The Influential Advisor

069: From Clients to Advocates: Unlocking the Psychology of Referrals with Dan Allison

• Paul G. McManus

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In this podcast episode, I welcome Dan Allison, co-founder of The Exchange Group, and behavioral psychology expert, to discuss the science behind effective referral strategies. 

This episode provides valuable insights into why traditional referral strategies fail and how to transform satisfied clients into active advocates. Dan’s proven approach, rooted in behavioral psychology and two decades of research, helps financial advisors unlock a repeatable process for building trust-driven relationships with both clients and Centers of Influence (COIs).

Dan's Journey: From Psychology to Referral Expert

  • Early Business Success: Built and sold his first company by age 27, achieving an eight-figure exit.
  • Industry Transition: A non-compete clause led him to explore the financial services industry through insurance wholesale operations.
  • Research Development: Discovered that most advisors lacked effective referral strategies, leading to extensive focus group research.

Why Traditional Referral Strategies Fail

  • Missed Opportunities: 81% of clients who think they’ve referred their advisor have simply shared contact information without follow-up.
  • Overcoming Barriers: Dan explains how behavioral insights can help advisors coach clients to make effective introductions instead of relying on passive referrals.

Building Relationships with Centers of Influence (COIs)

  • Understanding COI Hesitation: COIs, like CPAs, often hesitate to refer due to perceived risks, including reputational and financial concerns.
  • Creating Value for COIs: Advisors must demonstrate their expertise, provide tailored resources, and build trust over time to foster reciprocal relationships.
  • Strategic Engagement: Dan highlights the importance of asking COIs about their needs and challenges to create a collaborative foundation.

Leveraging Books as a Referral Tool

  • Establishing Credibility: Authorship accelerates trust and positions advisors as experts in their field.
  • Partnering with COIs: Co-authoring books or involving COIs in customized forwards fosters a sense of ownership and deepens the relationship.

Key Takeaways 

  • Focus on Introductions, Not Referrals: Replace passive “I gave your name to someone” moments with actionable introductions like email connections.
  • Understand COI Motivations: Take the time to learn what COIs value and how to address their concerns.
  • Build a Community: Dan’s SKOOL platform, The Exchange, provides a space for advisors to connect, share challenges, and access expert guidance.

Dan’s practical advice and innovative strategies provide a clear roadmap for advisors seeking to grow their practices through referrals. Whether you’re struggling to convert client satisfaction into advocacy or looking to strengthen relationships with COIs, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

About our guest: Dan Allison, co-founder of The Exchange Group, and behavioral psychology expert.

You can learn more about his work:

https://www.skool.com/exchange
dan@modelfa.com

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

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Speaker 1:

If you're like most advisors, I know you're caught in a familiar trap. Your clients love you, they're happy with your service, they tell you how much value you bring to their lives, yet somehow those glowing testimonials rarely turn into actual referrals. You've heard all the usual advice Just ask for referrals, offer incentives, remind clients you're taking new business. But when you try these approaches, they feel awkward and forced, or worse, you get the dreaded. I'll keep you in mind or I gave out your name, which almost never leads to anything. Our guest today proves there's a better way.

Speaker 1:

Dan Allison has not only cracked the code on why traditional referral strategies fail, but has developed a proven system that transforms satisfied clients into active advocates. He's taken what many of us thought was impossible generating consistent referrals without awkward asks or damaging client relationships and turned it into a repeatable process. And now he helps advisors across the country do the same. Drawing from his unique background in clinical and behavioral psychology, dan has built Feedback Marketing Group into the go-to resource for advisors who want to understand the psychology behind why clients refer or don't. Dan, welcome to the show. Hey, paul, good seeing you, man. I'm excited to have this conversation. Just so you know, in preparation I was listening to the episode that you did with Michael Kitsis. I'd love to get your take For me. In the financial advisory space, michael Kitsis has built himself into essentially the Joe Rogan of podcasts for this space. It seems like all the top players, all the people that are influential in the industry, end up on his show.

