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.

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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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Setting Objectives is Essential To Driving Growth

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Some­times run­ning a busi­ness can feel like you have been thrown over­board from a ship. If you just tread water to stay afloat and main­tain daily oper­a­tions, you will not make any progress toward the shore. After a while you will get exhausted and sink. How­ever, if you set a des­ti­na­tion and start swim­ming to it, you will even­tu­ally get there and survive.

We have a say­ing here at The Covenant Group that we try to impress upon every one of our clients: “The future dri­ves the present.” That means how you plan for the future of busi­ness and the goals you set will dic­tate the actions you take today.

Do you know where your com­pany is headed? Are you aware of how the tasks you com­plete today will move your orga­ni­za­tion for­ward tomor­row? If not, then it is def­i­nitely time for you to estab­lish goals for your one– and three-year rev­enues, expenses and prof­its. Set objec­tives that are mea­sur­able, lim­ited to a spe­cific time frame and con­tain hard num­bers. They should address three fac­tors: How much, of what, by when.

The future holds solu­tions for the present

It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive to talk about your three-year goals before address­ing your one-year objec­tives. How­ever, by estab­lish­ing what you want to accom­plish within the longer time frame, you will be able to deci­pher what needs to hap­pen over the course of the next year. Deter­mine how much you are mak­ing cur­rently and what you want that fig­ure to be in three years.

From there, you can cal­cu­late the annual growth rate nec­es­sary to bring in that rev­enue, some­thing that is also cov­ered in The Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­ney. Set up bench­marks for cash flow, retained earn­ings, rev­enue growth, prof­itabil­ity and how much you want your per­sonal income to increase annu­ally for the next three years.

Deter­min­ing your cur­rent stand­ing will allow you to make a more informed deci­sions analy­sis of your sit­u­a­tion, high­light any strengths and/or weak­nesses and will give you insight on exactly what must be done to hit your one– and three-year tar­gets. List your cur­rent sources of rev­enue and your rev­enue totals. Also cast a crit­i­cal eye upon your exist­ing mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Will they be robust enough to carry your busi­ness through the next three years? This activ­ity is known as a SWOT analy­sis (strengths, weak­nesses, oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats).

With your SWOT analy­sis in hand, you can devise a strat­egy for dri­ving your busi­ness to the one– and three-year objec­tives. Write out a sum­mary of your sit­u­a­tion today. What aspects of your exist­ing oper­a­tions will you con­tinue for the next 36 months? Con­sider what will be required to sus­tain those efforts. Now think about what needs to change and what you have to do to over­haul operations.

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.

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Tags: Annual Growth Rate, Benchmarks, Cash Flow, Covenant Group, Entrepreneurial Journey, Goals, Informed Decisions, Insight, Limited, Norm Trainor, Personal Income, Profitability, Profits, Retained Earnings, Running A Business, Swimming, Time Frame
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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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Write Tweets That Will Solicit a Response

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

Using social media for mar­ket­ing pur­poses can often feel like you have arrived late and alone to a crowded event: There is no lack of peo­ple to talk to, but it may be dif­fi­cult to cut in on con­ver­sa­tions that began with­out you. Twit­ter is a main demon­stra­tion of this sce­nario. It can be con­fus­ing and over­whelm­ing to know who to fol­low, how to get oth­ers to fol­low you and what to say to your audi­ence once you have one.

Hash­tags and targeted tweets

To start get­ting a response to the short tweets you post on Twit­ter, con­sider chim­ing in on dis­cus­sions that have already started. Vis­it­ing Twitter’s search page makes it eas­ier to find out what peo­ple are talk­ing about. The page allows you to look up gen­eral trend­ing top­ics or use the advanced search oper­a­tors to find tweets spe­cific to your inter­ests or those of your client base. Search­ing for “life insur­ance,” for exam­ple, gen­er­ates a list of con­ver­sa­tions that include that phrase. This can pro­vide insight into what peo­ple are say­ing about the topic and may present you with the oppor­tu­nity to share your knowledge.

If you notice that many peo­ple are dis­cussing a cer­tain topic but have not addressed an angle you find impor­tant, write a new tweet that includes the phrase — with­out spaces — pre­ceded by a hash­tag (#lifein­sur­ance) that users will be able to eas­ily find. Be sure oth­ers are using the hash­tag for sim­i­lar pur­poses or at least know to search for it, oth­er­wise your tweets could go unread. Given the vol­ume and fre­quency of tweets, you may need to con­vey the same mes­sage in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways to reach more people’s newsfeeds.

