How to Show Up at the Top of Google Searches

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

More and more investors are con­duct­ing google searches as part of their pur­chase process  – and not just for restau­rants and car deal­ers but also for pro­fes­sion­als such as lawyers and finan­cial advisors.

And while con­duct­ing google searches for advi­sors has not entered the main­stream among older investors it is becom­ing increas­ingly common-place among clients in their 30’s and 40’s.

Today fea­tures a 32 page report from Google on how to max­i­mize the chances of show­ing up first on searches for finan­cial advi­sors in your communities.

The report pro­vides tips on:
• Accu­rate page titles
• Improv­ing your site struc­ture
• Opti­miz­ing con­tent
• Mak­ing bet­ter use of images
• Using header tags
• Mak­ing your site mobile-phone friendly
• Pro­mot­ing your site effectively

Click here for the full report.

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Tags: Car Dealers, Financial Advisors, Google, Google Searches, Header Tags, Images, Lawyers, Mainstream, Mobile Phone, Older Investors, Page Titles, Restaurants
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What to Say When a Friend Doesn’t Want to be Your Client

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Many great client rela­tion­ships emerge from friendships.

That said, some investors are uncom­fort­able work­ing with advi­sors with whom they have close friend­ships – some­thing I was  reminded of last week by an email from a vet­eran advi­sor in New York City with a ques­tion that many advi­sors grap­ple with – how to respond when a good friend elim­i­nates the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing together, pre­cisely because of your friendship.

Here’s the email:

“I won­der if you have any sug­ges­tions on how to respond when a close friend con­fides to you that they are look­ing for a finan­cial advi­sor but pre­fer to keep busi­ness and friend­ships separate?

For years now I’ve peri­od­i­cally been in this sit­u­a­tion but have not had a com­fort­able response.”

Mix­ing busi­ness and friendships

It’s not only clients who have con­cerns about mix­ing busi­ness and per­sonal friend­ships – I’ve talked to advi­sors who make a con­scious deci­sion not to mar­ket within their per­sonal net­work. In some cases this is because of con­cerns that mar­ket­ing to friends will be seen as intru­sive and posi­tion you as a sales­per­son, in other instances it’s because advi­sors don’t want to jeop­ar­dize friend­ships should peo­ple feel let down dur­ing choppy markets.

When friends say they’re uncom­fort­able mix­ing busi­ness and friend­ship, you have three alternatives:

1. Try to change your friend’s mind
2. Sug­gest that they con­sider work­ing with another advi­sor on your team (depend­ing on the size of your team)
3. Offer to intro­duce them to other advi­sors, either at your firm or at other firms.

Note that your response here is very much one of per­sonal pref­er­ence – and in some cases may depend on your rela­tion­ship with the per­son you’re talk­ing to.

Option 1: Chang­ing your friend’s mind

This would not nor­mally be my rec­om­mended course of action – I believe that as pro­fes­sion­als we all have to respect the stated pref­er­ences of our friends and fam­ily, no mat­ter how much we might want to work with them.

That said, if you want to try to change your friend’s mind, start by defus­ing the ten­sion they’ll often be feel­ing, with a response like:

“I appre­ci­ate your shar­ing how you feel. This is very much a mat­ter of per­sonal pref­er­ence, many peo­ple are com­fort­able work­ing with friends, oth­ers aren’t. And on this kind of deci­sion I really think you need to fol­low your instinct. So I’m absolutely fine with your deci­sion here.”

Pause to allow your friend to respond, then you could con­tinue with some­thing like:

“Just so I under­stand this bet­ter, I won­der if you could help clar­ify the back­ground to your deci­sion. Have you had bad expe­ri­ences in the past with friends with whom you began doing business?”

At this point, you need to sit back and lis­ten and con­cen­trate on acknowl­edg­ing what your friend has to say. I don’t sug­gest that you try to change their minds in this ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion, rather make a men­tal note of the con­ver­sa­tion for future ref­er­ence, for a time when you’re talk­ing to your friend in a con­text that lends itself to com­fort­ably rais­ing this topic..

At the end of your friend’s answer, I would con­clude the con­ver­sa­tion unless they truly seem to want to dis­cuss this fur­ther – you don’t want to appear to be beat­ing this topic to death. You might con­sider, how­ever, clos­ing by ask­ing your friend if they’d like to stay on your email list, per­haps with a sen­tence like:

“Thanks again for your hon­esty about this. Please let me know if I can be of assis­tance at any time – in the mean­while, would you like to stay on the dis­tri­b­u­tion list for my emails and invites to the lunches I hold, this is entirely your call, I’m happy to leave you on but am equally happy to take you off the list.”

