Stop Asking for Referrals

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

The big day has arrived! My book on refer­ral mar­ket­ing, Stop Ask­ing for Refer­rals, has now been released by McGraw Hill!

After work­ing with finan­cial advi­sor for 14 years (and being one for 25), I focused two years ago on research­ing every­thing I could find on the art of refer­ral mar­ket­ing.  I found that a lot of great work has been done that shows us what really works, and how we can cre­ate refer­ral mar­ket­ing strate­gies that will bring in plenty of new clients.  You have read many of those insights and ideas on this blog. I have been work­ing with advi­sors all over the coun­try imple­ment­ing these strate­gies. And now you can learn them, too, and start build­ing the prac­tice you have always wanted. And now most of those ideas have been con­cen­trated into this sin­gle action-oriented manual.

In this break­through book, you will learn:

•    How and why clients refer
•    How to engage your clients to teach you what they find most valuable
•    How to pre­pare your clients for the oppor­tu­nity to refer you
•    How to be the advi­sor clients nat­u­rally think of when they meet a good prospect
•    How to turn a bad refer­ral into a great opportunity
•    How to use LinkedIn to iden­tify peo­ple your clients can refer
•    How to have the “New Refer­ral Con­ver­sa­tion” with clients
•    How to cre­ate a refer­ral mar­ket­ing strat­egy that works

It’s all here — what works in get­ting refer­rals and how to put it into action.

Stop! Ask­ing for Refer­rals will give you the insight and strate­gies to solve your prob­lems attract­ing referrals. 

Bob Veres said the book “will almost cer­tainly become the best book on mar­ket­ing in the finan­cial planning/independent RIA world.”

Michael Kitces said “read­ing this book will rev­o­lu­tion­ize how you think about grow­ing your busi­ness.“
Julie Lit­tlechild rec­om­mends it as some­thing that will help you “unlock the untapped poten­tial you have in your busi­ness today with an approach that is com­fort­able as it is effective.”

Sheryl Gar­rett raves “Kudos for this pow­er­ful, one-stop mar­ket­ing resource!”

Get your copy today!  The book is avail­able on Ama­zon, at major book­sellers, or right on my web­site here.

Copy­right © Stephen Wer­sh­ing

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Tags: Asking For Referrals, Bad Referral, Blog, Bob Veres, Breakthrough Book, Business Today, Driven Practice, Financial Advisor, Financial Planning, Insight, Insights And Ideas, Julie Littlechild, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Strategy, Mcgraw Hill, Opportunity, Referral Marketing, Ria, Single Action
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Strategic Problem Solving or What’s The Cost of Losing a Client?

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consulting

Every sin­gle day, we are faced with problems:

• Per­sonal Problems
• Client Prob­lems
• Busi­ness Problems
• Rela­tion­ship Problems
• Finan­cial Problems

to name a few.

In fact, as a finan­cial advi­sor, you are in the busi­ness of solv­ing problems.

What is your process for solv­ing problems?

Strate­gic Prob­lem Solv­ing is a process that you can refine to pro­duce your sys­tem for solv­ing prob­lems for your­self and your clients.

Step 1 – Quan­tify the problem

One of my goals in work­ing with advi­sors is to “sim­plify every­thing” and focus on doing work that has the great­est impact on suc­cess, or focus on the 20% of activ­i­ties that pro­duce 80% of results.

Rather than fol­low­ing a tra­di­tional approach of “find a problem/fix a prob­lem”, you will achieve grater results by pri­or­i­tiz­ing the prob­lems and work­ing on the most impor­tant ones.  This is achieved by putting a finan­cial value on a problem.

Here’s an exam­ple.  You get a call from a client in which you are informed that this client is trans­fer­ring his account to another advi­sor or more likely, you get a transfer-out notice and no call.  In your dis­cus­sion, you try to iden­tify why your client made this deci­sion and find out that he is not sat­is­fied with fre­quency and qual­ity of contact.

