In this era of harder-to-reach prospects – especially among the affluent and wealthy – Social Prospecting has become the business-building model of choice for many successful advisors/agents. To my mind, Social Prospecting, quite simply, is the use of social environments to identify, meet, and grow relationships with qualified prospects. For over 16 years, I’ve been teaching financial professionals how to build a thriving referral-based business. Not only is this an effective marketing strategy, it’s also a lot of fun.

When it comes to serving your clients, do you follow a specific model that drives your behavior or are you winging it? And, do you think your clients can tell the difference? You bet they can! Unfortunately, most financial professionals are winging it when it comes to how they stay in touch with the clients and how they provide ongoing client service.

There has been a lot of controversy the last few years around cloning – cloning of sheep, cloning humans, etc. When it comes to “cloning your best clients” there’s no controversy at all. Every financial professional wants to acquire more clients that resemble their top clients. Here are 5 steps to accomplishing that goal.

Here are seven proven ways to promote referrals to your clients. About 70% of the time, these techniques will result in your clients giving you referrals at some time in the future. However, you can expect that about 30% of the time, these techniques will generate referrals right on the spot. These little adjustments you make now act just like compound interest turns small deposits into large savings. You’ll reap the rewards for years to come.

A participant in a referral seminar offers great insights and lessons from her experience.

Let’s start with the truth. Not all clients like to give referrals. For some of your clients, you could run into a burning building and save their children, and they still wouldn’t give referrals. And you know what? This has nothing to do with you. It’s their “stuff” around referrals. It’s their fear, or guardedness, or past bad experience that keeps them from playing the referral game. It is not a reflection on you and your relationship with them.

A financial professional from New York was fined $10,000 and suspended by FINRA for 20 business days for improper outside business activities.

What do you say when you get on the phone with your new referral prospects? Here’s a template from which you can base your own script. If you’re serious about refining your current phone script, I think you’ll find it particularly helpful to read this column a few times and then craft your own new script that fits your situation. Since I believe the best referral is an introduction, we’ll assume that in this sample script.

When Stephen Perry came to the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking in 2000, its fraud division saw five referrals all year, and none reached a courtroom.

I’m a huge advocate for asking for referrals. While I don’t teach an aggressive approach, I do advocate finding ways to be appropriately proactive. Sometimes it’s appropriate to promote the referral process by planting referral seeds. One of my favorites, that many reps are having great success with is, “Don’t keep me a secret.” Sometimes it’s appropriate to come right out and ask for referrals.