Speaker 2:

Michael had reached out about being on his podcast. I'd heard of Michael, obviously, but I stay busy like traveling and speaking. And I was on his podcast and I had no clue the reach Michael has. And in March I was in Asia, australia, new Zealand and did 12 speeches throughout those countries. Every single event I had multiple advisors during kind of the break, say hey, I heard you on Kitsis podcast. I was like this guy's a rock star. I reached out to him. I was like dude, I can't get away from you, everybody knows you.

Speaker 1:

I'm just impressed by what he's accomplished and I'm going to actually be on his podcast next month. I'm also anticipating what you said, which is suddenly it's I go from wherever I'm at now to suddenly people being that much more aware of what I do. So we met recently online which is part of a school community called the Exchange, and can you share just a little bit about I don't know that everyone knows what school is or what the Exchange is and maybe use that as the starting point for our conversation?

Speaker 2:

I didn't know what school was until about three months ago, I knew what school was.

Speaker 1:

It's a school with a K, not a C, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had probably the last 20 years and I know we'll get into some of the background, but I've been lucky to keynote conventions all over the world for the last 20 years. So I'm on airplanes 100 to 200 times a year. The firms that hire me either hold big conventions or they'll hire me for private engagements, like we want you to come for the day and just coach our firm on how to implement this process to get a lot more referrals. And it always bothered me that 95% of the people in the audience they can't write a check for 10, 20,000 bucks just to get help. But I never had any kind of products I sold. I always saw those guys who sell from stage and I was like, ah, I don't want to be one of those guys. But then I realized there's a lot of them that wanted more knowledge, they wanted detail. Like I want to implement this stuff, not just hear about it. So COVID happened. Obviously, convention shut down.

Speaker 2:

I decided now's the time to build out a platform where I can get the intellectual capital that I've built over the years and create a platform that's affordable for advisors who want to grow, to access everything and implement. And ideally I wanted one where they can communicate directly with me when they have questions and I can give detailed responses, almost like a digital retainer where ask me anything you want, anytime you want. I decided, if I'm going to launch it, I want it to be more well-rounded, because a lot of times I'm coaching firms and they're like hey, we have some younger advisors who don't have a big client base to get referrals from. How do they prospect, how do they market? And I'd be like I don't know, I'm the expert once you already have a client base. I decided to pull in some of my favorite coaches and say look, I want to build this platform out and ultimately what it'll become is the hub for coaches who have good content from everything from how do you prospect from the beginning all the way to creating the raving fans and really getting a lot of referrals, and then everything in between efficiency technology. I wanted to create this community where advisors felt they had access to experts directly. We have multiple of them, but they also interact with each other, because nobody's a better coach than somebody who's 10 years ahead of you in the industry and has already been where you're at.

Speaker 2:

We launched the platform called the Exchange it's on school a platform that allows companies like mine who want to create this environment. They've already done the heavy lifting. So you plug in, you customize it and it has all the functions that you need. So we launched the exchange. Our soft launch was 45 days ago, I believe, right around there. We were hoping to get 50 to 100 advisors that first month and we crossed, I believe, 500 in the first 10 days on six continents. So we're still waiting for Antarctica somebody from there to be on there, and we are just now in the phase 10 days on six continents. So we're still waiting for Antarctica from there to be on there and we are just now in the phase of actually launching to the public officially. We wanted people interacting and using it to give us feedback, tweak anything we needed to, and we're really proud of where it's at today already.

Speaker 1:

I'm in there myself and it's a fantastic platform, and just for our audience. The way that I think about school with a K so it's S-K-O-L which seems to be becoming increasingly popular as a platform for these things is that probably five years ago, people would typically create a group and they would do it inside of Facebook, and so you'd have a Facebook group. Some are free, some are paid memberships, but if you're familiar with a Facebook group, it's similar in that way, but it's outside of Facebook. It's its own platform. Platforms like school exist so that you can actually go there and do what you want to do without all the distractions.

