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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Is Attracting Referrals Passive?

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

Thomas Coyle, in an arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal last week, sug­gested that a strat­egy for attract­ing refer­rals, rather than ask­ing for them, is pas­sive. He went so far as to describe my approach as a “wall­flower strat­egy.” I have heard sim­i­lar com­ments before. It makes sense. If you not actively engaged in ask­ing for refer­rals, it must be pas­sive, right?

I don’t think so.

It goes back to hunt­ing ver­sus farm­ing. Most advi­sors “hunt” for refer­rals, but I coach advi­sors to farm them instead. The farmer does not stalk prey, actively pur­su­ing it until he cap­tures it. But farm­ers work hard, and pur­sue a spe­cific, active strat­egy. Till­ing the soil, care­fully plant­ing the right seeds at the right time, tend­ing the field until the har­vest yields the return on his efforts.

A well designed and imple­mented refer­ral mar­ket­ing strat­egy is a big project that requires hard work. It involves going to the cen­ter of your strate­gic plan, iden­ti­fy­ing your ideal clients and design­ing a prac­tice around them. It takes care­ful craft­ing of a value propo­si­tion tai­lored to that niche. It requires dili­gence and tenac­ity in con­sis­tently com­mu­ni­cat­ing that value and teach­ing your staff, clients and cen­ters of influ­ence to use that mes­sage in describ­ing you. It involves ded­i­cat­ing time to doing the research to uncover your clients’ con­nec­tions and affin­ity groups and net­work to be able to ask for the right intro­duc­tions. It takes courage to refer to other pro­fes­sion­als the poten­tially lucra­tive prospects who are not part of your niche. It calls for cre­ativ­ity in dis­cov­er­ing how to serve your tar­get mar­ket in ways they did not real­ize they needed.

No, attract­ing refer­rals is a very active strat­egy. In fact, it takes con­sid­er­ably more effort than tak­ing the easy and unimag­i­na­tive (if a bit uncom­fort­able) path of sim­ply pes­ter­ing your clients for names and numbers.

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Tags: Affinity Groups, Asking For Referrals, Centers Of Influence, Diligence, Driven Practice, Farming, Introductions, Marketing Strategy, Niche, Prey, Prospects, Referral Marketing, Right Seeds, Right Time, Staff Clients, Strategic Plan, Target Market, Tenacity, Value Proposition, Wall Street Journal
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Pulling Financial Levers for Better Operations

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

As I explain in The Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­ney, there are five finan­cial levers that sales pro­fes­sion­als must con­trol in order to run their firms smoothly. First, you must address the prod­uct and ser­vice mix — do you offer a wide range of prod­ucts that sat­isfy every client’s need? The sec­ond lever, the size of sale, will be deter­mined by the mar­kets you oper­ate in. Some are more prof­itable than others.The third lever focuses on the num­ber of sales. You need a process to track the num­ber of sales and the prod­ucts your clients have selected. Review the sea­son­al­ity of sales to pre­pare for fluc­tu­a­tions over the course of the year. The fifth lever, cycli­cal­ity, looks at how your rev­enue varies in rela­tion to mar­ket cycles.

Taken into con­sid­er­a­tion along­side mar­ket­ing, sales and ser­vice, entre­pre­neurs can more accu­rately cal­cu­late how they will be per­form­ing fur­ther down the line. Empow­ered with this infor­ma­tion, you are able to cre­ate pro­jec­tions for expenses and iden­tify resources you will need in six months, one year and beyond.

To align these levers with a mar­ket­ing plan, you will have to devise activ­i­ties that will facil­i­tate greater sales in the future. While con­tin­u­ing to set up cur­rent clients for future sales, also ask them for intro­duc­tions and refer­rals to other prospects (a request that is dri­ven chiefly by the level of cus­tomer ser­vice you deliver). Net­work and “netweave” with other prospec­tive clients in your tar­get mar­kets, host sem­i­nars and other events to drip on cur­rent and poten­tial clients in your pipeline and also expand your mar­ket­ing tac­tics to include social media, direct mail and any other chan­nels that you have not yet used.

Revive your sales plan by defin­ing exactly who you want to sell to, what prod­ucts you will offer and when you want to com­plete the sales process. This should cover not only your exist­ing clients but also those in your net­work, the refer­rals and any­one who attends your mar­ket­ing events.

