The Science of Generating More Referrals

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining our webinar today, The Science of Generating More Referrals. And while we’re having people come in, it’ll take just a few minutes here. I figured we’ll we’ll pause, but, in the practice session, Ali and I were talking about Thanksgiving is on our minds. This year, unfortunately, I am not making the Thanksgiving meal this year, but we were talking about what our favorite dishes were. Maybe you could drop in the chat. Give us a little bit of inspiration there. And, Ali, what what’s your favorite dishes?

So I have a really good cornbread stuffing recipe, so I think that’s probably up, at the top of my list along with, you know, roasted brussels sprouts, I think, go really good with the turkey. So Yeah.

I was saying my my son is a big brussels sprout guy, and he’s only thirteen.

So Yeah.

That’s good. That’s good. I’m always looking for ideas, though. So if anyone has them, amen.

Mine is I do this amazing corn pudding, and it sounds like it’s a vegetable, but there’s definitely more cream and butter than there is corn. So I don’t know. It’s questionable.

That’s true. That’s true. Oh, baked brie. I I’d agree with you, Josh.

Alright. Well, let’s get started here.

I’m Amy Galley. I’m the vice president of product marketing at FMG, and I have with me here today, Ally McCarthy. She is the founder and president of Amplify Your Voice.

So for today’s agenda, we’re gonna talk about the significance of referrals and an advisory firm growth. So some of those components like understanding net promoter score to drive client satisfaction.

Ally’s gonna talk about the science behind the power of emotional intelligence, and then we’re gonna finish up with how content in the words you use really impact client engagement and advocacy.

So I’m gonna kick it off to Allie. What’s driving advisory firm growth?

Thank you, Amy, and hello, everyone. It’s really great to be with you today. So, as we get to jump into the content a little bit, I just want to give, some of my background. So I have been, a CMO and head of marketing for many years, so definitely aligned with the team here, FMG, from a functional perspective.

But I recently started my own company, Amplify Your Voice, for fractional CMO work within our space and then also was able to then marry up my work with emotional intelligence. So I started doing research back in twenty fifteen to really understand the relationship between the advisor and the client and what strengthened that bond and how did they grow a business around that that coaching relationship that you all have. And so, today we’ll talk a little bit about my research findings and more importantly the foundation of it, which is emotional intelligence. So it perfectly aligns with referrals because the spoiler alert is, if you have higher EQ you get greater referrals, so there’s your EQ tie in for the day, but it’ll be important for you to kinda understand how it all comes together.

So we’ll start the discussion a little bit about just the topic of referrals in our industry and what is the trend, and here the recent wealth management, RIA edge study just reconfirms that over the last two years, we’re really not seeing much of a difference in that referrals are still the number one, growth generator for advisors in our business and also obviously new business from existing clients. And what you see interestingly enough on the bottom is how, you’re seeing that marketing, if you put those together, you can start to use, digital marketing to amplify some of these efforts. So

we’ll be talking a little bit about that as well. And, John, I see I’m also monitoring the chat, so I’ll try to answer, some of your questions and comments as they come through in real time so we can kinda save some time at the end and not have to revisit. So is that referrals from COIs?

So, that is not. That’s just, client referrals is how I understood the study and how they were asking that question. If we can roll to the next slide. It’s interesting. So Chuck says you need a plan.

So this is from the Schwab RA benchmarking study, and it shows that firms that have a referral plan, this might be where your COI comes in, and also referral, business partner plans are growing at a more rapid pace than other firms. So your top performing firms have a plan in place. And if we go forward to the next slide, it really kinda sets up what we’re gonna be talking about today. So let’s talk about the factors that contribute to referrals, the first being, NPS.

So if you’re not measuring net promoter scores, you might want to consider this as a way to measure your client satisfaction, which can tie to how you are able to see referrals over the over the course of your business. The second is going to be emotionally connected clients. So the better you are connected with your client, the more apt they are to talk about your services to others. So we’re going to talk a little bit of how to do that on a day to day basis.

And then interestingly, Susan who couldn’t be here today, was just recently on a webinar with YCharts and it was they had unveiled some of their recent research, which showed that eighty nine percent of clients they were serving who did have advice, through a financial advisor talked about, communication being the top factor in providing referrals. So I thought that was very interesting. So let’s go into NPS a little bit. And so when you think about NPS go ahead one more, please.

