Do You Have the Elements of a High-Performing Business?

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

March 7, 2013

When sur­vey­ing your busi­ness, do you assess the indi­vid­ual com­po­nents of oper­a­tions, mar­ket­ing, sales and client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment? Or do you sim­ply look at it as a whole?To get a clear sense of which aspects of your com­pany are per­form­ing well and which ones need to be closely mon­i­tored and improved, it is bet­ter to inspect the five ele­ments that cre­ate a high-performing busi­ness. As I explain in The Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­ney, these are your vision, strat­egy, struc­ture, sys­tems and skills (the peo­ple who make the busi­ness run). It is vital that you under­stand the inter­de­pen­dent rela­tion­ship of these five ele­ments and that you give them all the atten­tion they deserve.With­out vision, there can be no direction

Lay­ing out your vision for the busi­ness will give the com­pany a focus but will also give you a greater pur­pose to work every day than merely mak­ing money. Greed is not a healthy or sus­tain­able moti­va­tor. When you have estab­lished the pic­ture of what you want to achieve through the orga­ni­za­tion, you will be able to make all future deci­sions in con­text of that vision. Each time you face a major choice, you will weigh it in terms of how it advances or detracts from your men­tal pic­ture of the business.The vision will serve as a foun­da­tion on which you build strat­egy. What will you have to do to achieve what you want the busi­ness to become? What resources and skills do you have on hand in order to exe­cute the plan? The answers to these ques­tions will help you cre­ate a busi­ness plan​.As you grad­u­ally exe­cute each point in your strat­egy, you will see your com­pany begin to grow. Expand­ing from a busi­ness of one to an orga­ni­za­tion of many dif­fer­ent employ­ees and mov­ing parts will require you to cre­ate a struc­ture and a hier­ar­chy. Define every role within the com­pany and map out how each person’s respon­si­bil­i­ties relates to those of other team members.With the increased num­ber of peo­ple and processes, it will be nec­es­sary to adopt sys­tems that sup­port the var­i­ous func­tions in the com­pany. Even­tu­ally, you will have a set of poli­cies and tasks related to hir­ing, train­ing, client ser­vice, infor­ma­tion man­age­ment, billing and much more.The final ele­ment, skills, will develop and become stronger as you hire more peo­ple and begin to nar­row your practice’s areas of spe­cial­iza­tion. Rec­og­niz­ing the intri­cate rela­tion­ship between all five of these com­po­nents will help your busi­ness grow and enjoy long-term suc​cess​.As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Business Plan, Client Relationship Management, Covenant Group, Decisions, Entrepreneurial Journey, Five Elements, Greater Purpose, Greed, Hierarchy, Interdependent Relationship, Major Choice, Map, Marketing Sales, Mental Picture, Motivator, Moving Parts, Norm Trainor, People, Structure Systems, Team Members
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How to Warm Up Your Prospects

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

March 13, 2013

To advance prospects through the mar­ket­ing pipeline and even­tu­ally guide them to the sales process, sales­peo­ple in any indus­try need to keep their tar­gets “warm.” Do you have a strat­egy for how you ensure you are at the top of prospects’ minds? What have you done to guar­an­tee that they asso­ciate your name with a par­tic­u­lar ser­vice or prod­uct? Main­tain­ing con­tact is only half of the sales process — you also need to con­stantly evolve what you are offer­ing the prospect, adapt­ing the pack­age as you learn more about him or her.Communication is a two-fold process. First, you must col­lab­o­rate with the mar­ket­ing func­tion in your orga­ni­za­tion to deter­mine the best sched­ule for con­tact­ing prospects. Decide if it is more effec­tive to send monthly newslet­ters, peri­od­i­cally call your prospects to check in, host edu­ca­tional sem­i­nars, or a mix of all these tac­tics and more.

Next, you must ana­lyze these con­ver­sa­tions and your prospects’ responses to iden­tify his or her goals, using that feed­back to tai­lor the way you com­mu­ni­cate in future inter­ac­tions. When you finally get to the stage of ask­ing for a prospects busi­ness, the strat­egy that you present will be the con­densed ver­sion of the months or years of interactions.