Speaker 2:

That's why we built it, paul. We wanted an environment number one where if you post something that's valuable or you share it, it's not just out there in the ethos and anybody has access to it. It's exclusive to the people that paid to get in there. But also, like you said, I wanted to eliminate the distractions. People are in the platform at the exchange. They're there to contribute, consume a course, share a success story. I wanted it to be that, so we put it behind the paywall. It's only 99 bucks a month. People get a free trial for seven days so they can dig around and if they like it, they stay. I wanted to find a way for people to have that same support on demand without the big fee. I think you've seen I'm in the community every day.

Speaker 1:

What impresses me so much is that I've been a part of a number of groups over the years and typically when you have the guru they're there to sell the platform and then you join. But it's rare that you have someone like yourself as active as I see you. You're not in there giving like little short answers or pointing to resources. From what I can tell, you're legitimately deep, diving into specific questions that people ask, and you do so very routinely. I've just been amazed and impressed by both you and your partners that run it and how much value you actually provide. I guess it's called exchange for a reason. From my experience again, I've been in a lot of these groups. It really is one of the best ones that I've seen so far.

Speaker 2:

The way I looked at it, paul, was the tagline is exchange your challenges for solutions. There's hours and hours of high quality video on a variety of topics that you can learn through the courses. The community, to me, is why people stay that kind of interaction. But selfishly being in the community and reading what you all post and how you share with each other the resources I learn every time I'm in there, that makes me more valuable. It fosters learning for me in a controlled environment also, so it's like everybody wins. Whether you're sharing an experience that makes you feel good. We got a multi-billion dollar RIA giving advice to a guy who's been in the industry nine months and has seven clients. It's like the guy sharing the advice it makes him nostalgic about when he was there, right, and the guy that nine months in he couldn't pay that guy to coach him. It's like facilitating. That is really rewarding for anybody who wants to learn about that. It's just skolcom forward slash exchange so people can check that out.

Speaker 1:

I would love, just for our audience, if this is the first time that they're getting to know you, let's take a step back and tell us about where you started and how you got into the role that you are today. We have in common is that you and I both serve the financial services industry and financial advisors, but neither of us are financial advisors. Right, I'll let you tell the story. But you've been doing this for so long. Large companies pay you to go and speak and train their people. I'm very impressed with that. Tell us your story. What got you into this industry?

Speaker 2:

I've been an entrepreneur my whole life I've been an entrepreneur. My whole life I've owned. My first company was in the clinical and behavioral psychology, the mental health space. But I never went on to get my doctorate and become a psychologist. I owned a real estate and mortgage banking company, after that an insurance wholesale company. I never got a real estate license or a life insurance license. I remember somebody when I was acquiring the life insurance company saying it's a 45-year-old company that I bought and the senior staff said what qualifies you to run this company? You don't even have a life insurance license. And I remember the meeting and I said, with all due respect, around this table is 400 years of life insurance knowledge. The reason the company's not succeeding is not life insurance knowledge, it's entrepreneurship. It not succeeding is not life insurance knowledge, it's entrepreneurial ship, it's vision, it's strategy execution. I don't care if you're selling life insurance or hot dogs. 95% of it is the same and 5% is product knowledge.

Speaker 2:

I've always looked as being an entrepreneur. Skill sets are transferable as long as you're passionate about what you're doing. So my background originally went to college, undergrad and grad school for clinical psychology. I started a company during grad school that had facilities for kids with serious mental health issues. So, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. My partner and I launched the company with a $10,000 line of credit. We were dead broke back then. We were employee number one and number two and within five years we had grown the company. I think we at that time had 600 and some employees, 70, plus facilities, and the 800 pound gorilla of the industry came by and said we want you guys to go away, so we're going to write a big check and buy this thing. So at 27 years old I had my first eight figure exit Awesome, like first time out lightning in a bottle. I loved it, but about a month after I sold it I realized what a non-compete clause actually means. I signed a five-year deal that in no way, shape or form, could I engage in the mental health field. My plan was I'll find something to do for five years and then I'll use their money to start another company and compete with them.