Fol­low­ing the call, you sit at your desk and try to put a num­ber on how much rev­enue you lost as a result of this defec­tion.  This client had $750,000 in a 1% fee-based account.  So you have lost rev­enue of $7,500.  Not so fast.  If you had bet­ter sat­is­fied the client’s needs, this client who is in his early 50’s may have stayed with you for another ten years, for exam­ple.  So the num­ber is $75,000.  Think again.  This client plans to con­tribute $25,000 per year and will, in all like­li­hood, receive an inher­i­tance of $500,000 over the next ten years AND the account should grow, based on a con­ser­v­a­tive asset allo­ca­tion model of 6% per year.  Then, as you plan to retire and sell your busi­ness in ten years at 1.5 times rev­enue, you will lose this as well.

Based on this sce­nario, the loss of this one client will cost you approx­i­mately $86,000 with­out the inher­i­tance and over $113,000 in pre-tax income, if the inher­i­tance was received in the fifth year.

This num­ber gets crazy if you con­sider how many other clients you may lose if you don’t fix this prob­lem and poten­tial refer­rals, if you did a good job.

By quan­ti­fy­ing prob­lems, you are bet­ter able to pri­or­i­tize them and get them resolved before it costs you a small fortune.

How impor­tant do you think it is to solve a prob­lem like this?  How many clients have you lost in the last three years?  Sorry, it was not my inten­tion to make you feel nau­seous.  Maybe, you should get in touch with us?

Step 2 – Iden­tify the root of the problem

Some prob­lems are sim­ple and some are very com­plex.  Com­plex prob­lems can be very dif­fi­cult to solve and require a spe­cial­ized approach.

The first step, in work­ing on a com­plex prob­lem, is to break it down into smaller, more man­age­able prob­lems.  A com­plex prob­lem may be made up of ten or more sim­ple prob­lems.  Some may be sur­face issues that are easy to assess and some may be deeper and more dif­fi­cult to identify.

Your goal should be to drill down and find the root of the prob­lem.  The root may be com­plex but more often than not, it is rel­a­tively sim­ple to solve.  By fix­ing the root, many of the prob­lems you have iden­ti­fied may be resolved quite simply.

Step 3 – Plan to resolve the problem

Some prob­lems can be resolved sim­ply and it may make sense to knock them off quickly but it is impor­tant to give the high value prob­lems the proper pri­or­ity and atten­tion.  Any­thing that may result in the loss of a client is auto­mat­i­cally near the top of the list.

The best way to accom­plish this is to take a project man­age­ment approach to run­ning your busi­ness.  Our blog enti­tled The Project Man­age­ment Approach to Build­ing a Bet­ter Busi­ness will help you to wrap your mind around this concept.

Bob Simp­son is Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants.  Bob can be reached on his direct line at 905−502−0100, toll free at 866−646−6002 or by e-mail at bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment, was branch man­ager and SVP National Sales for Mid­land Wal­wyn and has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: Asset Allocation Model, Busin, Business Problems, Defection, Desk, Financial Advisor, Focus, Frequency Contact, Goals, Inheritance, Likelihood, Personal Problems, Problem Solving, Relationship Problems, Single Day, Sit, Solving Problems, Step 1, Success, Traditional Approach
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Advisor Collaboration on LinkedIn

Friday, January 13th, 2012

“LinkedIn is the world’s largest pro­fes­sional net­work with over 120 mil­lion mem­bers and grow­ing rapidly. LinkedIn con­nects you to your trusted con­tacts and helps you exchange knowl­edge, ideas, and oppor­tu­ni­ties with a broader net­work of professionals.”

One of the pow­er­ful fea­tures of LinkedIn is their Groups func­tion.  It allows you to set up and man­age groups based on a cen­tral theme.  I am a mem­ber of a broad range of groups.  Click on Bob Simpson’s Pro­file at the bot­tom of this arti­cle and scroll to the bot­tom of my pro­file to see my list of groups.  By the way, this is a great way to iden­tify groups that you might want to join.

