up next. What do you bring to us? What do you have for us that's going to get the cat rolling around on the floor on the plate, as Matt described before?
Kurt Dupuis:
I don't know what to do with the metaphor anymore.
Matt Campbell:
Cat on a platter. Yeah, give us the cat on a platter.
Kurt Dupuis:
There's two questions that I always get asked that I never feel like I have a good answer for, and so I'm answering only one of them. I didn't have time for both. But those two questions are, "Do you know anybody that's looking to sell their practice?" Because a lot of people look to wholesalers to help make those introduction.
Matt Campbell:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
"Secondly, we're looking to add staff. Do you know anybody?" Those are the two questions I get asked probably more than any other question. So I thought, someone has to have a rubric for this. I've never bought a practice and I've never hired a junior advisor, but surely I can go out here and tee up the opportunity and come up with an actionable game plan, and I think I've done that. So I'm pretty excited about this.
Steve Seid:
Oof!
Kurt Dupuis:
But the numbers here are staggering. Cerulli had a stat out there that 37% of advisors are going to retire in the next 10 years who, collectively control $10.4 trillion that's with a “T,” of assets. That represents 40% of industry assets. So think of 40% of the industry assets are going to change hands in some way, shape, or form in the next decade. It's crazy.
Steve Seid:
I was on the phone with a manager that deals with a ultra-high net worth division in her firm. I asked her, "What is it that your teams are dealing with? What are the biggest challenges they're facing?" She goes, without even thinking, "Succession”. They're all dragging their feet. They're all depressed about it. They don't want to think about it because this has been the existence, but yet it's happening. It's going to happen, so let's get prepared for it.
Matt Campbell:
And this business has not done a good job of rejuvenating itself, there's not a ton of folks coming down the pipeline.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. We get caught up, I think, in the mousetrap that a lot of public companies come up with where they're kind of shortsighted. Whereas if you're thinking about the next decade and not the next year or two, you are hiring people, you're giving them equity, you're probably being a little bit more philanthropic, which ultimately is better for everybody. But you're right, that's not baseline for the business.
So that's the opportunity set put in numbers from one study, but this really is fantastic. In a lot of the data, in a lot of the notes, in a lot of the action items, there's very much a difference between, I'll call it captive and not captive. So I'll give a couple of thoughts with each. So let's say not captive, so independent, there are, on average, 50 buyers for every one seller. So a gigantic…
Matt Campbell:
Holy cow.
Kurt Dupuis:
…mismatch of supply and demand. If you're captive, the numbers that I was seeing were more in the 10 to 20 range, but still the question is how do you differentiate yourself? What are the pain points? What can you be doing now, tomorrow, and in five years to set yourself up for that?
I'm saying this because there were multiple surveys that referenced this. The number one thing they were looking for is compatibility. So not the best price, not the best terms, not the right business mix. People really just wanted to sell their business to someone that they trusted, they felt that they kind of saw eye to eye with them, and that would ultimately take care of their clients.
There's a company called Advisor Successions. There's woefully few views on this video, but Advisor Successions had a great video out there, 25, 30 minutes. And so these are the top five things to consider and to be thinking through if you are in the market to buy a practice. So the overarching thing was compatibility. So you have to solve for that. How do you do that? You network. Digitally, in person. This is back to old school, right? Tell people what you're looking for. I always love people that have a good value add or a really clear sense of who they are and what their mission statement is. If you are aggressively looking to buy a practice, every advisor you network with, you should be asking about their contingency or succession plan. It turns out a lot don't even have that. Right?
Steve Seid:
Exactly.
Kurt Dupuis:
So I've even heard anecdotally of success on Kitces’ podcast, a guy cold calling advisors and just having an agreement in place that if they got hit by a bus, it's like, "We don't have to talk again, but if you get hit by a bus, let's come up with some sort of sell agreement." And he ended up buying a handful of practices that way because they got to know him over time. None of them got hit by a bus, but it started the relationship, started understanding that, hey, they are compatible. This guy would serve my clients well.