Take what you learn to heat up the sales cycle
In the finan­cial ser­vices world, this is known as goal-based finan­cial plan­ning, but the model is applic­a­ble in a vari­ety of indus­tries. There is no set model for meet­ing clients’ needs, so sales­peo­ple need to take the suite of prod­ucts or ser­vices that their com­pa­nies offer and then put those into the con­text of the prospects’ needs. Do not attempt to force a prospect into a pre-fabricated profile.

Start con­ver­sa­tions with your prospects that encom­pass their needs and desires. Ask ques­tions or present mate­ri­als that are thought-provoking and will inspire them to reflect on what it is they really want. Do not be sat­is­fied with vague answers — press for responses (and pro­vide more edu­ca­tional mate­r­ial if needed) that will give you insight into what prod­ucts or ser­vices you can rec­om­mend. View your prospects’ stated goals as the frame­work to which you will mar­ket, and even­tu­ally, around which you will build their indi­vid­ual ser­vice strategies.

Prospects and clients alike look for reflec­tions of their past feed­back in the ser­vice you deliver now and in the future. Prove to them that you are lis­ten­ing by using their com­ments and asserted needs to cre­ate a goals-based solution.

Shauna Trainor is The Covenant Group’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ager. She focuses on The Covenant Group’s own mar­ket­ing strat­egy and also helps entre­pre­neurs through finan­cial advi­sor train­ing to lever­age social media and other tech­nol­ogy to spread the word about their ser­vices and prac­tices and build relationships.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Attempt, Business Strategy, Conversations, Covenant Group, Desires, Educational Seminars, Feedback, Financial Planning, Financial Services World, Guarantee, Marketing Function, Marketing Organization, Newsletters, Pipeline, Profile, Prospects, Salespeople, Shauna, Targets, Vague Answers
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What is Missing from Your Marketing Strategy?

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

Many entre­pre­neurs may think they have a plan for how they will allo­cate mar­ket­ing bud­gets and spread aware­ness of their busi­ness. How­ever, many of these ideas fall short of truly being strate­gies. They fail to cap­ture the essence of what they want to achieve and how the var­i­ous func­tions within the busi­ness — sales, mar­ket­ing, ser­vice, admin­is­tra­tion — are all inter​wo​ven​.To cre­ate a truly use­ful mar­ket­ing strat­egy, com­pile a few key pieces of infor­ma­tion: the cur­rent state of your busi­ness; the over­ar­ch­ing mes­sage you wish to con­vey to cus­tomers; a pro­file of your ideal prospect; the sales, brand­ing and rev­enue tar­gets you want to hit; and your company’s avail­able resources. Armed with these details, you can pro­ceed with craft­ing a mas­ter mar­ket­ing plan.Gen­er­ate an action plan, then share it

A mar­ket­ing strat­egy that sits in a binder on your desk will do noth­ing to boost your rev­enue or help you meet your one-, three– and 10-year plans. Rather, you must share the action points with every­one in your com­pany. As we often say on this blog, your employ­ees fill mul­ti­ple roles in their own depart­ments and other divi­sions of the company.

Even the team mem­bers who do not inter­act with clients on a reg­u­lar basis — per­haps instead work­ing in the back office to develop prod­ucts or cre­ate sys­tems to improve oper­a­tions — are client ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In the same way, every­one is essen­tially a mem­ber of the mar­ket­ing team. Directly or indi­rectly, they work together to advance the goals of the orga­ni­za­tion. In this case, that goal may be to advance an oper­at­ing sys­tem so resources can be spent get­ting ready to launch a mar­ket­ing campaign.

