Play the Infinite Game

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Spe­cial thanks to our client, Eric J. Miller, for pro­vid­ing the inspir­ing story included in this case study.

When we first met Stan Sum­mers he had just blown two sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness cases and was con­cerned about mak­ing the same mis­take with his other high-net worth prospects.

Stan had been an advi­sor for three years. Prior to that he had been a con­sul­tant at a large firm. Though suc­cess­ful as a con­sul­tant, he was attracted to the idea of being his own boss and set­ting his own income ceil­ing. Fur­ther­more, he knew he could bring an envi­able asset to his advi­sory busi­ness — a large net­work of busi­ness con­tacts. After two years, with ded­i­cated study and hard work, he had man­aged to grow a size­able clien­tele. But he knew that he’d only scratched the sur­face of his poten­tial. He had always known that through his net­work he could access some extremely afflu­ent indi­vid­u­als, but had decided not to approach them until he felt he was ready. A year ago, he felt the time had come.

He arranged an appoint­ment with the owner of a large import com­pany, a prospect worth over $30 mil­lion. He pro­gressed through a series of appoint­ments and even­tu­ally put together an insur­ance pack­age for $5 mil­lion, but then the case started to unravel. The client raised objec­tions Stan couldn’t respond to and the deal fiz­zled out. He found the loss dev­as­tat­ing, but soon opened another large case, only to find that fall through as well.

When we sat down, I asked Stan why he thought he’d lost the big cases. He admit­ted he’d felt a lit­tle out of his depth, didn’t know how to respond to the objec­tions, and lacked exper­tise.
“What’s your strat­egy for get­ting that exper­tise?” I asked.

“That’s why I called you.”

“Okay, with our help then, when do you think you could expect to develop the exper­tise you’ll need to close big cases?”

“Months, maybe years,” he answered.

“Can you afford to go years with­out approach­ing big clients?”

“No, but I can’t afford to go on blow­ing my chances. You only get one chance with these prospects.”

“You spent your first cou­ple of years ignor­ing large prospects because you weren’t ready,” I said. “In that time, some of those prospects were picked up as clients by other advi­sors. Prospects that are on your radar screen today might not be there tomor­row. You have a win­dow of oppor­tu­nity with some of these prospects, but you don’t know how large that win­dow is.”

“So it’s a catch-22,” Stan said, “What do you recommend?”

“I rec­om­mend you get the exper­tise to go on those big cases.”

“But when would I be ready?”

“Today, if you’re willing.”

“Will­ing to do what?”

“Play the Infi­nite Game.”

He looked perplexed.

“Most advi­sors play the Finite Game,” I said, “they work by them­selves, serv­ing their clients as soli­tary advisors.”

Stan said he didn’t like the idea of work­ing with other advi­sors and shar­ing com­mis­sions. Since he had the con­nec­tions, he felt the prospects were his alone.

“You’ve just expressed the mind­set of the Finite Game player. Peo­ple who play the Finite Game think that the oppor­tu­nity with cer­tain mar­kets or prospects is lim­ited, and that their best strat­egy is to ensure they get the ‘whole pie’. How­ever, the real­ity is far dif­fer­ent – the lim­its advi­sors per­ceive are often based on their own lim­i­ta­tions, not the lim­i­ta­tions of the mar­ket or the client. To get beyond your lim­i­ta­tions, you need to play the Infi­nite Game — you need to expand what you bring to your clients by work­ing with others.

“Let me give you the exam­ple from a client of mine, Eric J. Miller of the Miller Con­sult­ing Group. Eric is a large-case expert based out of New York. Another agent, Henry, had come to Eric for help on a case he was hav­ing trou­ble with. Henry had sold a $3-million insur­ance pol­icy with a $33,000 pre­mium to Vic­tor Win­ters, a wealthy entre­pre­neur. Henry had called Eric for help on the case when the sec­ond pre­mium was due, say­ing that Vic­tor was ‘chok­ing on the pre­mium.’ Henry had drafted a pro­posal to rewrite the insur­ance for a pre­mium of $18,000, almost half the orig­i­nal cost, think­ing that that would save the deal. When Eric and Henry went to see Vic­tor, Henry opened the meet­ing by refer­ring to Victor’s feel­ing the pain of the pre­mium costs. Vic­tor hotly denied that and clar­i­fied that he didn’t feel he was get­ting value for his money. Eric felt that Henry was about to bun­gle the whole deal and waded in. Eric began to talk about the value of the cov­er­age and said he had a pol­icy that rep­re­sented tremen­dous value with a pre­mium of $60,000. By now Henry had the where­withal to keep quiet and let Eric run the meet­ing. Victor’s estate was worth $15 mil­lion, and grow­ing. The poten­tial tax lia­bil­ity was in the $6-million range. Eric relayed the ben­e­fits of hav­ing the insur­ance com­pany pay the tax, rather than sell­ing assets to do so. Eric stated that the orig­i­nal pre­mium wasn’t too high — it was too low. Vic­tor agreed. By the time the appoint­ment was through Eric was propos­ing a solu­tion with a $100,000 premium.