So outside of compatibility, that just seemed like table stakes. The number one thing that sellers were looking for is flexibility. I think being flexible at the business mix, like, if you're coming from an RIA2, being open to a hybrid. If someone wants five-year terms and you really want seven, you have to be accommodative. Down payments, if they want 40%, you got to be accommodative, right? You don't really get to take the term sheet, so you have to be flexible with that.
Persistence was another thing that was brought up, and deal flow. So the rule of thumb on deal flow is if you are actively talking to a handful of people a year about a potential succession while realizing these might take several quarters if not several years, that's going to put you in a good spot to eventually capitalize that.
Steve Seid:
Can I say something on persistence here? Because it's related to a conversation that I had the other day that I thought was really interesting for everybody who's in sales, which we all are. Basically the comment was the industry, and I'm talking about wholesalers right now, so it's a little bit of a digression, overall are having trouble getting meetings. There's less meetings than they used to have. Now fortunately for Touchstone, we are not in that case, but the industry is dealing with it. And the person was saying, "You want to have the secret to having a full calendar? You want me to tell you exactly what the secret is?"
Kurt Dupuis:
Add value?
Steve Seid:
Well, yeah, well that add value, but I mean, not everyone's going to add value though that we do. Sorry, I'm a little biased in that regard, but just in general. No one takes the time to continuously follow up. So they'll send an email to someone or make a call, and then that person doesn't respond. And they might follow up once and then it's over. No one ever ends up going and doing three or four or five or six times. And if you do that without being annoying, you know what I'm saying? Not going over it, just like, "Hey, just staying in front." If you get to that and continuously be persistent, you will get meetings. People will see someone who's trying, who's working, who's putting in the time.
So I think in the case of this, it's the same thing. Okay, you talk to someone who looks like they're close to selling their business. They say the first time, "Well, I don't think I'm going to be selling." Don't just give up. Continue to work through. And that doesn't mean you got to figure out a way to do it without wasting a ton of your time, but the persistence I think is really important.
Matt Campbell:
Well, and Kurt, if I could add one more thing too, I mean, what I keep hearing with the compatibility is my wife and I were set up through a friend because that friend knew both of us intimately and knew who we were and what our values were. That kind of brings it back to the wholesaler relationship too. I mean, who better to refer you or to give you some ideas of who else it is that thinks the way that you do and operates the way that you do?
Kurt Dupuis:
The superpower of wholesalers is they know a lot of financial professionals. So to the extent that you can glean any insights from a person that knows a lot of other financial professionals, that's a viable resource to tap into.
This is a thing you really have to hire outside help. So if you're captive, you really need to be lobbying and putting it out there internally that you want to do this. Every firm that exists wants to keep assets, so if they know someone that's sunsetting, they will help facilitate that. Before you do any of that though, you have to get your own house in order. Your own finances, your own value proposition. Why would someone want to sell their business to you? That's step one. Step two is utilize internal or external resources because I don't think you're going to do this by yourself. Carson is a gigantic RIA that also does coaching. They were a great resource in studying up for this. I think it's worth having conversation with some sort of third party like that or internally.
Three, you have to be persistent because these things don't happen quickly or overnight. And so anything you can do to systematize your outreach, and I'm talking email campaigns, lunches, conferences, it's just relentless prospecting, right? You have to just put yourself out there a lot and eventually you'll get hit by a pitch. And then my couple of out-of-the-box ideas were what if you're a financial professional and you treated this exactly like you would for getting new clients? So going old school and doing seminars. What if you put on a seminar for people selling their business? These are the five things you need to know of selling your practice. Bring in an outside consultant because so many people have cold feet with this, and a lot of that's due to the fact that they just don't know what's out there. So connecting to somebody on a human level, giving them information, helping be that connector and organizing.
And then as I've played around with, I just generally call digital marketing over the last couple years, you could build a database of people like this and do the same thing with the cadence that we've talked about is you give, give, give, ask. Set up some email sequence where you are giving information away, you're help putting to rest some of these fears, filling people's head with knowledge which will eventually put butts in seats at your table to be in a position to take advantage of this.