Do not neglect ser­vice. Make sure you are con­stantly giv­ing clients a high level of value-added ser­vice that reaf­firms their deci­sion to work with you.

What do you do to coor­di­nate your sales, mar­ket­ing and ser­vice efforts? Is there col­lab­o­ra­tion between the three teams? Do you have a strat­egy that incor­po­rates mar­ket­ing and sales com­po­nents in ser­vice calls?

By com­pre­hend­ing the impor­tance of each lever’s role, FAs will be able to make their busi­ness plans and strate­gies more con­fi­dently and accu­rately. Rather than being dis­tracted by the hec­tic day-to-day sched­ule, they can step out­side of the busi­ness to make long-term projects and set goals that will advance their com­pa­nies’ growth.

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: Direct Mail, Drip, Entrepreneurial Journey, Fluctuations, Future Sales, Host Seminars, Introductions, Levers, Market Cycles, Marketing Events, Marketing Plan, Marketing Sales, Marketing Tactics, Pipeline, Prospective Clients, Referrals, Sales Professionals, Seasonality, Service Entrepreneurs, Target Markets
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Securing Valuable Introductions

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

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Tags: Asser, Client Description, Client Relationship, Colleagues, Confidence, Covenant Group, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Services Industry, Five Steps, Groundwork, Introductions, Latter Situation, Momentum, Norm Trainor, Prospects, Quality Customer Service, Referral, Referrals, Salesperson, Sectors
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Using Customer Service as a Marketing Tool

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, Covenant Group

Never under­es­ti­mate the power of a client rec­om­men­da­tion. When the peo­ple with whom you’ve built busi­ness agree­ments trust you enough to not only con­tinue the rela­tion­ship, but sug­gest that their friends and asso­ciates do the same, entirely new mar­kets and groups of prospects can become accessible.

How do you get to the point in the rela­tion­ship that your clients feel com­fort­able telling their friends and asso­ciates about your ser­vices? Do you have a sys­tem in place that guar­an­tees top-notch cus­tomer ser­vice while prim­ing your clients to make rec­om­men­da­tions or intro­duc­tions later on? Have you made the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence a pri­or­ity not only as a tac­tic for keep­ing the clients you have, but as a business-building strategy?

Deliv­er­ing high-quality client expe­ri­ences can serve as a mar­ket­ing tool, mak­ing prospects not only aware of your exis­tence, but also why they should con­sider a rela­tion­ship with you. One focus in finan­cial ser­vice train­ing is learn­ing how to inter­act with clients in a way that makes them feel val­ued and spe­cial, every time. It’s not enough to just be a great sales­per­son. Even before the deal is closed, you need to be nur­tur­ing and deep­en­ing the client rela­tion­ship by invest­ing time and/or money in pro­vid­ing the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence possible.

For­rester Research released a study ear­lier this year that inves­ti­gated the mon­e­tary ben­e­fits of devot­ing addi­tional resources to improv­ing how the cus­tomer feels when inter­act­ing with a com­pany. The good news is: There’s a pay­off in pay­ing more atten­tion to your clients’ experiences.

“The Busi­ness Impact of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence, 2012″ found that when com­pa­nies offer a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, their clients tend to be more loyal, a devel­op­ment that can result in longer-lasting rela­tion­ships, greater rec­om­men­da­tions and increased rev­enues, ana­lyst Megan Burns writes for the research firm’s blog. For hotels and wire­less ser­vice providers that made the issue a pri­or­ity, rev­enues ben­e­fited from a $1.3 bil­lion boost.

The boon to prof­its is not short-lived. “When your cus­tomers like the expe­ri­ence you deliver, they’re more likely to con­sider you for another pur­chase and rec­om­mend you to oth­ers,” Burns writes. “They’re also less likely to switch their busi­ness away to a com­peti­tor. These improved loy­alty scores trans­late into more actual repeat pur­chases, more prospects influ­enced to buy through pos­i­tive word of mouth, and less rev­enue lost to churn.”