Speaker 2:

I found the finance industry and never went back. I bought an insurance, wholesale operation and independent financial advisors were the customer of that company and it had an advisor, but I had never seen behind the curtain of what it's like to be one. I thought it had to be an easy profession In the mental health field. You line up a thousand people. Maybe one of them needs your help. In the finance industry, I thought you line up a thousand people. They all need help with money. So you got to have a parking lot full of prospects at eight in the morning waiting for your office. I had no clue how hard it was.

Speaker 2:

So as I started to see that, I saw that the majority of advisors' referrals were the primary way they wanted to grow. But when I would push them for what's your strategy for doing it, like, how do you make it consistent, a steady flow? I rarely got any answer. Most of them were wish, hope and pray that if I just give them a good experience it'll happen. It does, but very unpredictably and not nearly as much as it could.

Speaker 2:

So back then I decided referring to behavior like anything else. That's my core competency. I'm going to start researching the behavior of referring. So I began back then conducting focus groups with affluent and mass affluent clients to understand why they refer, why they don't, when they do it, how do they do it. I knew if I could understand the motivations and the behaviors, I could help coach our advisors on how to overcome that challenge and unlock more referrals. So, 21 years later, we've interviewed thousands of clients COIs, lawyers, cpas all over the world about referral behavior, and then we coach advisors through a platform and a system for how do you engage these clients in the right way so referrals occur?

Speaker 1:

frequently and consistently. It's interesting I don't think that people always appreciate, but just 20 years ago or however long ago, it was transactional right and so the referral risk was much lower and so why not go for it, where today the referral risk is much higher and I think people are really hesitant? I'd like to focus in going forward in our conversation in two areas that are of most interest to me and, by extension, I think, our listeners. First is that there's really, I would say, two types of referrals. There's the client referral, but then there's the COI referral, and a lot of people talk about the client referral.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to shift gears into that COI referral. So, for example, financial advisor, typically they're told and think about COIs, and to me the benefit of that, of course, is I'd rather get 10, 20, 50 introductions and referrals from a trusted source than I would just one by one. It's a leverage. It saves a lot of time. At the same time, I think, especially when trying to create CPAs or anyone else as those COIs, I think if people are generally bad at the one-to-one client referral, they're even worse at the center of influence referral. So share with us your thoughts, wisdom, et cetera on what you see when it comes to that COI referral.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but it's funny, paul, I, literally before I hopped on your pod, I was on a call with one of my long-term retainer clients. He's the coach though, but it was CEO. They manage 35 billion of assets, so it's not a small firm. They're funded by private equity and their target is the CPA space regional and they want to be the number one go-to resource in the COI market, specifically CPAs. They have a hundred advisors and I coach them in teams and I gave him the summary that you're.

Speaker 2:

In theory, your messaging is good, we are the number one trusted whatever for CPAs, but the execution is awful because they're just running around talking to CPAs, doing lunch and learns. And when I ask, when you went into the meeting, what was your intention and your desired engagement and outcome? How do you know if it was successful? And now that you've done the meeting, what is the next step? And every time it's like I don't know. I think we had a good lunch and I'll follow up. So I'll tell you what COIs. When we interview all the clients we've interviewed, I always ask why don't you refer your advisor to more people?