I've got a couple pages of notes put together on this with some resources that I looked into, so again, reach out to us. Thewholetruth@touchstonefunds.com. Be happy to nerd out on this stuff, but hopefully those are a few ideas of ways, put you in a better spot.
Steve Seid:
You guys knocked the ball out of the park with these two ideas. I love it. This is going to turn into a pretty densely useful... Is that a term I could use? Densely useful?
Matt Campbell:
Actually, people call me densely useful all the time.
Steve Seid:
That's right. Densely useful episode.
Kurt Dupuis:
Show that tattoo.
Matt Campbell:
Or dense and useful. I don't know, it's something-
Steve Seid:
It's one of those two. We've got database and prospecting work that Matt did, which I'm still doing in the background right now. I just want to tell you.
Kurt Dupuis:
He's still researching every Steve Seid in America.
Steve Seid:
And I'm kind of worried that I can't find myself. That's a worry for me.
Matt Campbell:
Your Christmas card list just got a lot longer, didn't it?
Steve Seid:
We've got buying a business and we've got referrals. That is a lot of good stuff in one episode, so I'm going to save mine for future episode. Should I tease it? Is it worth teasing? It got back to a concept I've been thinking about lately around client experience. The concept is that people think my client experience has to be better than the average advisor that's down the hall, which is true-ish, but the reality is you're not just competing with that financial professional. What you're competing with actually is the experiences that they're getting from every other industry, which is that experience is growing exponentially due to tech, period.
And it used to be, we got to start using more tech and more things that are forward-thinking in regard to experience because the next generation is coming down the pike. The truth is, the older generations are already there. The pandemic got Grandma on Zoom. Baby boomer clients are using apps. And so what I came out with was a list of what we could learn from the tech companies that might be applicable or we might use in the client experience.
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh, that's beautiful.
Matt Campbell:
Yeah, definitely.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. I'm going to get your notes offline.
Steve Seid:
Thanks again to our friend Matt Campbell. We are going to transition to our conversation with Stacy Brown Randall. This is The Whole Truth. Stick with us.
Kurt Dupuis:
And welcome to our conversation with Stacy Brown Randall. We tend to be of the opinion that people are better at introducing themselves rather than us going online and reading some stale bio. So if you wouldn't mind, could you tell us your background? Tell us about your firm, tell us your story.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Yeah, but not listening to you introduce me. Doesn't feed my ego.
Kurt Dupuis:
Well, we'll do that at the end then.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Okay. I'm just kidding. Thank you guys for having me on. I'm excited for this conversation. When people ask me about my background and how it led me to talk about referrals and do it different than most people, I always say the short answer is I have a portfolio career. I did a lot of different things before I figured out what I was actually supposed to do. I went to college thinking I was going to be the next Katie Couric, so I got a broadcast journalism degree and decided while in college I didn't want to do that and my parents freaked out because they just paid for four years of school and, "What are you going to do now?" And I was like, "I have no idea." I've worked for a lobbying firm, I've worked in sales and marketing, I worked for a publisher, and I've been a real estate agent and I worked for a financial services company. So I did a number of different things as I tried to figure out how to build my own successful business.
It's really just this portfolio career, but has always been focused on relationships, sales and marketing, and communication. And I really found that all of that helps with what I do with the work I do today with referrals. Once I realized, "Oh, there's something here with my referral strategy," that's what I started teaching and I did a pivot and we've been doing this for 10 years now.
Kurt Dupuis:
Love it. So we obviously work in the investment management business. My favorite cheeky definition of diversification, so talking about your portfolio career, is diversification is always having something in your portfolio that you hate. So my question is, which job did you hate the most in your portfolio?
Stacey Brown Randall:
All of them that had a boss.
Kurt Dupuis:
All the W2. Okay. We're anti W2s. Got it.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Not that I didn't work with... I feel bad. Someone's going to listen to us and be like, "I didn't know Stacey hated me or hated that boss or hated that job."
Kurt Dupuis:
You did the role.
Stacey Brown Randall:
I don't play well in the sandbox, and I'm okay with acknowledging it. There's nothing wrong with being okay with calling the shots, and that is where I like to be.
