Over ten years ago I met two financial advisors who worked as a team in a national financial services firm. They were top producers and outperformed everyone in their regional office and were even recognized nationally. Over the years we built a relationship, I met with them many times but we always seemed to struggle on referrals. They liked, admired and respected me and I liked, admired and respected them but underneath it all something always seemed to be in the way of us truly creating a meaningful relationship. Everything on the surface seemed like this was a great referral relationship and over the years we continued to work to find out the best way to work together. We began receiving referrals from them but it seemed each referral came at a price. They continually asked why we didn’t send an equal number of referrals back. I had explained most of my clients came from referral sources and the few that didn’t, had to be spread among all my referral sources. They accepted my explanation for a while but always reminded me of their financial goals. They were driven to succeed. I often supported them in many other areas like sharing business ideas, business operations, practice management and even practice development and marketing ideas. They implemented many of the ideas I shared with them but somehow the ideas always ended up being theirs. They became more and more successful as I, but we really never identified how best to work together. The referrals stopped. Recently, they left the national firm and created an independent company and literally moved across the street. After six months of settling in they called me and asked me to see to come visit their new offices and catch up. I was encouraged to see them with hopes to reignite the relationship. When we sat down, I asked each of them their goal of the meeting. They were very clear to say they wanted to build a $300 million book of business and they wanted to know our relationship could support them. Without being asked, I shared, my goal was to identify whether we should give up in trying to find a way to work together or if there was still hope for us to discover a mutually beneficial relationship. This took them by surprise but it was very real for me. Ultimately, I believe it was to them as well.
I began a polite conversation reminding them of the value I could provide their clients and the value of working with us and I shared what I thought the value of working with them was. After discovering their frustrations of working with me in the past, I acknowledged it and shared the new processes I put in place to reduce their concerns in the future but assured them “we were not perfect” and if issues arose again, they should let me know rather than just “complain” to each other as they did in the past. Interestingly, they asked me if I had concerns with working with them in the past. I shared that working with them felt like there was no way to please them and my firm was always under a microscope. I also shared it seemed like they kept a big check list on the wall they were always checking to be sure what we “gave them”. I concluded by telling them, I would love to find a way to work together but I was not committed to it unless I could be comfortable they abandon the “quad pro quo” approach and they be willing to gave up judging us, and start working with us side by side, warts and all. At the end of the hour and a half meeting there was a different air in the room. All of us recommitted to be maintaining our friendship and agreeing that we like, admire and respected each other but we also agreed that we no longer needed to struggle to figure out how best to work together. In fact, we decided not to. Interestingly, in the process we’ve developed a good social relationship, even if we decide not to have a business friendship. No expectations. I feel the best about our relationship as I have in all the ten years of knowing them and I know they do as well. Letting go of this apparent “prince” referral source that was really a disguised “frog” has been very freeing. It now gives me the confidence to focus on those relationships who do appreciate what we do without a “quad pro quo” and without a magnifying glass to micro analyzing any little missed expectations that occurred along the way. So as you read this I encourage you to re‑examine your relationship and identify what apparent “prince” you may be working with that may actually be a disguised “frog”. Take the chance and challenge the relationship into a good one or acknowledge it for what it is, a waste of time. Good luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment