Some advisors have all the luck. At least, that’s what it looks like from the outside looking in. But those on the inside know better. They’ve learned firsthand that success can’t be sustained on luck alone. Instead, building a business requires loads of heavy lifting. Along with good fortune, advisors therefore need strong muscles to assemble the foundations of a prosperous future.

But here’s the thing about muscles: If you don’t use them, you lose them. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of advisors’ strongest muscles have atrophied.

Most of all, their networking muscles have weakened, suggests a 2021 study by researchers at Yale University. It found that the average person’s professional and personal networks have shrunk by nearly 16% during the pandemic.

It’s easy to understand why. Instead of meeting prospects in elevators, bars and buffet lines, advisors, colleagues and clients have been quarantined on two-dimensional Zoom calls where their reach is limited by the size of their screen.

Thanks to the popularity of remote working, what initially was a temporary hindrance increasingly looks like a permanent handicap. Networking isn’t what it used to be, and it might never be again.

And yet, the ability to build professional relationships remains critical, according to Guy Munro Mankey, a 19-year MDRT member from North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. “It’s probably the largest key of all to being successful in the long term,” explained Mankey, who says the power of relationships manifests in the form of referrals. “When you’re starting in this business, you spend more time on prospecting than you do anything else,” he said. “That’s an enormous expense and frustration. Having people who are willing to introduce you to potential clients takes away a lot of that frustration.”

Some referral sources are better than others, and the best of the best are centers of influence (COIs) like accountants and attorneys — people who, because of their position or business, have significant sway with prospects in your target market.

“Centers of influence have a lot more to offer because their clients think very highly of them,” Mankey said. “These are people who on any given day are seeing a large number of people who already trust them on financial matters. So, when they tell you to call someone about insurance, it’s a very easy entrance. Their clients want to hear what you’ve got to say.”

Unfortunately, COIs aren’t always a willing audience. “The best way to get better clients and to build your client base is to work with your clients’ professionals,” said 20-year MDRT member David M. Ethell, LUTCF, of Camarillo, California, USA. “The doors are often closed. They’re not very friendly. They have no need for what we’re trying to bring — even though what we’re trying to bring are solutions to many of their problems.”

Fortunately, closed doors can be opened. All that’s needed are keys to unlock them. Here, advisors share five strategies that might do the trick.

1) Share your knowledge

Networking typically is reciprocal: Connections will refer business to you if you refer business to them. But successful COIs don’t always need referrals. And if you’re growing your business, you might not have referrals to give. You therefore have to find something else to offer. “These people are successful because they already have relationships. They don’t need your relationship,” explained Ethell, who said what they do need is information about how to run their business. “They all want to grow their practice. They want to bring value to their clients, and information is critical.” To deliver information, Ethell writes articles and hosts free webinars, often in partnership with peers of the COIs — other lawyers and accountants, for example — who can share relevant thought leadership. Subject matter might include business-oriented topics like client service and employee retention, or industry-specific topics like changes to the tax code.

“We’ve got so much inundation of information,” Ethell said. “My email is exploding every day with new information. Everybody is saying, ‘You need this,’ and, ‘Here’s what to do with that.’ But who do we trust? This is an opportunity for us to gain trust.”

Bhupinder S. Anand, ACII, Dip PFS, takes a similar approach by educating these professionals. “Creating a seminar on a subject that’s relevant to accountants or lawyers is so easy nowadays with webinars. You can use social media to gather those kinds of [COIs] and run training for them,” said the 25-year MDRT member from London, England, UK. He adds even more value by creating certificates of completion that he can award after his events, which some professionals might be able to use to obtain continuing education credits in their industry.

“I took a lawyer out for lunch recently to explain what I do in terms of estate planning,” Anand continued. “At the end of the lunch, I said to her, ‘Do you feel that you’ve learned something in this conversation? This is probably a form of continuing education for you, isn’t it?’ She said yes, so I mailed her a certificate. She showed it around the office and now all her colleagues are asking me to run a seminar for them and give them a certificate as well.”

If you’re stumped on what information you could offer in an article or webinar, the MDRT Annual Meeting is a wellspring of inspiration. “At literally every Annual Meeting, there’s something we learn that we could share,” Anand said.