It’s really it was something created by Bain in two two thousand three, I believe, and and it really zeroes in on asking very simple questions. So this has been around in our industry for a while, growing more so in the advisory space, but you’re really getting to the heart of client satisfaction because it’s asking how likely you are to refer your company to someone else. And so if you look at that and as you’re measuring this to clients and I know sometimes we don’t want to necessarily survey our clients for fear of it might bubble something up, but I think what’s nice about this in an open ended, box for comments it really creates the power of being able to, show that you’re actively listening to your clients too.

So are you willing to refer me? And then asking a little bit about why or why not might be able to give you some insights, as to what is working in your practice and and where you might be able to, go deeper. So if we look at just how to score it because I think it’s pretty simple. So one, go ahead and go forward, please.

So if you if you surveyed a hundred of your clients and, sixty of them were nine or ten, so they were your net promoters. Thirty were in the middle, so those don’t count in the, calculation.

And ten were, ten percent or ten of them, which would be ten percent of the hundred, weren’t, willing. So they were, five and under. You would just simply take the sixty minus the ten, so the top minus the bottom, and you would have your NPS score. And if you roll forward one, this shows that the average NPS score in our industry is around forty five. So and this is actually, looking at sixty almost sixty four thousand respondents. So it gives you a good gauge that that forty five number is a true number in our space.

And I think what’s interesting about looking at client satisfaction through the lens of NPS is it’s really giving the opportunity for the client to, open open up all the things that they they value beyond just the investment management and so much. And Amy will talk a little bit about, communications in a bit. But when you think about really all the value you bring beyond just investment management, here’s an opportunity to really lean in on that and, being able to go deeper with your clients. So let’s go forward one more, Amy, please.

Now this is interesting because this is research about from Julia Littlechild who, has done a lot of NPS work in our industry and also IWI, and it shows over the last few years sort of the trend of the net promoter score and and the advisors that they’re measuring and how it’s tied to satisfaction. So if you remember, the average was about forty five, so we’ve been trending above average a little bit as an industry, but showing, the satisfaction level of it being high and loyalty being high. And I thought that that was very interesting because this really kind of proves out how NPS can tie into client satisfaction and referrals.

But what’s also interesting about their research, if you go forward one, is it shows how emotions start to creep in. And if you look at some of these questions and what this chart is showing is eighty two if you just look at the top line so eighty two percent of the respondents this is the client talking they say that feeling financially secure is important. It’s a very important thing, but only fifty two percent strongly agree that they feel financially secure. So there’s this gap in satisfaction, and so where you’re starting to see a trend on this page is it really talks to emotions, feeling financially secure, feeling in control, feeling confident.

And so these are things where even if your client is satisfied and willing to refer and you’re measuring that through your MPS, That is only one leg of the three legged stool. The other part that’s very important is how emotions are impacting their decisions and what are you to do and how can you manage that in the course of your business. So that’s the second part of our agenda today is talking a little bit about emotional intelligence. You can go forward, Amy.

And we’re gonna talk about what it is and why it’s important and how you can infuse it into your practice.

So emotional intelligence is funny because when Susan and I were prepping for, this event, she said, you know, Ali, I never even thought that emotional intelligence was about me. I thought it was just about advisers being able to read emotions in their clients more acutely. And I thought that was interesting because there’s a lot of things that are baked into emotional intelligence, but it starts with you and in service to others. So the classical definition is emotional intelligence enables you to understand and control your emotions so that you can better understand and relate to others.

Because if you can’t understand your emotions and how they impact you, then you certainly make it harder to relate to others or identify those in others. If you could go to the next slide. Here I have I created this equation so that it would just be super easy. So it’s all about you looking in the mirror first, kind of saying that you know there might be days where we are using more emotions in our decision making than others it’s not every day but they are present in everything we do.

And so being self aware of that and then being able to regulate that allows you to then go into the world and be able to interact with others, and that could be you interacting with your clients, your partners, your children, your teammates, anyone else that you are interacting with on a day to day basis. So EQ is not just about your practice as an advisor. It’s also about you as a leader, you as a parent, you as a teammate. And so it it really makes sure that you in this coaching role that you have signed on as an advisor or a leader are in service to others, and that’s what that last part is.

It’s about us. Like, if you really care and you want to do a better job and and grow a deep deeper, more meaningful relationship with your client, then you do want to look inside and do everything you can to do for self care and to make it better for you as you go through your day to day business. And we’re gonna talk about some of the ways that it shows up in your practice in a moment.

And so they call EQ soft skills, and I would say there’s nothing soft about soft skills. So here’s some hard data, that shows where this is important and why it’s important. So you can be book smart IQ or you could be people smart EQ and more than half fifty eight percent of your job performance is actually EQ being people smart and being able to relate well with others.