Spend some time refin­ing your mar­ket­ing strat­egy. Per­haps you would like to break it up into smaller pieces based on the func­tions and capa­bil­i­ties of indi­vid­ual teams. If you present it as a company-wide effort, not the respon­si­bil­ity of a lone mar­ket­ing team or indi­vid­ual mar­keter, you will likely enjoy greater suc­cess. The impor­tant thing to remem­ber is that account­abil­ity for pro­duc­ing results will lie with the mar­ket­ing per­son or team, how­ever, by makig it a com­pany wide effort, you can empower those respon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing to uti­lize other employ­ees as resources to achieve greater results. Addi­tion­ally, your clients and prospects will wit­ness a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that weaves through­out every aspect of the orga­ni­za­tion. This can increase engage­ment and deliver a more con­sis­tent brand experience.

At The Covenant Group, we facil­i­tate a unique process to help you iden­tify the respon­si­bil­i­ties, objec­tives and activ­i­ties of each role inside your orga­ni­za­tion in order to improve the pro­duc­tiv­ity of your team, drive results, and achieve your over­all goals. To learn more, email us.

Shauna Trainor is The Covenant Group’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ager. She focuses on The Covenant Group’s own mar­ket­ing strat­egy and also helps entre­pre­neurs through finan­cial advi­sor train­ing to lever­age social media and other tech­nol­ogy to spread the word about their ser­vices and prac­tices and build relationships.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Available Resources, Binder, Business Sales, Client Service Representatives, Covenant Group, Current State, Individual Market, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Plan, Marketing Service, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Team, Master Marketing, Revenue Targets, Sales Marketing, Service Administration, Shauna, Smaller Pieces, Spread Awareness, Useful Marketing
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Recognize and Seize Your Business Opportunities

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Entre­pre­neurswho have been work­ing in a spe­cific mar­ket for many years may some­times feel as if they have hit a glass ceil­ing. If you think you have tar­geted as many clients as pos­si­ble in your niche, it may be time to reflect on other mar­kets or ideal client pro­files whose needs you have not yet addressed. Con­sider your cur­rent areas of exper­tise and how these could cat­a­pult you into other related areas.With a new year on the hori­zon, there are new oppor­tu­ni­ties to iden­tify. Assess what you need to do in order to meet them. For exam­ple, are there cer­ti­fi­ca­tions you need to acquire to boost your cred­i­bil­ity and prove your exper­tise to new prospects? Just as we need to invest in our busi­nesses (by adding employ­ees and tech­nolo­gies) to drive our com­pa­nies to the next level, we also need to invest in our­selves to push our­selves into higher pro­fes­sional categories.

Rein­vent your busi­ness with new mar­kets

Be an indus­try trail­blazer and find fresh new mar­kets, rather than some­one who fol­lows the pack and thus gets a smaller por­tion of the rev­enue. To do so, it’s vital that you are con­stantly research­ing your cur­rent sec­tor and also learn­ing about emerg­ing trends and ana­lyz­ing them for poten­tial busi­ness opportunities.

Let me give you an exam­ple. I recently came across a new report from research con­sult­ing com­pany North­star Research Part­ners and brand engage­ment firm Sul­li­van, the 2012 Rebuild­ing Investor Trust study. The researchers found that even amid the stag­nant econ­omy and con­tin­ued decline in home incomes, investors are still engaged in their invest­ments and are even tak­ing a big­ger role in over­see­ing their inter­ests. Jim Neuwirth, the pres­i­dent and CEO of North­star Research Part­ners, com­mented that despite investors choos­ing to del­e­gate more regard­ing their port­fo­lios, that does not mean advi­sors have to abdi­cate their positions.

What does this mean for pro­fes­sion­als in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try? “To be suc­cess­ful mov­ing for­ward, advi­sors must rec­og­nize this shift and increase their client engage­ment accord­ingly,” Neuwirth says. An advi­sor who wanted to cap­i­tal­ize on this trend could choose to rebrand his or her busi­ness as one that val­ues col­lab­o­ra­tion with its clients. By focus­ing on cus­tomer ser­vice and mak­ing its com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems more effi­cient and sim­ple, a firm could build a rep­u­ta­tion as one that is there to help its clients make smart decisions.