“Prior to the appoint­ment, Henry had laid out his strat­egy to walk away with an $18,000 pre­mium. We can clearly see that Eric moved the case from $18,000 to $100,000, but more impor­tantly, Eric solved Victor’s tax lia­bil­ity prob­lem. Henry’s strat­egy to lower the pre­mium because of a per­ceived objec­tion was a dis­ser­vice to the client. Henry was out of his ele­ment here. Eric brought the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence and exper­tise and was able to pro­vide the advice Vic­tor needed.

“It’s inter­est­ing to note that Henry’s per­cep­tion of the size of the pie stemmed not at all from the real­ity of the client’s need but from his own per­sonal feel­ing that a $33,000 pre­mium was too much. It’s very dif­fi­cult for inex­pe­ri­enced advi­sors to sep­a­rate their emo­tions from a large case. They’re not used to deal­ing with large, com­plex client needs and let their own per­sonal biases get in the way of serv­ing the client. An expe­ri­enced expert like Eric brings the nec­es­sary objec­tiv­ity and cool-headedness to the table. Eric knows to ask the ques­tions that an inex­pe­ri­enced advi­sor is too fright­ened to ask. In the end, the case with Vic­tor even­tu­ally grew well beyond the $100,000-premium mark, and Henry shared half the case. That’s the value of play­ing the Infi­nite Game.”

Stan was blown away by the story. I could see his mind shift from a Finite-Game to an Infinite-Game men­tal­ity. I sug­gested Stan put together a plan for how he would approach his busi­ness from this point for­ward. A week later we reviewed Stan’s plan in which he mapped out a strat­egy for approach­ing his big-case prospects, but this time jointly with a business-case expert from his firm. At the time of writ­ing, Stan and his part­ner have already closed one sig­nif­i­cant case, and are work­ing on others.

Lessons Learned

Stan learned that his best strat­egy for tack­ling his high-net worth prospects was to play the Infi­nite Game — to team up with other pro­fes­sion­als. He learned that in the big-case mar­ket it’s dif­fi­cult for one advi­sor to have all the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents for serv­ing the client. While he had access to big prospects through his net­work, he lacked exper­tise. And it works the other way around. There are many advi­sors with exper­tise who lack access, so it’s essen­tial for them to team with advi­sors who have valu­able net­works. Even though pool­ing resources means shar­ing com­mis­sions, each advi­sor ben­e­fits, because it’s bet­ter to have a smaller piece of a larger pie than a larger piece of a smaller pie — or, as is more often the case, no piece at all. And it’s infi­nitely bet­ter for your client if you bring in the needed exper­tise, oth­er­wise you risk leav­ing your client exposed to the risks you were intend­ing to min­i­mize. Most advi­sors have heard the advice about shar­ing the pie, but few heed it. Per­haps the largest bar­rier to adopt­ing the prac­tice of play­ing the Infi­nite Game, as Stan learned, is the per­cep­tion of the size of the pie. For many advi­sors, their per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions of a case are based on their own feel­ings, and not on real­ity. As Eric’s story above has shown, the lim­its of the Vic­tor deal far exceeded what Henry had ever enter­tained. And as Stan learned, the best way to push through your own lim­its is to start play­ing the Infi­nite Game.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 30 Million, 5 Million, Advisory Business, Affluent Individuals, Appointments, Boss, Business Cases, Business Contacts, Case Study, Clientele, Import Company, Infinite Game, Inspiring Story, Insurance Package, J Miller, Mistake, Objections, Prospects, Special Thanks, Stan
Posted in My Practice, Norm Trainor | Comments Off

A Question that Motivates HNW Prospects

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

As we enter the new year, many advi­sors are rethink­ing many aspects of their business.

Yes­ter­day, I received an email from an advi­sor strug­gling with the right approach to use when talk­ing to high net worth prospects.

The ques­tion

Here’s part of his email:

“One area that I would like to improve in 2010 is turn­ing high net worth prospects into clients.