Top performers and companies, they have higher EQ and this makes sense. I mean think about the people that are able to actively listen when, their teammates are going through something, being able to display a vision for the company, being able to handle stress when times are difficult, you might be acquired and you know you might be trying to blend your teams. That can be a very stressful and uncertain time, so managing stress is also a part of EQ. So it’s not only just about being an active listener and being empathetic, it’s also being able to be optimistic and handling stress in a healthy way. And then people with higher EQ, make more annually than they do, than their lower EQ counterparts.

And a Capgemini research found that in the age of digital transformation that our industry is in right now, there is a six times increase in demand for emotional intelligence skills because we are trying to use, digital technology to make the client experience frictionless. Right? We’re trying to make everything from end to end completely seamless, so we’re using technology more. We’re using technology more for AI to be, an enabler and help us do things faster.

And so we really wanna make sure that we’re looking at how these skills of interacting with others come into play as we’re trying to balance this this drive for, efficiency and a frictionless experience on on the technological side. And lastly, to kind of bring this home a little bit, if you go forward, like I said, my study or, go yeah. Just back one, please. Yeah.

Thank you.

That advisors that have higher EQ have two times the amount of referrals and their lower EQ counterparts. And this to me, naturally makes sense, but I’m I’m so happy to have proven it out, empirically. It’s because you will focus you will have a limited view of your business and the value that you bring, if you’re not being able to communicate effectively to your clients and, being able to hear hear them, listen to them, explain how the solutions you provide extend beyond investments, how to bring in the family, how to go across generations.

All those things are beyond just the table stakes of of hitting a return. It’s really helping them.

If you think of, Amy will talk a little bit about the the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and kind of that value stack, and if you think of that layer of security that you’re providing, well those are the investments, those are the table stakes, but as you move up and as the clients move up and they have some of those layers of security in place and feel confident about that, they start to need you differently, and they and you have to be able to adapt and flex and be able to serve them in those ways. And those might be, you know, setting up, estate planning for an entire family or charity or, you know, you might have been the advisor that they started with and now you have to kind of be the advisor that grows with them as their wealth grows. So I think it’s really important to think that, you know, these are the ways that it’s relevant to your business.

So go ahead and go forward one. And I want to spend a couple minutes on this and then I’ll turn it back over to Amy to talk about how you can take this and infuse this into your communication. So as a financial advisor practice, whether you’re an advisor or a different type of of, service in our industry, you have the ability to work in your business and on your business, and so Kitsis, put this box chart together specifically for financial advisors. So that will be the illustration that I’m using. And then you can see that that this is sort of my overlay on it is that EQ is surrounding you in every part of the business that you’re working on. And so if you go, we’ll go you know kind of go around from the top and then clockwise top left and then, clockwise from there.

So if you are look working on your technical and your competency skills, and this is again like your investment acumen and being able to understand Medicare and Social Security and all the different areas that are important to building the foundation of a good financial plan for a client. You are working in areas of EQ that are self regard and self actualization.

So self actualization is that I’m a lifelong learner. I’m passionate about what I do. I want to learn more. I want to get better at what I do. That’s actually part of EQ.

Self regard, I’m confident. I’m confident that I can, explain this to my client, that they can understand it, and that I have a good grasp of the different types of investments that are available to us and services that we can provide as a firm. Then if you look at the advisor or the team that’s external facing. So here you have to have empathy.

Right? You have to be able to put yourself in my shoes and be able to understand where I’m at in my life. Am I I am the sandwich generation, right, taking care of my parents and my children, And so this is something that you will approach that differently than, you know, my niece that is a business owner that’s a thriving millennial or my mother that’s a boomer. And so this ability to be able to pivot and flex and be able to use empathy and active listening skills, that’s you flexing some of your EQ muscles there.

And then your interpersonal skills: can I connect with you? Can I can I really ask you how you’re doing? Not just, great, okay, let’s get started. No.

How are you doing? You know, really going a little bit deeper and really starting to have those clients connect and open up with you and feel that they are heard and understood.

Now I’m gonna have to promote my business. It’s what I’m doing with you today. Right? I’m talking about what I do best. So as a salesperson, I have to have optimism. I have to have I have to see the life through a glass half full perspective.

Otherwise, you are not gonna sell anything. Right? And you have to be able to be a little bit assertive, and you have to be able to communicate how you feel and what you feel is important in a way that people can receive that information and understand. A little bit of different than aggressive, which means I don’t care about how you feel.

Assertive is I’m gonna tell you what I think, and I’m gonna respect that you have emotions too to receive that. So I’m going to be able to adapt and flex as I’m giving that information over to you. So you might use that also when you’re trying to solve some complex problems that clients have from an estate planning need. And then we’ll bring it on home.

