Why AI Means Referrals Are Even Better Now Than Ever Before For Financial Advisors That Target High Net Worth Clients and/or Business Owners
There was a tremendous post on LinkedIn recently by Mark Stouse, shared by my friend Timothy Hughes from DLA Ignite, that prompted this week’s post for my paid subscribers:
AI is giveth, and it can and will taketh away…
“Net / net, the potential of a super-technology is that whatever you can do with it against me, I can thwart using the same tech. We're already seeing this with AI.” (Mark Stouse)
I have watched with escalating waves of horror and dismay as the financial services industry (and most others) has continued to play an arms race with technology around leveraging targeted marketing (email et al.). This doesn’t surprise me, as most people are incredibly ignorant about true business development in our industry and are also incredibly sales-adverse and lazy. Ignorance and lack of work ethic are a recipe for disaster, folks.
To my joy and wonder, AI has come along and is going to really, really enhance the value of the ‘AI’ that I advocate for and, on a personal level, hold at the core of my professional and personal belief systems: AI (for me) = Ancient Intelligence.
No matter what, we are wired for story, and referrals (the OG marketing system that still crushes for the best prospects) are the only marketing system based upon it and have evolved with us…that’s right. The universal language to communicate is story and the original, still undefeated delivery system is through another human being. Referrals win again (1000’s of years and counting…)
AI — that so many people are paying lots of money and/or spending tons of time trying to figure out how to use it to keep beating the dead horse of email — is a game changer because it so quickly illustrates what we would already know if we had been paying attention. BTW, I know that email still works every now and then, so spare me with the pushback. If you really believed in it, you wouldn’t be reading my crap.
Every action has an equal reaction; if not immediately, it is over time.
Remember spam blockers, do not call lists, etc..? That’s right, every single marketing technique that interrupts and irritates prospective clients is eventually opposed by the same technology. You know what defeats almost all of the defensive measures high-value prospects erect around the castle of their personal time and energy? That’s right: referrals.
If you are worth meeting when the prospect isn’t in buying mode, you are going to absolutely slay in referral marketing because you are always worth introducing and with an absurdly low risk of relationship damage. This, when powered by my predictable referral culture and system, equals a robust and sustainable pipeline of identified ideal prospects that you have already met and are working with at their pace.
Let me state this clearly: the best financial advisors (those that I love working with) are really, really effective at helping prospects that ‘already have a FA’ start to wonder why they aren’t working with them after meeting them without sales pressure via a referral from a trusted source.
You are not going to be doing one-shot sniper kills from another mountain range over in one meeting sales appointments, but you will have a huge and friendly top of the sales funnel filled with people that have already met you face to face, like you, and know that a friend of theirs thinks you are the ‘obvious choice’ (killer new book by Jonathan Goodman btw).
Many folks in financial services don’t have a background in commercial, B2B sales. Over my career, I have noticed that technology shifts that happen in one part of the sales world tend to bleed over to the other. I am referring to business-to-consumer vs. business-to-business here.
Buyer bots are going to be a huge thing in B2B purchasing efforts from now on.
“These are bots that are already in beta with a growing number of larger enterprises. It is programmed by the users to seek out all information about a type of product or service that the company is interested in buying, and it evaluates that information, gradually assessing and disqualifying vendors without creating any sort of signal.” (Mark Stouse)
I have a friend who works on strategy with AI for companies that has a client doing exactly that.
This tech will very rapidly trickle down to individual consumers and is going to, thankfully and hopefully, finally hammer the stake in the evil vampire of mass automated targeted marketing as we know it.
What does this mean for financial services business owners and other professional advisors? A couple of things, and they are incredibly urgent.
You are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee on your technology distraction/addiction when it comes to marketing. You have far less time on your hands and not enough money and staff to keep playing the big companies game. They can afford to do R&D in a way you cannot. Stop following and start leading.
Referrals are no longer something that is a nice surprise and an extra bit of fluff in your plan. They must be the absolute foundation of your company’s culture and strategic planning. All marketing in your company must be designed to empower and accelerate human-to-human referrals.
You need to start right now. There aren’t many people who truly understand this, and I am one of the few who do because we are (a) stubborn and (b) believe in doing business this way at a deeper level.
If you haven’t read my latest book, Can I Borrow Your Car? How Successful Financial Advisors Can Grow Their Business And Love Their Life, you should do so immediately. That book is my love letter to human beings who love helping other human beings…and being successful as a result. It perfectly describes the most essential ingredient in any referral system or culture in an easy-to-share language that you can integrate into your business from day one.
This is really, really important, my friends.
I know that successful financial advisors face unique challenges as their career matures. My goal is to help people like you manage the transition from producer to successful business owner while enjoying life now. To learn more about how we do that, subscribe to Can I Borrow Your Car on Substack.
You can also:
💡 Connect with Mike on LinkedIn
🔗 Visit Can I Borrow Your Car website
🔗 Explore Strategic Referral Team website
📕 Purchase your copy of Can I Borrow Your Car?
🎙 Subscribe to the Why Should I Refer You? Podcast