Wall Street Journal: Advice for Million Dollar Producers

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Wall Street Jour­nal: Three words of advice for mil­lion dol­lar producer

In Sep­tem­ber of 2010, the finan­cial advi­sor careers sec­tion of Wall Street Jour­nal asked 60 advi­sors from all over the U.S. for sug­ges­tions for new advi­sors start­ing in the busi­ness; with the goal of becom­ing mil­lion dol­lar producers.

Their advice came down to three words: “Nar­row your focus.”

Why focus is key:

This sug­ges­tion is hardly new. For at least a decade, advi­sors have been told that focus­ing your prac­tice to serve a defined client group is essen­tial to max­i­mize success.

First and fore­most, nar­row­ing your focus enables you to develop greater exper­tise in a spe­cific group’s needs, so you can serve them better.

It allows you to improve the effi­ciency of your mar­ket­ing, as you can nar­row cast your mes­sage to a more clearly defined group of prospects; and focus on build­ing part­ner­ships with other pro­fes­sion­als who serve the same group.

Being a spe­cial­ist low­ers the risks for clients who are con­sid­er­ing refer­ring you to friends who belong to the same group.

And in an increas­ingly com­pet­i­tive world, spe­cial­iz­ing can be a cru­cial point of dif­fer­ence; espe­cially in larger urban cen­ter. Whether in man­u­fac­tur­ing, retail­ing or pro­fes­sional ser­vices, the les­son of the last twenty years is clear; gen­er­al­ists do just fine when com­pet­ing against other gen­er­al­ists. As soon as spe­cial­ists arrive on the scene, how­ever, gen­er­al­ists strug­gle to compete.

Focused spe­cial­ists in action:

Despite the over­whelm­ing case for focus­ing your prac­tice, most advi­sors stub­bornly cling to their gen­er­al­ist positioning.

In part, this is because of risk aver­sion and resis­tance to change. Almost every advi­sor begins the busi­ness with an “every client is a good client” mind­set. As a result, five years into the busi­ness you have a hodge­podge of clients with­out much in the way of con­sis­tent needs or themes. Mov­ing to a focused approach is a depar­ture from what’s comfortable.

Even advi­sors with focused client bases, for exam­ple those with a con­cen­tra­tion on retirees, are gen­er­ally reluc­tant to artic­u­late that focus and to be explicit about who they serve. There is a sense that by say­ing that you focus on seniors, you are lim­it­ing your appeal to some­one who doesn’t meet that def­i­n­i­tion. What’s lost in that deci­sion is that by being explicit about who you serve, you typ­i­cally gain much more in strength­ened appeal to other prospects in that group than you lose by exclud­ing peo­ple who might fall out­side your niche.

Cer­tainly, the fact that most advi­sors fail to focus isn’t because of the lack of poten­tial client com­mu­ni­ties on which to con­cen­trate. Some of the client seg­ments rep­re­sented in the Wall Street Jour­nal survey:

• GBLT couples
• Fam­i­lies with chil­dren with spe­cial needs
• Retirees
• Young physicians
• Entrepreneurs
• Pro­fes­sional athletes

One par­tic­i­pant in this sur­vey goes so far as to focus on peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in horse rac­ing. And these exam­ples only scratch the sur­face of what’s pos­si­ble. Over the last few years, I’ve talked to suc­cess­ful advi­sors who focus on dairy farm­ers, own­ers of Tim Hor­tons fran­chises, Toy­ota deal­ers, real estate devel­op­ers, Cana­dian Tire fran­chisees and own­ers of man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­nesses export­ing into the United States , just to name a few.

Decid­ing who to serve:

I recently sat down with two advi­sors who have been in the busi­ness for many years. While quite suc­cess­ful, they have seen their busi­ness stag­nate, and have come to the con­clu­sion that to take their busi­ness to a higher level, they need to nar­row their focus.

Focus­ing your niche starts by brain­storm­ing can­di­date groups who you might be able to serve. One of the best ways to do that is to start by dig­ging into your client base and iden­ti­fy­ing clus­ters of clients who you could repli­cate more broadly.