2) Ask for connections

For Mankey, networking is a numbers game. “How do we get luckier with networking? By increasing the sample size,” he said. “The more potential centers of influence you meet, the luckier you’ll become.”

To meet as many COIs as possible, Mankey early in his career made a habit of asking every client he spoke to for an introduction to their accountant. “I started by asking, ‘Julie, are you happy with everything we’ve achieved for you?’” he said. “She would invariably say yes, to which I’d say, ‘That’s great. I want to make sure your accountant understands what we’ve done for you here. Do you have any objection to introducing us?’”

To make the introduction as effortless as possible, Mankey would then supply a prewritten email that the client could use to connect him with their accountant. “When I saw the email come through, I’d wait a few days to give the accountant the chance to call me first,” he continued. “When they didn’t, I’d call them and ask when they might have 15 minutes for me to buy them a coffee and explain our mutual client’s insurance to make sure they didn’t miss any tax deductions, and so they knew where to get me if they ever had a question.”

The main objective of an introduction to another professional your client is currently using isn’t to network. Rather, it’s to serve your mutual client. Networking is just a happy side effect, said Kathleen R. Benjamin, CFP, CPA, of Maugansville, Maryland, USA, who takes a similar tack to cultivating COIs.

“I’m a football fan, and in football you have the quarterback who is listening to the offensive coordinator calling the plays. That’s how I look at my role as a financial advisor,” explained Benjamin, an 18-year MDRT member. “I consult the other professionals my client is working with to ensure that when I render advice, it is coordinated and comprehensive.”

Benjamin developed an approach where she would ask clients to sign release letters giving her permission to contact their CPA and estate planning attorney for the purpose of doing tax planning, beneficiary management and other client-focused activities. She would then huddle with those professionals to develop strategies for their mutual client. That created an organic opportunity to demonstrate her expertise in front of professionals who might later refer her to other clients after seeing her in action.

“Many advisors do not make that extra effort to coordinate between professionals,” Benjamin said. “When you do that, you’re adding value to the client relationship, which makes it easier for your clients and other professionals to refer you to their friends and family.”

3) Neutralize fears

Many COIs are skeptical of referring clients. To remove barriers, address their fears head on, Anand suggested.

“I have a very interesting question I use: What has been your past experience working with a financial advisor?” he said. “Listen very carefully, because what people tend to do is talk about the things that went wrong. And what they’re really saying to you is, ‘Make sure you don’t make those same mistakes.’”

Many COIs, for example, are worried about their reputation. “We have to understand that we’re asking him to risk his client relationship; the client is not going to come back and complain,” explained Anand, who counters that fear by providing client testimonials and articles in which the media has quoted him as a credible expert. “That third-party endorsement is far more powerful than me blowing my own trumpet.”

On a related note, COIs often worry about quality of service. To reassure them, Anand furnishes copies of reports, documents, marketing literature and other collateral he uses with clients so COIs can get a feel for how he works. He also emphasizes the size of his team so COIs know someone will always be available to service their client.

“It’s not just about us,” Anand said. “It’s about the whole back-office system that we are going to be bringing to the table.”

Yet another concern is poaching. “We must emphasize that by working together, you’re not losing control of your client. You’re enhancing your relationship with your client,” Anand continued. “We must be very clear: ‘I’m not going to carve you out of discussions. I’ll keep you in the loop. You will know exactly what I’m saying to your client at any point in time. And with the client’s permission, I’ll copy you on all correspondence.’”

4) Create COIs from clients

The most effective way to turn a professional referral source into a COI is to first turn them into a client, Mankey said. When you’re marketing and prospecting in search of new clients, it’s therefore a good idea to target professional communities where future COIs might reside — a local CPA society, for example, or a law school.

“I don’t have a center of influence who isn’t a client themselves,” Mankey said. “Because I can talk until I’m blue in the face about how good I am, but until someone sees you in action, they’re not going to believe it. If they can see you doing what you do, they’ll know firsthand that you are capable of doing what needs to be done with their clients.”

