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Top Advisor Podcast
#78 Maximize Your Referrals: The Secret to Becoming a Highly Referable Financial Advisor with Jeff Jackel
00:40:17
Creating a memorable client experience is key to standing out in the competitive world of financial advising. How can you automate thoughtfulness and build emotional connections to boost referrals? In this episode,
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to the Top Advisor podcast, brought to you by Proudmouth's Pod Rocket Academy. I'm your host, Bill Cates, creator of the Cates Academy for Relationship Marketing. In each episode, I interview one of our industry's top performers, getting them to pass on their secrets to success to you so that you can impact more lives and generate more income. Now onto the show. Welcome. Welcome. In today's show, we're going to focus on your referability. How referable are you? Are you getting unsolicited referrals? And when you encourage or ask outright, are your clients receptive? But before we get going with that important topic, I want to let you know about some free resources that I invite you to retrieve. After you've listened to today's interview, you'll find checklists, guides, videos and other tools. Simply go to referralcoach.com resources. Now write this down unless you're driving referralcoach.com resources. It's also in the show Notes. While you're there, make sure you sign up for our free weekly tips. We're always sharing best practices and we'll notify you of our newest podcast interviews as they go live. And while these are free to you, I think you'll find them quite valuable. And now on with today's show. You know that one of my areas of expertise is giving financial professionals the principles, strategies and tactics to create more referrals and personal introductions. The very first principle of generating referrals and introductions is. Drumroll, please. You have to be referable, and to be referable, you have to create highly engaged clients who believe that your value and your service is remarkable. That is worthy of remark. This will be the focus of today's show. To say today's featured guest Jeff Jel is an expert in this area would be an understatement. Co founding his company client giant in 2018, Jeff currently serves as a Chief Strategy Officer, playing a pivotal role in introducing the company to the financial services industry. Under Jeff's expert guidance, Client Giant has achieved an exceptional milestone by delivering over 1 million magic moments to clients. Jeff's forward thinking blend of technology and human interactions is setting a new standard in client engagement. Jeff Jaeckel, zooming in from Costa Mesa, California. Welcome to Top Advisor podcast.
- [02:34]
B
Thanks so much, Bill. What an introduction. I hope I can live up to that one.
- [02:38]
A
Oh, I think you will. I'm confident. So, real quick, for our listeners who aren't familiar with Client Giant, what is Client Giant? What is your mission? Who do you serve? Give us a sense of the way you serve your clients. And I know we'll go into more depth as we go.
- [02:56]
B
Yeah, definitely. So I love that you ask, what's your mission? We have a mission statement that is if you have the power to make someone's day, you'd be crazy not to. And the truth is you have the power to do that every single day. So because we sell to business owners and operators, it means that we essentially help to help people do business differently. What that means is more relationally, less transactionally, and to honestly view the people who make their business run every day as personal relationships first, knowing that if you cultivate those and treat those right and treat those like real human beings and not dollar figures, the money will come as a natural byproduct of just the law of human reciprocity. So we don't only do this because we believe it's the right way way to do business. We do it because it's the most proven way to grow and also the most economical way to do it. At the same time, as I know you, you're a big believer. Who we actually take care of is, of course we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for, you know, financial advisors. We help financial advisors and wealth management, insurance. We actually started in real estate, residential real estate, we're still very large there. And then enterprise as well, helping, you know, companies take care of vendors and folks like that, as well as even internally their employees. We all know now, especially coming out of Pandemic, that employee happiness is actually massively directly related to the success of companies. So we help folks with that. And what we do for all of these people is essentially we, we automate thoughtfulness. You know, they decide, these business owners and operators decide that they want to be thoughtful with the people that they do business with. What we, what we offer in software and services is it just allows them to kind of press a button and make that happen and make it appear like it's coming from them, when really, you know, we do all the work, you just get all the credit.
- [04:39]
A
Automate thoughtfulness sounds a little bit like an oxymoron, but I know you're going to put some meat on that bone so it won't be. I love the concept of making someone's day right. Today we're going to make someone's day. Boy, I guess every advisor should think about that for their clients and also, as you said, for their team members, for their, their support staff. Right? Make my day right.