Once you have a list of poten­tial groups the next step is to pri­or­i­tize them by fit and opportunity.

Before meet­ing the two advi­sors to talk about where they wanted to take their busi­ness, I sug­gested that they rank each poten­tial group on five dimen­sions from 1 to 10 (with 1 being low and 10 being high):

1.  Does this group have press­ing prob­lems in com­mon that are hot but­tons for them and that you can help solve?

2.  Is this group one that you can build a busi­ness around; tak­ing into account the num­ber of peo­ple in this group and their typ­i­cal asset level?

3.  Do you have a base of clients in this group from which to start?

4.  Are there effi­cient ways to reach prospects in this group; through pub­li­ca­tions, asso­ci­a­tions or lists?

5.  Do you enjoy work­ing with mem­bers of this group?

As a result of this process, each poten­tial group will emerge with a score of up to 50 points. A key issue is to ensure that the group you select sees itself as hav­ing com­mon needs. A quick real­ity check is to imag­ine the response if you told some­one in the group you’ve selected “I spe­cial­ize in the unique prob­lems and finan­cial needs of .…..”

Reach­ing your tar­get group:

Once you pick a group, the final step is fig­ur­ing out how to get in front of them.

In a sense, hav­ing a defined tar­get group makes mar­ket­ing eas­ier. After all, bring­ing focus means you can more effec­tively orga­nize your prac­tice to meet your tar­get group’s unique needs. And once you’ve done that, it’s typ­i­cally eas­ier to find the mem­bers of your group who you want to talk to.

There are a broad range of approaches to reach your tar­get group. Three exam­ples of strate­gies I’ve seen work to help advi­sors build $100 mil­lion plus books:

Tar­get: Snowbirds

Unique needs:  Advice on US tax issues, cur­rency con­cerns, home security

Strat­egy:  Sep­tem­ber work­shops focus­ing on hot but­ton issues for snow­birds; with speak­ers includ­ing some­one from the local police force talk­ing about ways to secure your home when away for extended periods

Quar­terly work­shops focused against this group’s needs

Tar­get: Dentists

Unique needs:  Finan­cial plan­ning advice and insur­ance; con­tin­u­ing education

Strat­egy:  Host com­pli­men­tary din­ners offer­ing den­tists con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion cred­its on pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment issues; as well, the advi­sor includes a 20 minute mar­ket update and fol­lows up the next day

Tar­get: Suc­cess­ful busi­ness owners

Unique needs:  Trans­la­tion of busi­ness assets to finan­cial assets; coor­di­na­tion of tax and estate plans; com­mu­ni­ca­tion among fam­ily members

Strat­egy:  Develop refer­ral rela­tion­ships with a small num­ber of accoun­tants focus­ing on suc­cess­ful busi­ness owners

Host break­fasts fea­tur­ing a pro­fes­sor of entre­pre­neur­ship from the local uni­ver­sity. or an expert on com­mu­ni­ca­tion on finan­cial issues among afflu­ent families

The hol­i­day sea­son pro­vides an oppor­tu­nity both to relax from the year behind us, as well as to reflect on the year ahead. As you think about where you’ll be tak­ing your busi­ness in 2012, con­sider whether you need to take the Wall Street Journal’s advice and nar­row the focus of your busi­ness in the com­ing year.

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Tags: Careers Section, Client Group, Competitive World, Crucial Point, Dollar Producer, Dollar Producers, Generalist, Generalists, Hodgepodge, Mindset, Narrow Your Focus, Overwhelming Case, Professional Services, Risk Aversion, Specific Group, Twenty Years, Urban Center, Wall Street, Wall Street Journal, Words Of Advice
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Giving Back and Paying Forward

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Wal­ton Rogers.