Hav­ing said that, there is a prob­lem with groups.  Most of them get taken over by employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and self-promotion.  If you are a mem­ber of some groups, you know what I mean.

On Jan­u­ary 11, 2012, we started a group called “Advi­sor Col­lab­o­ra­tion” on LinkedIn.  It is pretty new but mem­ber­ship is grow­ing.  To be a mem­ber, you must be a wealth plan­ner, finan­cial advi­sor or plan­ner.  We have invited a few trusted sources to par­tic­i­pate but that will be kept to a minimum.

Advi­sor Col­lab­o­ra­tion only allows dis­cus­sions that are rel­e­vant to you, the finan­cial advi­sor com­mu­nity.  We will mod­er­ate the group to min­i­mize con­tent that will frus­trate you.  If you have a dis­cus­sion that you would like to start, please feel free to post it.  We have set up the group so that all new dis­cus­sions must be approved before being posted.  We will start a new dis­cus­sion each week and will give pri­or­ity to advi­sor requests.  Only one dis­cus­sion will be posted per week.

We pre­fer to keep dis­cus­sions cen­tered on core prac­tice man­age­ment issues with an empha­sis on client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, busi­ness devel­op­ment, per­sonal or team per­for­mance and tech­nol­ogy.  For exam­ple, last week we posted a blog enti­tled “Focus and Avoid Lists for 2012”.  The arti­cle pre­sented 5 sug­ges­tions for you to think about focus­ing your atten­tion and five sug­ges­tions that we think you should avoid.  We’d like you to share what is at the top of your lists for 2012, start­ing Monday.

This group is a safe envi­ron­ment for you to par­tic­i­pate.  The pub­lic is not allowed to par­tic­i­pate so they have no access to read your posts.  If you post a com­ment in the dis­cus­sion and some­body responds to your post in a non-professional man­ner, that com­ment will be deleted imme­di­ately.  No BS or self-promotion will be tolerated.

Here are some links to help get you started.  We hope you will join:

LinkedIn​.com

Advi­sor Col­lab­o­ra­tion Group on LinkedIn

Bob Simpson’s Pro­file (so you can check out my groups)

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: Blog, Bob Simpson, Business Development, Client Management, Client Relationship Management, Collaboration, Core Practice, Employment Opportunities, Exchange Knowledge, Financial Advisor, Financial Planner, Groups, Linkedin, Management Business, Practice Management Issues, Priority, Professional Network, Self Promotion, Team Performance
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Gaining Competitive Advantage

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

An effec­tive way to gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tage is to shift the func­tions in your busi­ness or indus­try to a higher level. Star­bucks is a good exam­ple of a dom­i­nant brand that enhances the café or cof­fee shop expe­ri­ence. In our neigh­bour­hood, there are four Star­bucks loca­tions and a num­ber of owner-operated cafés and cof­fee shops. Recently, a new café opened and my wife and I went in and ordered two lattes. I soon real­ized that the young man mak­ing our drinks would ben­e­fit from the train­ing Star­bucks pro­vides. He seemed to take for­ever. As a retailer, Star­bucks excels at the pro­ce­dural aspects of prepar­ing and serv­ing drinks and food. Their com­mit­ment to effi­cient, reli­able and respon­sive ser­vice, aug­mented by a friendly staff pro­vides com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. It is likely that Star­bucks and the local cof­fee shop are hir­ing from the same tal­ent pool. How­ever, Star­bucks is able to hire bet­ter peo­ple because they pay more and pro­vide more train­ing. In addi­tion, their store man­ager also receives bet­ter train­ing and is able to oper­ate at a higher level. Each Star­bucks loca­tion ben­e­fits from bet­ter processes and sys­tems that were designed by peo­ple at a higher level. The dif­fer­ence is man­i­fested in every­thing from the store lay­out to the qual­ity of equip­ment and the skill of the staff. The front line per­son­nel in Star­bucks gain an advan­tage through the train­ing and sys­tems pro­vided by the company.

As a finan­cial advi­sor, you can gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tage by shift­ing the func­tions in your prac­tice to a higher level.