What sys­tems have you estab­lished to make sure you are catch­ing new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties? How often do you review your cur­rent mar­kets for insight into how you can expand your company’s areas of oper­a­tion? Build a brand that is respon­sive to your clients’ demands and capa­ble of adapt­ing to shifts in its mar­kets, and you are much more likely to cre­ate sus­tain­able success.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Business Opportunities, Client Profiles, Consulting Company, Covenant Group, Credibility, Glass Ceiling, Horizon, Incomes, New Opportunities, Next Level, Niche, Norm Trainor, Northstar Research, Portfolios, Professional Categories, Prospects, Research Consulting, Research Partners, Stagnant Economy, Trailblazer
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Create a Strategy for Focusing on Real Work

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Herb Koplowitz, The Covenant Group

For far too many finan­cial advi­sors, it may feel as if they spend more time wrapped up in small details such as answer­ing email and man­ag­ing an office to focus on the real work of build­ing their busi­nesses and estab­lish­ing client cap­i­tal. Tying your­self up with unim­por­tant but easy tasks is often a tac­tic — uncon­scious or delib­er­ate — to pro­cras­ti­nate on tack­ling more dif­fi­cult or chal­leng­ing responsibilities.

As we enter a new year, it is impor­tant to con­sider how you can be more effi­icient and effec­tive at work. Con­sider mak­ing a to-do list at the start of every morn­ing, list­ing the items in order of impor­tance. Force your­self to com­plete one task before jump­ing to another. Writ­ing it down on a slip of paper instead of typ­ing it on your com­puter will also pre­vent you from mov­ing the tasks around, and you get the added sat­is­fac­tion of cross­ing out a line every time you fin­ish that item.

If what you are work­ing on does not require a com­puter or an inter­net con­nec­tion, turn it off. This can help you set­tle into and focus on one task at a time. At the very least, sign out of your email account and com­mit to only check­ing it once every hour, for 10 min­utes or less. The time limit will make it nec­es­sary to respond to the most press­ing issues first. Take advan­tage of many email ser­vices’ pri­or­i­ti­za­tion tools to orga­nize the mes­sages, and sched­ule more time later in your day to deal with the rest of your emails.

As you work to over­haul your own pro­duc­tiv­ity habits, it may be wise to get your employ­ees involved too, as the entire team can serve as a source of sup­port and encour­age­ment for one another. Dif­fer­ent employ­ees may be able to share new and inter­est­ing ways to man­age time most effectively.

David Gross­man recently issued an e-book explain­ing that employ­ees need to be empow­ered and encour­aged to pri­or­i­tize emails. Specif­i­cally, they should cat­e­go­rize which ones should be answered imme­di­ately and which can afford a delayed response. He rec­om­mends reassess­ing your choice of email for all com­mu­ni­ca­tion, using it instead to sum­ma­rize and fol­low up on con­ver­sa­tions you have in per­son or over the phone.

Sim­ply hav­ing every­one in the office work­ing toward the same goal of boost­ing their pro­duc­tiv­ity and trans­form­ing their work ethic can pro­vide the extra moti­va­tion you need to improve. Under­stand that you are work­ing to change habits asso­ci­ated with how you approach your daily tasks, and the trans­for­ma­tion will require time and ded­i­ca­tion. When you get frus­trated, talk to another team mem­ber about what it is you are strug­gling with. Ask them about their tac­tics for jug­gling minor details such as email and other tasks to get tips for block­ing out other thoughts when you have dif­fi­culty con­cen­trat­ing. Do not be afraid to ask for help or to del­e­gate some of the tasks that do not require your exper­tise to another employee.

