Training Programs: Field Wholesalers

Referral Forest: Accelerating Client Acquisition

Course Overview

It approaches common knowledge that the most effective strategy for building new business is to obtain introductions and referrals from existing clients. It is equally true that few sales professionals have a well articulated, repeatable process for gaining introductions and referrals.

Sequoia’s Referral Forest Program introduces an effective, repeatable process with a measurable outcome to leverage existing advisor relationships. The end goal is efficiency in developing new relationships and as a result, new business. The program assists the sales professional in clearly defining whom to seek referrals from and how to effectively ask for referrals. Perhaps most importantly, the program provides a clear process for developing the referral to a productive relationship. Among the topics covered during the program are:

• Segmentation and Seeding the Forest
• Defining Productive Relationships vs. Production
• Preparing the Request for Referrals
• Defining the Approach and the Development of a Referral
• Measuring the Results and Reseeding the Forest

We conduct open enrollment programs at our corporate headquarters in Naperville, IL. Each program accommodates anywhere from 10 to 24 sales professionals from a variety of financial services firms. This variety provides a unique opportunity for the exchange of individual best practices. One of the benefits of an open enrollment program is convenience.