- [05:05]
B
Sometimes it feels like a little bit clean Eastwood, but It's surprise and delight moments.
- [05:09]
A
Well, make my day in, in, in a good way.
- [05:12]
B
Yeah.
- [05:12]
A
So I'm going to start with a couple of broad questions and then we can get more strategic and tactical as we go. First, broad question. What are the key elements that go into creating a truly memorable client experience in today's world, especially related to financial services?
- [05:30]
B
Yeah. I wonder whether people will be surprised to hear that it's actually not all that challenging to surprise and delight folks in this industry. There are standard practices. If you asked 100 advisors, what do you do to take care of your, you know, of your clients, 99 of them, honestly, they would answer in a lot of ways that is just about their knowledge, their know how, their expertise that they're looking after folks, you know, money. And really our sort of argument and what I think we've proven out is that that's par for the course. Right. That's kind of like the barrier to entry. You have to be doing all those things and in an industry and a service offering that is, you know, becoming more and more commoditized, like everything. But at this point, if I, if I had a nickel for every advisor I talked to that's concerned about, you know, that they're competing against the Internet, I'd be very wealthy. So it's extremely commoditized. So really all you have more and more is the way that you make people feel. So what stands out is treating folks exceptionally well simply because they are who they are, they're a human. Not because they've just given you business, not because you're hoping to get more business for them. And people can feel that. Right. So we always say do this and take care of people on an ongoing basis. That's what's happening. Know proven most effective and expect nothing in return. The fact that it's bound to come is, you know, that's great, but you want to do it in a way that's completely untethered to revenue in your brain and in a way that's not expecting of it. So for example, I, I talk about something called the reverse ABCs of gifting, which is an anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas or holidays. Right. It's not to say that you can't do that. A lot of people do and we even help people do that. But it's, it's kind of general practice. So if you ask that same hundred advisors, okay, well what do you do that's very special. It's surprise and delight. All my clients receive an amazing bottle of wine or A gift basket in December, you know, every year. And the truth of the matter is, you know, in December I've got 30 bottles on my desk. I have no idea who sent them.
- [07:41]
A
Because, well, well, here you go. You can, you know, if that's too many for you, just.
- [07:46]
B
Yeah, I'll send them on over your way.
- [07:48]
A
I Wish I got 30 bottles for holidays, but keep going. Sorry.
- [07:52]
B
No. So, I mean, the answer is that it's actually not all that challenging to, to create those that surprise and delight because there's just certain business and this is by the way, the same. It's not to, it's not to kick wealth management or advisors. We started in real estate and there's standard practices there that are very transactional. You know, in real estate, the equivalent is you close a transaction, you get someone a quote, unquote closing gift. Well, you know, that becomes expected, same way that a Christmas gift becomes expected or. And so it's really to, to take care of people completely out of the blue. And what way that feels out of the blue just because they are who they are. So with us, as I'm sure you'll get into, the simplest way is automated quarterly touches that speak to the season and ask for absolutely nothing. And it. And hits like crazy because it's just such a unique feeling for these folks.
- [08:44]
A
You know, I once heard someone say that sometimes they're, they're. That you want to be able to give and expect nothing in return.
- [08:56]
B
Right.
- [08:56]
A
Just sometimes we just give to give. And it always amazes me when people give especially large financial gifts anonymously. Right. It's. It's hard to imagine trying to take your ego out of. Of that sort of thing. But that's what you're talking about. You're. You're giving to give, to take care because you care. There are other times to give, expecting reciprocity, but that's, That's a different thing.
- [09:21]
B
I mean.
- [09:22]
A
Yeah.
- [09:22]
B
And I mean with this, in a business setting, of course, the people who are receiving these things, they know that the only thing they can do, you know, in response is to help you with business. I mean, exchange of friendship, of course, but. But you know, but they know on a tiny level, by the way, I would challenge people just for fun. That's the best feeling in the entire world. Doing something and nobody knows, you know, go into a Starbucks, give 20 bucks, you know, say, pay for however many people this will pay for and walk out. It'll feel great.