The start­ing point is to define the lev­els of ser­vice you will pro­vide your clients and the ways in which your ser­vice addresses their needs, wants and val­ues. Then, you focus on the pro­ce­dural aspects of how you deliver value to your clients. I often encounter advi­sors with the same level of capa­bil­ity; yet, one out­per­forms the oth­ers through atten­tion to processes and sys­tems. Finan­cial advi­sors are entre­pre­neurs. As such, they share char­ac­ter­is­tics in com­mon with the owner-operator of a local café. Typ­i­cally, finan­cial advi­sors do not enjoy the ben­e­fits of work­ing for a large and systems-oriented orga­ni­za­tion like Star­bucks. How­ever, advi­sors can access processes and sys­tems designed by peo­ple at a higher level of func­tion­al­ity. The qual­ity of what you deliver is cor­re­lated with the qual­ity of your sup­pli­ers. You can work with your sup­plier com­pa­nies to lever­age their exper­tise. Con­sul­tants can pro­vide you with processes and sys­tems capabilities.

At The Covenant Group, our role is to pro­vide our advi­sor clients with the same level of capa­bil­ity as the higher level exec­u­tives in a Star­bucks. We give finan­cial advi­sors sys­tems that were designed two or three lev­els above where the advi­sors are oper­at­ing. Uti­liz­ing a Best Prac­tices approach, we edu­cate and coach advi­sors and their staff to be more effec­tive and effi­cient. We intro­duce processes and sys­tems that take the advi­sor to a higher level.

Most finan­cial advi­sors are work­ing below their capa­bil­ity. Shift­ing the func­tions in their prac­tice to a higher level unlocks tremen­dous value cre­ation. The rewards are not only finan­cial, but also emo­tional. Advi­sors make a lot more money and derive far greater satisfaction.

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: Capability, Coffee Shop, Coffee Shops, Dominant Brand, Drinks, Financial Advisor, Financial Advisors, Gaining Competitive Advantage, Lattes, Line Personnel, Location Benefits, Neighbourhood, Norm Trainor, Procedural Aspects, Responsive Service, Shop Experience, Starbucks, Starbucks Locations, Store Layout, Talent Pool, Young Man
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Building a World Class Financial Advisory Firm

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

Finan­cial Ser­vices is a rela­tion­ship busi­ness. The bond between a finan­cial advi­sor and a client is very per­sonal. The chal­lenge for finan­cial advi­sors is to extend that rela­tion­ship of trust and per­sonal con­nec­tion to include the other peo­ple in the firm who work with clients.

Dave Rich­mond is the head of a finan­cial advi­sory firm in Jack­son, Michi­gan. His vision is to build a multi-million dol­lar finan­cial advi­sory firm. For Dave, the thing that gets his juices flow­ing is build­ing a busi­ness or entity that makes peo­ples’ dreams become real­ity. This is true not only for the clients of Rich­mond Broth­ers, but also for each of the peo­ple who work in the firm. Dave expresses the chal­lenge of grow­ing the busi­ness in this way;

‘We are ask­ing the ques­tion: Can we become world class in Jack­son, Michi­gan? The chal­lenge is to ensure that as we grow, our cul­ture and the peo­ple we hire have the same phi­los­o­phy and the qual­ity of client ser­vice is not diluted. We need to step out­side the nor­mal box to real­ize the impos­si­ble is attain­able. We con­stantly address the issue: Is our Vision going to test out over time? Clients want the same qual­ity of ser­vice and ongo­ing rela­tion­ship from every mem­ber of our team. As an exam­ple, a client told me that each time he has been in our office, he has met a dif­fer­ent per­son and the expe­ri­ence has been out­stand­ing every time. To build a world class busi­ness, your peo­ple have to con­vey what you are about as well as you do. The client left me a voice­mail mes­sage: “Every time I walk out of your office, I say to myself, I should call David and tell him that your peo­ple are liv­ing your vision. I called to leave the mes­sage that your dream is a reality.”