A word of warn­ing here: Don’t try to sup­press your friend’s objec­tion with clichéd objec­tion han­dling tech­niques like “Feel, Felt, Found:”

“I under­stand how you feel.”

“I’ve talked to friends in the past who ini­tially felt the same way.”

“But what they found once we dug into this fur­ther is that we were able to come to a work­ing rela­tion­ship that fully met their needs and with which they were com­pletely comfortable.”

Lines like this one work because peo­ple feel under pres­sure to con­form to the expe­ri­ences of oth­ers. And in fact, on occa­sion you may have suc­cess with this approach for that rea­son. Ulti­mately, though, you haven’t addressed the con­cern, you’ve buried it – and it’s unlikely that this addresses your friend’s nag­ging doubts in the long-term. Mean­while, any inter­ac­tion where cur­rent or exist­ing clients feel undue pres­sure under­mines your rela­tion­ships, rather than enhanc­ing them and risks posi­tion­ing you as a product-pushing sales­per­son rather than a pro­fes­sional advisor.

Option 2: Work­ing with other advi­sors on your team

The advi­sor who sent me the email is one of three wealth man­agers with a 12-person bou­tique firm.

Again, first acknowl­edge the con­cerns that your friend has expressed:

“I can sym­pa­thize with your point of view here. This kind of deci­sion is very per­sonal – while some good friends have become my clients and some clients have become good friends, you should absolutely go with your instincts here.”

After paus­ing for a reac­tion from your friend (chances it will be one of relief for your under­stand­ing), this advi­sor could con­tinue on.

“There are a cou­ple of options here, if you’re inter­ested. First, I could intro­duce you to one or two advi­sors at other firms that I have respect for and con­fi­dence in. Alter­na­tively, I could intro­duce you to one of the two other wealth man­agers at my firm who might be a good fit for you.  These are out­stand­ing col­leagues who I’ve got a lot of respect for, I’m con­fi­dent that one of them could fit your needs. Just to be clear, you and I wouldn’t be work­ing together directly but you’d still get the ben­e­fit of my thinking.”

Hav­ing said this, again sit back and lis­ten. Note that phras­ing this as you have you give your friend a com­fort­able option should they feel that not only don’t they want to work with you, they don’t want to work with your firm.

The key is to put this in your own words, so that you can deliver this com­fort­ably. One sug­ges­tion – do try to keep your answer as short as pos­si­ble.
Option 3: Mak­ing a refer­ral to other advisors

In many regards this is the most com­fort­able response for both advi­sors and peo­ple in your net­work – all you’re doing here is offer­ing to help friends con­nect with some­one who can meet their needs, with no vested inter­est on your part.

Again start by val­i­dat­ing your friend’s concern:

“I can sym­pa­thize with your point of view here – you’re not unique, I run into quite a few peo­ple who feel the same way.”

Then go on to say:

“The good news is that I’m not the only good advi­sor in this com­mu­nity, there are lots of excel­lent advi­sors. Let me know if at any time you’d like me to intro­duce you to one or two advi­sors who you could sit down with to get a sense of their approach, these could be other advi­sors at my firm or advi­sors at other firms.”

And then leave it at that – at this point you’ve made the offer, now let your friend decide how to pro­ceed.  That said, if friends do take you up on your offer and you intro­duce them to other advi­sors, there’s noth­ing wrong with let­ting these advi­sors know that you’d wel­come rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing intro­duc­tions should they run into the same sit­u­a­tion that you did.

One of the rea­sons that advi­sors are unhappy with their response to a state­ment like “I want to keep busi­ness and friend­ships sep­a­rate” is that they haven’t thought their answer through before­hand. Even if you haven’t run into this sit­u­a­tion in the past, chances are you will in future – con­sider tak­ing time to rehearse how you’ll respond. Chances are a two minute rehearsal will pay div­i­dends in a much stronger answer when you do run into this comment.

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Tags: Choppy Markets, Client Relationships, Conscious Decision, dan richards, Email, Friend Doesn, Friends, Friendship, Good Friend, Instances, Investors, Marketing, New York City, Option 1, Personal Friendships, Personal Network, Personal Preference, Relationship, Salesperson, Team 3
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Three Minutes That Lost a New Client

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Being a finan­cial advi­sor can be a roller coaster – one week you get a refer­ral that leads to a ter­rific new client, the next you lose a long-standing rela­tion­ship for rea­sons entirely beyond your con­trol. A recent call from a suc­cess­ful advi­sor look­ing for advice reminded of the fine line between suc­cess and failure.