Steve Seid:
So you got to the point where you're like, "Okay, this referral thing, it's got legs." You launched your own business. You've also got a podcast that's out there called “Roadmap to Referrals”. And when we started looking at this, I was in awe. I mean, I think I saw 267 episodes, which is a ton of content for any podcast, let alone one that's focused on a singular subject. So maybe talk about the show and some of the broad themes that you cover on it.
Kurt Dupuis:
And how you're the Katie Couric of referrals.
Steve Seid:
There you go. I think that's really the headline here.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Yeah, I think the Katie Couric thing is if you believe it, then it's true.
Steve Seid:
There you go.
Stacey Brown Randall:
I don't know necessarily if I believe it. I had written a book and the book came out and I was churning out a lot of content that was written, and I kind of burned out and I was looking for a different format. So I decided to learn how to do a podcast. And I always think that it's actually not hard to start a podcast. I think what's harder is keeping it going.
Kurt Dupuis:
Absolutely.
Steve Seid:
100%.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Content churn is real. I mean, a lot of times people are like, "I started a podcast." I used to say, "Talk to me when you hit your 10th episode." Now I'm like, "Talk to me when you hit your 52nd episode."
Kurt Dupuis:
Oh, we can talk to her then. Yes.
Steve Seid:
We're in the game, Kurt.
Stacey Brown Randall:
I look at everything in my business, when it's sales and marketing, I look at it falling into three categories. It's either lead generation, lead nurture, or lead conversion. Where am I spending my time and energy as to where it falls into eventually getting prospects to turn into paying clients? And the podcast is lead nurture, and I always knew that. I wasn't looking for it to generate, but I was looking for people to be able to listen to me on a weekly basis and be like, "Yep, I like her style. I like what she has to say. I believe and agree with her. I want to learn from her and I want to pay her to do it." And so I knew that meant I had to do a solo show, and it wasn't going to be a guest based show.
But I also knew 52 weeks a year is a lot of time to be…
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Stacey Brown Randall:
…saying stuff. What's amazing is that you're right, I'm well into the 270s with the batching and stuff of the episodes now, and I sometimes amaze myself that I come up with different ways to talk about the same topic and do it week in and week out. I collect ideas throughout the year. I want to be known for referrals. That's what I've been doing for 10 years. That's where all my clients get their success. I do take the summers off and allow myself to do a different topic. So we just finished a topic on the business owner mindset. Last year we did a topic on business development. In the past we did the client experience. So we will take the summers off, but it's really focused on referrals and what people need to know and understand about it.
And the truth is, I'm a contrarian when it comes to referrals. I am different from the majority of how people teach referrals, so I do a lot of explaining that so people can be like, "Oh wait, you can get referrals without asking? Okay, now I'm open to learning more."
Steve Seid:
Spend a minute there on your difference.
Stacey Brown Randall:
There's two things that I see other folks in the referral space doing. That referrals person is going to teach you to ask, and they'll provide you whatever those scripts are, who to ask, how to ask, when to ask, how often to ask. Or they'll teach you that you need to network and you need to always be seen, and you need to have these rings and these networking circles of your referral sources, which just sounds exhausting as I say it. There are some folks who will teach that, "Hey, just put in your email signature, 'The greatest compliment you can give me is a referral,' or, 'I'm always open for your referrals.'"
And what people don't realize is that because they don't understand the science behind why referrals are happening in the first place, they'd have no idea that that's actually doing more damage than it is good in the long run. When I think about the philosophy and the fundamentals that we teach, we know why referrals are happening, which is why you should never ask. You should never be gimmicky, you should never incentivize, and you should never feel like you've got a network to know a ton of people, but you still have to do something. You still have to build a strategy to make referrals work.
Steve Seid:
Oh, I love that so much as the foundation because I agree with so much of that. So let's get into your approach and maybe we'll do that through a few of your episodes and a few of your topics. So in one of your episodes, you mentioned the do's and don'ts. Can you touch on the key do’s and don'ts, in your opinion?