So when you are a business owner or you are in your practice and you’re trying to figure out which digital technology you’re gonna use to be able to weave everything together in a frictionless environment for your client, you’re solving problems in dealing with stress management. This is also a part of EQ, and so as you can see, advisors that do this really well, you are absolutely growing your business at a higher rate than advisors that think that soft skills are not very relevant to their business.

So let’s go ahead and come back a little bit to how can we infuse this into our business and how can we infuse this into our communications.

So the next slide, please.

EQ. EQ is one of those things that’s teachable. So IQ and personality are set. You are who you are in that perspective. It is how you see the world, and that is fine.

EQ is something that you can learn over time, and I say this a lot because I do a lot of mentoring, and I do a lot of training, and I work with obviously, as a female, coming through in our industry, have been in a lot of, female, networking groups and and things along the way. And a lot of people want to say that women are better at EQ than men, and it is empirically proven that that is false. What is interesting about the difference between the genders is that we flex those different EQ muscles, and we so women might be higher, when you score. Women score typically higher in empathy, and men typically score higher in being assertive.

And so to me, all that says is that’s why you would have an awesome team, and you can learn from each other, but you can also learn, from an individual perspective. So I have a question. Do you train on EQ? I absolutely do that.

My specialty is the financial services industry, which is relevant to the conversation that we’re having today.

And the next one is how does this show up in your communications?

So the next slide, please.

If you are looking at what we talked about today, you are fundamentally going to change how you talk about your business and the value you bring because you automatically are going to be more tuned in to your clients, to your to their needs, and to what’s most important to them and actually going back to the work you really enjoy. I know when, we trained advisors, when I was managing a practice management group, to a tee. Every single financial advisor we came into contact with said, I got in this business to help others.

And I think that what this is is it’s just like this armature that allows you to go forth into, communications, naturally, you are gonna be able to abate the fear that your clients have. We all know investing is the number one stressor.

Finances are not something that people, a, are comfortable talking about necessarily with their partners and or their families and or they don’t want to admit they don’t know anything about investing, and so they don’t have the confidence there. So you will help to abate those fears of investing with your clients that will absolutely be reduced.

Their willingness to change and receive in the information that you need to, convey to them to get to their goal, they will be a little bit more open to change.

Your bond with them will strengthen, which means it will nudge every other, person trying to come from them out. And then referrals, I’ve already told you a couple times, are gonna grow double. So, that’s what you can look forward to. So to wrap up my section go ahead and yeah.

EQ, as we saw in that box chart, it’s everywhere in your practice. You just might not have known you were flexing those muscles so beautifully. So what you can do today is you can look and say, okay. I’m doing this, but I’m not doing all of these well.

That’s the second part. You can assess your skills individually or your team’s skills, and you can get better at them. That’s what I’m here for. And the third, this is where FMG comes in because they’re gonna help you take what makes you authentically you and activate that from a marketing perspective. And so I’d love to turn it over to Amy. Thank you for your time and attention, and I really want you to show how you can start to put this in your practice. Thank you.

Great. Thanks, Ali.

I’m excited to talk about how content and the words you use really impact client engagement and advocacy.

Ali talked in the beginning about referrals. The people who were giving referrals really liked the communication style and mentioned that as one of the main factors. Eighty nine percent of clients said communication was a top factor in providing the referrals.

So part of that is focusing on the topics that clients care about. So you can see on the right hand side, there’s this gap between the services expected and the services received. So thinking through those types of topics and hitting on the things that are most important to them and where those gaps are. So, where those gaps are between expectations and the services rendered. So so really talking about topics that are on their mind before they go out and they’re googling and they’re looking at different media publications and things like that, you really wanna control that narrative by getting out there to those types of topics that they wanna hear. So there’s so much opportunity out there for those firms that offer a full range of services and partner with other key professionals that feel like they’re they’re they’re closing those gaps.

So Ali had mentioned kind of that that diagram of, like, of how you communicate the focusing on the topics that clients care about most, like that foundational level of managing money. That is your asset allocation. Those are the, you know, taxes, debt, cash flow, things like that. The things that they would expect to to hear from their financial professional.

And then, you know, as you go up that pyramid, they’re achieving their goals. So that starts to get into, you know, what’s important to them. So things like paying, you know, paying for my kids’ college or, you know, making sure that I have health care and that I’m set for retirement or or supporting charities that are really important to me. So now you’re starting to move up that pyramid and then peace of mind, you know, so really taking care of loved ones. So ensuring that you have that legacy in place and that they are in control and and and, you know, things that are important to them even more important to them, like, what do they do with their discretionary time and freedom from worry?