- [09:49]
A
Yeah, I've done that a little bit. Not a lot I can Say I was speaking at a conference about a year ago and a room full of advisors all doing a million dollars or more of annual production. And, and a big part of the conference was really on this topic in the sense of talking about client events and, and little gifts and other aspects of the client experience. And you know, there's, there's a reason why these folks were doing a million or more, right, because they weren't just managing the investments, they weren't just making a value connection, they were making a personal connection with their clients. And I believe we need both. So kind of, that's a nice segue, I guess. To my next question, part of this is the, the emotional connection, the personal connection. How important is that in building long term relationships in the financial services industry?
- [10:45]
B
Yeah, they, I think that all of it is about emotion, all of it is about a personal connection. Because, because doing your job, doing the thing, especially in this industry that is so vital and so important to one's life and lifestyle and eventual retirement is what you're expected to do, the actual tactical function of your job. You better be damn good at it. You better know all the things, you better be giving the attention. So that's, like I said, it's kind of like par for the course. I golf a lot, so I end up using that phrase. And so, you know, and, and it's becoming more, you know, becoming more true and more statistical. I always tell people what we do results in real gifts, real tangible things that arrive at your doorstep and make you feel great. But at the end of the day, I'm a data dork and this is a tech company. So we, I run entirely on data. And, and you know, what we know about people and we know this to be more and more true, especially in, in business. And I would say that even a, a, an individual, as a client of a, of a financial advisor, we, we have to have sound logic for a decision, and this is now proven with science. But close to 80% of that decision is based on emotion. Right. The logic has to make sense, but then it's almost entirely emotion about our decisions of whether we go with one person or another person, whether we make this investment. And so, you know, I can't underscore enough how much this, this, this idea in financial advisory of making the relationship much more personal, assuming that you're good at what you do on the tactical side. And like you said, the best of the best believe this. And it's funny, the story you just said at that conference, I wonder whether it was the Same one. I was speaking at a conference in Florida this year in February, and they had invited the top three advisors in terms of AUM, all time in the 100 year history of this, of this company. And one of them, they all saying basically the same thing, but they were focusing in 2024 entirely on relationship. Of course they've got the other part dialed. But one of them said something that I've not forgotten and I say it all the time and I want to tell as many people here as we can, he said, a satisfied client will leave you. Being just satisfied is not enough for longevity and it's certainly not enough for referrals. Satisfied clients are not something that we should strive for. And I think that the difference between satisfied and exuberantly happy and becoming a passionate referral of yours is emotional. That's the delta.
- [13:28]
A
You know, Antonio Damasio has studied this, He's a famed neuroscience and I quote this research in a lot of my presentations. He had subjects who had the part of their brain that felt emotion damaged and they really couldn't feel emotion. It's just kind of hard to imagine, I suppose. But the inability to feel emotion made it unable, made them unable to make a decision. They couldn't make decisions. They couldn't decide if they're going to have wheat flakes or corn flakes for breakfast. How did they make decisions? Well, usually out of habit, they didn't have to really decide or they had someone help them with the checklist. But I mean, he really has proven what we've always suspected at the end of the day. And every decision is emotional at its core.
- [14:14]
B
Yeah.
- [14:14]
A
You know, the logic, the stats, the, the illustrations that advisers present, they all create an emotional reaction.
- [14:23]
B
Yeah.
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A
And so, yeah, I just, it's almost.
- [14:25]
B
Like whatever decision you make needs to be defensible based on your, your knowledge, you know, that the logic, I, I, I had sound logic. I listened to all the information, but then at the end of the day, that the decision was based on emotion.
- [14:37]
A
Sounds right. Feels right.
- [14:38]
B
Yeah.
- [14:39]
A
So let's talk about the surprising and delighting clients. I don't know if we've kind of hit all this already, but my question I had ready for you was how do we surprise and delight clients that lead to business growth? What impact does the personal touch have on client loyalty and referrals? You've kind of touched on that. Anything to add to that?