An engi­neer by train­ing, Bob came into the invest­ment indus­try fif­teen years ago, today he runs a grow­ing prac­tice focused on mid and high-level cor­po­rate exec­u­tives in the tech and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. Last fall, he invited top clients to a mar­ket out­look lunch at a pri­vate room at a top local restau­rant. He asked clients inter­ested in attend­ing to call him directly to dis­cuss spe­cific ques­tions they wanted to address.

Bob sent out 50 invi­ta­tions and had about 15 clients say yes, over twice the response to sand­wich lunches in his board­room. (A free meal shouldn’t make a dif­fer­ence to mil­lion dol­lar clients, but expe­ri­ence shows that it does.) After talk­ing on the phone to the clients attend­ing about what they’d like to cover, he men­tioned that while this lunch was pri­mar­ily for exist­ing clients, he did have a few extra spots and asked if they had one friend or co-worker who might be inter­ested in attend­ing as their guest.

Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on an opening

A client in a senior role at a mid-sized tech com­pany brought along a work col­league, let’s call his guest Jim. Both the exist­ing client and Jim had sub­stan­tial equity in their firm, while they might not be huge clients cur­rently, they both rep­re­sent very sig­nif­i­cant future potential.

The lunch went well with lots of inter­ac­tion and dis­cus­sion. Next morn­ing, Bob called his client to get his impres­sions of the lunch and also to get per­mis­sion to fol­low up with Jim. While that follow-up call was politely received, Jim begged off an imme­di­ate meet­ing due to travel and work pres­sures, but did agree that Bob could add him to his monthly email list and then fol­low up in January.

Bob con­nected with Jim early in the new year and they agreed to meet for a casual con­ver­sa­tion over a mid-morning cof­fee at a Star­bucks across the street from Jim’s office. Bob got there early to ensure that they got a table in the cor­ner and was wait­ing when Jim arrived.

After get­ting there cof­fees, Bob thanked Jim for tak­ing the time to meet and said that his goal was sim­ply to get to know Jim bet­ter, then asked if he had any­thing in par­tic­u­lar he’d like to get out of their con­ver­sa­tion. Jim paused, thought for a moment and said, “Not really, no” … and then went on to say: “Before com­ing over, I glanced at your pro­file on Linked-In, was a bit sur­prised to see that the only thing there was your cur­rent role with­out any his­tory or back­ground, so I’d like to hear more about you.”

He then went on to say: “I assume you’ve looked at my Linked-In pro­file, do you have any ques­tions about my back­ground?”   There was an awk­ward pause while Jim waited for Bob’s answer. Bob first of all explained that updat­ing his Linked-In pro­file was on his to-do list, but other pri­or­i­ties had got in the way. And he apol­o­gized that he didn’t have a chance to look at Jim’s pro­file before their meet­ing and asked him to tell him a bit about himself.

Bob and Jim went on to have a cor­dial con­ver­sa­tion. When the meet­ing wrapped up after 30 min­utes, Bob sug­gested sched­ul­ing a time for a more in-depth dis­cus­sion of Jim’s sit­u­a­tion. Jim thanked him for for the offer, but said that while he’d enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tion, given how busy he is, he’s not inter­ested in talk­ing fur­ther at this point. Jim did agree that Bob could keep on his monthly email list and that he could check back in 12 months, but Bob walked away feel­ing that what had seemed a promis­ing oppor­tu­nity had turned cold.

The new expec­ta­tions for meet­ing preparation

Bob called me later that day to get my thoughts on how he should fol­low up with Jim and also what he could learn from the meet­ing. There were two obvi­ous take­aways from the meet­ing with Jim:

First, before con­tact­ing prospects and cer­tainly before meet­ing them, advi­sors will more and more need to get into the habit of first check­ing prospects’ Linked-In pro­files. This is obvi­ously less rel­e­vant if you work with retirees, but if you work with busi­ness own­ers or pro­fes­sion­als and cer­tainly if you work in the tech space as Bob does, this has become expected behav­iour. More and more, not check­ing someone’s Linked-In pro­file before call­ing them or meet­ing them will send the sig­nal that you’re not seri­ous enough to invest three min­utes in basic research. (Note that Bob could have checked Jim’s pro­file while wait­ing for him at Starbucks.)