I was a finan­cial plan­ner for 6 years and see the value in ask­ing sev­eral ques­tions and build­ing the best plan to meet their goals. I would describe my approach is a “soft sale” and most appoint­ments have a nat­ural pro­gres­sion and close smoothly; how­ever, I fig­ure I am leav­ing some oppor­tu­ni­ties on the table.

Maybe I am wrong but I have found it eas­ier to plan or acquire clients in the $100-$500k range since they often need more help as they seem more reliant on their nest egg than other with larger investible assets. As the net worth goes up, I find it harder to moti­vate clients with­out more salesmanship.

Do you have any insights as to some great ques­tions or strate­gies to get HNW prospects’ atten­tion and ulti­mately as clients?”

My answer

Many advi­sors are intim­i­dated by the prospect of talk­ing to mil­lion dol­lar prospects.

Two com­ments:

First, remem­ber that at a 4% with­drawal rate, $1 mil­lion pro­vides annual income of $40,000 — investors with nest eggs of this size may need less help, but they still typ­i­cally need help.

Sec­ond, research shows a con­tin­u­ing anx­i­ety among many Cana­di­ans with regard to fund­ing their retire­ment — and often that con­cern is high­est among mid and higher income earn­ers used to more extrav­a­gant lifestyles than some­one mak­ing $40,000 a year.

When talk­ing to prospects, you want to do two things.

First, you want to rein­force what­ever level of urgency to take action they may already feel — or help cre­ate that urgency if it doesn’t exist.

And sec­ond, you want to posi­tion your­self as some­one who can pro­vide a solu­tion to impor­tant issues in their finan­cial life.

Once you’ve bro­ken the ice, here’s a ques­tion that I would con­sider ask­ing to help achieve both of these goals:

“Do you have a writ­ten plan fore­cast­ing income and expenses in retire­ment, to ensure you don’t run out of money?”

Once you’ve asked that, you might want to have case stud­ies or sam­ples of the kinds of plan you put in place to help clients address this concern.

Let’s be clear — to my knowl­edge, there are no sil­ver bul­lets that will have HNW prospects come flock­ing to your door.

But ask­ing thought­ful, slightly provoca­tive ques­tions such as this one — not to panic or alarm prospec­tive clients but to get them think­ing — can be help­ful in advanc­ing your cause when talk­ing to HNW prospects.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 1 Million, 500k, 6 Years, Anxiety, Appointments, Canadians, Email, Financial Planner, Income Earners, Investible Assets, Lifestyles, Natural Progression, Nest Egg, Nest Eggs, New Year, Prospects, Retirement, Salesmanship, Urgency, Withdrawal Rate
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From the Finite to the Infinite Game

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm’s clients, Stan Sum­mers. All of the names and telling details have been changed to pre­serve client pri­vacy. Spe­cial thanks to our client, Eric J. Miller, for pro­vid­ing the inspir­ing story included in this case study.

I first met Stan Sum­mers six months ago. Stan had just blown two sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness cases and was con­cerned about mak­ing the same mis­take with his other high-net worth prospects.

Stan had been an advi­sor for three years. Prior to that he’d been a con­sul­tant at a large firm. Though suc­cess­ful as a con­sul­tant, he was attracted to the idea of being his own boss and set­ting his own income ceil­ing. Fur­ther­more, he knew he could bring an envi­able asset to his advi­sory busi­ness — a large net­work of busi­ness con­tacts. After two years, with ded­i­cated study and hard work, he had man­aged to grow a size­able clien­tele. But he knew that he’d only scratched the sur­face of his poten­tial. He had always known that through his net­work he could access some extremely afflu­ent indi­vid­u­als, but had decided not to approach them until he felt he was ready. A year ago, he felt the time had come.

He arranged an appoint­ment with the owner of a large import com­pany, a prospect worth over $30 mil­lion. He pro­gressed through a series of appoint­ments and even­tu­ally put together an insur­ance pack­age for $5 mil­lion, but then the case started to unravel. The client raised objec­tions Stan couldn’t respond to and the deal fiz­zled out. He found the loss dev­as­tat­ing, but soon opened another large case, only to find that fall through as well.

When we sat down, I asked Stan why he thought he’d lost the big cases. He admit­ted he’d felt a lit­tle out of his depth, didn’t know how to respond to the objec­tions, and lacked expertise.

“What’s your strat­egy for get­ting that exper­tise?” I asked.

“That’s why I called you.”

“Okay, with our help then, when do you think you could expect to develop the exper­tise you’ll need to close big cases?”

“Months, maybe years,” he answered.

“Can you afford to go years with­out approach­ing big clients?”

