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Gain Clients Via Referrals

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Identify and create referrals.
  • Prioritize referrals.
  • Convert referrals.

Meet New Customer Needs

A referral starts with a customer need. A customer needs something—a mortgage, retirement planning, or a new credit card. An existing client, a partner, or a colleague knows you can help. So they send you a referral.

Let’s look at an example. Kotori Mizono is a client associate at a financial services firm. Her client, Kiara Shah, has been saving to buy a new home. Kiara has finally met her savings goal. Now she has a new need: a mortgage.

Kotori learns that Kiara is ready to buy her house. She creates a referral for Kiara with an in-house mortgage broker named Bob Akua. Bob follows up and helps Kiara get her mortgage. Kiara, a satisfied customer, moves into her dream home.

Kiara standing next to her dream house

Let’s follow Kiara’s referral from beginning to end.

In this unit, we show you the steps you would take to create a referral in Financial Services Cloud. In the next unit, you'll get hands-on by signing up for a special Developer Edition org that contains Financial Services Cloud and our sample data. The special Developer Edition org enables you to try out some of the steps in unit 2 and take the unit 2 challenge.

Create a Referral

Kiara tells Kotori she needs a new mortgage. Her client associate, Kotori, creates a referral to a mortgage broker to help Kiara along her journey. The mortgage broker, Bob, works for the same financial services company as Kotori.

Here’s what Kotori does in her org.

  1. Click App launcher.
  2. Select Wealth Management or Retail Banking Console.
  3. In the navigation bar or menu, choose Leads and Referrals, and click New.
  4. Select the Person Referral record type and click Next.
  5. Fill out the values for the new client. In this example, Kotori creates the referral for Kiara Shah.
    • First name: Kiara
    • Last name: Shah
    • Company: Indus Ventures
    • Expressed Interest: Mortgage
    • Internal Referrer: Kotori Mizono
  1. Click Save.

Financial Services Cloud automatically routes the referral to the person who handles mortgages. In this case, that’s Bob. Kotori isn’t working on Kiara’s mortgage, but she can still follow her referral. She clicks Leads in the navigation bar and selects Kiara’s referral. She wants to make sure that Kiara is well taken care of.

Prioritize Referrals

Bob receives the new referral in his inbox. He’s busy, so he must address his most important tasks first. Is Kotori’s referral a top priority? Bob’s company uses Einstein Lead Scoring to help him figure that out. Einstein Lead Scoring gives each referral a referral score, and Bob prioritizes his referrals based on that score.

Note

Einstein Lead Scoring is an add-on to Financial Services Cloud. If you don’t have it installed, you don’t see a referral score. Contact your admin if you have any questions.

Here’s how Bob checks the score of his new referral.

  1. Click App launcher.
  2. Click Retail Banking Console.
  3. In the navigation menu, choose Home.

Bob’s home page shows him Kiara Shah’s referral score.

Bob’s home page with Kiara Shah’s referral score of 75 highlighted in the Referrals Assigned to Me pane

Kiara’s referral score is pretty high, so Bob quickly gives her a call and starts working to get her prequalified for a mortgage.

Convert a Referral

If a referral is qualified, you convert it into an opportunity. You then work with your opportunity until you close it, either by completing it or canceling it. But how do you qualify a referral?

Qualifying a referral indicates that you believe the client has a use for and interest in your product. A sale to this referral is a definite possibility. Some businesses choose to qualify referrals more quickly than others. The exact criteria for qualifying and converting referrals is part of your company’s unique business process.

Bob’s company requires that he follow these steps, which are common in the financial services industry, to convert Kiara’s referral.

  • Confirm her interest in a mortgage.
  • Determine that she’s likely to move forward quickly.
  • Prequalify her to make sure that she can afford the mortgage.

Bob calls Kiara and confirms that she meets those criteria. Now he’s ready to convert the referral to an opportunity.

  1. In the navigation menu, choose Leads.
  2. Click the client name. In this example, Kiara Shah.
  3. From the actions dropdown menu, choose Convert.Kiara’s Lead and Referral record with Convert selected from the arrow menu on the right
  4. Select whether to create an account or choose an existing one. Since Kiara already has an account at Bob’s company, he selects Choose Existing and searches for her account.
  5. Click Convert.

A dialogue appears telling you that you’ve converted the referral to an opportunity. Click the opportunity to finish fulfilling the client’s need. Just like the process for converting a referral to an opportunity, your company determines the steps you take to complete an opportunity.

You’re comfortable with referrals now and understand the role they play in helping customers and expanding your business. In the next unit, you learn how to track important client metrics across your books of business.

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