The Importance of Why when Soliciting Referrals
When you ask clients for referrals, and hopefully clients are going to solicit referrals for you, you really have to get them to focus on why they do business with you. I think it’s important to tell people what you do and how you do it, but why they’re doing business with you is the most important part of any referral.
Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn the importance of why when it comes to growing your business as a Financial Advisor.
There was an experiment at the Wharton School of Business, in Pennsylvania, to demonstrate the power of why. The experiment took place in the university call center. Employees were calling alumni to get contributions for scholarship funds – you know what that’s all about since you’ve been through that.
They divided this call center staff into three call groups. The first group read stories written by former call center employees about the benefits of working there. I’m not going to improve communication skills, better selling skills, etc. The second group read accounts from former students about how their scholarships helped them with their education, careers, and lives. The third part of the control group read nothing.
When the results were measured after the phone calls, the researchers found the first group and the third group raised about the same amount of money as they did before the experiment. But callers in the second group who had read inspirational stories about the impact of the scholarships they were raising funds for raised twice as much money from twice as many alumni as they had before. That’s pretty incredible. The point is you have to understand the importance of the work, the why – that’s what motivated them to get better results.
If referrals are going to do business with you, the ‘why they do business with you’ is very important. So when you’re asking somebody for a referral, say “When you talk to so-and-so, please tell them why you do business with me. Not just what I do for you, or how I do it, but why.”
This is very important in getting referrals.
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