If your client roster isn’t flush with accountants and attorneys, never fear: Just about anyone can be a COI if they’re willing to make regular and enthusiastic referrals, suggests three-year MDRT member Patricia Vaca Pedroza, a financial and insurance advisor at Seguros Monterrey New York Life in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

“I got my first center of influence through a person close to me: a relative,” Vaca said. “If you think about it, relatives must be our first centers of influence because they are familiar with our work, they trust us and they know the value of the work we do.”

A particularly memorable COI for Vaca was an aspiring mother to whom she sold pregnancy insurance. When she later gave birth to premature twins, her benefits kicked in: double indemnity for a twin pregnancy and premature birth.

“An important person who was a center of influence referred this client to me, and eventually this woman also became a center of influence,” Vaca said. “As a result of what she experienced, she started to refer me to new people.”

Every client belongs to a niche community that can be an ongoing source of business, if only you recognize its potential. Vaca has one COI, for example, who fills her pipeline with engineers, another who fills it with health care professionals and a third who fills it with banking professionals.

Seventeen-year MDRT member Laura Xue-Fen Hoi, ChFC, AEPP, of Singapore, also cultivates nontraditional COIs — that is, COIs who aren’t CPAs or lawyers. Most of her clients are young professionals with growing families. In a cohort like that, not everyone has COI potential. To help her identify those who do, she segments clients into A, B, C and VVIP categories: C clients are transactional and disengaged. B clients are average clients with future potential. A clients are highly engaged clients who do lots of business with her. And VVIP clients are her top 20.

VVIP and A clients account for only 30% of Hoi’s client base but give her 70% of her business. “These clients generally give me bigger premiums, but they also could be clients who give me lots of introductions. They may not always buy a lot from me, but they’re my centers of influence,” said Hoi, who can invest more time and energy into her best clients — and therefore seek more referrals from them — by keeping track of who they are.

Categorizing clients also can help you identify your ideal client profile so you can cultivate COIs who are more compatible with your business objectives. When she looked at her VVIP and A clients, for example, Hoi noticed several doctors and dentists. She therefore arranged meetings and explicitly asked for referrals to other doctors and dentists.

“This has helped me be very focused on the people I want to meet, because I have limited time,” Hoi said.

5) Focus on relationships

If you want to attract COIs, seek relationships instead of referrals, Ethell advises. “Friendship is the greatest thing we can provide,” he said, recalling advice he once received from a mentor. Before he would do business with people, the mentor said, he had to judge their character. “He said, ‘I don’t care how much they know until I know how much they care.’”

Mankey describes it as farming. “There are two types of people in pretty much any business: miners and farmers,” he said. “The miners are the people who go in and tear the land apart searching for what they want, whereas the farmers are the nurturers. They make sure the land is well prepared, and then they plant their seeds. They know that they’re not going to get anything in the short term, but they’re working for the future.”

Sometimes it takes years for seeds to sprout. But if you constantly water and fertilize them, eventually they grow.

To help her tend her own seeds, Hoi keeps detailed notes about clients and COIs in a personal database. It includes everything from the names of spouses and children to birthdays and hobbies. Armed with that information, she can send cards for wedding anniversaries, drop off gifts for kids’ graduations and make relevant conversation over coffee, all of which makes her more memorable, more personable and, as a result, a more attractive referral partner.

But she doesn’t just collect information. Because the best relationships are mutual, she also shares it. “One way I try to make myself more approachable and more real is sharing on social media,” said Hoi, who posts regular updates about her family. “I show who I am outside of what I do, and I think that resonates with my clients. It helps them relate to me because they see I’m not just all about work.”

Therein lies the power of the COI: When you give, you get.

But you’ve got to give in a deliberate way, and to the right people, according to Mankey, who says what looks like luck in financial services often is labor.

“Luck is defined as ‘success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than one’s own actions,’” he concluded. “The key word is ‘apparent’ because not all luck is random. A lot of luck can be managed.” 

CONTACT

Bhupinder Anand bhupinder@anandassociates.com
Kathleen Benjamin kbenjamin1017@gmail.com
David Ethell david@deifs.com
Laura Hoi laurahoi.office@gmail.com
Guy Mankey guym@paxfin.com.au 
Patricia Vaca patyvacap@gmail.com