Herb Koplowitz has 20 years expe­ri­ence con­sult­ing to orga­ni­za­tions on issues of strat­egy imple­men­ta­tion. His areas of exper­tise include con­sul­ta­tion on orga­ni­za­tional struc­ture, per­for­mance man­age­ment, com­pen­sa­tion, team­work and tal­ent pool devel­op­ment. He’s well-versed in the chal­lenges that an entre­pre­neur may strug­gle with, and as a Senior Coach and Facil­i­ta­tor, helps clients achieve busi­ness change through The Covenant Group’s exten­sive finan­cial advi­sor train­ing programs.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Client Capital, Covenant Group, David Grossman, E Book, Email Account, Email Services, Emails, Encouragement, Entire Team, Financial Advisors, Focus, Internet Connection, Managing An Office, New Year, Productivity, Satisfaction, Slip Of Paper, Tactic, Time Limit, Typing
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The Emotional Side of Customer Service

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, The Covenant Group

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing a solu­tion to a client’s per­sonal or finan­cial prob­lem, how do you think your company’s prod­ucts and ser­vices impact that per­son? You may think that a friendly demeanor or tak­ing the time to meet with a client face-to-face is insignif­i­cant, but the effort can actu­ally res­onate with him or her on an emo­tional level. Addi­tion­ally, being able to make a client’s day can have a pos­i­tive effect on your employ­ees as well.

In a SAGE pub­li­ca­tion on Human Rela­tions, researchers from the Uni­ver­sity of West­ern Aus­tralia and Car­leton Uni­ver­sity in Canada stud­ied how employee-client inter­ac­tions affect both par­ties on an emo­tional level and what con­se­quences that has for cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and employ­ees’ well-being. They iden­ti­fied instances of “emo­tional con­ta­gion, where the pos­i­tive emo­tions of the sales employ­ees, or those of the cus­tomer, influ­enced the emo­tion of the other.”

Employ­ees who par­tic­i­pated in the study wrote diaries track­ing their inter­ac­tions with clients on a daily basis, which were sep­a­rated into five kinds of inter­ac­tions: Event-emotion, event-appraisal (when the team mem­ber feels he or she had an influ­ence on the client out­come), appraisal-emotion, negative-event-positive-emotion and emo­tional con­ta­gion relationships.

The way clients and employ­ees inter­act with each other sets up a cycle. If one feels happy, that will influ­ence the other’s reac­tion. If a client comes in with a neg­a­tive atti­tude but the employee is able to find a solu­tion, that team mem­ber is likely to feel proud and worth­while. These and other expe­ri­ences can con­tribute to an over­all pos­i­tive atti­tude for employ­ees and clients alike.

How do you strive to cre­ate a pleas­ant, pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence for your employ­ees and your clients? Have you cre­ated a sys­tem in which both par­ties can be sat­is­fied, or is one group’s well-being dimin­ished in favor of the other?

The process for ensur­ing your clients always have a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence when they inter­act with your employ­ees is twofold. First, you must hire tal­ented peo­ple who don’t just pay lip-service to client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment — they gen­uinely value it and believe in its con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness suc­cess. Sec­ondly, encour­age them to put for­ward a happy and enthu­si­as­tic demeanor when work­ing with clients.

This can be achieved by cre­at­ing a customer-centric cor­po­rate cul­ture, lead­ing by exam­ple and by rein­forc­ing the mes­sage with ver­bal reminders that you are in the busi­ness of serv­ing peo­ple. The prod­ucts you pro­vide are sec­ondary to this mission.

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices training.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Carleton University, Client Interactions, Client Outcome, Covenant Group, Customer Satisfaction, Daily Basis, Demeanor, Emotion, Emotional Contagion, Emotional Level, Emotional Side, Human Relations, Negative Attitude, Positive Attitude, Sage Publication, Taking The Time, Team Member, University In Canada, University Of Western Australia
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Are You Using Periodic Reviews to Secure Client Capital?

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Some of the most valu­able busi­ness prospects are already your clients. Because you have already suc­ceeded in con­vert­ing exist­ing clients, a major por­tion of the mar­ket­ing process has been com­pleted. It allows you to build upon your past suc­cesses and the fact that the exist­ing clients are already famil­iar with your work.