Stacey Brown Randall:
Yeah. So what I see a lot is these generic approaches to trying to generate referrals. They're just looking for something easy and they have no idea what they're supposed to do, so they borrow, beg, steal, whatever, from somebody else who's done it and they're like, "Oh, let's see if this works." So the generic approaches that I see is people will send out a bunch of emails letting people know that they're open for referrals. And the truth is, that's just more noise in my inbox. It doesn't even matter how much I love you. It doesn't even matter how much I want to see you succeed. When you are telling someone you're open for referrals or you're asking for referrals and you're sending this blanket email out, or every time I see you, you're asking me, what you don't realize is that you've actually just created work for me, and I got enough of my own.
Steve Seid:
Right.
Stacey Randall Brown:
When referrals are really truly happening with consistency and in a way that you're like, "These are dream clients being referred to me," it actually needs to feel more like it's the referral source's idea, not you telling them it's their idea. I always tell folks, the easier thing to do instead is maybe reach out to them and see how you can help them. Or instead of that mass email, maybe you just send a handwritten thank you note and let them know you're thinking about them. How we get our referral sources to start thinking about referring us, that is the secret sauce. That's how it all works. So that would be the one “don't” I think that people do a lot is these very generic approaches.
Kurt Dupuis:
So don't put in my signature, "There's two ways I get paid. One is you being a client. The second is by you giving me referrals." Don't put that in my email signature. Is that what you're saying?
Stacey Brown Randall:
Correct.
Kurt Dupuis:
Okay. Roger.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Because here's the thing. The people receiving your emails, they're not... Okay, I'm going to say this. Hopefully I don't offend anybody, but the people receiving your emails who may or may not be looking at your signature, because let's be honest, do you look at everybody's signature? Right? But the truth is they're not stupid. At the end of the day, we know how other people get paid. We know how it works, but you telling me that you get paid by me being a client or by me referring you doesn't actually entice me to want to refer you.
And this is the thing that I think people forget is that referrals happen because there's opportunity and desire. You don't control opportunity. All the other strategies like asking in your email signature, they're telling you you control the opportunity. You don't. Someone putting their reputation on the line to refer a client to you cannot be manufactured or artificially created no matter how much you want it to be true. And so you don't control the opportunity.
Now, can you create opportunities and you be top of mind so that you're remembered? Yes, but you don't actually control them. What you control is desire, and it's the desire that I refer to you, Kurt, versus Steve, and that comes down to your relationship. So when we think about referrals, it's this idea of understanding what's happening in the mind of your referral source when they're referring you, and then we build strategies around that.
Kurt Dupuis:
The one word that intrigued me with your content and one of our first conversations was the science of referrals. And I wasn't aware that there was much science, but can you tell us about that? What is the science? Where does it come from?
Stacey Brown Randall:
So here's the three things, and I'll go back in and explain them. The first thing is what's going on in the brain of your referral source when they're referring you? We call it the happiness trifecta. The second thing is this idea of the psychology of trust, and the third thing is behavioral economics. And so when we look at the happiness trifecta, and that's a scientific term, I didn't just make it up, of when the brain chemicals release when we feel good.
And when as that relates to referrals, when someone's making the decision to refer you, they're actually not thinking about you, because referrals aren't about you. The moment the referral source is deciding they have somebody they're going to refer to you, they're thinking about the person they're helping. They're thinking about that person who says, "I need an advisor. I just came into an inheritance and I don't know what to do with it," or, "It's time for me to be a grownup and actually have an advisor that's helping me," or, "I'm not happy with my advisor." Whatever it is, when your referral source is talking to that person and they're thinking, "Oh, you have a problem. I know how to solve it," then they're going to turn to you to be like, "And you are the solution provider."
So the idea here is the referral source is most important. They are the hero in this situation, and the idea is that they're referring someone to help them. The fact that you get a new client is just bonus. That happiness trifecta of those three chemicals that are releasing in the brain when a referral source refers someone to you, it's because they're the hero of helping someone else. And so that is the hard piece to manufacture. That's the piece when people start asking for referrals, you're trying to manufacture that piece to happen and it's just not going to work that way because there has to be a need in the prospect.