Sec­ond, advi­sors need to get seri­ous about their own Linked-In pro­files. I rec­og­nize that some firms still limit what advi­sors can put on their Linked-In pro­files (although I’m not clear as to why there should be dif­fer­ent stan­dards for Linked-In vs advi­sor web­sites), but the indus­try as a whole needs to adjust to today’s real­ity here and do it sooner rather than later.

With regard to how to fol­low up with Jim, I sug­gested that Bob update his LinkedIn pro­file and then send Jim a note, thank­ing him for pro­vid­ing the impe­tus to move this up Bob’s pri­or­ity list. This won’t recoup all the ground that was lost, but per­haps will be a beginning.

For advi­sors who want to know more about how to incor­po­rate Linked-In to your prac­tice, below are links to two arti­cles that appeared last year:

The Game-Changer for Attract­ing Afflu­ent Clients

8 Steps to a Prof­itable LinkedIn Strategy

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Tags: Boardroom, Co Worker, Corporate Executives, Email List, Fifteen Years, Impressions, Investment Industry, Invitations, Local Restaurant, Manufacturing Industries, Market Outlook, Next Morning, Private Room, Referral, Roller Coaster, Sandwich Lunches, Substantial Equity, Success And Failure, Three Minutes, Work Colleague
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Making 2013 Your Breakthrough Year for New Clients

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

With the first month of 2013 behind us, many of those res­o­lu­tions at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary relat­ing to diet, weight or exer­cise are dis­tant mem­o­ries. That’s why this might be an oppor­tune time to con­sider a new res­o­lu­tion for 2013 relat­ing to your busi­ness – and that’s to make this the year that you get really seri­ous about bring­ing new clients on board.

I was reminded of this by two dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions last fall from two dif­fer­ent branch man­agers frus­trated by the lack of prospect­ing activ­ity among the advi­sors in their branches. There was a con­sis­tent theme to their com­ments: While the large major­ity of advi­sors do a rea­son­ably good job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing clients, other than hop­ing for refer­rals from their client base, most advi­sors in their branches dis­played lit­tle empha­sis on prospect­ing activ­ity and on attract­ing new clients.

In con­ver­sa­tions with advi­sors, there are four pri­mary rea­sons for the lack of prospect­ing focus: loss of con­fi­dence, lack of pri­or­ity, no clear prospect­ing plan and fail­ure to estab­lish a prospect­ing rou­tine. Let’s talk about what you can do in 2013 to address each of these.

Con­fi­dence

When talk­ing to poten­tial clients, you need to believe that prospects would be bet­ter off work­ing with you than where they are now or with other advi­sors. But for prospects to believe that, first you have feel that way.

I’ve talked to advi­sors who lack that fun­da­men­tal con­vic­tion and are ques­tion­ing the value they  pro­vide to their clients.  I recently spoke with an advi­sor who feels that over the past fif­teen years she’s let clients down, as tough mar­kets have meant that plans that clients had back then have had to be adjusted down­wards, with retire­ments post­poned, hol­i­days deferred and lifestyles scaled back.

The first nec­es­sary con­di­tion to be develop prospect­ing momen­tum is to have the gut feel­ing that prospects would be for­tu­nate to work with you. If you don’t have that con­fi­dence, then you’re unlikely to be suc­cess­ful in devel­op­ing prospect­ing momen­tum. Some­thing that helped one advi­sor was adding an agenda item to his Mon­day morn­ing team meet­ings, in which some­one shares an expe­ri­ence from the pre­vi­ous week where a client thanked them for the job they’d done or the dif­fer­ence they’d made. Alter­na­tively, they select a plan update they’ve reviewed the week before and talk about the how the client is bet­ter off as a result of the deci­sions that were made.

Pri­or­ity

When most advi­sors entered the busi­ness, prospect­ing was a sur­vival issue — if you weren’t suc­cess­ful in attract­ing new clients, your career in the indus­try would be a short one. This is a stark con­trast to today’s mind­set — while most advi­sors know they should prospect, many see this as a “nice to do” activ­ity rather than a crit­i­cal issue for the health of their businesses.

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Tags: Branch Managers, Breakthrough Year, Confidence, Consistent Theme, Conversations, Conviction, Distant Memories, Fifteen Years, Good Job, Gut Feeling, Lifestyles, Momentum, Necessary Condition, New Resolution, Opportune Time, Priority, Prospects, Referrals, Resolutions, Retirements
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Four Steps to Get in Front of Million-Dollar Prospects

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

For most advi­sors, once you’re face to face with a prospect, you have an excel­lent chance of sign­ing them up – not the slam dunk that it might have been fif­teen or twenty years ago, but good odds nevertheless.

