Avoid Pressuring Clients to Help Grow Your Practice

Dear K.W.,

I think you are espousing a great life philosophy. If something doesn’t sit right with you, don’t do it. Or at least don’t do it right away until you have had time to consider whether it will work for you. If you are holding yourself back from doing something this person outlined for you, don’t do it.

And when you do decide to do something along these lines, be sure you are authentic and genuine about what you are implementing. For example, we often have advisors ask us for specific language when they are talking to a client or COI, or if they are going to a networking event. I always underscore three things:

1. There is no script, because what works for me and my style might not work for you. I find it best to provide ideas and let an advisor try different things to figure out what fits.
2. The audience matters, so what works in one case might not work in another. For example, I like to use humor, but there are certain prospects and clients who are very serious. I would never use humor when speaking with them like I might with others.
3. Scripting means you have to memorize something, but the goal in this case is to be comfortable and natural. Memorization isn’t going to help you do this.

Whatever you end up doing, make sure you are authentic and honest in your approach. Clients see right through a request or ask that you are uncomfortable making. You have to know what you want, find words that are right for you, and proceed accordingly.

All said, let me move on to another favorite personal rule: Never ask your clients to help you make more money. Life — and business — is all about quid pro quo in many cases. However, there is an inherent “quid” in working with your clients. They will pay you a fee, and in return you will give them excellent service and answers to help them reach their goals. They don’t “owe” you anything outside of this!

However, there is another consideration that does work. If you are good at what you do, and you offer excellent solutions to life’s financial problems, and your clients have people they know and love that could also benefit from your approach, you could offer them something meaningful. Have a conversation with their friends or family to understand what they might be wrestling with and whether you could help them. Here you don’t talk about wanting to grow. Rather, you talk about your passion for what you do and how you want to be able to do it for more people. Let them know you particularly want to be able to do it for people in their universe whom you could help.

Is this a nuance? Is it a reframe? Of course it is, but it positions what you are asking for very differently. It gives you more confidence, and it doesn’t treat your clients like a distribution arm for growing your firm.

This brings me to my last point, which is also very important — the art of the reframe. You don’t ask clients for referrals. You are not a carpet cleaning company or selling used cars. You do not treat them like a sales force, out there trolling for qualified opportunities. While clients may want to send you people they know and care about on their own, your “ask” (when it happens) is for introductions.

You never want to put clients in a position where they need to make sure the person they are referring is ready and willing to work with an advisor. You do want them to introduce you to others, who could then introduce you to someone else. If you take the pressure off a client to do your sales work for you, and share your passion to do more and your desire to simply meet more people you can talk to about what you do, you will put your client at ease. You will then also be much more at ease.

It will feel more normal and you will think about this whole process differently. See if these ideas give you a different sense of what could work for you. If nothing here resonates, and you still don’t feel very comfortable, then just don’t do it.

You can always just solicit advice and ideas from clients about what you could do to find more opportunities. Don’t treat them like the distribution arm; instead, treat them like your trusted partner. Explain the firm is doing very nicely but you are interested in continuing to expand and grow for your next generation of leaders. Tell them you value their input and would appreciate any ideas they might have for finding opportunities to talk with more individuals about what you do so well.

This approach often simply generates ideas. It doesn’t really move your clients to action in most cases, but it might be what you need to do to stay in your comfort zone. Importantly, it still gets the message across to your client base.

Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching Executive MBA students Leadership and Managing Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).

She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.

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