In this interview, Michael Epstien, CA, of Fuller Landau, Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors, talks about his firm's alternative to cocktail party referral events.
One of the great challenges of being in business is differentiating yourself from your competition. This is especially true when attempting to make a lasting impression with your referral sources. The challenge of communicating your message to this audience can be an elusive task. Consider how your business usually probes for new referrals.
You’ve enjoyed the company of the lawyers visiting your offices, eaten too many hors d'oeuvres to call yourself hungry, and enjoyed a nice glass of wine. You look at your watch: It’s just 7:30pm. It was a short evening. You wonder if anyone you spoke to tonight will remember tomorrow what it is that you’re best at or even where he or she put your card. And what’s worse, you’re not sure you can recall any details about the whirlwind evening either; just a few discussions about how the favorite team is doing this year. You don’t really question whether or not the evening was successful, though. This is how it’s done, right?
Sound familiar? The typical referral event is a cookie-cutter model. Renting a private facility or catering an office gathering for a bank or group of lawyers you want to get to know. Mill around with drink in hand for about 2 hours discussing current events, weather trends, and various local sports while collecting a stack of business cards. In the end, the results are usually the same. Everyone made their way around the room and developed some topical connection, polite and friendly, and apparently interested. But how likely is it that they will follow-up? Furthermore, would they know whom to follow-up with to assist with target areas in their business?
Fuller Landau, Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors, examined this problem and concluded it was time do something different, something to break from convention. The superficial office mixer no longer proved effective for Fuller Landau in establishing interested, genuine referrals. In the following interview with Fuller Landau Managing Partner, Michael Epstein, CA, you’ll learn about how their firm stepped outside the box with great success by planning a different kind of referral event.
Amanda Hansen, The Growth Partnership: Michael, what prompted your firm to approach the referral event in a new way?
Michael Epstein: We have spent and continue to spend a lot of time in trying to develop stronger working relationships with both bankers and lawyers within the Greater Toronto business community. Many of us have created personal friendships with various referral sources practicing in Toronto but we’ve found it difficult to make Fuller Landau consistently ‘front of mind’ on a particular organization’s list when referring clients. We tried the stereotypical “Meet and Greet” referral event but found that it left no lasting impression. That type of event felt forced and most everyone fell into the same traditional conversations. We knew we needed to make some adjustments to get our message across effectively and efficiently. So we worked with our marketing team from The Growth Partnership to create an event that would give us the maximum exposure, strongest positive impression, and the desired number of referrals.
Hansen: In remodeling the process, where did you start?
Epstein: We first examined our goals. Some of the things we expected from a referral event included the ability to: share our firm philosophies, introduce our key team members, identify the specialties of our individual professionals, and highlight some of the distinct capabilities of our firm. In the end, we wanted to differentiate Fuller Landau from the rest of the CA firms our referral sources often interact with. We also wanted the outside professionals to leave with a great impression of the firm. We didn’t want to railroad them with facts about our firm, but we wanted to give them the tools with which to build a real referral relationship.
Hansen: Once you established that the main goal of your event was to communicate the true strengths of Fuller Landau, how did you go about creating your messages?
Epstein: We knew we had a lot to say and not enough time to say it. We also recognized the fact that most of the professionals we would be speaking to have families to get home to. They wouldn’t want to spend their whole evening hearing presentations about our firm and if we approached it that way, they would be too distracted by other thoughts to retain the information. Honestly, often times referral events can be slightly dry—nothing that really grabs your attention. In order to meet our goals, we identified 6 unique areas of service our firm provides. We determined that we needed to limit our team members to short 5-minute presentations on the subjects selected. We created a single detailed poster for each of the 6 subjects that outlined the basic points the speakers would cover. Then we put our team members to work streamlining their performances in order to hone them to exactly 4 minutes and 50 seconds. I had my own subject to prepare. I developed a short informational speech to welcome the professionals into our firm, give them background on our firm’s service philosophies, and explain to them the process of our event. I clocked in around 4 minutes and 50 seconds as well.
Hansen: It’s obvious that you and your team members were well prepared, but how did you get the necessary feedback to help them improve the presentations before you were expected to perform?
Epstein: Getting our key team members geared up for the parts in the event proved to be another added benefit of our reengineering. We asked all of our staff accountants and administrative staff to participate in a mock run-through during their workday. Everyone took a break and we ran him or her through a trial version of our program. There were several terrific outcomes of that run through. First, our presenters received constructive criticism to help them fine-tune for their debut. In addition, the participating team members expressed excitement as they learned a wealth of new information about our business services. This was certainly an unexpected result for us. We set out to improve our communication with people not familiar with our team, and ended up working on the inside, also. We have been able to use this to our advantage. It has helped us to educate our team on what we have to offer. With a better understanding and knowledge of our own firm, our team members are better suited to address key issues and answer important questions posed by referrals. The run-through has become a part of our process, providing practice for our presenters and allowing us to educate our new team members. As we had anticipated, we also educated our team members on the fact that our firm is active in practice development and their individual efforts in this area would not go unnoticed. Finally, the internal rehearsal provided us with the necessary test of our process. We learned what logistics we needed to tweak to make the event flow smoothly. And I’m proud to say, we were well prepared after that. I must say, the whole process is a lot of fun!