The big chal­lenge is get­ting that face to face meet­ing. That’s why I was inter­ested in an email from an inde­pen­dent advi­sor in a mid-sized com­mu­nity in the U.S. mid­west, ask­ing for my advice on fol­low­ing up with a prospect who’d opened the door to sit­ting down.

The ben­e­fits of stay­ing top of mind

This advi­sor, let’s call him Andrew, has been send­ing his newslet­ter to a prospect named Phil for sev­eral years. Andrew knows that Phil has at least $2 mil­lion in invest­ments and from his ini­tial take would be a pleas­ant client to deal with.

In Decem­ber, Andrew sent Phil an email men­tion­ing that it had been some time since they had spo­ken. He sug­gested sched­ul­ing a meet­ing for some point in Jan­u­ary and also sug­gested that it would make the meet­ing more pro­duc­tive if Phil could email him his cur­rent state­ment beforehand.

Phil responded by email quickly, mak­ing four points:

1.     He’d be happy to sit down and has good avail­abil­ity to meet –he always finds that he learns from sit­ting down with pro­fes­sion­als such as Andrew.

2.     How­ever, he wants to make it clear that he’s not look­ing to make a change and is not sure it would be a good use of Andrew’s time.

3.     Email­ing the rel­e­vant com­po­nent of his invest­ment state­ment is prob­lem­atic, given that the last state­ment for his Mer­rill Lynch uni­fied account was over 120 pages.

4.     Finally, he thanked Andrew for his newslet­ter, which he reads and enjoys

So Andrew’s ques­tion to me: How would I respond in his sit­u­a­tion?  Before read­ing on, con­sider what you would tell Andrew and what this exchange tells us about attract­ing new clients today.

The value of get­ting face to face

This inter­ac­tion demon­strates four prin­ci­ples when it comes to get­ting in front of prospects:

1.     Widen your net

Suc­cess­ful advi­sors rec­og­nize that prospect­ing is a num­bers game. Cer­tainly you can do some things to increase the odds of suc­cess, but if you com­mu­ni­cate with 50 qual­i­fied prospects, your chances of land­ing new clients are always bet­ter than if you’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing with  5 or 10. Andrew’s focus on expand­ing the base of prospects with whom he’s com­mu­ni­cat­ing was the crit­i­cal first step.

2.     Pro­vide clear value

Once a prospect has agreed to receive infor­ma­tion, you have to have the right qual­ity at the right fre­quency. If Phil hadn’t been impressed by the con­tents of Andrew’s newslet­ter, chances are that he wouldn’t have been open to meet­ing. And odds are that if Andrew’s newslet­ter had been two or three times a year rather than monthly, it wouldn’t have made the same impact.

3.     Be patient

Note that Phil had heard from Andrew for a num­ber of years before being pre­sented with the chance to meet – for­tu­nately, email allows you to com­mu­ni­cate much more eas­ily with greater fre­quency at lower cost than would have been pos­si­ble even ten years ago.

4.     Take the initiative

Even if prospects are impressed by the infor­ma­tion they get from you, you can’t wait for them to call – you still have to take the ini­tia­tive to get in front of them. If Andrew hadn’t sent Phil that email, then the chance to meet wouldn’t have pre­sented itself.

Fol­low­ing up when the door is open

With regard to my advice to Andrew, in my view his para­mount goal should be to get face to face with Phil in a fash­ion that accom­plishes four things:

1.     It helps him gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of Phil’s situation

2.     It  rein­forces  Andrew’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the value that he pro­vides to clients

3.     It builds a deeper bond and increases Phil’s com­fort with him

4.     It con­veys Andrew’s con­fi­dence in the value of his time – if he appears too anx­ious to meet, then his chances of suc­cess in mov­ing for­ward go down dramatically.

Given that, in Andrew’s sit­u­a­tion I would call Phil and say:

1. I’m delighted that you find my newslet­ter helpful

2. I appre­ci­ate your being upfront about not mak­ing a change at this time, but am happy to invest the time to sit down and get to know you bet­ter with no expec­ta­tions of any­thing com­ing from that in the imme­di­ate period ahead

3.  With regard to your state­ment, I sug­gest that we sched­ule a con­ve­nient time for you to meet at my office and that you bring your state­ment along. While we’re meet­ing, I can have the rel­e­vant parts copied … depend­ing on how our con­ver­sa­tion goes, I would be happy to review it and get back to you with any thoughts and suggestions

This also has the advan­tage of putting the meet­ing on Andrew’s turf – some­times ask­ing prospects to come to you can be a test of seri­ous­ness on their part.