And, you know, at the top there is that, fulfillment. So accomplishing life’s purposes and leaving that legacy. You know, when we talk about referrals, you know, I’ve I’ve mentioned this before and and think about the last referral that you gave. You probably liked that person because you had some sort of connection.

Like, anybody can come in and do, like, the things that I’m supposed to do. So someone came and, you know, fixed my fixed my plumbing. You know? They fixed my leaky sink, and they did it just right, and everything was great.

But he also, you know, took time to come back to call me afterwards and ask how it went and do some extra touches. That person was very referable to me. So if you think about those last referrals, you probably had some sort of personal connection as well.

This was this was a social post from Samantha Russell, our chief evangelist. I love this one. You know, in this industry, we tend to use a lot of jargon and a lot of acronyms and things that just regular investors don’t, you know, wouldn’t connect with. Right?

So things like I provide holistic financial planning. They you know, or I I give financial I help people with financial freedom or integrated advice. I don’t necessarily know what those things might mean, and they might be a different picture to different people. Right?

So, the things that you that that we recommend is start writing so a six year old could, you know, get it. So using regular words. So I streamline complicated finances. Right? You know?

I reduce taxes in retirement.

I I help people have a plan for income in retirement, or I help them understand their investments. Those are things that even a sixth grader would know what I’m doing or what I’m looking to accomplish.

So we did a little experiment. We went out and we found some financial advisors’ websites, and we took content from their websites and how they explain the services that they offer, and we rewrote it thinking about this, this e with EQ in mind. Right? So, we found we provide estate planning services for high net worth families.

It it’s good. Like, I kinda understand what they’re saying, but what about, you know, we craft legacy plans to care for our clients’ families. So adding that care and bringing in their family and what that means to them, you know, really changes what it’s saying.

Another one, we help clients minimize taxes. That’s a great thing. But if you think about it, you know, think about what those taxes mean to them, changing it up to, we help clients keep more of their hard earned money, to use, you know, to towards their dreams. Right? So that has changed it changed it around into, yeah, I worked hard for that money. I’m I have that earmarked for dreams.

And last one here, we make sure clients have adequate insurance coverage.

So, the the after that, we help clients identify solutions that protect what they value most. So you can see going through your website and just making those tweaks could make a huge difference on how you’re perceived when someone goes to your website looking for what types of services you offer.

So I encourage you all to go back to your website and look at these things with that lens.

So we put together a foundational content calendar. So you should have a goal in mind about how much you wanna communicate each month. So blogging, two to three blogs a month is great, and I’m gonna show you where you can get some content on that. But, you know, at least one to two should be financial planning oriented, and then you can have some sort of timely or human interest type thing.

But blogging, you can find content in a number of places out there.

Email, two to four emails a month. One of those could be a newsletter.

There’s lots of timely headlines out there that, you know, those we’re finding the highest open rates as we look at the type of content that’s out there. Whereas, typically, you get between twenty one and twenty eight. Our timely content on breaking news is getting about forty. So people are really interested in what you’re saying and how you’re and what that means to them.

And then you can have one to two planning related general interest, look at what’s coming up on the calendar, you can promote your blog. So there’s plenty of places to find this type of content without writing each of these pieces.

Social media, you’d wanna be a little more active, six to twelve a month, some sort of combination of financial planning related.

Sharing media articles is a great way to share content and really just be setting up why you think that’s important for them.

And then, you know, social media is social, so you do wanna have some nonfinancial pieces in there. And one of my personal favorites is those surprise and delight and wow moments, like finding one to two a quarter to find these random acts of kindness, appreciation, birthday anniversaries.

I saw this, great tip the other day, and it was talking about it was saying that, you know, when you talk to a client, you should ask them, what are what are you most looking forward to that’s coming up? Maybe it’s, you know, their grandson’s big baseball game or something like that. Putting that in your calendar and then having so if that was happening on Sunday, putting it in your calendar on Monday to just reach back out to them like, hey. I knew this the big game was happening. Tell me what happened. Thinking that you remember them, those are those kinda surprise and delight moments.

Alright. So writing content.

Write content that clients are thinking about.

So things here, navigating the cost of senior care, tips for financially preparing for long term care. So these so this was kinda going through that list of the things that were most important to them and pulling things out from there. So the seven most common estate planning strategy mistakes and how to avoid them.

Using graphics is also a great way to get your point across.