Respond­ing to other people’s comments

Con­tinue mon­i­tor­ing a few key phrases and hash­tags, and fol­low the users who are the most knowl­edge­able and vocal on those par­tic­u­lar issues — they may choose to do the same with you. As you build up a fol­low­ing on Twit­ter, you may find that other peo­ple are talk­ing about your busi­ness or are direct­ing their com­ments to you by includ­ing your han­dle (@yourusername) in their post.

Twit­ter is also a use­ful tool for dri­ving traf­fic to your other inter­net assets, such as your com­pany web­site, blog or other social media plat­forms. For exam­ple, if you recently posted an edi­to­r­ial but are dis­ap­pointed with the low response, con­sider shar­ing the link with your Twit­ter fol­low­ers and ask­ing for their feed­back. Did you just upload a fas­ci­nat­ing pod­cast to your web­site? Include a short­ened URL in your next tweet. This sets the tone for a two-way con­ver­sa­tion and can help you bridge the gap between your var­i­ous online mar­ket­ing activities.

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.

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Tags: Audience, Conversations, Covenant Group, Demonstration, Find People, Insight, Insurance, Life Insurance, Many People, Marketing, Phrase, Phrases, Search Operators, Search Page, Several Different Ways, Shauna, Tweet, Tweets, Twitter
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The Misconception of Asking Dumb Questions

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the say­ing that there’s no such thing as a dumb question—only the ones you don’t ask. Depend­ing on that, you might assume that poten­tial clients com­pre­hend your require­ment to dis­cover insight about their issues and so pro­vide you with license to pose dumb questions.

You are able to get away with that to some extent in client meet­ings. But clients expect you to learn quick, and will eval­u­ate your capa­bil­i­ties accord­ingly. When the depth of your ques­tions does not enhance the client’s impres­sion of you with every one you ask, watch out.

Prior to you ask­ing your client a ques­tion, con­sider these three points:

1. Will your ques­tion really enhance your knowl­edge of the client’s issue?

2. Will it encour­age the client to think much more deeply about the matter?

3. Will your ques­tion lead the client to ask you ques­tions about your plan?

A per­fect client ques­tion fur­thers your under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, adds some value for that client, and shows that you really know your stuff. Obvi­ously, not every thing you ask about needs to trig­ger your clients to stroke their chins and rumi­nate on a response; you style some ques­tions solely to col­lect fun­da­men­tal info.

There are dumb ques­tions, and you get to ask a small num­ber of them in any client meet­ing. Make sure to try to ask them early on if you want to remain around to win the sale.

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Tags: Capabilities, Chins, Client Meetings, Customer Meetings, Dumb Question, Dumb Questions, Extent, Insight, Knowledge, Lead, Misconception, Ruminate
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The Power of Self-Awareness

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

I often encounter finan­cial advi­sors who tell me they could achieve greater suc­cess in their careers, but they don’t want to sac­ri­fice bal­ance in their lives. What they seem to be say­ing is that suc­cess comes at too high a price. Recently, I started work­ing with a 46 year old advi­sor who earns $700,000 a year and has stalled out. When I asked him why he was not grow­ing, he told me that his fam­ily was more impor­tant than his busi­ness. He felt that there would be too many per­sonal sac­ri­fices required in order to take his busi­ness to the next level. This is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that has its roots in dichoto­mous think­ing i.e. the ten­dency to think in either/or terms. The under­ly­ing belief is that you can­not be really suc­cess­ful and live a bal­anced and full life. In my expe­ri­ence, this type of think­ing is quite com­mon and inac­cu­rate. Some of the most suc­cess­ful advi­sors I know are very balanced.

Often, the source of the belief that suc­cess and bal­ance in life rep­re­sent polar­i­ties or oppo­sites is rooted in our early life expe­ri­ence. The 46 year old advi­sor is a good exam­ple. His father was a very dri­ven man who seemed to be con­stantly work­ing and unavail­able to his fam­ily. As a result, the advi­sor has been very moti­vated to be dif­fer­ent than his father. One of his unex­pressed fears is that he will become like his father if he strives to become as much as he can be. His sit­u­a­tion reveals how much of our behav­iour is shaped by child­hood expe­ri­ence. To a large extent, the lessons we learn as chil­dren deter­mine our basic beliefs about the world. As chil­dren, we are a ready audi­ence, but not an informed one. What we observe or are told, affects what we believe. My client grew up with the belief that in order to be very suc­cess­ful, he had to be unavail­able to the most impor­tant peo­ple in his life. As chil­dren, we do not have the insight to rec­og­nize the lessons we learn are not always true. Only as an adult, can we unlearn these lessons.