Rich­mond Broth­ers sur­veys every client that does busi­ness with them. Dave describes it this way: “We want to ensure that they have a great expe­ri­ence. To do that, you have to have A+ peo­ple on your team. It is the inter­ac­tion that your peo­ple have with clients that make a dif­fer­ence. It is also a great way to do busi­ness because it is fun and expresses where our pas­sion lies”.

The firm’s mantra is: “Have we made a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life today?”

Dave’s job is to allo­cate human resources and cap­i­tal to exe­cute the firm’s Vision and Mis­sion. It is to put their peo­ple in the best posi­tion to succeed.

“We hire peo­ple who are excel­lent at doing what we don’t do well. We not only empower peo­ple; we enable them. We give them the resources to exe­cute deci­sions that make a dif­fer­ence. On the rela­tion­ship side, every­one in the office has the capa­bil­ity to give some­thing to clients. If some­thing hap­pens in a client’s life, they can send flow­ers to them that day. The power of send­ing flow­ers that arrive in two hours is so great. Each per­son on staff has the power to do it. We track ran­dom acts of kind­ness. Our peo­ple are expected to find ways to make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ples’ lives. In each staff meet­ing, we ask: How did you make a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life?

It is hum­bling to lis­ten to David. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of great lead­ers is gen­eros­ity of spirit. Dave is warm and gen­er­ous by nature. That is also true of Matt Curf­man, his part­ner, and each mem­ber of the Rich­mond Broth­ers team. Ear­lier this year, my father died. I learned of his death while facil­i­tat­ing a work­shop that Dave and Matt attended. The next day, a large bou­quet of flow­ers was deliv­ered to my home from Rich­mond Broth­ers. The fra­grance from those flow­ers filled the house. These acts of kind­ness raise the human spirit and bring out the best in us.

Dave Rich­mond is real­iz­ing his vision of build­ing a world class busi­ness every day and hav­ing fun doing it.

Norm Trainor is the Founder and CEO of The Covenant Group, a com­pany that spe­cial­izes in edu­cat­ing and coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors and entre­pre­neurs and pro­vid­ing them with busi­ness tools to enhance their per­for­mance. He can be reached at norm@covenantgroup.com or 1−877−903−3878 X333.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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Tags: Advisory Services, Business People, Culture, Dollar, Dreams Become Reality, Financial Advisor, Financial Advisors, Financial Advisory, Financial Services, Interaction, Jackson Michigan, Juices, Met, Norm Trainor, Personal Connection, Philosophy, Quality Of Service, Relationship Business, Richmond, Surveys, Time Clients, Voicemail Message, World Class Business
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2010 National Survey of Canadian Financial Advisors

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

2010 Advi­sor Surveys

Open March 15, 2010 to April 15, 2010

To Fee or Not to Fee is launch­ing its sec­ond annual national sur­vey of Cana­dian fee finan­cial advisors.

The sur­vey is open to all finan­cial advi­sors, no mat­ter what their level of fee income. We have also added a sec­ond sur­vey this year for the commission-based advisor.

Because the sur­vey results will be com­piled and sent to all the par­tic­i­pants, there are sev­eral ben­e­fits to advi­sors for participating:

•  Help elim­i­nate the myths and mis­un­der­stand­ings of the fee vs. com­mis­sion mod­els.
•  Pro­vide pric­ing guide­lines.
•  Under­stand the tran­si­tion process.

“The fee advi­sor mar­ket is fas­ci­nat­ing, but quite con­fus­ing and filled with inac­cu­rate data,” accord­ing to Marc Lam­on­tagne, founder and work­shop leader. “We think advi­sors will ben­e­fit from tak­ing the sur­vey because it will prompt some thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of their prac­tice and give them a fee-model benchmark.”

To Fee or Not to Fee is an advi­sor train­ing com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in the tran­si­tion to the fee model. Lam­on­tagne will also present the sur­vey results at the 2010 CIFPs con­fer­ence in Nia­gara Falls from June 13 to 16, 2010.

