Rewarding clients delivers prize leads
Existing clients are often the best source of future leads. The challenge for Simone Vanden-Driesen and Leishman Financial Services was to tap the source.
The answer was a rewards program. The Client Appreciation Program (CAP) was launched by the suburban Melbourne planning group 18 months ago to formally recognise and reward existing clients for referrals.
It’s similar to a frequent flyer program, with clients earning redemption points for each referral, regardless of whether it leads to business for Leishman.
Additional points are awarded if a referral does bring business, which, together with the initial referral points, can be redeemed for prizes, including cases of wine and cinema tickets.
Two cinema evenings, partly sponsored by fund managers, have been held since the program’s launch, both attracting more than 120 clients.
Vanden-Driesen, a director of Leishman, says the program ensures clients “understand that Leishman does not take their referrals, which constitutes 80 per cent of our business, for granted”.
A letter was sent to all clients when the program was launched “acknowledging Leishman wouldn’t exist without their referrals over the past 19 years”.
Vanden-Driesen says the program’s success in generating referrals has “more to do with its novelty as a rewards initiative than with the actual rewards clients receive”.
“It provides a talking point for our clients, when ordinarily they wouldn’t tell their friends about their financial planner,” she says.
Vanden-Driesen says the group is also careful not to turn clients away — even those who may not have a significant portfolio themselves.
“You never know what business a client could refer you to,” she says.
An example is an elderly client with a “very small portfolio and a lot of Centrelink work” that Vanden-Driesen has visited at a local nursing home over a number of years.
“Her son recently become a Leishman client, on the basis of her referral, bringing with him a portfolio of over a million dollars,” she says.
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