“No, but I can’t afford to go on blow­ing my chances. You only get one chance with these prospects.”

“You spent your first cou­ple of years ignor­ing large prospects because you weren’t ready,” I said. “In that time, some of those prospects were picked up as clients by other advi­sors. Prospects that are on your radar screen today might not be there tomor­row. You have a win­dow of oppor­tu­nity with some of these prospects, but you don’t know how large that win­dow is.”

“So it’s a catch-22,” Stan said, “What do you rec­om­mend?”
“I rec­om­mend you get the exper­tise to go on those big cases.”
“But when would I be ready?”

“Today, if you’re willing.”

“Will­ing to do what?”

“Play the Infi­nite Game.”

He looked perplexed.

“Most advi­sors play the Finite Game,” I said, “they work by them­selves, serv­ing their clients as soli­tary advisors.”

Stan said he didn’t like the idea of work­ing with other advi­sors and shar­ing com­mis­sions. Since he had the con­nec­tions, he felt the prospects were his alone.

“You’ve just expressed the mind­set of the Finite Game player. Peo­ple who play the Finite Game think that the oppor­tu­nity with cer­tain mar­kets or prospects is lim­ited, and that their best strat­egy is to ensure they get the ‘whole pie’. How­ever, the real­ity is far dif­fer­ent – the lim­its advi­sors per­ceive are often based on their own lim­i­ta­tions, not the lim­i­ta­tions of the mar­ket or the client. To get beyond your lim­i­ta­tions, you need to play the Infi­nite Game — you need to expand what you bring to your clients by work­ing with others.

“Let me give you the exam­ple from a client of mine, Eric J. Miller of the Miller Con­sult­ing Group. Eric is a large-case expert based out of New York. Another agent, Henry, had come to Eric for help on a case he was hav­ing trou­ble with. Henry had sold a $3-million insur­ance pol­icy with a $33,000 pre­mium to Vic­tor Win­ters, a wealthy entre­pre­neur. Henry had called Eric for help on the case when the sec­ond pre­mium was due, say­ing that Vic­tor was ‘chok­ing on the pre­mium.’ Henry had drafted a pro­posal to rewrite the insur­ance for a pre­mium of $18,000, almost half the orig­i­nal cost, think­ing that that would save the deal. When Eric and Henry went to see Vic­tor, Henry opened the meet­ing by refer­ring to Victor’s feel­ing the pain of the pre­mium costs. Vic­tor hotly denied that and clar­i­fied that he didn’t feel he was get­ting value for his money. Eric felt that Henry was about to bun­gle the whole deal and waded in. Eric began to talk about the value of the cov­er­age and said he had a pol­icy that rep­re­sented tremen­dous value with a pre­mium of $60,000. By now Henry had the where­withal to keep quiet and let Eric run the meet­ing. Victor’s estate was worth $15 mil­lion, and grow­ing. The poten­tial tax lia­bil­ity was in the $6-million range. Eric relayed the ben­e­fits of hav­ing the insur­ance com­pany pay the tax, rather than sell­ing assets to do so. Eric stated that the orig­i­nal pre­mium wasn’t too high — it was too low. Vic­tor agreed. By the time the appoint­ment was through Eric was propos­ing a solu­tion with a $100,000 premium.

“Prior to the appoint­ment, Henry had laid out his strat­egy to walk away with an $18,000 pre­mium. We can clearly see that Eric moved the case from $18,000 to $100,000, but more impor­tantly, Eric solved Victor’s tax lia­bil­ity prob­lem. Henry’s strat­egy to lower the pre­mium because of a per­ceived objec­tion was a dis­ser­vice to the client. Henry was out of his ele­ment here. Eric brought the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence and exper­tise and was able to pro­vide the advice Vic­tor needed.

“It’s inter­est­ing to note that Henry’s per­cep­tion of the size of the pie stemmed not at all from the real­ity of the client’s need but from his own per­sonal feel­ing that a $33,000 pre­mium was too much. It’s very dif­fi­cult for inex­pe­ri­enced advi­sors to sep­a­rate their emo­tions from a large case. They’re not used to deal­ing with large, com­plex client needs and let their own per­sonal biases get in the way of serv­ing the client. An expe­ri­enced expert like Eric brings the nec­es­sary objec­tiv­ity and cool-headedness to the table. Eric knows to ask the ques­tions that an inex­pe­ri­enced advi­sor is too fright­ened to ask. In the end, the case with Vic­tor even­tu­ally grew well beyond the $100,000-premium mark, and Henry shared half the case. That’s the value of play­ing the Infi­nite Game.”