Please con­tact Marc Lam­on­tagne, CFP, R.F.P., FMA, at (613) 240‑8308 or marc@tofeeornottofee.com if you have any ques­tions or com­ments.

Please click on the appro­pri­ate sur­vey choice:

2010 Fee Advi­sor Sur­vey Click here to take survey

2010 Com­mis­sion Advi­sor Sur­vey Click here to take survey

More from Marc Lam­on­tagne — Ideas from the 2009 CIFPS Con­fer­ence — Video Inter­view from IE Television:

Over­com­ing three obsta­cles to fee-based busi­ness

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Tags: Advisor Training, Benchmark, Canadian Financial Advisors, Cfp, Financial Advisor, Fma, Inaccurate Data, Misunderstandings, Models, Myths, National Survey, Niagara Falls, Obstacles, Participants, Survey Results, Surveys, Television, Thoughtful Consideration, Transition, Video Interview, Workshop Leader
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Lessons From a $1-million Misunderstanding

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

A recent con­ver­sa­tion drove home how easy it is to cross wires when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients.

Late last fall, I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a good friend, a suc­cess­ful lawyer in his 60s who I’ve known for over 30 years. He has been man­ag­ing his own money for the last while but mar­kets over the past cou­ple of years per­suaded him he should look at work­ing with a finan­cial advisor.

He men­tioned that he had sat down with one advi­sor (as it hap­pens some­one I know quite well) for ninety min­utes, had enjoyed their con­ver­sa­tion and been lean­ing towards work­ing with him. In fact, he had agreed to a follow-up meet­ing the next week to talk about a spe­cific plan.

This all fell apart at the very end of the meet­ing, as he became con­cerned about this advisor’s strong empha­sis on junior resources (“Moose Pas­ture Mines” was how my friend described these stocks) that he saw as being too risky for some­one in his six­ties. As a result, he had decided not to move for­ward with this advi­sor and had can­celled the fol­low up meeting.

How this went wrong

Know­ing the advi­sor in ques­tion, this just didn’t sound right. I called him, men­tioned I knew the prospec­tive client he’d talked to — and asked for his take on the con­ver­sa­tion.

It turns out that he had thought the meet­ing went well and was baf­fled by my friend’s deci­sion to can­cel the fol­low up meeting.

In talk­ing fur­ther, he did say that he’d made an off­hand com­ment that he’d suc­cess­fully used flow throughs as a vehi­cle to help some clients save taxes .… And yes, he had told my friend that these flow throughs did con­sist of junior resource stocks.

Two impor­tant lessons

I did ulti­mately get this advi­sor and my friend back together for a cof­fee to clear the air — and we iden­ti­fied the source of the misunderstanding.

When they met, the very last thing they’d talked was the flow through share oppor­tu­nity — it turns out that by leav­ing this to the end of the meet­ing, this was what the prospec­tive client walked away remembering.

There are two impor­tant lessons for advi­sors from this.

First, in struc­tur­ing agen­das for meet­ings with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients, be sure that you end on the right note — often advi­sors will leave the least impor­tant item to the end of the agenda and risk that being what the peo­ple you’re talk­ing to take away.

And sec­ond, you need to be sure to sum­ma­rize what you’ve cov­ered at the end of every meet­ing (and ide­ally recap this in a short email imme­di­ately after­wards.). You can’t assume that peo­ple you meet with will remem­ber all the things you dis­cussed — you need to take two min­utes at the con­clu­sion to sum­ma­rize the key points you talked about

You can never elim­i­nate the chances of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but you can reduce them.

One way to do that is to learn from what hap­pened to this advisor.

Whether meet­ing with an exist­ing or prospec­tive client, be sure to end every meet­ing on a pos­i­tive note that is con­sis­tent with your over­all approach.

And hav­ing done that, take the time to sum­ma­rize what you cov­ered after meetings.

Do those two things and you’ll sig­nif­i­cantly reduce the chances of an expen­sive misunderstanding.