As human beings, we all want to real­ize the full­ness of our poten­tial. We want to push as big a rock as we are capa­ble of mov­ing. For my client, the aware­ness of these lim­it­ing beliefs freed him up to clar­ify what is really impor­tant in his life. With self-awareness, he real­ized that it is impor­tant to him to be truly suc­cess­ful. How­ever, this suc­cess is not sim­ply mea­sured by income or achieve­ment in busi­ness. It includes a happy mar­riage and fam­ily life, phys­i­cal, men­tal and spir­i­tual health and the free­dom to do what he wants in his life. Self-awareness is power.

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: Adult, Basic Beliefs, Belief That, Childhood Experience, Common Misconception, Driven Man, Extent, Fears, Financial Advisors, Human Beings, Important People, Insight, Life Experience, Next Level, Norm Trainor, Opposites, Personal Sacrifices, Polarities, Ready Audience, Roots, Self Awareness, Tendency
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The Key to Sleeping Better

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

By Norm Trainor

Many finan­cial advi­sors tell me that they suf­fer from sleep dis­or­ders. I have expe­ri­enced dis­rup­tive sleep pat­terns since my child­hood. Often, I will wake up at 3 or 4 AM and have dif­fi­culty get­ting back to sleep. My mind kicks in and will not rest. I think about my busi­ness and the chal­lenges we face. Like many high achiev­ers, I am dri­ven to achieve busi­ness goals and my focus is on what we need to do to accom­plish our objec­tives. At times, my desire to achieve those goals gets in the way of my performance.

My wife, Wendy, is a Mar­i­tal and Sex Ther­a­pist. One of the things she has taught me is that anx­i­ety is blocked excite­ment. When­ever we expe­ri­ence anx­i­ety, it is a result of los­ing touch with our excite­ment. Many suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sors have dif­fi­culty in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between goals and work­ing to the best of their abil­i­ties. They don’t wake up in the morn­ing and say “I’m going to work to the high­est level of my capa­bil­ity today.” They start out with a goal. It is the goal that moti­vates them. The pro­found point of dif­fer­ence is in the pur­suit of doing your best ver­sus need­ing to achieve an out­come. You learn to give up your attach­ments to results. If you are true to your pur­pose, what will hap­pen is meant to be. If you do your best and do not achieve your goal, it is the right out­come. This is a pow­er­ful insight and, yet, we are often left with the ques­tion, what do we do about it?

For many finan­cial advi­sors, the drive is to reach a desired rev­enue goal e.g. $150,000, $500,000, $1,000,000, etc., not to be the best they can be. You change the inner game when you pur­sue your goals as a means of ful­fill­ing your capa­bil­ity. The para­dox is that pur­su­ing a goal often gets in the way of peak per­for­mance, espe­cially when anx­i­ety comes into play. We begin to obsess and worry about the achieve­ment of the goal. As a result, we lose touch with our excite­ment about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

One of the best ways to achieve bet­ter out­put is to let go of your attach­ment to results. If you are doing your best, then being attached to out­comes can only reduce your out­put, let alone qual­ity of life. Goals are use­ful in that they give us a tar­get to pur­sue. When we con­vert those goals into objec­tives i.e. spe­cific mea­sur­able results within a stated time­frame, we can track our progress.

What is impor­tant is to keep the end game in per­spec­tive. Our work is not about reach­ing a goal. At its best, work makes us whole. It is a means of express­ing what is impor­tant to us and gives us mean­ing. We spend more time at work than in any other area of our lives. If we are not enjoy­ing our work, it takes a toll on the rest of our lives. So, next time you wake up at 4 AM and find your­self obsess­ing about work, take a minute to re-connect with your excite­ment about what you are doing and why you are doing it. This will allow you to fall back into a pleas­ant and rest­ful sleep.

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: Anxiety, Attachments, Back To Sleep, Business Goals, Capability, Desire, Excitement, Financial Advisors, High Achievers, Inner Game, Insight, Losing Touch, Norm Trainor, Paradox, Peak Performance, Performance Anxiety, Sex Therapist, Sleep, Sleep Disorders, Sleep Patterns, Wife Wendy
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The Zen of Leadership

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

This arti­cle is by Michael Beck, Busi­ness Philoso­pher, Strate­gist, and Exec­u­tive Coach.

There are many aspects to lead­er­ship that par­al­lel the philoso­phies, con­cepts, and per­spec­tives of Zen Bud­dhism.  I don’t pro­fess to have a great depth of knowl­edge regard­ing Zen Bud­dhism, but from the insights I do have, I can see the appli­ca­tion with respect to effec­tive leadership.

