My name is Jim Gould, and from 1990 to 2004 I was a financial advisor with Advest, Inc. During that time I consistently produced well over $3,000,000 in commissions and fees and for many of those years I was Advest’s top producer amongst their other 600 brokers. My clients came from professional referrals – attorneys and accountants. I worked in a rural town of 25,000 in Maine.
Beginning in 1980 a friend, who also happened to be an accountant, started sending me referrals. Although he had opened an account with me about six months earlier, I had never thought to try to leverage this friendship into a lucrative source of new accounts. Then, as the trickle of referrals turned into a flood, it was impossible to ignore that this accountant had become my largest source of new business. Within three years, he was directly responsible for directing over $100 million in assets to me that were producing $1 million in fees annually. I needed to step back and analyze the dynamics that were driving this good fortune.
Nothing had changed in my personal relationship to the accountant. When we went to lunch, we still split the tab. I had never sent him any referrals. We continued to talk about our mutual interests – family, hobbies, community, art, religion, politics, sports, philanthropy, recreation, and people we knew in common. Rarely did we ever discuss a mutual account.
I decided that the best way to find out what had motivated this accountant to become such an important source of new accounts was to ask him. We were friends first, so I had no qualms about broaching any subject with him. I acknowledged to him that he had become my single largest referral source. I told him that, of course, I was grateful, but I was also curious. What had moved him to extend the line of friendship into referring his practice clients to me.
He told me that other investment professionals who were obviously seeking a referral relationship had often visited him. After meeting with a few, he concluded that these people were all saying the same thing. They all approached him with the focus on what they might be able to do for him – not his clients. They offered to relieve him of certain jobs like valuing securities. They volunteered to cross reciprocate by sending my friend referrals. They offered financial incentives in various forms. Each of them extolled the capabilities of their respectful firms, and tried to convince him that theirs was the best.
While this parade of salespeople marched through his office, our personal friendship had taken hold, and we were getting to know each other very well. I developed tremendous respect for him – his character, his integrity, his honesty, his commitment to excellence, and his sincerity. Evidently, he was coming to a similar impression of me.
He told me that he decided to test his impressions by sending me a few referrals. One day, a man walked into my office and told me that his accountant, my friend, had “instructed” him to open an account with me. He handed me a check for $250 thousand, filled out some forms, and agreed we needed to meet so I could get the information required to develop an investment plan.
Did I run for the phone to thank my friend? Did I call and order him a basket of fruit? Did I send a contribution to his favorite charity? No. What I did do was tell my new client that our first meeting would benefit from the participation of his accountant. I had learned that many clients were unaware of previous transactions that affected the selection of the appropriate investment vehicles. Their accountants knew what was important for me to know.
We set a date for an initial meeting, and my new client called his accountant to request that the accountant be present. That turned out to be the single most important tactic in turning a few test referrals into the accountant eventually referring almost his entire client roster.
Over the subsequent years, I refined this experience into a process. I used this process to connect with other accountants, and eventually a number of them became friends – and later referral sources. When I decided to retire from the investment business, I refined the process to connect financial advisors to professionals who would refer to them. If you express your interest in the form below, I will call you and tell you everything you need to know to succeed in developing the most lucrative and efficient sources of affluent and qualified referrals.
Powered by Fast Secure Contact Form