And then the next piece is the psychology of trust, and this is the piece that people overthink and get wrong. Do I need to know you're a good advisor? Yes, but the reality of it is, do I actually need to understand how you do it and all the ways that you do it and all the things that you offer to be able to have trust in you? No.
Kurt Dupuis:
Not at all.Yeah.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Right? What I really need is to have a relationship with you.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Stacey Randall Brown:
So that know, like, and trust factor, that sales continuum that's been around in sales forever, when somebody is referring someone to you, not only is the prospect on the trust side of that continuum, so is the referral source. And so most people think, "Well, I've got to make sure my referral sources know what I do." I'm like, "Only if you want to bore them." People are like, "How many seminars can I do for my referral sources?" And I'm like, "About that many. Zero." Because they don't really care. I mean, unless they are a CPA or an estate attorney and they need to know, that's not really why they're referring you. And so most people think to get that trust, I got to teach you. I'm like, no, you actually got to have a relationship with those folks.
And then the behavioral economics piece is, we pay attention to other things like the surprise and delight factor of variety and other things within behavioral economics.
Steve Seid:
I want to run something that's come up on this podcast by you, which is, I don't know, it's come up a few different times around client communication, around elevating the experience. And the idea is to communicate with your clients' case studies or ways that you're helping people. We're going to be communicating different ways that we're helping people in an email or a podcast or a video and that way they know, “A”, more ways that they can help me, but also if that scenario comes up with people that they know, to your point about being the hero, they know that you can help in these different ways. How would you evaluate that strategy?
Stacey Brown Randall:
So the reality of it is when you're looking at referrals, I'm going to refer you because we have a relationship. But everything else that that prospect is going to do is going to... See those case studies, check up on you, validate you themselves is really important, which means those same type of things can help the referral source as well. What I would recommend is people don't be like, "Here's a case study. I need you to read it so you understand how I help people.
Steve Seid:
Right.
Stacey Randall Brown:
"We're more likely to teach someone like, do you know how to tell that story in a conversation with your referral source in a way that makes it not sound like you're bragging or teaching…
Steve Seid:
Right.
Stacey Randal Brown:
…but that you're just sharing how things are going?" So yes, I think those things are great.
Steve Seid:
Let's move over to the concept of referrals as an ecosystem, which is another podcast episode and I think a key concept from what I'm hearing from you. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Stacey Brown Randall:
There's actually an ecosystem happening of all these different places where you could be doing things or saying things where referrals happen to be potentially hiding. So we look at the ecosystem as these four parts. The first part is referrals come easiest from specific people. So you should always have a specific person or specific people strategy. We break that into two parts. You have existing referral sources, which means they've referred you before, and potential referral sources, meaning you would love for them to refer you. You should have strategies in place of how you're cultivating referrals from your existing referral sources and cultivating new referral sources. So that's the first part is specific people.
But then the next piece in the ecosystem is actually your client experience and your ability to make that a referable client experience is important, which means not only does it need to be worthy of referrals, there are actually things you should be doing throughout your client experience that are allowing you to cultivate referrals. The third piece is actually the buyer's journey. There's a lot going on when a prospect's making a decision to decide that they're going to hire you or not. Not all moments, but there are moments within that where you actually can start having that prospect who hasn't even decided to work with you to potentially become a referral source. And it's not because you're going to ask them, of course. It's other things that you do throughout that buyer's journey that prime them to be a referral source later on. There's just moments that you can take advantage of in that regards.
And then the fourth piece is really your sales, your marketing, your networking, your social media. There's just these moments where you have the opportunity to plant referral seeds, which is what we call the language that we teach our clients, to plant referral seeds so people start thinking about you from a referral perspective. Most people just miss out on a massive amount of opportunities when they don't think about it from an ecosystem perspective.
Steve Seid:
I'm very intrigued by those different buckets, and you don't have to do it for each one, but can you give one specific in each of those cases?