Stan was blown away by the story. I could see his mind shift from a Finite-Game to an Infinite-Game men­tal­ity. I sug­gested Stan put together a plan for how he would approach his busi­ness from this point for­ward. A week later we reviewed Stan’s plan in which he mapped out a strat­egy for approach­ing his big-case prospects, but this time jointly with a business-case expert from his firm. At the time of writ­ing, Stan and his part­ner have already closed one sig­nif­i­cant case, and are work­ing on others.

Lessons learned

Stan learned that his best strat­egy for tack­ling his high-net worth prospects was to play the Infi­nite Game — to team up with other pro­fes­sion­als. He learned that in the big-case mar­ket it’s dif­fi­cult for one advi­sor to have all the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents for serv­ing the client. While he had access to big prospects through his net­work, he lacked exper­tise. And it works the other way around. There are many advi­sors with exper­tise who lack access, so it’s essen­tial for them to team with advi­sors who have valu­able net­works. Even though pool­ing resources means shar­ing com­mis­sions, each advi­sor ben­e­fits, because it’s bet­ter to have a smaller piece of a larger pie than a larger piece of a smaller pie — or, as is more often the case, no piece at all. And it’s infi­nitely bet­ter for your client if you bring in the needed exper­tise, oth­er­wise you risk leav­ing your client exposed to the risks you were intend­ing to min­i­mize. Most advi­sors have heard the advice about shar­ing the pie, but few heed it. Per­haps the largest bar­rier to adopt­ing the prac­tice of play­ing the Infi­nite Game, as Stan learned, is the per­cep­tion of the size of the pie. For many advi­sors, their per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions of a case are based on their own feel­ings, and not on real­ity. As Eric’s story above has shown, the lim­its of the Vic­tor deal far exceeded what Henry had ever enter­tained. And as Stan learned, the best way to push through your own lim­its is to start play­ing the Infi­nite Game.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 30 Million, 5 Million, Advisory Business, Affluent Individuals, Appointments, Business Cases, Business Contacts, Case Study, Client Privacy, Clientele, Import Company, Infinite Game, Inspiring Story, Insurance Package, J Miller, Norm, Norm Trainor, Objections, Prospects, Special Thanks, Stan
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A Question that Motivates HNW Prospects

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

As we enter the new year, many advi­sors are rethink­ing many aspects of their business.

Yes­ter­day, I received an email from an advi­sor strug­gling with the right approach to use when talk­ing to high net worth prospects.

The ques­tion

Here’s part of his email:

“One area that I would like to improve in 2010 is turn­ing high net worth prospects into clients.

I was a finan­cial plan­ner for 6 years and see the value in ask­ing sev­eral ques­tions and build­ing the best plan to meet their goals. I would describe my approach is a “soft sale” and most appoint­ments have a nat­ural pro­gres­sion and close smoothly; how­ever, I fig­ure I am leav­ing some oppor­tu­ni­ties on the table.

Maybe I am wrong but I have found it eas­ier to plan or acquire clients in the $100-$500k range since they often need more help as they seem more reliant on their nest egg than other with larger investible assets. As the net worth goes up, I find it harder to moti­vate clients with­out more salesmanship.

Do you have any insights as to some great ques­tions or strate­gies to get HNW prospects’ atten­tion and ulti­mately as clients?”
My answer

Many advi­sors are intim­i­dated by the prospect of talk­ing to mil­lion dol­lar prospects.

Two com­ments:

First, remem­ber that at a 4% with­drawal rate, $1 mil­lion pro­vides annual income of $40,000 — investors with nest eggs of this size may need less help, but they still typ­i­cally need help.

Sec­ond, research shows a con­tin­u­ing anx­i­ety among many Cana­di­ans with regard to fund­ing their retire­ment — and often that con­cern is high­est among mid and higher income earn­ers used to more extrav­a­gant lifestyles than some­one mak­ing $40,000 a year.

When talk­ing to prospects, you want to do two things.

First, you want to rein­force what­ever level of urgency to take action they may already feel — or help cre­ate that urgency if it doesn’t exist.

And sec­ond, you want to posi­tion your­self as some­one who can pro­vide a solu­tion to impor­tant issues in their finan­cial life.

Once you’ve bro­ken the ice, here’s a ques­tion that I would con­sider ask­ing to help achieve both of these goals:

“Do you have a writ­ten plan fore­cast­ing income and expenses in retire­ment, to ensure you don’t run out of money?”

Once you’ve asked that, you might want to have case stud­ies or sam­ples of the kinds of plan you put in place to help clients address this concern.