The par­al­lel exists within the con­cept of lead­ing with­out lead­ing.  It exists in the ebb and flow of lead­er­ship style.  And it’s reflected in the very dual­ity of the role of a leader within an orga­ni­za­tion.  Let me share my per­spec­tives on each of those con­cepts as an insight into effec­tive leadership.

The first con­cept to expand upon is that of lead­ing with­out lead­ing.  Many peo­ple hold the notion that lead­er­ship is about lead­ers and fol­low­ers.  They feel that an effec­tive leader learns how to either “pull” their fol­low­ers along, or they become adept at “push­ing” fol­low­ers to “fol­low”.  At first blush, this might sound a bit sim­plis­tic, unre­al­is­tic, or naïve, but the prac­tice of pulling or push­ing fol­low­ers is much more preva­lent than one might expect.

When we push or pull fol­low­ers along, they’re sim­ply acqui­esc­ing to our demands or desires.  In con­trast, when a leader truly has peo­ple fol­low­ing him or her, peo­ple act not because they “have to” so much as because they “want to”.  How is this accom­plished?  How do we shift our team from acqui­esc­ing because they feel they “have to” to a place where they excel because they “want to”?

That is cap­tured within the con­cept of lead­ing with­out lead­ing.  An accom­plished leader devel­ops the abil­ity to inspire those around him or her to be, do, and give their best.  The leader inspires them to be, do, and give will­ingly.  An effec­tive leader elic­its excel­lence from their team.  It’s not about “get­ting” peo­ple to do any­thing.  It’s not about being viewed as “the leader”.  It’s really about becom­ing the kind of per­son oth­ers admire, respect, rely on, and want to emu­late.  Peo­ple are attracted to and respond to some­one because of who they are, and not because of what they do.

Effec­tive lead­er­ship is about lead­ing with­out lead­ing — a Zen-like philosophy.

The next con­cept to exam­ine is the ebb and flow of lead­er­ship style.  Many lead­ers make their mark on an orga­ni­za­tion by stay­ing true to a cer­tain style of lead­er­ship.  And while con­sis­tency and act­ing in integrity are crit­i­cal to strong lead­er­ship, one’s style of lead­er­ship needs to ebb and flow with chang­ing sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances.  It’s anal­o­gous to the East­ern con­cept of Yin and Yang.  The very sym­bol for Yin/Yang illus­trates the never-ending flow between hard and soft, strong and weak, expand­ing and con­tract­ing, mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine.  And even within those con­cepts, the seed of its oppo­site exists.

For lead­er­ship to be truly effec­tive, there needs to be a flow of style.  Some­times a strong, unyield­ing style is required, and other times, a deter­mined, yet yield­ing style is called for.  The more adept at mas­ter­fully flow­ing among the var­i­ous lead­er­ship styles that one becomes (yes, there are more than two styles), the more effec­tive that leader can be at elic­it­ing excellence.

Effec­tive lead­er­ship is about ebbing and flow­ing — a Zen-like philosophy.

The final lead­er­ship con­cept to exam­ine is that of the dual­ity of the role of a leader.  This phi­los­o­phy once again par­al­lels some of the prin­ci­ples of Zen Bud­dhism.  The dual­ity of lead­er­ship is reflected in the fact that some­times a leader is the Mas­ter and at other times, a leader is the Ser­vant.  In truth, Ser­vant Lead­er­ship can be an extremely effec­tive role which fos­ters respect, admi­ra­tion, and trust — all of which are very pow­er­ful influ­ences in elic­it­ing excellence.

It is the very exis­tence of the role of Mas­ter that allows the role of Ser­vant to exist — and to exist with such impact.  With­out hav­ing a role as Mas­ter, the impact and influ­ence of the role of Ser­vant is greatly dimin­ished.  Con­versely, with­out the role of Ser­vant, the role of Mas­ter loses its effec­tive­ness as well.

If a leader acts in self-interest with­out regard to the peo­ple they are lead­ing, then their impact and effec­tive­ness is soon dimin­ished.  Over the years, we’ve seen the self-interest of many cor­po­rate lead­ers exposed, and their power and stature destroyed.

The other extreme can be just as inef­fec­tive.  If a leader abdi­cates his or her author­ity, is unable to make con­fi­dent deci­sions, and does not com­mand respect, an orga­ni­za­tion will soon lose its way and drift apart.

Effec­tive lead­er­ship is about the dual­ity of Mas­ter and Ser­vant — a Zen-like philosophy.

