By Referral Workshops are for groups of 8-20 participants from a single business (or franchise/dealer group).  Workshops offer you the greatest degree of personalised training, working onsite with your own tools and materials.

PROBLEM: GOT ALL THE QUALITY REFERRALS YOU CAN HANDLE?

You have clients that love you. You provide a great service. You constantly ask them if there is anyone else you could help. Yet the referrals just don’t come. What’s going on?

Referrals are the main business driver in most Professional Services firms yet they are often treated as an after-thought, limited to a throw-away line while walking a client to the door. Many advisers are somewhat fearful of “harming” a good client relationship by discussing referrals. Other advisers may raise the topic, but get no result.

SOLUTION: AUSTRALIA’S LEADING REFERRAL TRAINING EXPERIENCE

There is a solution. Vue Consulting’s By Referral experience is a three month training process designed to help you create an easy, comfortable and ethical referral process.

This practical training suits any Professional Services adviser (accountant, banker, financial planner, broker, recruiter, real estate agent, consultant) and moves beyond simple inter-personal skills and into Business Development outcomes. The end result is a tangible process which helps your business boost its referral capabilities.

KEY BENEFITS

• Flexibility - Remove or expand topics based on your needs, culture, experience and industry and delivery via two-hour, half-day, one day and online formats.
• Content - From “who, when and how” through to advanced tactics such as Mail-outs and Centres of Influence, we have it all.
• Design - No generic case studies or role-plays. You will learn through active, adult-learning techniques focused on actions and implementation.
• Implementation - You receive templates, examples and feedback on your own documents. The training focuses on your business, not case studies.
• Involvement - You can choose the degree of follow-up, from passive coaching to active motivation, we will be with you “on the job”.
• Immediacy - You work in the context of your tools and your industry. Quick wins are readily available while you build your long-term, sustainable referral business.
• Experience - We have first-hand Professional Services industry experience. We work with clients to monitor success and maintain best practices.
• ROI - Because of our collaborative approach and post-training follow-up, we know By Referral works (as proven by many repeat and referral clients!).

DOES IT WORK?

Let’s look at a potential return on your training investment. The goal of By Referral is to find additional clients that you wouldn’t otherwise have found. Therefore, to calculate the potential annual benefit to your business by undertaking By Referral you need only consider how many additional referrals you could obtain and the average revenue of those clients. The following table shows the impact of just a few extra referrals each month.

Ten clients have been referred in the few months since your session. We are preparing advices for at least seven of these. David, I will continue to spread the word on the value and ideas we gained from your services which I believe is one of the most cost effective, value added programmes I have undertaken in my 18 years as a RetireInvest proprietor/adviser.
- Paul Fogden, RetireInvest

After your workshop I instantly realised what I should be doing and now see that it’s not so hard to ask for referrals. You just need to educate, promote the practice and use the best technique. It has only been two weeks, but I have gained at this stage one very strong referral with the view of three properties to be listed with myself, I am currently working with this referee and he is already talking about referring me on as well. You just have to ask in the right way!
- Samara McCrohon, Raine & Horne

I am confident the actions we have taken and are taking will continue to make a difference to my business. It is exciting to think of how many opportunities come from such innocent yet well timed comments to customers who are happy with what we do. It is the key point I need to regularly reinforce to my staff so they too can benefit from new customers coming in and asking for their assistance.
- Sean Cawley, Bank of Queensland

TRAINING CONTENT

The training experience is broken into two parts - Referral Process modules which help participants implement core referral strategies into their client experience and Advanced or Industry modules which expand or enhance the By Referral experience.

The Referral Process modules comprise four hours of Workshops and six weeks of implementation. All participants undertake the Referral Process modules although examples and ideas are customised for each industry.

The Advanced or Industry modules comprise five optional modules and one compulsory module.  Each  By Referral experience includes 2-3 optional modules to suit participant needs.

Referral Process

• What are the facts about referrals
• What makes you referrable
• How to raise client referral awareness
• Define who you want to be referred to
• When and how to discuss referrals
• How to manage referral discussions

Optional Modules customise By Referral for different industries. We can recommend
modules or participants can select during training, from modules including…

• Referrals from Centres of Influence
• Referral branding and marketing
• Obtaining referral introductions
• Referral mail-outs to existing clients
• Obtaining Client feedback on your process
• Analysing and comparing referral process

TRAINING PROCESS

Vue Consulting’s training methodology consists of three steps.

Step 1 - Preparation

Many training experiences fail simply because management and participants come unprepared.  We work with you to ensure all parties are ready for the training, come with the right expectations and are prepared for follow-through work.  Preparation strategies include...

• Participant welcome pack - two weeks before 1st Workshop. Participants are welcomed with an overview of the entire experience and given some preparation work.  This includes gathering materials, online benchmarking surveys and field-tests with clients.
• Management preparation - three to Four weeks before 1st Workshop. We meet with management to explain their role in the process, customise aspects of the training and prepare managers for their part in the follow-through process and activities.
• Business preparation - at least four weeks before 1st Workshop. We meet with you to review existing client materials, including brochures, checklists and forms. This discussion also helps us understand your firm’s culture, prior referral successes/failures and brand position.
• Client or Centre of Influence surveys - one to two months before 1st Workshop. We can provide online referral surveys (with your branding) to run with your clients or Centres of Influence - a great way to focus participants and gain valuable market feedback.