And thinking about timely topics, these two pieces came for from our do it for me program, and they were they were, requests from customers that that called Susan and said, hey. You know, can you really write something on the September effect? That’s something that’s super interesting and timely, and we were able to put a chart in there. That was one of the most popular pieces that we use then. And then coming up, we have a year end financial checklist because we know that there’s lots of things that they need to think about before the end of the year. So this would be something that was really interesting to them.

And it’s great to share articles from media outlets. You don’t have to write it then. Right? You know, you’re grabbing something of interest.

These these images here are from her mobile app Curator, And so what it does is it pulls up timely news lines. So I’ve got headlines there at the bottom.

You know, what happens if the government shuts down? So I so that article was interesting. And what we found before we, rolled out this new AI capability in there was that people would pull up these articles, they’d look at it, and they’d sit there, and they’d write a caption, and then they erase that caption, and then they write another caption, and then they would just stop.

Because the most important part of sharing an article is not just sharing the article, but it’s what you say about it. So, you can see in that box there, it says write text for me. So this is what our what some of our newest functionality here. So I pull up the article, and I say write it for me.

And you can see over here, we use all of our, like, social media best practices in there too, and we create these prompts. And so it’ll look through the article and create them, and it’ll use, you know, use some emojis, not too many, use hashtags, the things that we’ve told them, and we’ve given them the voice of typical financial advisors. If you don’t like that, you just say, rewrite it, rewrite it again, and then you can edit this. So it was really helped advisers share more articles and, and and be more interesting about them.

It comes up with all the you know, gives a summary of everything in there. So that’s been a huge help in sharing articles on, social media.

And it’s always important to sprinkle in some of that human interest type things. So, we wrote this blog here, AI’s role in shaping our our tomorrow look ahead. And so, you know, as we we know that your time is limited and writing all this content that was in that plan is can be overwhelming.

Taking one thing and repurposing it in three different ways is a great way is a great content strategy.

So we wrote the blog here, and and then we summarized it into a shorter email that then we pushed out, and then it drove them back to the website.

And then wrote, you know, kind of that summary, in social media that can be shared as well. So one piece of content that now I’ve used three different ways.

And one of the most important things I say to advisors about social media is social media is supposed to be social. So not everything is financial services or financially related.

So things like this over here, sharing good deeds. This was just a special interest story that was super heartwarming, and lots of people engage with that piece of content.

The next one is, you know, finding a quote that you love, and this adviser wrote what that meant to what that meant to her.

So sharing motivation, and then this is a great place to brag. So anytime that you have you have any rewards or anything like this, social media is a great place to share those.

So most importantly is getting to your audience first. So, you know, as they read these headlines, I saw I saw some some news. Like, talking about headlines a week later doesn’t cut it anymore. You know? So, one of the the nice parts about FMG and our content we have a whole content team so that as things are breaking and as news is coming out, we’ve got a whole content team that is writing something for you.

You can then go in so this is about the government shutdown.

So you can go in and use that as is to send out or edit it. I know, personally, I always like to start with something to edit versus starting with that blank piece of paper. So finding some good content sources that you can take from to then edit and personalize and make your own.

So if I was to summarize those kinda game changing ways to create a content strategy is to set your monthly goals to ensure consistency. So I’ve seen so many advisors I’ve talked to so many advisors, and none of them have told me marketing or communicating with clients is a bad idea. But what they do tell me is, I don’t have the time.

I might write this beautiful newsletter, and it was awesome, and I sent it out, and then I have to do it again. Right? So that consistency and execution.

So setting those goals and having a weight of where you’re finding that content is is will really help you there. So find timely topics to use for blogs, social media, and email, and be sure to leverage your time by repurposing that. You’ll have different audiences too in each of those. Some might really like blogs. Some might want that, you know, just summary on social.

And then AI is out there, and it’s helping you write content. But the but the emphasis there is help. You always need to start it, have the idea. Whenever I use AI, I’m I’m typically writing it first.

So getting that helping hand, whether it be from something like our mobile app curator to give you captions for your articles, that’s a great way to gain some help there.

And then using charts and graphs to convey complex information and expertise. So, really, what and what if clients and investors want is the simple explanation. And pictures are always worth a thousand words. So if you can simplify it with a picture or a graph, that will always help with connecting with them.

So how to quickly source some timely content. I talked a few about a few of these ways, but, find some blogs that you like. I have up here Y charts. Look through them, summarize them, come up with you know, make it your own, but you can find inspiration in a number of different ways.

We also have, you know, a huge content library in in FMG that advisers take that content. They personalize the blogs. They change those. So, you know, find some good content sources that really align with the way you think.

