Faced with a referral well that has run dry, this is what advisors need to do, says Michael Kitces

Advisors’ client referral challenge was front and center on the second day of the Future Proof festival in Huntington Beach, Calif. Tuesday, with industry figure Michael Kitces kicking off the day’s events with his latest research on advisor marketing.

“It is harder than we think to make clients refer faster or more because the truth is that at some point the well just goes dry and they referred all the people they know from their personal network,” he told InvestmentNews. “A lot of founders remember when they used to grow more from referrals and then wonder why it slowed and assume that it’s because their advisors are doing a bad job asking for referrals and generating referrals.”

“The truth is that it’s simply because the founder was with the client in the early stage when referral flow tends to be high and now they already drilled that well – they are complaining that their advisors are not pulling things out of a dry well,” he added.

Reducing the risk that clients refer the wrong person can go a long way to resolving this issue, according to Kitces. “Really getting clear on your ideal persona, being clear about fees and minimums … so people can just refer prospects to your website and just let them sort that out for themselves – they don’t have an awkward conversation about money with their friend or their neighbor.”

Earlier, Kitces was the first of the day's speakers on the festival’s Ocean Stage. The self-proclaimed chief financial planning nerd at Kitces.com explained that 43% of consumers find their way to an advisor because they asked friends and families for a referral.

In the 2026 Marketing Study, Kitces found that about a quarter of consumers find their way to an advisor through an event or networking gathering, while about 20% find an advisor through a third party that they trust, such as an attorney or an accountant.

Kitces’ research also found that only about 4% of consumers find their way to an advisor through a search engine or AI.

“It’s actually a fairly limited segment,” he said, during his presentation. “There are about 120 million households in the U.S. and about 30 million of them have at least $100,000 of investable assets outside their primary residence … so if it’s only a couple of percent of 30 million people there’s still, like a million consumers a year who are finding their through search engine optimization, AI, etc.”

Understandably, referral data is of great value to advisors looking to grow their businesses. Earlier this year, for example, a study by Ficomm Partners and research firm Absolute Engagement found that wealthy investors are less referral dependent than advisors think.