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 at:

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Tags: Additional Resources, Anthony Lam, Business Agreements, Business Building, Business Impact, Client Experiences, Client Relationship, Covenant Group, Customer Experience, Forrester Research, Introductions, Marketing Tool, Megan Burns, Monetary Benefits, Prospects, Quality Client, Salesperson, Tactic, Top Notch, Wireless Service Providers
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Building Your Brand by Demonstrating Expertise

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

By Norm Trainor

The fol­low­ing case study is based upon one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Howard Haskings

All deci­sions are con­fi­dence based. This is one of the great truths in under­stand­ing how peo­ple make deci­sions. One of the most effec­tive ways to estab­lish con­fi­dence with exist­ing and poten­tial clients is by demon­strat­ing your exper­tise. Howard Hask­ings, applied this under­stand­ing of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics to serve a large num­ber of peo­ple in his community.

Howard’s finan­cial advi­sory firm is located in Wind­sor, Canada an eco­nomic cen­ter very depen­dent on the auto­mo­tive indus­try. One of the major auto­mo­tive com­pa­nies offered buy-outs and early retire­ment pack­ages to its employ­ees in the area. Howard’s firm had a num­ber of clients who received offers. Under­stand­ably, for the clients, accept­ing or reject­ing the offer was a major deci­sion, which caused real anx­i­ety. Howard and his team invested a great deal of time to fully under­stand the con­se­quences as well as both the pros and cons of the offers. They were proac­tive in meet­ing with clients to assist them in deter­min­ing the finan­cial and career impli­ca­tions of their choices. In addi­tion, they talked with HR per­son­nel in the com­pany and met with the union lead­er­ship to gain per­spec­tive on the ben­e­fits and costs of the offers.

The firm’s efforts on behalf of clients led to intro­duc­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions and refer­rals to other employ­ees in the same sit­u­a­tion. Through its involve­ment with the union lead­er­ship and the company’s HR depart­ment, Howard’s team earned the right to offer edu­ca­tional sem­i­nars to affected work­ers. The union lead­er­ship allowed Howard to pro­mote these sem­i­nars and encour­aged employ­ees to attend. A local news­pa­per and a tele­vi­sion sta­tion heard about the sem­i­nars and the work of Howard’s firm and inter­viewed him. The result­ing press and tele­vi­sion expo­sure sig­nif­i­cantly increased aware­ness of the firm’s exper­tise in pro­vid­ing coun­sel on the buy-outs.

Behav­ioral eco­nom­ics exam­ines how peo­ple make finan­cial deci­sions. We often assume that peo­ple make ratio­nal deci­sions that are in their best inter­est. The real­ity is quite dif­fer­ent. Faced with impor­tant deci­sions, peo­ple often pro­cras­ti­nate, feel con­fused and unsure of what to do. This is when they need a trusted advi­sor, some­one who they can turn to for advice and coun­sel. How do we know whom to trust? The research indi­cates that peo­ple match their behav­ior to those around them. When peo­ple express con­fi­dence in a per­son or an idea, it instills con­fi­dence in others.

The endorse­ment of fel­low employ­ees, the edu­ca­tional sem­i­nars and the media expo­sure fos­tered a sense of con­fi­dence in Howard and his firm. They were per­ceived as adding real value. As a result, they acquired a large num­ber of new clients and made addi­tional sales to exist­ing clients.

Howard and his team took this les­son to heart and now incor­po­rate these activ­i­ties into their mar­ket­ing sys­tem. The firm’s Tar­get Mar­kets include pre-retirees, retirees and busi­ness own­ers. In each mar­ket, the team works hard to acquire exper­tise; and demon­strates its exper­tise in review meet­ings with clients, through edu­ca­tional sem­i­nars and by increas­ing media expo­sure. It is the com­bi­na­tion of all of these activ­i­ties that con­tributes to the firm’s suc­cess. It seems so sim­ple. Act in a man­ner that builds con­fi­dence and peo­ple will turn to you for advice.

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, Automotive Industry, Behavioral Economics, Career Choices, Career Implications, Case Study, Early Retirement, Economic Center, Educational Seminars, Financial Advisory Firm, Hr Department, Introductions, Major Automotive Companies, Norm Trainor, Pros And Cons, Referrals, Retirement Packages, Television Exposure, Television Station, Union Leadership, Windsor Canada
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The Single Best Way to Start a Client Meeting

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

What does it take for a meet­ing with a key client to be successful?