And so, the do it for me program is one that, that we rolled out in the last year and a half or so.

You know, Susan and I had worked with so many advisors and we give them all the best practices and the content strategy and where to find it, and they’d say, that’s great, but can you just do it for me?

And so that’s really where this program came about. So our thought leaders, Susan Theater, Samantha Russell, putting together you know, this would be my ideal content calendar for this month. We write the content, and then it solves for consistency, execution, marketing know how, because then you have a team that holds you accountable. So you meet monthly to talk about, you know, the type of content that’s in the calendar, anything specific to you. And then you have a team executing on your behalf as well. So it really so the advisers in the program find that the timeliness, the content, they’re really they’re gaining more referrals because the content is very good. It’s consistent, and it’s topics that their that their clients are interested in.

So kind of in in summary, referrals clearly is a huge growth strategy for advisers.

You know, they grow through NPS, which we talked about, emotional to measure client satisfaction and understand where you are, emotional intelligence, which really strengthens that relationship, and and clear communications that build trust. So people want to, you know, build trust with people who are who are simply answering their questions and giving them good information.

Alright, Ally. I wasn’t looking at the chat. Was there anything that we wanna that we wanna bring up that or questions that came up?

I have a few questions. So, I’ll I have a few for me and a few for you, Amy. How about that? So Okay.

So the one question is how do you figure out your own EQ? So I’ll I’ll take that one, Amy, if that’s okay. Alright.

So what’s in so on the slide the box chart slide where, we talked about your business and then EQ is all around you, that was eight of the fifteen different subscales that make up emotional intelligence. So one way you can start, you know, if if I was gonna say what to do today, tomorrow, and next week, maybe today go back and reflect on just what we covered and, say okay is this somewhere where I I feel like I’m strong in these areas or do I sometimes, let emotions get the best of me in in these eight? You know, you can start there. What could you do tomorrow?

You can start to be more aware of your emotions and your clients and and again emotions not meaning you’re erratic or flying off the handle, it just means emotions are present in our decisions whether we want to admit it or not.

That is something that we need to take into consideration as we’re trying to serve clients more effectively.

And then what you could do, you can actually assess. So what I do when I work with individuals, I will give them an individual, EQ assessment, tell you where your strengths are, where you have areas to improve, and then you can start to come, together with a long term plan of of where you might be out of balance. The The interesting thing about EQ is you’re not supposed to just, score off the charts. You’re actually supposed to be in harmony in certain areas, so it’s all about creating balance within you internally.

And really you know I love to work on balancing that out with an advisor’s self care like how are you taking care of yourself, as an advisor and filling up your own bucket so that’s what you get. So that’s a good start on how you can figure out your own EQ. Look at those eight, see where you are, and then if you want more, individualized support, we could do that.

The other questions that came through, Amy, were, will x Twitter x slash Twitter be added at any time for for posts? Is that something?

You know, right now, if they make it available for people to utilize their API, we are absolutely up for adding that back. They haven’t made that really available. So, you know, we’ll keep monitoring that situation.

Okay.

Tips for LinkedIn. Are there any tips that you can offer, regarding LinkedIn and direct messaging? I’m combining two questions.

Sure. So there’s the eighty twenty rule. So for every one post that you post, you should comment or like someone else’s. So peep it’s called this, like, social giving. Right? So if you post something and Allie comments back and I’m like, oh, I get I’m like, oh, well, that you know, I appreciate her posting back and liking that. So when I see her post next time, I’m more willing to post or comment on that.

So social is about, you know, being social and commenting on other people’s. It’s a give, give and get situation. So I would so and I would and another thing is, you know, to build your network, you know, carving out to make two ten new networking requests each week. So I would go in, find, you know, people people that you know, make that connection, and your network will just build build exponentially, and it’ll only take you finding those ten connections and writing something to them. You know, it could be twenty minutes, half hour of your day.

And then, you know, just really mixing up your social, your social things like that. You you expect to become a thought leader by adding financial planning stuff, things like that.

We do see that, you know, a lot of the most engagement is more personal stuff. Like dogs and babies get lots and lots of engagement.

We we wrote a post for our do it for me customers customers, and it was about dog appreciation day. And there were some interesting things in there, and we’d recommended that they put their own pictures in there. And so that same post looked so different on, you know, on the other people who posted the cutest dog pictures and things like that. So, you know, infusing some kind of fun in your social as well.

Okay. So, I’m gonna say coming soon. The question is where can we get an NPS for our clients? Anything else to say?

Yeah. You know what? There are some things that we’re working on at FMG to make that available. So, you know, that that is something that is in the works, and, hopefully, we’ll be talking about that at some point in the future.