One final note: While I rec­og­nize that we’d all like to see state­ments of prospects’ invest­ment accounts in advance of our first meet­ing, it’s rarely a good idea to ask prospects to share their invest­ment details with you in advance of your ini­tial meet­ing (and cer­tainly before even agree­ing to a meet­ing, as Andrew did.)

Rec­og­niz­ing that it nor­mally takes at least a cou­ple of meet­ings to bring a prospect on board, ask for one com­mit­ment at a time. Focus first on get­ting the ini­tial meet­ing; once a meet­ing has been sched­uled you can ask prospects to bring their invest­ment state­ments with them, should they want to refer to them dur­ing the meet­ing.  If it feels right, towards the end of the meet­ing you can sug­gest sched­ul­ing a time to talk fur­ther, in advance of which you would review their invest­ment sit­u­a­tion in light of the con­ver­sa­tion you’ve just had.

As you think about your own prospect­ing plans for 2013, con­sider whether any of the lessons from Andrew’s suc­cess in get­ting in front of a two-million dol­lar prospect apply to your busi­ness. If the answer is yes, iden­tify when you’re going to dis­cuss this with your team with a view to build­ing this into your routine.

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Tags: Dollar, Email, Face To Face, Four Points, Four Steps, Independent Advisor, Interaction, Investment Statement, Investments, Merrill Lynch, Midwest, Newsletter, Odds, Prospects, Sit, Slam Dunk, Time 3, Twenty Years
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The Choices That Predict Future Performance

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

In the Oscar win­ning film Mon­ey­ball, base­ball Gen­eral Man­ager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) chal­lenged con­ven­tional wis­dom by tak­ing a data dri­ven approach to acquir­ing play­ers for the Oak­land As. Cen­tral to his suc­cess was employ­ing sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis to iden­tify the fac­tors that con­tribute to win­ning teams and the play­ers whose value was under­rated based on those fac­tors, replac­ing intuition.

Recently, Toronto soft­ware firm PriceMetrix released a report Mon­ey­ball for Advi­sors. Using its detailed data­base of per­for­mance by 35,000 advi­sors at a cross sec­tion of Cana­dian and US firms, PriceMetrix first looked at pro­duc­tion in 2006 for advi­sors who’d been in the busi­ness for between 5 and 20 years. It then looked at pro­duc­tion in 2011 for these same advi­sors – with a view to iden­ti­fy­ing advi­sors’ behav­iour in 2006 that pre­dicted pro­duc­tion five years later.

Designed as a resource for head offices when recruit­ing advi­sors at com­pet­ing firms, the report is also use­ful for advi­sors look­ing to max­i­mize their future pro­duc­tion. PriceMetrix looked at dozens of vari­ables, before hom­ing in on three that cor­re­lated with future production:

1.The source of revenue

It’s no sur­prise that pro­duc­tion in 2006 was strongly cor­re­lated with pro­duc­tion five years later, but PriceMetrix found that when it came to pre­dict­ing future pro­duc­tion, all income was not equal. Of the three forms of income – trans­ac­tional, trailer and fee-based – fee rev­enue was far and away the most pre­dic­tive of pro­duc­tion in 2011.

2.The pro­file of client households

The sec­ond fac­tor that pre­dicted future pro­duc­tion was the com­po­si­tion of books and the num­ber of large vs small house­holds. You could have two advi­sors with the same level of pro­duc­tion but dif­fer­ent house­hold com­po­si­tion led to sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent lev­els of future pro­duc­tion. An above-average num­ber of larger house­holds (those with assets over $250,000) led to higher future pro­duc­tion, an over­weight of smaller house­holds with assets under $250,000 led to lower future production.

3.The depth of relationships

The final vari­able that cor­re­lated with future pro­duc­tion was the depth of client rela­tion­ships; PriceMetrix used hav­ing the client’s retire­ment account and the num­ber of accounts per house­hold as the proxy for depth of rela­tion­ships. The more fre­quently that an advi­sor held clients’ retire­ment accounts and had mul­ti­ple accounts, the greater the pro­duc­tion in five years time.