- [15:03]
B
Yeah. So really in this world, the opportunity for growth. And again, it's not to say that, that people use Client Giant or start delivering this level of care to their clients solely for the reason of growth. Right. That's not the only reason. I always tell people, you know, people start for one or two reasons. One, you're just a really good. This is just the way you do business. You want to take care of the people who are making it, you know, possible for little Timmy to have food on the, on his plate. Right. Or you're doing it because you want to grow like crazy. And you know that this is going to, it doesn't matter to me which way, because six months down the line, you know, the person did it for the right reason is going to be happy with the fiscal results, and the fiscal person's all of a sudden going to feel, you know, feel good. But in terms of growth, it's really two things in this industry. And as a chief strategy officer, I'm sort of helping advisors all the time try to figure out, based on the makeup of their clientele and where they're trying to go, which of these paths has more opportunity, where we're going to see ROI and how quickly. But it's, it's client count and then it's wallet share, of course. Right. So, so client account is all about referrals. And a lot of times people say, I don't want any more referrals, or they're trying to cull the herd. They're trying to weed out these, you know, 50 people that they've been taking care of for 30 years who've never added any, any products or any, anything with them. Or, you know, they're really trying to grow wallet share, which is, you know, cross sales in this industry. Which, I mean, as you know, and I get told all the time is abysmal in financial advisory. So like, you know, the average in a couple of these companies we talked with is a couple percent, you know, 2 to 3% of their existing clients will, will spend new money with them. Of course the AUM will grow or hopefully in a market like this. Well, but, but only a couple two out of 100 are going to actually, you know, purchase a new service or add on to the business that they do with them yet that, that revenue accounts in some of these companies for half of their overall revenue. Right? So imagine if you could grow, you know, that, that wallet share. So the, the way that Surprise and Delight works in terms of growth for these things is the referrals should kind of be obvious. I mean, if, if. So long as you're doing a good job with somebody's money and they feel really comfortable with you. If you're constantly making them feel special and like you care about them, not just because of the business that you do, every chance they get, they're, they're going to talk about you. Right? I mean, I couldn't even tell you how many opportunities on the golf course or wherever I get, somebody asked, do you have anybody that's fantastic for life insurance or do you have anybody else, anybody that's doing the 401ks for your employees or. I mean, I probably have, you know, 10 opportunities a month to refer an advisor. The difference between saying, yeah, you know, I got a guy you, you could talk to and saying, oh, you've got to talk with my guy. He's incredible. That's the difference between that. That's because you feel cared for. Because every, you know, occasionally you're reminded with it. So that's what surprise and delight does in terms of client count to grow referrals, cross sales, and wallet share. What we like to say, what really happens is you, you take care of folks and then they reach out to you. You know, I would ask most advisors, when was the last time that you had a client reach out to you by phone or by email or text or whatever, just to kind of shoot the, you know, breeze, right? Just to catch up? And how are you doing? How's your wife? How's your kids? How's your, you know, it doesn't really happen. They may call when they need something, unless it's somebody who started as a friend. But when you develop that type of relationship, well, then it, it becomes, I, I say from wallet share, if you want wallet share, you gotta, you gotta create life share, which means treating somebody in a way that they will call you and share their life with you like a friend would, right? They'll call and they'll share what's going on in their business, what's going on in their life the way they will with a friend they haven't caught up with in a while. And that naturally will bring about the opportunity to talk about things that might be helpful to them. Right? But you want to just create an environment with the surprise and delight that has them, you know, initiate willingly. So, and a lot of that, you know, I think you asked about the personal side of it and the personal. So again, data dork admitted. So we know that 80% of the impact of a gift that you give somebody, and this is if you're doing it right, but is about the messaging the reason why you did it, not the item itself, right? So, and people like I said somebody could try and do this themselves. But what we're really good at and what we kind of, you know, twist knobs on is, you know, a message that makes someone feel a certain way about you, that, of course, you know, you. All of our members can edit anything that they wish, so the messages are written for them, etc. They can edit, they can. They can change things. But writing that message in a way that provokes thought and really shows that you genuinely care. And it's not just, I'm giving you this, you know, this mug because I know you like coffee. There should be something to it. You know what I mean? I can give you examples if that's helpful. But the personal touch is very much about the person ability of why you're doing this, why you're giving them something while you're taking care of them. We actually haven't done this at Client Giant, but this Jay did this a long, long time ago. Let's say that it's going to be a particularly rainy season, and you give somebody an umbrella. If you just give an umbrella and the note says, it's going to be really rainy this winter, here's an umbrella. And that's nice and that's kind and that's thoughtful. But if you say, you know, here's an extra umbrella, I'm sure you already have one. You keep this one in the trunk in case you get in a bind or if you see a pedestrian in need, here's your chance to be the hero. Right. Have an amazing winter now.