Let’s be clear — to my knowl­edge, there are no sil­ver bul­lets that will have HNW prospects come flock­ing to your door.

But ask­ing thought­ful, slightly provoca­tive ques­tions such as this one — not to panic or alarm prospec­tive clients but to get them think­ing — can be help­ful in advanc­ing your cause when talk­ing to HNW prospects.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 1 Million, 500k, 6 Years, Anxiety, Appointments, Canadians, Email, Financial Planner, Income Earners, Investible Assets, Lifestyles, Natural Progression, Nest Egg, Nest Eggs, New Year, Prospects, Retirement, Salesmanship, Urgency, Withdrawal Rate
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Success Leaves Clues (Don’t Shoot the Messenger) – Part 2 of 3

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

As with the Rule of 168, there are Nat­ural Laws and Uni­ver­sal Truths about what is nec­es­sary to be a suc­cess­ful Finan­cial Advi­sor. I did not invent these truths any more than I had input into how many hours there are in a day or week. I have just been a dili­gent observer tak­ing good notes. This may not be a com­plete list, but I doubt you will dis­agree with any­thing on it. What you do with this infor­ma­tion is your choice. Remem­ber, don’t shoot the messenger.

- Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to engage peo­ple in con­ver­sa­tions that could lead to the next step of them poten­tially doing busi­ness with you. These can be with peo­ple you already know, peo­ple you meet in the course of your every­day life, or refer­rals. The result of these con­ver­sa­tions must be enough appoint­ments on your cal­en­dar to yield enough clients to make your busi­ness suc­cess­ful.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to con­duct an ini­tial client inter­view where you estab­lish a bond of trust and the out­come is that a high enough per­cent­age of these peo­ple hire you so your busi­ness is suc­cess­ful.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to answer any ques­tion any prospect, or client, could ever ask at any time.
– Must have the skill, con­fi­dence, and resources to cre­ate a plan of action that gives your clients the high­est prob­a­bil­ity to achieve their goals.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to artic­u­late how much you charge, what they get, and that it’s a good value for them.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to set the right price for your ser­vices so your busi­ness is suc­cess­ful and your life works.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to give advice to clients about the nec­es­sary action required for them to achieve their finan­cial goals in a way that inspires them to act.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to con­duct reg­u­lar, pro­duc­tive progress meet­ings with your clients so they stay on track to achiev­ing their goals.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to have cru­cial con­ver­sa­tions with your clients when they become “their own worst enemy” and want to do things that are not con­sis­tent with them achiev­ing their goals.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to build and lead your team of the Tech­ni­cal and Admin­is­tra­tive Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts nec­es­sary to deliver on your promise to your clients. (The Rule of 168 man­dates that there is not enough time to do it all your­self.)
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to con­duct refer­ral con­ver­sa­tions that gen­er­ate refer­rals.
– Must have the skill and con­fi­dence to make follow-up phone calls and engage the peo­ple, to whom you have been referred, in con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tions that could lead to the next step of them poten­tially doing busi­ness with you.
– Must develop the skill and con­fi­dence to rec­og­nize high pay-off activ­i­ties, fill your cal­en­dar with high pay-off activ­i­ties, do the high pay-off activ­i­ties, and del­e­gate or drop lower pay-off activ­i­ties.
– Must develop the emo­tional for­ti­tude and dis­ci­pline to develop these skills and con­fi­dence.
– Must be will­ing to learn these skills from oth­ers if you were not born with them.
– Must develop the emo­tional for­ti­tude and dis­ci­pline to con­sis­tently and repeat­edly imple­ment the skills and con­fi­dence that pro­duce results both on the days when you feel like it and the days when you don’t feel like it, regard­less of events out of your con­trol such as what’s hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket, the econ­omy, or the world.
– Must doc­u­ment the processes and sys­tems that will be repeat­edly used to acquire clients, serve clients, and lead the busi­ness.
– Must gen­er­ate enough busi­ness rev­enue, so after pay­ing your busi­ness expenses and taxes, there is enough money left to pay for you to live a good lifestyle now and enough money for you to fund your future goals, such as your own finan­cial inde­pen­dence. In other words, you have enough money to get and keep your own finan­cial house in order.
– Must develop the abil­ity to pro­duce these busi­ness results in a rea­son­able amount of time per day, week, month, and year in order for other impor­tant aspects of your life to get the atten­tion they need and to be enjoyed. Ie: fam­ily and friends, health and fit­ness, fun and recre­ation, spir­i­tual growth, men­tal health, phil­an­thropy, etc.