Okay. So I have another one. Which AI platform do you recommend?

There’s you know what? I use I use a bunch of different ones for different things.

So I personally like Claude for writing. There’s Bard that’s more, like, up to date information. You know, it they’re kinda all changing now. So so I use different ones for different things. Are you which ones are you recommending?

I, I have not used Claude before, so I had only used Chad GPT. So I am actually going to, sign up because I know Susan’s a big fan of Claude. Mhmm. And so, I guess I will try them all and see what helps me, you know, get inspiration.

So because they all have a little bit of different voice.

Like, you gotta find one that, like, that that speaks to you. And then and then, of course, like, Bard has that up to date information, so I use that more for research.

I mean, the short answer would be just work with you all. Right? You’ll you’ll take all the heavy lift out of it. You don’t it doesn’t matter.

So do you have a sample client survey? I don’t know. Do you provide that? I did that’s something.

We actually just did so they’re probably talking about so we have created some surveys in the FMG platform based on customers asking like, hey. You know, can you write a survey on, like, how much and what type of communications?

We we don’t have an NPS survey in there, but, right now, we have we have some surveys.

So, I have, one more, a couple more here. Being a small firm with a limited staff, how do you suggest putting this all into action? I’m thinking about outsourcing.

So the do it for me program that I talked about, that’s that’s a very good solution for a lot of our small market office. We just did a webinar with a lady who she’s like, it’s just me, my partner, and and an assistant. So this program has really become another staff member because they’re writing the content and they’re and they’re executing on our behalf. And, this particular firm had hired a part time marketing person before and found that this really was the leverage they needed to get a more complete marketing, you know, strategy out there.

So outsourcing components of your marketing. And then, as I mentioned, like, really kinda being smart about repurposing things and and and taking a helping hand where you can.

Yeah. I think, you know, one thing that is a trend that we’re seeing more is is just that, value of time and advisers commanding it in a better way than, you know, maybe in the past having to juggle everything.

Really, you have more options to outsource with quality providers than you ever did before. And so, I mean, I’m I’m a byproduct of that too. Right? People can’t afford a hundred percent of me, so four clients get twenty five percent of me.

You know? So it’s it’s you know, there is an ability to, drive value to what you’re trying to do. So I think, you know, your firm is absolutely doing that. FMG is giving advisors value of of a marketing team that they can get that can take some of those stressful again, eliminate stress, take care of yourself.

But if you don’t if you’re not a marketer by nature, don’t try to become one tomorrow. Just, you know, work with folks like us that love what we do.

Testimonials, now that that’s allowed, are you helping advisors crafting, or or navigating that conversation as they work with you?

We have. And, you know, each firm is a little bit different about how they are managing testimonials. So, you know, we’re really on top of looking at the rule. But, you know, it really is to the broker dealers where we can give best practices and things like that. So that has become way way more part of our conversations.

That’s great.

And then a couple more. How, because first impressions matter when acquiring clients, how can we convey our EQ during our first conversations? I mean, the best part to begin with is, that flexing your active listening skills. I think, if you are just meeting someone for the first time and you’re not sure of family dynamics, how they view and value money differently than how their partner or spouse views and values money, that would be really great to understand upfront and really would set you apart because you would start to understand how, they view money to to empower their goals. So, someone might be the charitable person in the family and the other one wants to save every dime for retirement and how are you going to reconcile if though if their money values aren’t aligned? So that’s a tip from, my buddy Doctor. Crosby.

So he he reminds us of those things, but that’s also an active listening skill from an emotional intelligence perspective. So I think that you can kind of blend that and and really go in and and really start to understand how, how what’s what’s below the surface, and talk a little bit about, the value of money to to them, individually, not assume that it’s the same for the couple because typically, it’s not the same. One spouse is gonna have a very, very different view on money than the other, and what it’s meant for.

That’s it. Do you have any more or we can end on that one?

Or or That was it.

I thought that was a really good one. Yep.

That was it. So, thank you. What a fun time. I love q and a. This was great.

So That was super fun.

And, Ally, I learned so much from you.

For FMG, if you wanna if you want to move forward and learn more about it, I have a QR code here that you can book in a demo. And then, Ally, do you wanna talk about how they can reach out to you?

Sure. Absolutely. It’s just, there’s my e, website, amplify your voice dot studio, and I’m simply allie at amplify your voice dot studio. So that’s it.

Great. Well, we really appreciate everybody joining today. Allie, thank you so much for all this great information, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.

Yep. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.

Thanks. Bye.