- [20:56]
A
Yeah.
- [20:57]
B
So the reason and the messaging behind it is it's not necessarily so much about that gift. It's, this is the kind of person that I am, I would think, to do this, and I know you would this for somebody else. The challenge, I think is, and you alluded to this in the beginning, is automating thoughtfulness. Is that a conundrum? Some people would say, well, you know, the advisor didn't write this. We wrote this, and we're pros at this. But I would argue that everybody wants to be that kind of person, you know, I mean, everybody wants to be the kind of person who would gift somebody like that and who would think like that to. To. To help someone else be the hero in someone else's, you know, day stuck in the rain. You just don't have the time or energy or. Some people's brains just aren't wired that way. So we make it. We make it accessible for you.
- [21:44]
A
Yeah. Help them be the person they want to be.
- [21:47]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:48]
A
I mean, really, what you're describing, I like to call a business friendship where. Where you start to care about each other and you start to have conversations that go way beyond the main reason you got together in the first place. And I think it's the business friendship, the surprise and delight, what you're talking about, that's what creates the advocates.
- [22:10]
B
They like you.
- [22:10]
A
They like the work you do. They're happy with the work. You know, you've made them money, yada. Well, they say, yeah, my guy's good. My gal's good. But, you know, that difference in. You need to talk to my person. That's the business friendship, I think would really. Because they not. They not only want to help the other person, they. They. They want to help the advisor.
- [22:29]
B
For sure.
- [22:30]
A
And. And because of the relationship. So.
- [22:33]
B
Well, it's. It's two parts. We say it's. They want to help the advisor, they want to help the person. But. But there's. When we talk about a passionate referral versus a passive referral, I want to see if this hits home for you. You want. When you experience something that feels good, makes you feel good, you want others to experience the same thing that you did, and then you want to talk about it. Jay, my. My partner talks about, you know, everyone, your favorite movie, your favorite book. If you've seen. Have you seen Shawshank Production? If not, I'm just gonna end this right here. Of course I have. Oh, thank God. Okay, so, you know, if. If we were on this and you said, and you've learned that I haven't seen that movie, you would honestly say, jeff, stop this interview right now. Go watch Shawshank Redemption. Come back. Tell me about it. What did you think? You'd ask me a million questions because you want me to experience what you have, and then we would cut. That's what a passionate referral is. Yeah.
- [23:24]
A
I'd say the only caveat is we are now talking about personal financial matters. So people do get a little more private.
- [23:30]
B
Sure.
- [23:31]
A
Around that. But with that said, let's talk about this automated thoughtfulness. Talk to us. I mean, obviously, you use technology. How are you using it? Or how are you helping clients use it to personalize the client experiences at scale.
- [23:48]
B
Right.
- [23:48]
A
What. What role does automation play in this. This automated thoughtfulness? How does. What does that start to look like?