The con­cepts of lead­ing with­out lead­ing, flow­ing among lead­er­ship styles, and under­stand­ing the role of leader as both Mas­ter and Ser­vant are essen­tial to effec­tive lead­er­ship and to elic­it­ing excel­lence.  If a per­son is to excel as a leader, they must aban­don the con­cept of devel­op­ing them­selves as “leader” and must instead, embrace the con­cept of mas­ter­ing the abil­ity to elicit excel­lence in oth­ers.  This is not sim­ply a mat­ter of seman­tics, but a fun­da­men­tal shift in perspective.

Writ­ten by Michael Beck, Busi­ness Philoso­pher, Strate­gist, and Exec­u­tive Coach.  For more arti­cles on lead­er­ship, per­sonal effec­tive­ness and per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity, please visit www​.michaeljbeck​.com .  Per­mis­sion to reprint with full attri­bu­tion.  © 2010 Michael Beck Inter­na­tional, Inc.

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Tags: Acquiescing, Blush, Business Philosopher, Desires, Duality, Ebb And Flow, Effective Leader, Effective Leadership, Executive Coach, Insight, Insights, Leaders And Followers, Leadership Style, Michael Beck, Notion, Perspectives, Philosophies, Role Of A Leader, Strategist, Zen Buddhism
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Guidelines for an effective mid-year letter

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Last week, U.S. dis­count bro­ker Charles Schwab released a research report indi­cat­ing that one in four Amer­i­can investors is con­sid­er­ing chang­ing firms or advi­sors, con­sis­tent with recent data on Cana­dian investors  open to mak­ing a move.

An inter­est­ing insight emerged when investors were asked why they might switch. The top two fac­tors, each men­tioned 32% of the time, were desire for a bet­ter fee struc­ture and bet­ter advice. Just behind in 29% of cases where investors are con­tem­plat­ing a move was the desire for more proac­tive contact.

Even with the 40% mar­ket recov­ery since March, many investors are still very anx­ious and look­ing for guid­ance and direc­tion from their advi­sor. Mar­kets over the past year cre­ated a huge spike in the demand for com­mu­ni­ca­tion — what­ever level of con­tact your clients were look­ing for a year ago, it’s almost cer­tainly higher today.

And clients aren’t just look­ing for fre­quency of con­tact, sub­stance and qual­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are just as important.

One way to respond to this demand is by send­ing clients a mid year let­ter with your thoughts on where we are today and an out­look for the period ahead. Posted on this web­site today is a sam­ple tem­plate of what that let­ter might look like, road tested with investors.

There are five keys to mak­ing a let­ter such as this one work for you:

1. It needs to be substantive.

Today hom­i­lies, plat­i­tudes and generic com­men­tary don’t cut it — clients are seek­ing con­crete guid­ance and sub­stan­tive advice. Any­thing viewed as a puff piece will hurt more than help.

2. It has to be candid.

More than ever, investors are look­ing for can­dour and a bal­anced per­spec­tive — to main­tain cred­i­bil­ity, it’s crit­i­cal that you be forth­right in talk­ing about the neg­a­tives as well as the pos­i­tives in the period ahead.

3. It should be backed up by facts.

Given the spike in investor scep­ti­cism, we’re oper­at­ing in a “Prove it” world. It’s not good enough to make a claim — you need to back it up with facts. That’s why the model letter’s com­ments are backed up by links to arti­cles from the Wall Street Jour­nal, Globe and Mail and For­tune Magazine.

4. It needs to be easy to read.

Being easy to read means using terms that your clients will under­stand and keep­ing the length man­age­able — the length of the tem­plate let­ter is at the limit of what most investors will read, your let­ter can cer­tainly be shorter but it shouldn’t be longer.

5.  And it has to be yours.

Advi­sors are all dif­fer­ent in their per­spec­tive and  you need to make any out­look reflect your own point of view. The tem­plate let­ter pro­vides a start­ing point, but that’s all it is — to be effec­tive you need to spend the time to incor­po­rate your own per­son­al­ity and view­point and truly make the let­ter yours.

As you think about how to stay top of mind with clients in the next while, con­sider send­ing a mid year let­ter such as this one.  The invest­ment of time required could pay big div­i­dends in client peace of mind and be the dif­fer­ence between keep­ing clients and los­ing them.

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Tags: American Investors, Balanced Perspective, Canadian Investors, Candour, Charles Schwab, Communication, Concrete Guidance, Credibility, Desire, Discount Broker, Fee Structure, Five Keys, Frequency Contact, Insight, Investor, Platitudes, Puff Piece, Scepticism, Spike, Substantive Advice
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