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Looking a Niche Market? Look At Your Best Clients

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

To be suc­cess­ful you need to be dif­fer­ent. Stand out from the crowd, have some spe­cialty, or niche. This idea is not new. It has been dis­cussed plenty of times. And not just in our busi­ness. In defin­ing the dif­fer­ence is one of the most dif­fi­cult chal­lenges for a finan­cial advi­sor. I have worked with hun­dreds of advi­sors, and still most can­not artic­u­late what makes them unique.

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Setting the Stage for Referrals

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Last week, in the first part of this series of arti­cles we cov­ered “How Refer­rals Hap­pen,” by Stephen Wer­sh­ing. In today’s arti­cle, we con­tinue with “Set­ting the Stage for Referrals.”

Set­ting the Stage for Referrals

Here are three points that will cre­ate a fer­tile field for refer­rals. Pre­pare this field and nur­ture your client rela­tion­ships, and refer­rals will grow.

Be known for some­thing

Make sure you under­stand what your clients believe you are good at doing, and what kinds of clients or finan­cial issues you spe­cial­ize in. You have heard this con­cept under many labels: a niche, tar­get mar­ket, unique value propo­si­tion, strate­gic dif­fer­en­tia­tor, com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. One key that fre­quently gets missed is to make sure that your clients under­stand what this spe­cialty is. The biggest flaw I see in advi­sor mar­ket­ing is the rec­om­men­da­tion that you come up with this dif­fer­en­tia­tor on your own. Much bet­ter to have the clients teach you why you are different.

To be suc­cess­ful you need to be dif­fer­ent. Stand out from the crowd, have some spe­cialty, or niche. This idea is not new. It has been dis­cussed plenty of times. And not just in our busi­ness. In defin­ing the dif­fer­ence is one of the most dif­fi­cult chal­lenges for a finan­cial advi­sor. I have worked with hun­dreds of advi­sors, and still most can­not artic­u­late what makes them unique.

I empathize – it’s hard! The fact is most of what all of us do for clients involves essen­tially the same dis­ci­plines, regard­less of the client. So defin­ing what sets us apart gen­er­ally eludes us. And then we won­der why it is so hard to get refer­rals! Well, if you don’t know, your clients cer­tainly don’t know – and will rarely think to bring you up in con­ver­sa­tion when the right prospect or moment arises. So, how do you find a niche?

Hav­ing a niche or spe­cialty doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean hav­ing a lot of spe­cial­ized exper­tise or espe­cially advanced skills. It can mean sim­ply col­lect­ing the spe­cific ser­vices wanted by a par­tic­u­lar client. To take an exam­ple from out­side of our indus­try, con­sider the Trunk Club, dis­cussed in the book The Refer­ral Engine by John Jantsch. The Trunk Club is a cloth­ing buy­ing ser­vice for suc­cess­ful man who have lit­tle time and no inter­est in going to the mall to shop for their clothes. The client meets with the styl­ist (whether in per­son or remotely), describes the cloth­ing they need and the styles they like. An assort­ment of cloth­ing is shipped to the client. The client keeps what they like, and returns the rest. Is there any inven­tory the Trunk Club offers that can’t be found in other cloth­ing stores? No. Is there any about the ser­vice that any other hab­er­dasher could not pro­vide? It’s the same. The dif­fer­ence is how they have put the ser­vices together to cater to a client with a par­tic­u­lar pref­er­ence. And to that type of client, the Trunk Club is ideal.

You can find exam­ples in our busi­ness as well. Con­sider Gary Watsky, and advi­sor who prac­tices in Austin Texas. He spe­cial­izes in retire­ment plan­ning for Texas and Cal­i­for­nia edu­ca­tors. Of course, he knows some spe­cial­ized infor­ma­tion pecu­liar to those pop­u­la­tions: how the state retire­ment sys­tems work, the ins and outs of 403(B) plans. Does he do any­thing fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent than any other advi­sor who offers retire­ment plan­ning? Not really. But if I am a teacher in the state of Texas I want to get seri­ous about sav­ing for retire­ment, it will be obvi­ous that Watsky has some­thing spe­cific to offer me.

