Referrals Are Your Most Effective Marketing Tools

Many advisers find their most effective approach to growing assets under management is through referrals. With a passive referral approach, you wait for business to come to you. An active referral program takes the initiative of asking for referrals and gives you control over the process.

Taking referrals active requires developing tools to generate referrals that may range from how you ask for referrals from clients to client mailings, direct outreach to referral sources, bring-a-guest events, and more. Working with you, the Active Manager's Resource Center helps you target potential referral sources, reach out to those individuals and continually touch base with them to keep your qualifications and services at the forefront.

Interested in reaching out to accountants and attorneys to generate referrals? We have two new marketing pieces available for your use:

Thank you gifts can make it easier to ask for referrals.
Once a year, we try to send clients, who have been very helpful referring others to our services, small gifts with a high likelihood of staying on the shelf as a visible reminder of our services. It has proven a simple, but very effective referral tool.

 

The 10 Ways Collection

Written specifically for use by investment advisors who use active investment strategies, one-page inserts are designed to allow you to add your logo and contact information.

Referral tools such as these should be sent with a brief cover letter from your firm as well as a business card. The letter could include an offer to send the accountant or attorney your quarterly newsletter or email alert, as well as a request to meet with them at their convenience to talk more about how working together, you can benefit the client.

To increase the effectiveness of your outreach, you need to continue to send new information to the referral source at least every two months. Remember, marketing research has found that more sales are made on the fifth contact than the first four.