Per­haps you can think of a few other “musts” in order to have a suc­cess­ful finan­cial ser­vices busi­ness. This list truths will at least get you started.

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Tags: Act, Appointments, Complete List, Confidence, Conversations, Doing Business, Everyday Life, Financial Goals, Initial Client Interview, Lead, Leaves, Messenger, People, Probability, Progress Meetings, Referrals, Success, Universal Truths
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The last resort for achieving motivation

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Over the past six months, I’ve spent lots of time talk­ing to advi­sors, both indi­vid­u­ally and in groups.

A key con­clu­sion:  Never have so many advi­sors strug­gled to main­tain even the most basic level of activ­ity and show up in the morn­ing with a mod­icum of enthusiasm.

Yes, some advi­sors are step­ping up to the chal­lenge and ramp­ing up activ­ity and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients — but they’re the minor­ity. More typ­i­cal are those advi­sors who strug­gle to do much more than show up at the office.  And even when in the office, some advi­sors con­fess there are days when they fight to make more than four or five calls.

As a result, in some cases, a dif­fer­ent approach is required to stay motivated.

If you find your­self among those fight­ing to stay moti­vated, you might want to con­sider a recent New York Times arti­cle on a three step approach to com­pet­i­tive diet­ing that is pay­ing results, par­tic­u­larly among guys. While this arti­cle focuses on diet­ing, the prin­ci­pals can be applied more broadly to any dif­fi­cult task.

Step One:

In the intial stage of this com­pe­ti­tion, you and one or more col­leagues each set weekly goals. For exam­ple, it could be to have three face to face client meet­ings and six phone for­mal appoint­ments to review port­fo­lios with clients each week. And you might toss at least one face to face or phone con­ver­sa­tion with a prospect into the mix for good measure.

Step Two:

Next you agree on how long the com­pe­ti­tion will last — a rea­son­able length might be any­where from six to twelve weeks — and set a time for a “weekly weigh-in”, where each week’s results are reported and recorded.

One group of Toronto invest­ment bankers who embarked on a 13 week weight loss com­pe­ti­tion last fall raised the ante by hav­ing the weekly tally posted on their firm’s intranet. (To make things fair, suc­cess was mea­sured by the per­cent of weight lost rather than absolute pounds.)

Step Three:

In the final step, you agree to the stakes.

There are lots of dif­fer­ent ways to reward the win­ners and pun­ish the losers in this kind of com­pe­ti­tion.  Each par­tic­i­pant could put $100 into a pot, with any­one fail­ing to meet their objec­tives over the com­pe­ti­tion for­feit­ing their con­tri­bu­tion; the pro­ceeds could either be shared by those achiev­ing their goal or fund a party at the end for every­one who participated.

You could have a win­ner take all struc­ture, where who­ever has the most meet­ings and makes the most calls walks away with the pro­ceeds. Alter­na­tively, you could set a weekly penalty of $20 for any­one who falls short of their goals, so that even if some­one falls behind after a cou­ple of weeks, they have an incen­tive to keep trying.

Or you could go the anti-charity” route described in the New York Times arti­cle, where losers have to write a cheque to an orga­ni­za­tion com­pletely at odds with their val­ues. (Depend­ing on your polit­i­cal point of view, for exam­ple, the losers might have to write a cheque to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party, the Lib­er­als, the NDP or the Bloc Que­be­cois — as I write this, I can imag­ine bemused party offi­cials from the Bloc won­der­ing what’s prompted a flood of new con­tri­bu­tions from Eng­lish Canada.)

As an aside, if you don’t entirely trust other advi­sors in your office when it comes to self report­ing meet­ings and activ­ity level, you could always keep score by com­mis­sion lev­els or new accounts opened.

Remem­ber, des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. If every­thing you’ve tried to stay moti­vated has failed, con­sider giv­ing old fash­ioned com­pet­i­tive spirit, greed and humil­i­a­tion a try.  See if you can enlist some of your col­leagues to join you  - to para­phrase Karl Marx, by unit­ing in a friendly com­pe­ti­tion, you have noth­ing to lose but your sense of drift and lack of direction.

For those who want to read more, the full arti­cle is below:
HEALTH / FITNESS & NUTRITION | Feb­ru­ary 05, 2009
Fit­ness:  Diet­ing? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is
By PAMELA WEILER GRAYSON
Inter­net sites that facil­i­tate diet bet­ting have seen an increase in use, and recent stud­ies have sup­ported the idea that such wagers work for many peo­ple who couldn’t seem to shed pounds any other way.