- [23:54]
B
Yeah. Great question. So at its simplest form, we, I believe, still, knock on wood, Are the only service out there that is essentially creating a. An annualized plan for your recipients. So, you know, if you were to Just say if somebody's listening to. And they say, oh, man, I really want to do this. I believe in this and I know it's going to be great for my business. I'm going to do this. Which, by the way, is how this, our company started. Jay was giving talks, this is in real estate. He was giving talks all over the country, all over the world, as far as South Africa, saying, here's what I do on day one, day seven, day 12 of a transaction, and then here's what I do every single quarter afterwards. And thousands of people are saying, oh my God, this is great, I'm going to do this. None of them did. It's way too hard. It's not what you do, right? So. So if you were going to do this right now, you'd have to kind of remember set like a syncopated kind of a thing or try to figure out people's birthdays or whatever. And then you have to remember or have an assistant do it. It becomes crazy. So the simplest form with what we offer, and I can even explain it. So the plan that's kind of designed in financial advisory and for them is called Top of mind or top of mind plus, it stays compliant. It's under $100. It's actually well under because you only have to consider the value of the gifts. And it automatically goes out at the kind of the changing of the season. So every three months, something arrives at their doorstep. So an advisor, let's say an advisor has 250 clients. They put all these people on a plan. They decide these 150 are going to be taken care of at top of mind. And then these other hundred, they're actually couples. So now I can actually take care of them to a little higher degree. And they put them on top of mine plus, which is basically double that. And these people automatically receive these things. So a few weeks ahead of time, the advisor is made aware via email or text or whatever they want. This is going out to all your people. Here's the message that's going. Feel free to edit as you wish. Edit anything that you want, if you want someone to get something different, et cetera. So that's in its simplest form, automation that handles 90 something percent of what we do. The future of this and where we've kind of been moving towards is we have now a QR code, interactivity on every single touch that goes out. Right? It's on a card, it's never on a gift. And we can get into that too, if you want, because we've got a whole bunch of cardinal sins and most of my job is helping people get out of their own way when they make their decisions on gifts. I'm going to put my brand all over this.
- [26:17]
A
Don't do that.
- [26:18]
B
I know I have to yell at people most of the day. And so the QR now interactively can allow the person to say thank you and to write a message and to go to any kind of content that an advisor wants them to see potentially, if you create videos, if you. Anything like that. And where this is moving is creating what we call a passion profile for your clients where if they want to, they can answer questions. You may know some of these things about them. You may know that they're probably know that they're married. You probably know, you may not know if they have kids and what their ages are. You may not know that they've just recently taken up pickleball. And it's their absolute, you know, favorite thing to do. They do it every weekend. And so our system now is starting to learn the interests, like the real passions of people that have nothing to do with what they do for work. And it allows us, if our members, we call our customers members, if our members want us to take care of somebody in a very highly personal, based on interests sort of way, or if you want to try to figure it out, a way to take care of them yourself, you'll have that information at your disposal inside the. The portal.
- [27:27]
A
Yeah, you know, I have a. My little pet peeve is you talk about not putting the logo and the branding on the gift. Generally speaking, if it's got your logo on it, it's not a gift, it's promotion.
- [27:40]
B
Oh, amen.
- [27:41]
A
Now, my caveat would be, and this is my own personal perspective, if they're really good golf balls and they have their logo, I'll still appreciate them. If it's a golf, a really nice golf, something very utilitarian that I will use and has your logo. Now we're still, now we're getting into the gift stage.
- [28:02]
B
Well, I'm gonna make an argument here because I agree with you. I agree with you. Okay, so we, we have a, we have a few things. If there are anyone out there that wants to try to make their own gifts or do their own thing, we have requirements. There's, there's three steps, which actually you spoke about it in your intro, which I love, and I think I, I attribute it to Seth Odin, the idea of being remarkable worthy of making a remark about. But there's three things, three criteria. For, for every gift that we do, every touch that we create. Thoughtful, helpful and remarkable. Right. So it doesn't necessarily have to be helpful if you can hit all three of those. You've, you've hit a slam dunk. A fourth would be something having longevity. So you'll never really see us doing consumables or something. I want something to live in your house if it can, forever. And again, not with your name on it. It's not. The, the Cutco knives is, I don't even want to get into that. But. So when you say it's utilitarian, the golf balls are helpful. Those are five bucks a piece and you were going to buy them anyway. Right. So it's kind of like they're Pro.
- [29:07]
A
Vs, I mean, or, you know, Good callaways. Yeah. Right.
- [29:11]
B
So, so that's, that's super helpful. Well, I mean, I'm, this is, has a utilitarian, you know, usage. I'm, I'm going to use this. So I think that the gift that, you know, so it's kind of like even though it has the logo, I'm gonna use it. Yeah. And for me, you know, it's probably gonna end up ob left anyway, so.