Get infor­ma­tion on past actions for future suc­cess
To get insight into how you can do that, how­ever, you must undergo peri­odic reviews. As I explained in a recent pre­sen­ta­tion at the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Insur­ance and Finan­cial Advi­sors’ Annual Con­fer­ence (NAIFA), this is a six-step process and should be part of a reg­u­lar follow-up sched­ule that you main­tain for each of your clients.

Explain to your clients that you like to con­duct peri­odic reviews, and send an invi­ta­tion between two and four weeks ahead of when you would like to meet. Call them to estab­lish a con­crete date and time, and then send a meet­ing agenda a week before this date. Shar­ing an out­line for the meet­ing will make it a more con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion for you and the client and will allow both of you to orga­nize your thoughts ahead of time. Tele­phone once again to con­firm that your client received the agenda and ask if there are any ques­tions he or she would like to ask ahead of time or that should be cov­ered in more detail dur­ing the meet­ing. Anthony Lam delves deeper into the sim­ple steps you can take before a meet­ing here.

When you meet with the client, you can ask for feed­back on your per­for­mance and for sug­ges­tions of how you can pro­vide added value. This is a great oppor­tu­nity to have your clients reaf­firm their sat­is­fac­tion with your ser­vice and con­fi­dence in your abil­i­ties. The meet­ing will be a primer not only for secur­ing future sales — it can also be a great tran­si­tion as you ask for refer­rals and intro­duc­tions. At that point, describe who your ideal prospect is, and guide the client through a few ques­tions to help him or her iden­tify poten­tial leads. Now the client will be primed for you to ask for a per­sonal intro­duc­tion (a much more effec­tive tac­tic than cold-calling referrals).

In both the introduction-request and review processes, fol­low­ing up with your client is essen­tial. Let him or her know how it goes with the prospects they iden­ti­fied. Sim­i­larly, con­tact clients with whom you con­duct reviews to A) thank them for their time and feed­back, and B) let them know what course of action you plan to take as a result of their cri­tiques and/or suggestions.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Business Prospects, Confidence, Covenant Group, Future Sales, Insight, Insurance, Introductions, Invitation, Marketing Process, Meeting Agenda, National Association Of Insurance And Financial Advisors, Norm Trainor, Referrals, Satisfaction, Simple Steps, Six Step, Successes, Time Telephone, Transition
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Create and Stick to a Marketing Schedule

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

When try­ing to keep track of every func­tion in your busi­ness, mar­ket­ing may seem like the least press­ing issue com­pared to sales, client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment and admin­is­tra­tive duties. How­ever, with­out a mar­ket­ing strat­egy and sched­ule that you fol­low closely, you may find that your sales pipeline will start to run dry, and you will spend more time pur­su­ing fewer new clients.

Too many entre­pre­neurs run mar­ket­ing as an after­thought, using it to hap­haz­ardly patch holes in their sales strat­egy rather than treat it as a vital and stand­alone por­tion of the busi­ness. This results in wasted time, poorly allo­cated money, and dis­ap­point­ing results.

Be dis­ci­plined about your mar­ket­ing
The bet­ter route is to cre­ate a plan with pur­pose and stick to a sched­ule to exe­cute each phase of the strat­egy. Start out by set­ting goals for what you want to accom­plish in the next year and three years down the line. How many clients do you want to gain in the years to come? What is the num­ber of new prospects you will need to add to the pipeline to ensure you not only main­tain, but grow your leads? Who are your ideal clients, and what are the mes­sage for­mats and types of com­mu­ni­ca­tions they will respond to?

Once you have out­lined those bench­marks, you can start to think about what steps will be required to get you to that point.

Build some flex­i­bil­ity into your mar­ket­ing strat­egy. The best plans are not set in stone — they respond to changes in client demand and sales num­bers while tak­ing into account the suc­cesses and fail­ures of past tac­tics. Test out your var­i­ous mar­ket­ing efforts, be it direct mail, sem­i­nars, print ads or social media, and exper­i­ment with vari­a­tions of your cen­tral brand mes­sage. Mea­sure those results to deter­mine which tac­tics should be kept and which need more finess­ing before they can be relied upon to pro­duce results.