Speaker 1:

I just want to underscore that for our audience is that? One of the things I think is so unique about your approach is that most of us come from hey, this is my experience. Hey, maybe I've trained or coached a handful of people and this is what I'm seeing but you've literally not only the scale of the people that you've worked with, but also the approach of actually doing focus groups. Think about it in the most competitive arenas that exist today, say politics, they spend a lot of money on focus groups because they need to get that messaging right and it can save them a lot of time and trial and error. And so I just wanted to underscore that your approach is really backed by a lot of research, I would say primarily in the area of focus groups.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I tell advisors that these aren't my opinions. I'm just reporting back. I'm told by the people you want to help right the kind of clients you want to refer. All I do is ask them. My company was called Feedback Marketing Group. The whole concept is, if I want to market my services to a community of people that will find me valuable and irreplaceable whether that's COIs or clients getting their feedback on how to do that effectively is the first step. When I can tell they're like love the advisor.

Speaker 2:

At some point I will ask why don't you refer your advisor to more people? And when it's a client, the number one response is some variation of they don't talk about it. They've never asked about it. Man, my advisor is really busy, I'm not sure they're even taking new clients. 50% of the clients we interview aren't even aware if their advisor has capacity to help more clients. Think about that. Those aren't going to be effective advocates. They don't even know for sure. When they see the advisor and say how's business, the advisor's like ah, it's crazy, man, I'm really busy. And they give this persona of capacity.

Speaker 2:

When I move to the COI space and ask that same question by a mile, the answer is some variation of risk they feel making a confident recommendation to a client who's really important to them. You need to go see this advisor to get a resolution to this problem. They find a tremendous amount of risk in doing that Reputation risk, monetary risk. If my client gets mad enough that they leave, I could lose it. Most of them are very hesitant to open those floodgates. They're very protective of that client base. What I look at with the COI space is like you said, paul, if you can establish this great reciprocal relationship, where you refer a CPA and they refer back.

Speaker 2:

Without a doubt, they are the best market for high quality referrals. The problem is, most advisors think they have a reciprocal relationship. Yeah, I got this CPA and, man, I sent him 10 clients last year. I've gotten one client in the last three years. Right, they have this false expectation of reciprocity and they don't know what's wrong.

Speaker 2:

And so, again going to the feedback marketing concept, if I want to bring value to a COI, enough that they say I want you to talk to my clients the COI has got to teach me how to do. I need to understand how do you define value when it comes to a collaborative relationship with an advisor and how do you define risk when you think about confidently endorsing an advisor or wealth management firm to your client. What does that feel like? What has been your past experience? Because that CPA is bringing with them every stereotype, every experience, every good, bad and ugly. And I need to understand those things if I'm going to try to bring value to them and lower risk.

Speaker 2:

And too many advisors want to get in front of a COI, present their value prop and think that COI is going to be like where you been my whole life. Here's all my clients Ain't going to happen. It's a patient process that normally starts with bringing value to the COI for a period of time in the form of education resources, making them smarter in areas they need to be smarter. To be more valuable to their clients, you have to demonstrate competency expertise.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite strategies and just the context is that my company helps advisors write and publish books, and then the question is always okay, I wrote the book, now what? I want someone other than my mom to read the book. I've been focused on developing and helping advisors execute just a number of strategies that they can take advantage, but I think probably currently one of my favorite ones is that when they have these COI relationships, is to leverage the book as a tool. And I'll give you a concrete example. I have one client in mind. His firm manages upwards 10 plus billion in assets under management. He has a hundred advisors. They do really well when it comes to CPA relationships, so they already have the CPAs in place.

Speaker 1:

What we're doing together is that we're offering the CPA the opportunity to write a custom forward for the book. We're private printing this, meaning that you're not going to go to Amazon and find 50 copies of the book, but instead it's private printed, so you decide selectively who it goes out to. But what I'm seeing happening, which I'm just thrilled by, is that he's getting the buy-in from the CPA. So they're doing two things. One, they're writing a custom forward for the book so they have ownership of it. So now it's not just, hey, my advice, this person's book, but now it's our book, which is a huge mind shift change.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is that now they're invested in the process, so actually they're proactively sending out a letter and a copy of the book to their entire client base, or at least the segment that it relates to, and saying, hey, essentially I wrote the forward on this book, this is the wealth management firm that I use, I recommend them, etc. In my mind, what you're getting is you're getting that trust, I would almost say squared, because authorship creates a lot of trust. It accelerates the speed of trust, as I like to say. Now, when you have a COI sending out this email to their existing clients who already trust them, that's where you're getting this trust squared and the results have been fantastic. I want to get your feedback and thoughts on that.