Hansen: So you were armed with the right material and your team was ready to move into action, but I can’t imagine people being receptive to nearly 40 minutes of presentations. How did you make the presentations interesting for them?
Epstein: That is all in the process. As the lawyers or bankers filter into our offices, we welcome them into our conference room. There they are given nametags, which separate them into predetermined small groups of 4 or 5, and we serve them a drink. Once everyone is assembled, we begin. Each group of attendees is assigned a Fuller Landau tour guide. They are also given a 5-minute egg timer. We typically ask the most vocal person of the group —someone who stands out— to be the timekeeper, holding our presenters to their 5-minute limits. We like to give our attendees the opportunity to audit our time, giving them an element of control. It’s empowering. And, remarkably, it maintains a level of interest. Then our tour guides, one of our team members from Fuller Landau, lead their groups to each of the six areas where our presenters are waiting to speak. The posters we created work as visual aids which help them follow along with their presenters and add an additional path to convey our message. We try to afford our groups the opportunity to ask questions if we have enough time. This whets their appetite for further discussion. The small group setting is ideal for creating the right tone for this short dialogue. Our information sharing process has proven to be a real key to our game plan. Best of all, we maintain our audience’s attention as we move them around. We like to keep them on their toes!
Hansen: It sounds like the process is really well planned, but have you had any logistical problems with groups running into each other as they’re touring through the stations?
Epstein: We have had a few occasions when groups have stuck around after their 5-minute session to ask some questions. It’s hard to consider that a problem though! We welcome additional questions after the presentations. It usually doesn’t create the logistical nightmare you might imagine. We ask our tour guides, who are familiar with the layout of the office, to keep a watchful eye on the traffic routes as we’re moving through our tours. They try to end the questions when it appears that another group is headed their direction. We will get better at this as we host more events and manage to get a better feel of timing and flow among the stations. By answering the frequently asked questions during the presentations, we free up time at the end for new issues.
Hansen: You’ve said that your audience has often asked questions and participated in your mini-presentations. I am curious if you have received any negative feedback on the fact that your event is purely self-serving up to this point. This is not your typical referral event, so it’s most likely that none of your guests could have expected this new format.
Epstein: We had several partners who were concerned that attendees might feel taken advantage of when we were in the planning phase. As I look back at these concerns with a few of these events under our belt, I can honestly say that we have received the exact opposite results. Our guests have displayed genuine interest and real enthusiasm as they proceed through the tour. In fact, in our experience, it has generated so much interest that guests often try to ask questions at each station. Often, the questions raised in involve some of the attendee’s current work and how our solutions might apply to their own client situations. It is clear to us at Fuller Landau that the firms we have featured have found these sessions quite beneficial due much in part to our new approach.
Hansen: One of the goals you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation was leaving a good impression in the minds of the attendees. Once you’ve completed the tour, how do you give the evening the appropriate closure?
Epstein: When each group has finished their tour, we all filter back into the conference room where we have laid out a nice spread of refreshments. I make a few brief comments, thanking them for participating, apologizing for focusing on Fuller Landau all evening, and offering them a reciprocal opportunity at their convenience. I also invite their leadership to say a few words. Following this 5-minute dialogue, the attendees have some personal Q&A time with all the individuals they have just heard from. Here’s where you start to see some of the immediate results of our new methodology. During our first referral event, our guests stayed until nearly 9pm. Considering that our presentations begin at 5pm and end around 6pm, this is a remarkable occurrence. I have never been to a referral event where that much dialogue took place. And furthermore, it is actually substantive dialogue. We don’t even have time to fall into the comfortable trivialities about the weather or discussions of current events. Rather, we focus on the places where our businesses converge and how we can work together in the future. And when referral sources are interested, there’s a lot to talk about! We walked away from our first referral event with more than 6 real referral opportunities. Many of our key team members were poised to meet with our guests to further their discussions. What a great feeling of accomplishment!
Hansen: You are referring to some solid evidence to back up your belief that your re-worked referral event was a success. Tell me about some of the notable results.
Epstein: The senior partner of the first firm we featured called to congratulate me on a job well done. He also forwarded to me correspondence from other members of his firm who were pleased with the event. One attendee was so impressed, that he went home and raved to his wife about the information he had heard. Very conveniently for us, his wife happens to be an attorney at another leading law firm in the Greater Toronto Area. I have shared all of this feedback with the rest of the Fuller Landau team. Several members of our tax department have had lunch with many of the contacts they have met at the events. In order to maintain contact with our sources, about a week after our event is held, we send a PDF version of our posters attached to a ‘thank-you’ email to the attendees. This gives our new contacts an accessible refresher on what Fuller Landau is capable of and once again establishes an important point of contact.