What does it mean to be in the top 1% of your pro­fes­sion? For mem­bers of the Mil­lion Dol­lar Round Table (MDRT), it means that you are not only rec­og­nized as hav­ing reached the pin­na­cle of suc­cess in your pro­fes­sion, but also, that you are the ben­e­fi­ciary of a tra­di­tion of shar­ing that is unusual in our com­pet­i­tive world. Wal­ton Rogers was cho­sen by his peers to be the Pres­i­dent of MDRT for 2009 and to be a part of its Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for five years. His elec­tion to this august posi­tion rec­og­nizes his years of giv­ing back as a trusted member/leader in over 25 lead­er­ship posi­tions. How­ever, Wal­ton would be the first to admit that he has gained far more than he has given through this association.

When you meet with Wal­ton and one of his MDRT asso­ciates you may notice that they are proud of their mem­ber­ship and the num­ber of lives they touch. Wal­ton describes what this means as follows:

“We are proud that our ethics, our activ­ity lev­els and the results we achieve enable us to qual­ify to be part of this select group. The pride is in what we do with and for our clients. The pride is in the mem­ber­ship and the sym­bol­ism of the orga­ni­za­tion. It is not a pride in self. Rather, it is the desire to be the best in the world at what we do.”

MDRT pro­vided Wal­ton with a stan­dard of excel­lence early in his career. It taught him the power of the Whole Per­son Con­cept which is a reminder to keep your life and your career in perspective.

With a desire to keep all of life’s events in a proper per­spec­tive, Wal­ton has been work­ing with two younger asso­ciates, Jonathan Williams and Robert Zim­mer, to imple­ment a Suc­ces­sion Plan. Wal­ton sum­ma­rizes the impor­tance of plan­ning for the future and pay­ing forward:

“We have promises to keep. Our clients pay us for the future deliv­ery of a ser­vice or a prod­uct. If we are not there to deliver, then we are not ful­fill­ing our com­mit­ments to them. Suc­ces­sion plan­ning is a log­i­cal way to keep our com­mit­ments to our clients. Our clients now have three advi­sors to rely upon. My com­mit­ment to Robert and Jonathan is to pro­vide inspi­ra­tion, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence in what­ever way I can. I learned through MDRT that you inspire by exam­ple and you learn from oth­ers. The three of us are com­mit­ted to learn­ing from each other, the Round Table and our col­lec­tive experiences.”

There are two qual­i­ties that I have observed in work­ing with Wal­ton. The first is that he is a very good lis­tener. He has that rare abil­ity to make you feel as if he is totally engrossed in what you have to say and is lis­ten­ing with all of his senses. The sec­ond qual­ity is that he is a man of prin­ci­ple who is com­mit­ted to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in peo­ples’ lives. These two qual­i­ties have served him well in over thirty years of work­ing with clients to assist them in mak­ing the often dif­fi­cult deci­sions related to build­ing and pro­tect­ing the finan­cial well being of fam­i­lies and busi­nesses. Wal­ton, Jonathan and Robert are com­mit­ted to lis­ten­ing to the needs, wants and val­ues of new and exist­ing clients and cus­tomiz­ing a finan­cial plan to real­ize the client’s dreams.

Through his involve­ment with MDRT, serv­ing over 800 fam­i­lies and tran­si­tion­ing his prac­tice over time to Jonathan and Robert, Wal­ton is giv­ing back and pay­ing forward.

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:

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Tags: Beneficiary, Commitments, Competitive World, Executive Committee, Importance Of Planning, Jonathan Williams, Leadership Positions, Mdrt, Norm Trainor, Person Concept, Pinnacle, Proper Perspective, Robert Zimmer, Select Group, Standard Of Excellence, Succession Plan, Succession Planning, Symbolism, What This Means, Younger Associates
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Advisors must help clients deal with debt

Monday, September 28th, 2009

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Tags: Beneficiary, Commitments, Competitive World, Executive Committee, Importance Of Planning, Jonathan Williams, Leadership Positions, Mdrt, Norm Trainor, Person Concept, Pinnacle, Proper Perspective, Robert Zimmer, Select Group, Standard Of Excellence, Succession Plan, Succession Planning, Symbolism, What This Means, Younger Associates
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