Stacey Brown Randall:
Here's what I think everybody needs to pay attention to, and that is when we talk about specific people, and we talk about existing referral sources. Once you've identified who your existing referral sources are, and there's a very specific way I teach that and I can talk about it all day long because people do it wrong all the time, but it's super important. Once you know who refers you, then we can create an outreach plan of how we're going to stay top of mind with them. That is not going to be your email newsletter and is not going to be 7 million cups of coffee. How do you cultivate that relationship but do it in a way that you can cultivate a relationship with a number of referral sources without feeling like you're doing individual things all the time throughout the year.
And so we build out what we call a touchpoint plan for the existing referral sources. It gives us a chance to be memorable and meaningful, to use the right language, and to stay top of mind. But when I build out a plan for somebody, it's usually going to be between five and seven outreaches or touch points in a year. When a plan is being built out by a client, I always say, "Who refers to you matters," because that's who we're going to curate the actual outreach to. If I have a financial advisor and she's in her 20s and most of the people who refer to her are people that are in their 20s, it's going to look very different than a financial advisor who's been doing this 20 years is in their 40s or 50s.
So what that outreach looks like is going to look different based on who the advisor is and who's actually referring to them, but what they all have in common is recognizing who are your referral sources and how do you show thankfulness and gratitude for the fact that they do refer to you? It's really thinking through, what are the things I could do that would be memorable and meaningful? And so those touch points look different. It is a specific plan. It is built out on a calendar and you know here are the six things or here are the five things or here are the seven things things I'm doing throughout the next 12 months. And that's what I mean when I talk about strategy. There is something behind it that we know we're going to execute on that's going to allow us to get more referrals.
Steve Seid:
Well, we've got a couple more questions for you, but I want to make sure we get out how people can get in touch with you. So we mentioned the podcast before, but let's say that name again and then how else can people get in touch with you?
Stacey Brown Randall:
So the podcast is “Roadmap to Referrals”. For those of you who are not podcast listeners, you like to read, the book is “Generating Business Referrals Without Asking”, and my home base of my website is the best place to start. Right there on the homepage, we talk about how you can work with me and learning more about my philosophy. We got a lot of free resources as well. And the website's just my full name, staceybrownrandall.com.
Kurt Dupuis:
We love metrics. When thinking about referrals, what are a couple of key metrics we should think about and keep track of?
Stacey Brown Randall:
The very first thing I want folks tracking is how many referrals are you receiving? But it's not just the number of referrals we get. We also then want to look at the closing ratio of those referred prospects to paying clients. And from that perspective, we want to go one level deeper and then we pay attention to the closing ratio by individual referral source. Those are the three main metrics we pay attention to because if we do, then I can identify if you don't close a lot or do you have a closing issue, or do you know how to close a referred prospect? Because it is different from a prospect you met at a networking event. And I can also look at quality. Do you referral sources know who to refer to you that you can ultimately help and work with? And then if not, then I can teach you how to have a quality conversation with your referral source so they don't get defensive and they keep referring you better quality.
So when I look at those metrics, I'm looking for the gaps that those metrics tell me of where we can step in and solve issues. If you're also not receiving referrals, I mean, that's obviously the biggest gap we got to solve first, but then we look at closing ratio and closing ratio by referral source.
Kurt Dupuis:
So if we were to survey 100 financial professionals, how many you think could give us that data?
Steve Seid:
I think people have a good sense of how many they're getting each year, but I don't even know if I actually could make that statement.
Kurt Dupuis:
Maybe that number. Maybe that number, but the following two-
Steve Seid:
Certainly not the other one. Can I ask one follow-up question then I promise we'll let you go?
Stacey Brown Randall:
Yes. No, it's fine.
Steve Seid:
If closing ratio by referral source, what does that tell you? So Mr and Mrs X refer a few people a year. Their closing ratio is lower than some of the others. What would I do with that information?
Stacey Brown Randall:
Well, two things. Number one, we would determine, do we have a quality issue? Do who Mr and Mrs X refer you, do they just not fit your parameters of a client? And then that would help us know that we could then have a conversation with them to help them understand who you actually work with without saying it like that, because nobody wants to be told what to do. So we would have the quality conversation or we call it the quality script. We'd have the quality conversation because then I could tell, is it quality?