Hansen: Keeping track of the results of an event like this is an important indicator of your return on investment. Tell me a bit about how you have managed to track the referrals generated by the process.
Epstein: That is definitely been our weakest area. We have been so excited by all the activity these events have created that we have been slow in maintaining an efficient tracking and follow-up process. Although we were very prepared to use our new approach, we weren’t prepared for the immediate results it has generated. But we needed to track the responses. Here’s how we started: we circulated a list of our guests and asked each of the Fuller Landau attendees to note anyone that they would like to maintain contact with. We then collated those results and assigned a main contact steward for each guest. The main contact steward was asked to make a weekly effort to be in touch with their assigned guest. Others who expressed interest in the same contact were asked to keep the main contact steward aware of any continued communications.
Hansen: That sounds like a good approach. You’re creating one main gatekeeper for each contact so someone is always aware of how the communication process is transpiring. Where are you experiencing problems?
Epstein: It is not unusual that we find ourselves buried in work—which is a good thing. But, while we may make the time to maintain our contacts, we have trouble finding the necessary minutes it would take to communicate our successful relationships internally. For that reason, we are working hard to develop a more useful tracking system to generate a weekly report of all referral activity taking place within the firm. We have constructed a database where we can track incoming and outgoing referral opportunities. We are in the process of setting up an automatically generated weekly e-mail requesting that our contact stewards and secondaries provide details about any referral contact they’ve had that week. Once that system is up and running we’ll be able to track our results more accurately, and we’ll be able to communicate the results back to our team members. We can analyze it further from there. Keeping busy and continuing to expand a referral base generate the momentum for our team to stay excited about this initiative.
Hansen: One of the things that impresses me most about how Fuller Landau has utilized this process is how much team participation there has been. Everyone seems truly excited about being involved in the process. How did you instill this excitement?
Epstein: We did exactly what you just mentioned—we involved our team members in the process. We allowed each of the presenting team members to craft their own messages. We gave them feedback every step of the way. We also involved them in the follow-up assignment process. We asked which contacts they would be comfortable maintaining a relationship with. We encouraged our whole team to be part of our practice development efforts. We even asked them for feedback on the process. Each of these steps made our employees feel included in the development of our new referral event. Involving our team in the process has given them a sense of ownership of the event. That has made a significant contribution to the success of our program.
Hansen: How frequently will you host the new referral events?
Epstein: We have currently scheduled one event a month. This allows us the appropriate amount of time to establish an effective path of communication with our new contacts between each event. It also gives us a little breathing room and time to regroup before each event. Plus, it gives our referral sources time to use their own internal ‘word-of-mouth’ to communicate with their colleagues who, in turn, may possibly become our referrals. When they return to their offices, the buzz of the out-of-the-ordinary referral event creates a viral marketing effect. Internally, we have used team feedback after each event to help us streamline the process further. I would imagine that we will host only one or two during our busy season and resume with our normal schedule following tax day.
Hansen: How many attendees do you aim for when scheduling these events?
Epstein: Our goal is to have no more than 20 attendees at each event. We are then able to separate them into 5 groups of 4. This makes the groups an easily manageable size and creates a true small group atmosphere, where the referrals are more comfortable and the environment is more conducive to opening a dialogue among the referral and the presenter.
Hansen: Given your experience in creating this new referral event process, what advice would you give firms faced with modifying their referral event process?
Epstein: The important first step is identifying your goals. Second, planning and execution are critical. Above it all, I think, in order for firms to continue to be competitive in this ever-changing business environment, we need to think outside of the box. Consider what avenues we have open to us and how we might make those work for us. It is the creativity of our event that makes it powerful. It is not the normal referral event. It’s going to leave a positive long-term impression on the attendees because it’s different. That’s what we were going for and I believe that’s what we’ve achieved. A fresh approach is very important, but so is trying it out beforehand. We subjected our team members to a dry run and found it was a good idea. Taking major strides can be hugely beneficial, but remember to always look before you leap.
The challenge of creating a lasting impression among referral sources remains a moving target for many accounting firms. Sometimes, unconventional is the best approach to get noticed. Fuller Landau Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors’ approach is certain to continue to impress both referral sources who have sat in on it, and interested firms looking for new ideas to apply to standard practices. Although what they have accomplished at Fuller Landau has generated a lot of positive feedback and referrals, Michael Epstein admits that their system may not sound like something every business wants to try—“But they should,” he offers. After all, he has plenty of reasons (or referrals) to be confident his format is outstanding.