Speaker 2:

I think having a book is instant credibility period If you think about whether it's a COI or a client trying to refer somebody to you. Back in the old days it was give a business card or whatever right. But if you're looking at ways to establish credibility before you're able to meet a prospect, or you have a prospect coming in and you want to do a little work to establish some credibility and trust beforehand, there is nothing cooler than being able to say, hey, I'm going to send you a copy of my book. Or hey, I'm going to email my advisor and connect you. Here's a copy of their book. This will give you an idea of some of the things they talk about and their expertise in this area. It's instant credibility.

Speaker 2:

If you're trying to form a relationship with a COI that does not want to grow their business, is not trying to improve and become smarter and more valuable, you are wasting your time and there are a lot of CPAs that are at capacity. They don't want more clients. So what is in it for them to take any risk or recommend to you? So that, to me, is what's unique about COIs is you're a prospect for them also. So I always start there and we've got a process built out for how do you structure that meeting? And I structure it just by saying look, I told you we come across clients all the time that need support in your space and I just want to learn more about your firm, the background, all the different things you help people with. If there was one or two areas that you really love to work in. What are those areas? Who's your target market? What kind of challenges your clients typically have? I'm trying to learn to vet them for my clients. Also, they're telling me of all the things that I help people with.

Speaker 2:

Where should I most likely focus my time to talk?

Speaker 2:

So if they're talking about we help senior citizens, I'm not going to be sharing my strategy for helping budding entrepreneurs, but if they're in the business market and they work with entrepreneurs and that really is their ideal client profile, I'm going to focus on that part of what I do and how we normally solve the challenges there. So to me, it starts with feedback and learning about them talking about us. With a next action of, I would like to learn more about that one specific service. I have a lot of clients that need help in that area and I think I would be better if I was smarter in that area, and is there an area that we work in that you would like to dive deeper into? So my initial meeting, my objective, is a second meeting that's more laser, focused on our core competencies, and we're like teaching one another, and the goal is building trust, leaving each meeting with the next step already identified of what I want to have happen. That's the beginning of what will evolve into a solid COI relationship.

Speaker 1:

Just wanted to finish off by asking you two questions. Is there any question that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share? And finally, where can people reach?

Speaker 2:

out to you, I think. Paul. Number one, thanks for the time. Number two, I love what you're doing with the books. I actually met somebody who did a book for named Anton. Yeah, sharp guy Loved getting to know him. He's got a fascinating company in the COI connection space with advisors. He was really cool to talk to. But one of the things that I think your listeners if they're listening at this point, it's because referrals are something they maybe struggle with or want to get better at. I just want to give them kind of one takeaway, one thing that I see consistently that if they can handle better, they can move the needle tomorrow. Right, it's one thing they could implement our whole process and get all the coaching and that I mentioned that when we've done research ourselves. But then we also partner with Dimensional Funds, which is a global fund company who does massive research around the world and a variety of things.

Speaker 2:

So we find that when 98% of clients anywhere from 90 to 98, depending on the study say that they're willing to refer an advisor, but in their research over the last eight years and we've participated every year in writing questions for their studies they find that 51% of clients think they have referred their advisor to somebody at least one new client in the last 12 months. 51%, and more than 30% think they referred more than one. Think about the metrics If I have a hundred clients minimum, I should get 51 referrals this year. Nobody has those metrics right. What we find the actual problem there is those people, 81% of the time, are giving the advisors contact information. Hey, you got to call my guy, john. Here's his number. Sometimes they never even tell their advisor. They did that Every now and then. Hey, by the way, I gave your name to someone the other day. So here's what I'd love advisors to think about. I always tell them all the growth that you would like to achieve in your business already happened last year, just not effectively. If you could rope in all the times that a client gave your name to somebody and those people became clients, you would never hire me. So it's not an issue of convincing clients who don't want to refer or think money is private. Trying to objection, handle them into referring. That's not the issue. It's let's identify the people that are willing and even trying, and let's make them more effective at what they're trying to do, which this is what I want your listeners to understand.