As you think about your own plans for 2013, con­sider how to fac­tor the three vari­ables of fee rev­enue, focus on larger house­holds and mul­ti­ple accounts into your pri­or­i­ties for next year. To read the full report on Mon­ey­ball for Advi­sors, go to  http://​www​.pricemetrix​.com/​m​o​n​e​y​b​a​l​l​-​f​o​r​-​a​d​v​i​s​o​rs/

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Tags: Assets, Baseball, Billy Beane, Books, Brad Pitt, Choices, Conventional Wisdom, Cross Section, Dozens, Driven Approach, Household Composition, Households, Intuition, Moneyball, Profile, Software Firm, Statistical Analysis, Surprise, Variables
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A Lunch that Led to Three New Clients

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

As things wind down for the hol­i­days, many advi­sors are using this week to put together plans for 2013. If you’re still final­iz­ing prospect­ing activ­ity for next year, you might be inter­ested in a recent con­ver­sa­tion with an advi­sor, let’s call him Bob, who helped orga­nize a low cost lunch this fall that led to three new clients.

Trans­lat­ing infor­mal rela­tion­ships into joint activity

Bob works in a mid-sized com­mu­nity in south-west Ontario. The ini­tia­tive started with two sep­a­rate Sep­tem­ber con­ver­sa­tions with an accoun­tant and lawyer who he’d come to know well. While they had been infor­mally refer­ring clients to each other for some time, there had been no for­mal joint marketing.

The three of them got together and decided to invite their top clients to a Fri­day lunch in mid Novem­ber at a local coun­try club. The lun­cheon was adver­tised as offer­ing “Prac­ti­cal strate­gies to reduce your taxes” and fea­tured pho­tos and short bios of each of the three par­tic­i­pants. Six weeks in advance of the lunch, the part­ners in this ini­tia­tive each mailed invi­ta­tions to 25 to 30 clients; any­one who hadn’t responded within two weeks got a fol­low up call. Out of 80 invi­ta­tions, they had had almost 40 pos­i­tive responses.

In the con­fir­ma­tion to every­one who RSVP’d, clients were invited to extend an invi­ta­tion to friends or col­leagues, lead­ing to a few addi­tional guests. Note that a 50% accep­tance rate is excep­tion­ally high – the coun­try club loca­tion undoubt­edly helped, but remem­ber that this was a mid-sized com­mu­nity. You wouldn’t see this kind of response in Mon­treal, Toronto, Cal­gary or Vancouver.

Deliv­er­ing value to attendees

The day of the lunch of the lunch dawned bright (weather is always a risk once you’re into Novem­ber). The invi­ta­tion said the lunch would be from 12:30 to 2:00 pm, with a recep­tion start­ing at 12:00 pm. By 12:05 pm the room was packed and they got under­way promptly at 12:30 pm with a full house.

To max­i­mize use of the time, salad, sand­wiches and dessert were already on each table. At 12:40 pm the three hosts wel­comed the guests and from 12:45 to 1:30 pm, each deliv­ered a 15 minute pre­sen­ta­tion. Note that the pre­sen­ters spent no time talk­ing about their busi­ness or approach or how great they were; rather they used their 15 min­utes to briefly describe tan­gi­ble, con­crete strate­gies revolv­ing around reduc­ing taxes.

Bob’s focus was on the advan­tages of invest­ments which offered return of prin­ci­ple. He explained the con­cept and then pro­vided spe­cific exam­ples such as mutual fund series that focused on return of prin­ci­ple and annu­ities; he used back to back annu­ities as an exam­ple of how return of prin­ci­ple reduces tax lia­bil­ity com­pared to GICs or gov­ern­ment bonds.

Con­vert­ing good will to new clients

At 1:30 pm, they opened the meet­ing up for a short ques­tion period. At 1:45 pm, they asked atten­dees to com­plete a feed­back form, which they col­lected and then did a draw from responses for gift cer­tifi­cates at a local restau­rant.  While there was no hard sell around next steps, the feed­back form con­tained a box for atten­dees to express inter­est in receiv­ing ongo­ing email newslet­ters from the three pre­sen­ters. As well, they were given the oppor­tu­nity to request a follow-up call; in addi­tion, the hand­out con­tained busi­ness cards and con­tact infor­ma­tion for the three partners.

Bob’s share of the cost for the lunch was about $1200. For this invest­ment, three pos­i­tive things emerged:

1.       He got great feed­back from the clients who attended.

2.       He deep­ened his top of mind aware­ness and rela­tion­ships with the accoun­tant and lawyer with whom he part­nered on this and has seen an accel­er­a­tion of refer­rals since they began work­ing on this.

