Jeff Concepcion is a financial advisor who never carries business cards.

When he talks with potential clients, he takes their information and makes a follow-up call a few days later, so he is sure of a second contact.

That is one way Concepcion has turned the process of obtaining new prospects and referrals into an active rather than a passive campaign.

Concepcion is president and CEO of Stratos Wealth Partners, an RIA firm based in Solon, Ohio, with 150 advisors in 17 states. The firm, which opened its first office in February 2009, currently has more than $1.05 billion in client assets under management in advisory accounts and an additional $5.1 billion in brokerage assets held in accounts with LPL Financial, Stratos Wealth Partners' broker/dealer, and is still growing.

Concepcion attributes his success partly to his "go-get-‘em" style of seeking referrals. He has regular meetings with advisors in the firm to help them turn the passive referral system most advisors use on its head.

“If you give someone your business card, it is going to go in their pocket and you are never going to get a call,” Concepcion says. So instead of waiting for prospects to call him, Concepcion calls them.

Another technique he recommends advisors use is asking clients for names of new prospects. That might seem routine, but Stratos advisors ask for 100 names, which seems impossible.

“When you have done a really good job for someone, you can ask them for a large list of referrals. When they say they do not know that many people, you ask if you can see their accounts payable and accounts receivable,” says Concepcion, who deals with a lot of business owners.

“For one business owner who is a client, we went back to him with the names of all the other business owners in his industrial park. Then you talk to the business owner’s spouse and ask what organizations he or she is involved in and you get those contacts,” he says.

Concepcion then composes a letter of introduction and gets permission to send it to the contacts on the business owner’s letterhead. He and his advisors will get three or four new clients out of this process each time, he says. He then uses the letters on business owners’ letterhead as examples when asking another client to do the same.

There also are “diamonds in the advisors’ own backyards” that most do not cultivate, Concepcion says. Instead of just asking alliance partners to refer his firm to their clients, like most advisors do, Concepcion tells his advisors to be more proactive about the process.

“Create your ideal client profile and share it with the CPAs, attorneys and others you work with,” he says. That way you get the kind of referrals you want, he says.

Then schedule a meeting once a month with one partner and ask him or her to have three or four people picked out for referrals. Concepcion then asks the alliance partner to make the introductory telephone call and he takes it from there. Concepcion and his advisors hold reciprocal meetings for the partners.

In each case, he asks the person who becomes a client to send a note of thanks back to the client who made the referral to reinforce the process.

Chris Walling, managing partner at Stratos, has developed another active technique that he uses to gain new clients. He works with business executives and has created a short handbook on what to look for financially when joining or leaving a company and on financial strategies for corporate executives. He gives it to one person and then asks who else in the company might be interested in the handbook.

Walling also asks the executives, who are usually involved in several business organizations, for contacts within the organizations.

“This is a more structured process for getting referrals. Most advisors are too passive,” Concepcion says. “These techniques put the required teeth into it to be more effective.”