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Tags: Appointments, Client Meetings, Colleagues, Conclusion, Good Measure, Investment Bankers, Last Resort, Modicum, Motivation, New York Times, Phone Conversation, Portfolios, Principals, Prospective Clients, Six Months, Step Approach, Tally, Weekly Goals, Weight Loss, York Times Article
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Sales Activity Calculator

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Happy Birth­day Laura!

Over the past month I have writ­ten about com­plet­ing a Quar­terly Review for your­self and a Quar­terly Review for your team …

This is a seg­ment from an e-mail that I sent to a client about the Sales Activ­ity Calculator;

• What are your income goals for 2009?
• What income did you cre­ate from Jan­u­ary — March 2009?
• What is your new goal from April — Decem­ber 2009?
• Let’s say that your income goal for 2009 was $250,000.
• Let’s say that you cre­ated $50,000 in income from Jan­u­ary — March 2009
• Your new goal from April — Decem­ber 2009 is $200,000
• Or $66,666 per quarter
• Or $22,222 per month
• Given that July, August and Decem­ber can be softer months, lets reduce the monthly goals for these months by 50% to $11,111 per month for July, August and Decem­ber leav­ing $166,667 to pro­duce in the six months of April, May, June, Sep­tem­ber, Octo­ber and Novem­ber or $27,777 per month.
• What is your aver­age com­mis­sion per sale?
• Let’s say it is $3,000
• This means you need to cre­ate 10 sales per month
• What is your sales clos­ing ratio?
• Let’s say it is 65%
• This means you need to cre­ate 16 sales pre­sen­ta­tions per month
• What is your sales appoint­ment clos­ing ratio?
• Let’s say it is 50%
• This means you need to cre­ate 32 sales appoint­ment per month
• Based on 20 work­ing days per month
• This means you need to cre­ate 1.6 sales appoint­ments per day
• Based on 10 dials per hour, 2 con­ver­sa­tions per hour and 1 sales appoint­ment per hour
• This means you need to invest 1.5 hours per day on the phone speak­ing with qual­i­fied prospects

Image cour­tesy of; Learn­ing Resources

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Tags: Appointment, Appointments, Birthday Laura, Calculator, Conversations, E Mail, Happy Birthday, Income Goal, Income Goals, Learning Resources, Prospects, Sales Presentations, Segment, Six Months
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Strategic Quitting 2.0

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

The Pur­suit Of Excel­lence reminded me to engage Seth Godin’s notion of Strate­gic Quit­ting from his book called The Dip and this means;

• Daily blog­ging — while I enjoy daily blog­ging, it is some­thing that I com­mit­ted to doing when I started my blog back in Decem­ber of 2004. Now the blog­ging time is dis­tract­ing me from A Much Big­ger Picture
• Writ­ing pub­li­ca­tion arti­cles — I believe in STP, See The Peo­ple and the bot­tom line if it is going to be it is up to me and I have a big vision and a big mes­sage and it needs to be deliv­ered in per­son to MGA firms and life insur­ance com­pa­nies to attract the speak­ing and work­shops that we want to do
• Web 2.0 mar­ket­ing — clients hire us as a result of pub­lic speak­ing not because they are surf­ing the web
• Clients that con­tinue to re-schedule their appoint­ments — tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity cre­ates con­fi­dence, energy, esteem, respect and trust — break­ing appoint­ments not only demon­strates that no fore­sight is going into plan­ning, it destroys con­fi­dence, energy, esteem, respect and trust
• Not ask­ing for client referrals
• Not ask­ing for client testimonials
• Not Vlog­ging my coach­ing calls for resource mate­r­ial for my Vlogs

I wrote the above blog draft entry back on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 2nd and as a result of Strate­gic Quit­ting, this is what last week looked like;

Our mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties are yield­ing fruit and we are attract­ing an incred­i­ble har­vest of new clients and speak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties … last week being one of the best weeks we have had since the com­ple­tion of my book with 4 new clients, 2 Advo­cis speak­ing enquiries, an enquiry to speak at a finan­cial advi­sor con­fer­ence in the USA with 10 coach­ing prospect calls yet to com­plete. It is a good thing that I am work­ing on coach­ing work­shops that I plan to launch because there is only so much of me to go around.

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Tags: Advocis, Appointments, Bottom Line, Client Referrals, Client Testimonials, Confidence, Enquiry, February 2nd, Foresight, Insurance, Life Insurance Companies, Notion, Publication Articles, Pursuit Of Excellence, Resource Material, Seth Godin, Taking Responsibility, Vlogs, Web Clients, Web Marketing
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