Step 2 - Learning

All Vue Consulting experiences involve proven adult learning techniques.  We utilise lecture style training only when necessary and prefer to involve participants in the construction of post-training action plans and committed steps.

All participants create an eight-week Action Plan during the Workshop(s) structured to help take the training out of the room and into the workplace.  The Action Plans give participants and managers a structured, tangible process while retaining the ability for participants to tailor their individual actions.  We help participants learn through a mixture of case studies, role-plays, analysis, team activities, quizzes, panel discussions, personal reflection and best practice comparisons.

Step 3 - Follow-Through

This is the most critical part of the training process.  Our training methodology begins with this step and then designs Preparation and Learning activities which support the required Follow-Through results.  Follow-Through activities can include...

• Follow-up email course. A three month email course takes you back through the material  to refresh memories, prompt actions and provide an easy topic for discussion in team meetings. The email course directly links into the eight-week Action Plan.
• Email coaching. Through-out the length of the email course, participants can contact Vue Consulting for additional email coaching or assistance. Send documents for review, seek clarification or obtain feedback on new ideas.
• Management support. Management is provided with a separate email course providing monthly suggestions for coaching and mentoring.  This helps management provide the critical on-the-job support required to maintain participant engagement and accountability.
• Participant journals. Management and participants are able to use an online journal and reporting system. Participants can routinely complete an online journal tracking their process allowing management to monitor implementation and assist where necessary.
• Final accreditation. Participants can complete a final Accreditation process, either with Vue Consulting or with their management.  This activity allows participants to wrap up the process and provides a final check of accountability and next steps.
• Review Workshops. Workshop participants can organise a follow-up Review Workshop, typically held 6-18 months after the first Workshop(s). This half-day review helps examine successes, enhance processes or introduce advanced topics.

DELIVERY OPTIONS

There are several ways to obtain By Referral, depending on your circumstances.  Note that every delivery method is based on the same content. The difference is only in the delivery.

For Workshops, there are four main alternatives.  Workshops are best suited to 8-12 participants, although we can conduct Workshops for groups as large as 30-40 participants for Conference situations.

• By Referral 1x. A By Referral experience with a one-day Workshop for teams or groups that can only gather together once.
• By Referral 2x.  The benchmark By Referral experience, held over two half-days (one month apart.
• By Referral 4x. A By Referral experience held over four two-hour sessions for busy teams or participants that prefer shorter training sessions.
• By Referral Centres of Influence. A dedicated 1/2 day experience focused entirely on referrals from Centres of Influence.

FAQ

How industry specific is By Referral?

The main By Referral training is not industry specific. Referrals, however, are themselves most effective industries with medium sized client bases. Industries with very large client bases - say, many retail stores - generally work off price or brand promotion and their referral strategies are mass market. Industries with very small client bases - say, investment banking - rely more on relationship management as potential clients are well known and identifiable.

Referrals work the best in industries with medium client bases which involve significant trust issues and limited advertising potential - financial planners, accountants, consultants, designers, solicitors or real estate agents for example.

Are there industry specific versions of By Referral?

Sort of. The Referral Process modules of By Referral are the same for any industry – they are key referral foundations that are required no matter what you do.  The Industry or Advanced Modules, however, vary greatly between industries – this is the beauty of a modular training system.  We have a pretty good idea which modules suit which industries.

In addition, we have templates and examples of most processes for most industries.  If we are missing something, we can create it.  Plus we will be using your own materials and likely creating at least one specific client handout for use in your business.

Why do you limit the number of participants in By Referral Workshops?

By Referral is part Workshop, part Coaching. Each participant creates their own Referral Action Plan with application to their own clients, business and personality. There are no generic role-plays or case studies. As a result, there are group discussions and real-life application of the strategies. With too many different participants, the Workshop loses this coaching quality and becomes just another lecture.  In an ideal environment, experience reveals that less than 20 participants is an optimal number for this experience.

What sort of hand-outs do participants receive?

Participants in a By Referral workshop receive a bound Workbook with the presentation slides and accompanying notes, a bound Referral Action Plan, various colour handouts and examples. The business often receives mock-ups of client handouts, referral branding ideas, client letters, checklist suggestions and more.

How does the follow-up email course work?

Participants receive one email every week for 3-months. Each email revisits a key topic from the course and suggests a number of action steps for the participant to undertake to make sure that part of the training has actually been implemented.  These emails are tied into the follow-up Action Plan.

Each email is relatively short, just covering key points and moving onto the action steps as quickly as possible. Management can use the emails at team meetings to help in their overview of the implementation and keep the topic alive for several months.  The email follow-up course is included in the cost of a By Referral Workshop.