- [29:29]
A
Well, I, I, I actually gave customized golf balls, I Pro Vs titles, Pro V ones to a guy, I won't mention his name. We'll call him George Smith, but that's not his real name. And I had put on the golf ball this, this ball Lost by George Smith. Now this guy is pretty well known in his, his area in the Minneapolis area. And he, he didn't want to use him.
- [29:53]
B
Oh no.
- [29:54]
A
Because other people find it and they know who he is and it would be embarrassing. But he finally did. He thought it was, it was funny. You know, I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Scott Miller, a financial advisor out in San Diego. So if you're liking this conversation, this topic, after we're done here, go listen to episode number 12 with Scott Miller. The title of the episode is Using Wow to Maximize Client Engagement Advocates. And he's always looking for those special wow. He doesn't automate it. He's, he's got a different perspective, but nonetheless, it's the same. Same principle, same concepts at hand. Jeff, in about 90 seconds, I'd like you to share a couple of specific success stories where a client giant directly contributed to an advisor's growth to enhance client engagement. Our listeners love the real life specific examples. But first, let's take a very brief pause to listen to a word from our sponsor Pod Rocket Influence Academy brought to you by Proudmouth. First, they make this podcast possible and their core business is helping financial advisors accelerate their influence through marketing activities like podcasting.
- [31:05]
B
This podcast is sponsored by Proudmouth, the Influence Accelerators. If you're like our clients, you want to spend more time educating people and less time selling. That's why we turn Main street experts like you into trusted mainstream authorities. We help you amplify your influence over.
- [31:23]
A
A growing audience of magnetically attracted fans who will chase you down instead.
- [31:29]
B
Visit proudmouth.com to learn more.
- [31:32]
A
I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention one of our resources designed to help you acquire more right fit clients. Our newest Even Better than Before, Academy for Relationship Marketing is ready to help you build strong referral culture of client acquisition through personal introductions. After all, this is how most of your ideal clients would prefer to meet you through a recommendation from someone they already trust. So do yourself a favor, visit the katesacademy.com that's the katesacademy.Com you can go through everything on your own or you can add some one on one coaching with me if you want. And if you decide to join our academy, use the coupon code TCA200, the Kate's Academy TCA200 to save $200 off the already affordable tuition. Now back to my conversation with my featured guest, Jeff Jel, co founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Client Giant. Jeff, before I have you share a couple of real Life advisor stories, what do you suggest our listeners do to learn more about Client Giant? Where should they go? What should they do?
- [32:37]
B
Yeah, pretty simple. Just go to clientgiant.com you can check out some of the out of the box options that are geared toward financial advisors. But something really interesting happens when there's a button there that says I want to say it's like a free conversation or free consultation. So there's strategic care specialists that do kind of what I do every single day in learning a little bit about your business and help you figure out if it's right for you, what the goals are for your practice and then, and then how you can implement. So just client giant.com and talk to somebody for free so they can learn about your business, try to help you.
- [33:08]
A
All right, so let's, let's take this home with some examples. What are some things that Real Life Finance advisors have done working with you to, you know, to create some tangible results?