And what tar­get mar­ket should you focus on? How about spe­cial­iz­ing in your own best clients.

We talk about tar­get­ing the right clients and solic­it­ing feed­back. The con­cept log­i­cally flows from one to the next. For an exist­ing prac­tice look­ing to bet­ter under­stand who to tar­get, the real­ity is that you do these in the reverse order. Littlechild’s study found that a major­ity of engaged clients who refer had been asked for feed­back, and 72% believe that the feed­back they pro­vided made a real dif­fer­ence. Ques­tions dur­ing client meet­ings, sur­veys, and advi­sory boards are all crit­i­cal ele­ments in a sys­tem of client feed­back. Go to the clients you want most to repli­cate. Find out what they most value from among your ser­vice offer­ings per­haps find out what they would most like to see added to your port­fo­lio of ser­vices. Then orga­nize your prac­tice around those ser­vices and those clients.

Build your offer­ing around your best clients. Learn how to describe that pack­age to peo­ple. Bet­ter yet, have your best clients tell you how to describe it. Once you are in a posi­tion to say “peo­ple like you hire me to do [what you most want in advi­sor]”, you will be dif­fer­ent than any other advi­sor. Dif­fer­ent enough that more and bet­ter qual­i­fied refer­rals will be far eas­ier to attract. Jantsch writes that in a mod­ern refer­ral gen­er­at­ing sys­tem, the ori­en­ta­tion has changed from find­ing to being found. How do you accom­plish this?

Be some­thing that sets you apart. You must be dif­fer­ent from other advi­sors so that when a client hears a friend or acquain­tance express a need or desire, they will be able to match it to that spe­cial thing you stand for.
Involve your clients in help­ing you under­stand what is unique about you that they value, and how to describe it. As they teach you how to describe the unique value you bring to clients, they will be teach­ing them­selves. And when they find a friend or acquain­tance who needs that par­tic­u­lar value, the refer­rals will come.

Pro­vide excel­lent ser­vice

This may seem obvi­ous, but many advi­sors do not focus on this, and even more advi­sors fail to go out to their clients to ask whether the ser­vice is per­ceived to be excel­lent (or even what the clients con­sider “excel­lent”). As Peter Mon­toya recently said, “If you aren’t receiv­ing client refer­rals, frankly, your ser­vice stinks.”

Engage your clients. As noted in the study, engaged clients pro­vide all the refer­rals. So, make sure you are doing every­thing it will take to engage as many of your clients as pos­si­ble. These include deter­min­ing what clients expect from your rela­tion­ship and exceed­ing it, hav­ing deep con­ver­sa­tions with clients espe­cially regard­ing their goals and not just their port­fo­lios, and keep­ing clients focused and on task in mak­ing progress on their finan­cial plans.

“Engaged clients have a deep rela­tion­ship with their advi­sor” writes Lit­tlechild. That rela­tion­ship grows out of keep­ing clients focused and on track toward their goals, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship, and solic­it­ing client feed­back on the kind of expe­ri­ence they want. So, it is enor­mously impor­tant to dis­cuss a broad range of clients con­cerns dur­ing meet­ings tak­ing a long view.

Solicit and Uti­lize Feed­back

And once you have dis­cov­ered your unique value and the clients on which to focus, and we are hav­ing the right con­ver­sa­tions with them, we are back to ask­ing the right ques­tions. An objec­tive process of obtain­ing sys­tem­atic feed­back, includ­ing sur­veys and client advi­sory boards, is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of your client ser­vice plan. So, now that you can see where client advi­sory boards fit in the over­all scheme of a client cen­tered refer­ral mar­ket­ing pro­gram, let us exam­ine how to get the most value out of one.

This series con­tin­ues next week with “The Role of a Client Advi­sory Board in a Refer­ral Mar­ket­ing Program.”

www​.the​client​driven​prac​tice​.com

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