The other thing it would tell me is some people refer to you and it's really a one hit wonder. They refer a couple of people within their family, but it's never going to go past that or beyond that. So when we're building out a strategy to get more referrals, we then get to decide, is Mr and Mrs X a part of that strategy or not? It's not a perfect science. I mean, sometimes your referral sources are on a roll and they send you more than normal number of referrals in a year, and the next year it's a little bit more quiet. So it's a fluid list. It helps us understand how do we get more money out of the referrals that we're receiving ultimately.
Steve Seid:
Well, we're going to have to leave it there, Kurt, even though you and I probably have 37 more questions on this topic. We could do a six-hour podcast on referrals.
Kurt Dupuis:
Totally.
Steve Seid:
Now I kind of know how you've had this many episodes because there really is a variety of different paths that go down here. But Stacey, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Stacey Brown Randall:
Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Steve Seid:
This is The Whole Truth. Stick with us.
And welcome back to our Costanza Corner where we like to leave on a high note. Kurt, the floor is yours.
Kurt Dupuis:
So I'm not sure if we've even mentioned this, much less if we've beaten this horse to death, but you and I both celebrated 10 years of marriage this year, right?
Steve Seid:
Yes, sir. Yes.
Kurt Dupuis:
So my wife and I just got back from Chicago, which oddly enough we were out to eat one night and she ran into people that used to work at her same hospital here in Atlanta just down the road, which is random. But they were there for a bachelorette party, and so the bachelorette kind of corners us. We're leaving, we've already had dinner, and they ask, "10 years of marriage. That's awesome. I'm about to get married. What's the key to a happy marriage?"
Steve Seid:
I already like where this is going.
Kurt Dupuis:
And we were both, after a few cocktails, like “blblblbblblblbl”. My wife said, "Don't go to bed angry," and I said, "Never get married." No, ha ha… I literally don't remember what I said.
Steve Seid:
So that must've been sage advice.
Kurt Dupuis:
It's kind of an on the spot question.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, 100%.
Kurt Dupuis:
I'm sure it was very wise in the moment, but it reminded me of an article I ran into shortly after that. So scientists just did a study of people that are in happy relationships and they found that like 20% of them had nothing in common. And so how we've always heard the opposites attract?
Steve Seid:
Yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
And I don't know fully the dynamic between you and your wife, but my wife and I are very different.
Steve Seid:
Same.
Kurt Dupuis:
Turns out there's more and more science that is coming to back this up to the extent that it said, and this is 2,000 adults, so 1,000 couples in the UK, 51% also look very different. So different appearances also apparently attract. 14% said they had no overlap in musical taste. That might be a deal breaker.
Steve Seid:
That's hard. That's hard.
Kurt Dupuis:
But fully one out of every five said they're completely different people. They don't have anything in common, but they still are in the happiest of relationships.
Steve Seid:
My wife and I are very different. I think where it would be a challenge is if you have a really deeply held belief or something that's really important to you that they just absolutely couldn't. I'll give you an example. My wife's love of animals. If I just for some reason was somebody who hated animals, that is such a core part of her that that would be incompatible. So I think there's a value system alignment that takes place, but I agree with you. The differences, I can see that in a lot of successful couples. I agree.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah. A lot of the questions in the survey appeared to be like the outward stuff. What's your look? What are your interests and hobbies and personality type? Outside stuff, not necessarily... Yeah. You have to have a shared belief system to a pretty good extent to stay with a person, I believe.
Steve Seid:
I love it. I just wish somebody recorded you and I would love to take your wisdom from that night. I want to know what you said. I just wish that I was there.
Kurt Dupuis:
You never know the kind of wisdom after a few cocktails with me.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. Getting cornered by someone.
Kurt Dupuis:
A bachelorette party.
Steve Seid:
Cornered by a bachelorette party.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah.
Steve Seid:
All right everyone, we're going to get out of here. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
Kurt Dupuis:
Thank y'all.
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