As you iden­tify your var­i­ous adver­tis­ing tools, you can lay out a time­line for the stages of each. If you send out a piece of direct mail in the first month, you can fol­low up with a phone call or email in the sec­ond month, and so on. Inte­grate these phases so that each strength­ens and com­ple­ments the oth­ers. Just remem­ber, it is impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple via their cho­sen com­mu­ni­ca­tion channel(s).

Shauna Trainor is The Covenant Group’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ager. She focuses on The Covenant Group’s own mar­ket­ing strat­egy and also helps entre­pre­neurs through finan­cial advi­sor train­ing to lever­age social media and other tech­nol­ogy to spread the word about their ser­vices and prac­tices and build relationships.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Administrative Duties, Advertising Tools, Afterthought, Benchmarks, Brand Message, Business Marketing, Client Relationship Management, Covenant Group, Direct Mail, Marketing Efforts, Marketing Strategy, Message Formats, Print Ads, Sales Numbers, Sales Pipeline, Sales Strategy, Set In Stone, Setting Goals, Shauna, Timeline
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What Story are you Building for the Client?

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, The Covenant Group

A com­mon dis­cus­sion in the world of cus­tomer ser­vice is how to build a nar­ra­tive for your clients. Some of the biggest brands have achieved life­long loy­alty from con­sumers and con­tinue to draw in more cus­tomers. This is because they have focused not only on the qual­ity of their prod­ucts, but also on the expe­ri­ence clients have when inter­act­ing with their brands.

When assess­ing your own company’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, con­sider sev­eral fac­tors; includ­ing how you want clients to feel after they have used your prod­uct or got­ten off the phone with one of your employ­ees, as well as how your ser­vice is going to improve their lives. Addi­tion­ally, think about what you want them to say to oth­ers when they talk about your brand. By defin­ing the over­all mes­sage of your prod­uct, you can start to work that into every facet of your busi­ness, from client ser­vice to prod­uct devel­op­ment to the sales and mar­ket­ing functions.

Con­struct­ing a nar­ra­tive arc

What do you do to make sure your clients’ expe­ri­ences have a begin­ning, a mid­dle and a happy end­ing? This is a clear exam­ple of how all the com­po­nents of a busi­ness are inter­wo­ven. Most likely, the first encounter a poten­tial client will have with your com­pany is through mar­ket­ing efforts.

Pay atten­tion to how you com­mu­ni­cate with prospects dur­ing this period and how you make them feel as you grad­u­ally move them through the sales process to even­tu­ally become clients. At that point, what do you do to make them feel val­ued and appre­ci­ated? How are you com­mu­ni­cat­ing — explic­itly and sub­lim­i­nally — that you and the client are part­ners on a jour­ney to solve the prob­lem or need that ini­tially led them to do busi­ness with you?

It may be when you are draft­ing your mar­ket­ing strat­egy that you pay the most atten­tion to cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive for your clients, but it is in client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment that you tell the tale. In every inter­ac­tion, make sure that you are build­ing upon that ser­vice story, mov­ing toward clos­ing — a sat­is­fied client who is ready to start the next chap­ter of his or her rela­tion­ship with your busi­ness. To do so, iden­tify the con­flict (the ques­tion or prob­lem that your client is expe­ri­enc­ing) and main­tain intrigue by deliv­er­ing sur­prises (meet­ing and exceed­ing the client’s expectations).

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices training.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Client Relationship Management, Consumers, Covenant Group, Customer Experience, Experience Clients, Experiences, Facet, First Encounter, Interaction, Journey, Lifelong Loyalty, Marketing Efforts, Marketing Strategy, Narrative Arc, Product Marketing, Prospects, Sales And Marketing, Sales Marketing, Several Factors
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