3.       Each of the three part­ners got a num­ber of leads from the lunch from the clients of the other pre­sen­ters, which in all three cases have led to new clients. In Bob’s case, he can point to three new clients as a result of the lunch, with a num­ber of other prospects in the room who asked to be added to his newsletter.

When you think about what took place, we shouldn’t be sur­prised to see a pos­i­tive out­come. After all, Bob was effec­tively endors­ing the other two pre­sen­ters to his clients in the room and they were in turn endors­ing their clients to him. And the fact that clients were pro­vided with con­crete value and spe­cific ideas clearly helped also.

Bob and his part­ners have already planned to do two fol­low up lunches in 2013, one in the spring and another in the fall. As you think about your own plans for 2013, con­sider whether there are one, two or three pro­fes­sion­als with whom you have good rela­tion­ships and who you trust and respect, that it might make sense to dis­cuss an idea along these lines.

Note that this doesn’t have to be a joint event – I talked ear­lier this year to one advi­sor who part­nered with a lawyer to do two lunches, one in his board­room for his clients at which the accoun­tant was a guest speaker and then a rec­i­p­ro­cal lunch for the accountant’s clients at which the advi­sor spoke.  There are many mod­els for suc­cess – as you think about 2013, con­sider whether you can adapt Bob’s lunch to your own situation.

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Tags: Acceptance Rate, Accountant, Attendees, Bios, Calgary, Club Location, Colleagues, Confirmation, Conversations, Full House, Informal Relationships, Invitation, Invitations, Joint Marketing, Local Country, Lunch, Luncheon, Six Weeks, Three Participants, West Ontario
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An Invitation That Lost a $5 Million Account

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion, an advi­sor asked me what one qual­ity, more than any other, he should work to get clients to asso­ciate with him. There are clearly lots of can­di­dates – dis­ci­plined, pro­fes­sional and client-oriented, to name just three. But my answer was none of those – if I had to pick one attribute, it would be “my advi­sor truly makes me feel special.”

That’s because that sen­ti­ment cap­tures lots of other pos­i­tives -  not only do you do a good job, but you truly lis­ten, have a deep under­stand­ing of client needs, make com­mu­ni­ca­tion a pri­or­ity and value their busi­ness. In an increas­ingly imper­sonal world, being made to feel spe­cial and truly val­ued by the com­pa­nies to whom we give busi­ness hap­pens less and less often – which cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity to stand out.

There’s clear upside to mak­ing clients feel like we’re giv­ing them spe­cial atten­tion – but also big down­side if they feel unac­knowl­edged. Today’s arti­cle describes one exam­ple of that down­side: Prac­tice Management’s Black­hole: Process Over­load by Matt Oech­sli

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Tags: 5 Million, Attribute, Blackhole, Business World, Communication, Compendium, Downside, Good Job, Impersonal World, Invitation, Lost, Matt Oechsli, Nbsp, Opportunity, Practice Management, Priority, Sentiment, Target
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What Successful People Do Differently (Harvard Business Review)

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

What Suc­cess­ful Peo­ple Do Differently

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

One of 2012’s most read arti­cles on the Har­vard Busi­ness Review web­site is by psy­chol­o­gist Heidi Halvor­son, author of the book Suc­ceed: How We Can Reach our Goals.

In this arti­cle she out­lines nine things that suc­cess­ful peo­ple do differently:

1. Get specific

2. Seize the moment

3. Track progress

4. Be a real­is­tic optimist

5. Focus on get­ting better

6. Have grit

7. Build your willpower muscle

8. Don’t tempt fate

9. Focus on what you will do – not what you won’t

To become more pro­duc­tive and join the ranks of “truly suc­cess­ful” peo­ple, take three minute to read the arti­cle – and then pick one of these nine things to focus on in 2013.

Here’s the link – note that you may have to reg­is­ter for this site (at no cost) to read the article.

http://​blogs​.hbr​.org/​c​s​/​2​0​1​1​/​0​2​/​n​i​n​e​_​t​h​i​n​g​s​_​s​u​c​c​e​s​s​f​u​l​_​p​e​o​p​l​e​.​h​tml

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Tags: Business People, Business Website, Copyright, Fate, Focus, Grit, Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Review, Hbr, Heidi, Optimist, Psychologist, Successful People, Track Progress
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