From Proactive Advisor Magazine, featuring Adam Koós, CFP®, CMT®, CEPA. On testimonials, press, and the trust signals prospects check before they ever pick up the phone.
Referrals built your practice. They are not going to be the only thing that grows it.
Somebody hears your name at a dinner party and the first thing they do is go looking. Google, LinkedIn, your website, reviews. About ten minutes of it.
That ten minutes is doing more selling than your intro call ever will.
Proactive Advisor Magazine asked me and two other professionals how we build credibility that does not require somebody making an introduction for us. Here is the short version, and the same idea we teach inside the Million Dollar Blueprint. Credibility is a process you run, not something that happens to you.
In 2020 the SEC amended Rule 206(4)-1 and opened the door for advisors to use client testimonials, subject to conditions. That rule had been in place since 1961.
It covers SEC-registered advisors. Many state-registered advisors still cannot use testimonials at all, though NASAA has voted to move state model rules closer to the federal standard. This is not legal advice. Talk to your compliance person before you build anything.
Ask at the end of a review meeting, after two questions that earn you the right to ask:
You learn something either way, and the conversation is already pointed at the client’s experience. The ask lands naturally from there.
We also follow up after client surveys with a thank you and a one-click link to our Google Business page. If somebody never fills out the survey, we circle back about a month later.
Everybody gets asked. Not the clients you assume will say something nice.
Nobody at the firm can have control over the review. That is the whole ballgame.
We do not copy a review off Google and paste it anywhere. We use a widget that pulls reviews straight from our Google Business page, at random, so we cannot select only the flattering ones. Our staff cannot interfere with a review being given, and requests go to every client rather than a hand-picked list. Pick a tool that enforces that for you. Anything relying on somebody remembering the rule will eventually fail.
Earned recognition, credentials, and showing up.
Skip pay-to-play awards. The one I am proudest of after 25 years is the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethics and Trust, and that came from years of doing the right thing, including when it cost us money. Media coverage worked the same way. Be consistent, be quotable, be available on deadline.
Designations like the CFP, CMT, or CEPA tell a prospect you invested in mastery instead of the minimum. NAPFA membership does part of the vetting for you. Speaking and teaching is the most underused one on the list, because you are not selling, you are teaching, and the room knows the difference. Community involvement builds the kind of soft trust you cannot manufacture.
The two other advisors in the piece added useful mechanics. Vijay Khetarpal runs every testimonial through compliance first and puts real weight on advocates like CPAs and attorneys. Jon Cook recommends written over video, since editing a video triggers a disclosure requirement, and keeping testimonials focused on the client’s experience rather than results.
Pick one and run it for 90 days:
Credibility is earned, and it compounds the way a good portfolio does. It also collapses fast when there is no substance under it, and in a trust business you do not recover from that quietly.
Start with the Million Dollar Blueprint, a free on-demand webinar that carries 1 hour of CFP® CE credit. For weekly ideas, Talking Points goes out every Monday to more than 16,000 advisors. If you are weighing whether Adrenaline fits, take the Are We a Good Fit questionnaire or bring your questions to an Adrenaline Info Call.
Read the full article at Proactive Advisor Magazine: https://proactiveadvisormagazine.com/how-to-establish-credibility-beyond-referrals/