Speaker 2:

Think about the most popular methods of talking about referrals. From back in the day, I get paid in two ways. The greatest compliment you could give me as a referral don't keep me a secret. When I interview clients, we ask have you ever referred anybody? And when they say yes, we ask can we talk about? The last person that you referred to? Your advisor Is my brother. Here was the situation. I'll ask them why did you do it? Because it's risky. If something went wrong that could impact your relationship with your brother, why'd you take that risk? 21 years, I've never had a client look at me and say because my advisor gets paid in two ways. I wanted to compliment my advisor. They told me don't keep them a secret, never, and I'm never going to.

Speaker 2:

A client perspective is simple. If I'm the kind of person that enjoys being helpful to other people and somebody I care about needs help, I take action. I want to be helpful. The problem there is they do so in a way that doesn't lead to the person they care about getting help. I would encourage your listeners be prepared for the moment when a client says I gave your name to someone the other day and I have handled it. The exact same way in every single industry I've been in Happens to me all the time. Gave your name to someone the other day, dan. They're going to call you. All I do is say I appreciate that.

Speaker 2:

Can we talk about it for a minute? And they always say sure, like they're confused, like what? Yeah, I say I'm assuming you did that because you think they might need some help or benefit from some advice or some guidance. Is that accurate? I always ask that question because, paul, what do 100 out of 100 people say yes? They always say yeah, they went through this and I was telling them about you. All I do is say the problem with that is they don't know and trust us the way that you do. As a result of that, unless there's something very urgent going on, they're unlikely to actually get help.

Speaker 2:

So, because that was your reason for doing it, can we just talk about a comfortable way to tee up an introduction, we increase the likelihood they get some help. Could be an email that we're all cc'd on, based on your relationship. Whatever's comfortable for you I cannot tell you how many times I gave your name out turns into oh yeah, why don't we just send them an email and, hey, I could write it for you if you want? Save you the time. Oh, that'd be great Boom Connection, introduction, new client. If we could stop the 80% of clients that are not only willing to refer but trying to refer and coach them on how to effectively help people, we wouldn't need to hire referral coaches because the hard part's already done and the good thing is already happening. We got to rope them in, so hopefully that's helpful to your listeners.

Speaker 1:

I've taught referrals and how to do it and ultimately, to me, that's really one of the best ways is to get an introduction. I prefer the word introduction to referral because it's not as intimidating, but ultimately I need the person to introduce me in a way that, a I'm aware of it but, B I have the ability to follow up, and what I love about the email is just a very low risk. It's just an introduction, but it allows the person being referred to to follow up, whereas what you said before is that if it's simply oh, I gave someone your name, you're right. Chances are they're not going to take any action for the reasons that you stated.

Speaker 2:

And where people can find me. It's funny because I was so damn busy speaking for so many years I never even had a web presence or LinkedIn accounts or anything. So right now I would encourage people to go to schoolcom forward slash exchange and check that out. People can email me questions, dan, at modelfacom, and inquire about any kind of services. Very soon we're going to be relaunching our entire brand. We've been rebuilding for about a year and a half. Now that the exchange is live, we're building the whole brand around it, but those are the best places to find me Very cool.

Speaker 1:

Dan, thank you for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation. These are things that I'm genuinely interested in. I love getting your feedback, just really as a true expert in the space, so I enjoy the conversation. I hope our listeners enjoy the conversation and I appreciate your time today.

Speaker 2:

Congrats on what you got going on, paul. It's a cool service, thank you.