- [33:23]
B
Yeah, so first I'll say if you do go to client giant.com or the thing is riddled with, you know, testimonials and case studies. We don't ask for any of these. This is one of my most proud things here is that we, we people just send us. It's like we, you know, I joke that we're Santa Claus because we're not actually doing something that ever goes to our members. I mean, we do take care of them because, you know, who would we be if we didn't do what we believe in? But their clients receive things from them and then their businesses just grow. So they send us so much love when things happen like this. They'll send us the data and then, you know, we'll follow up and learn a little bit more. So you can find all sorts of case studies and testimonials. But the most fun one to share with you is actually an advisor who, when I was doing the speaking engagement in Florida earlier this year, he actually ended up volunteering to come up on stage because exactly like you said, it's one thing to, you know, to hear how this works and why it works and you know, the kind of data behind it and to just understand intuitively that, you know, the law of human reciprocity means that when you take care of someone, they will have a knee jerk reaction usually to do even more for you than you've done for them. It's just natural. But to hear it, you know, in this case, at this company from one of their own and their experience having done it for a year and a half, he joined me on stage in the last couple of minutes and it was extraordinary because I didn't even know all of what he had experienced. So it was actually a gentleman here in Orange county that we now work with as a result. But he, it's not, it's not uncommon for people to kind of tiptoe into what we do. I'll be honest, right with client giant. I don't think it's, it's a very big investment considering how you make your money as a financial advisor, particularly if you sell products. If you work solely off of Aum, you'll be ROI positive with this type of care, whether you do it with us or on your own. But if you sell life insurance or you sell things where you can have a big win, you know, quickly, it's, it's pretty much insane. I don't want to say that it's, you know, in fact, like that it's impossible not to, but it kind of is. So this gentleman, in fact he tiptoed in, he had like 300 clients and he started with like 50 or 60 and I don't have the stat in front of me, it's on our website. But I want to say he had made so, so he probably invested, I don't know, four, three, $4,000 or something on 30, 40 people. He made $50,000 in revenue off of those 30 or 40 people in New services that he sold them. So that cross sales number where he was selling to his industry or his company, average of 2%. He then did a multiple on that and made you know, 15 X's investment within six months. So then he had tiptoed in 30, 40 people out of 300. Then he comes back and adds more people on around Halloween. So he's now he spends real and he really invests. I think he spent something like $25,000, takes care of another 260 people or something. Right. He was ROI positive on that by Thanksgiving, which is four weeks later. So he had, in one year he had more than doubled his personal income. And he said the only thing that he changed was he started to implement taking care of people with client giant. So and this isn't whenever we've said that and when he first gave the testimonial we said well, is it a brand new advisor? Like what do you mean doubled your revenue? It was from his 10th to his 11th year. So he was able to take, he went from basically the average cross sales within of his company was he was at like two and a half percent and he has gone up. He's been with us for two and a half years now. He's now at over 11% of his existing clients will buy new services with them in a given year. It's not to say that everybody has these same results, but it's such a stark difference. When you start taking care of folks, it's nothing where you're like I wonder whether this is working. You, you will feel the difference in the relationships that you have with your people. If you take care of everybody across the board, you will feel like you had your business pre client, giant and post and they won't really look anything alike. Particularly if you weren't doing enough or weren't doing much of anything prior.
- [37:43]
A
Wow, that's great. Doubled his revenue in one year.
- [37:46]
B
I'd say 101%. That was so important to me that it was like. Was it? Yeah, 101%.
- [37:51]
A
Before we end, let's give us one more example.
- [37:54]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to encourage people to go to our website and read all these But I know that we've got somebody up there recently who has moved their referrals to an average of 15 referrals a month, considering prior to they were at one or two referrals and they've only been with us for a few months now. There's another gentleman that I know on there who has, with 119 clients that he put on initially received 23 referrals from those 119 in his first year using client giant. So that's like a 20 plus percent average on referrals of the people you're taking care of. So do the math and figure out how many referrals you're currently getting and see how that compares.
- [38:36]
A
Love it, love it, love it. Real, real tangible results, which is what everybody wants. My featured guest on today's show has been Jeff Jackel, co founder of Client Giant, a company specializing in helping financial professionals grow by providing remarkable client experiences. They Jeff, thank you for all the value that you provided to our listeners today.
- [38:57]
B
Thank you so much, Phil. This is awesome what you do. You're. You're providing advisors with views that I think that they don't get commonly because I know the way they look at me when I explain to them what we do. So you know, so many of them, they just don't deviate from a script. And you're just ahead of the shift that I think is going to be required for advisors to stay relevant and to stay strong and, and you're just delivering content that's going to ensure they don't get left behind. So it's awesome what you're doing. I'm proud to be a small part of it. Great.
- [39:27]
A
Thank you. To you, the listener of this podcast, a small favor. If you like this episode or like the podcast in general, please leave a five star review on the platform you're listening to the show. Not all platforms have a place for reviews, but if yours does, I would be grateful. This is Bill Cates reminding you that ideas do not make you more successful. Only acting on those ideas will bring you the success you desire. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you for listening to the Top Advisor podcast brought to you by Proud Mouse Pod Rocket Academy. I encourage you to Visit my website, referralcoach.com for links to my books, online courses, and to register for the Katz Academy.