Answer­ing that ques­tion requires you to first quan­tify how you mea­sure success.

Here are three alter­na­tive definitions:

• 1. First and fore­most, did the clients agree to move for­ward on at least one thing that will advance their agenda , mov­ing them towards their goals and leav­ing them bet­ter positioned?

• 2. Did the clients agree to move for­ward on at least one item that that will advance your agenda and leave you bet­ter off?

The list of pos­si­ble items here is lengthy, for example:

• A shift in your com­pen­sa­tion model
• Con­sol­i­dat­ing accounts they have elsewhere
• Agree­ing to deal with one of your team mem­bers on day to day issues instead of call­ing you
• Open­ing the door to talk­ing about needs that you’re not deal­ing with cur­rently (so insur­ance if you only have their invest­ments, invest­ments if you only have their insurance)
• Find­ing a way to get to know their kids bet­ter and poten­tially to begin work­ing with their children
• Intro­duc­tions to fam­ily mem­bers or their accountant
• Refer­rals to col­leagues at work

• 3. In the process, was your bond with these clients strength­ened? Did they walk away feel­ing bet­ter about your depth of knowl­edge and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the extent to which you truly care about their long term suc­cess, beyond the rev­enue you gen­er­ate from their account? Did they leave say­ing to them­selves: “Am I ever glad that Dan’s my finan­cial advisor”

Shap­ing your conversation

I’m going to sug­gest that depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, a meet­ing can be suc­cess­ful with­out spe­cific actions taken to advance your clients’ agenda or your agenda, but it’s impos­si­ble to have a truly suc­cess­ful meet­ing unless clients walk away feel­ing bet­ter about your rela­tion­ship. Even in tough mar­kets like we saw dur­ing the global finan­cial cri­sis, if clients don’t walk out of a meet­ing more con­fi­dent than they felt when they walked in, the meet­ing wasn’t a success.

I recently got a call from an advi­sor who’d attended one of my work­shops about a year ago and who’s a reg­u­lar reader of these articles.

Over the past year, she’s imple­mented a num­ber of ideas and feels that her meet­ings are much more pro­duc­tive as a result:

• 1. Before call­ing a client to sched­ule a meet­ing, she reviews her files and writes down her goals for the meet­ing, one or two things she hopes to achieve that will leave the clients bet­ter off and advance their agenda and also one thing that will leave her bet­ter off, advanc­ing her agenda.

• 2. When set­ting up the meet­ing, she starts by ask­ing clients what ques­tions they’d like to cover, then adds her own items to deal with (often emerg­ing from those goals she’s writ­ten down) and from that cre­ates an agenda, which she emails to clients before­hand and which is tabled at the start of the meeting.

I encour­age advi­sors to leave the line beside the first item blank and to say “You’ll note that he first item on the agenda is blank. That’s for any ques­tions that have come up since we set the meet­ing up or any­thing else that you’d like to talk about that’s not on the agenda.”

• 3. In devel­op­ing the meet­ing agenda, she fac­tors in some of the research I’ve writ­ten about on the “peak-end effect”. This research sug­gests that what shapes client rec­ol­lec­tions of any expe­ri­ence the most are the “peaks” — the highs and the lows — and what hap­pens at the very end. As a result, she struc­tures the agenda to be sure to end on a high note.

“What should I know about?”

This advi­sor has also incor­po­rated the idea of leav­ing the first agenda item blank, but after ask­ing clients about what else they’d like to dis­cuss that’s not on the agenda, she’s added another ques­tion of her own.

“At that point, I ask clients what’s hap­pened in their lives since we last met that I should know about, whether good or bad.

I have about 150 client meet­ings a year. About 95% of the time I don’t hear any­thing new or I hear great news about pro­mo­tions or buy­ing a vaca­tion home or their kids get­ting uni­ver­sity schol­ar­ships or per­haps expect­ing chil­dren them­selves. In those cases, we con­tinue on with the meet­ing, unless of course their good news has finan­cial impli­ca­tions we need to discuss.

Every cou­ple of months, though, the answer causes our meet­ing to move in an entirely dif­fer­ent direc­tion … I hear about health or work issues with them or fam­ily mem­bers or kids strug­gling with school or careers. Some­times their issues have spe­cific finan­cial con­se­quences that we talk about. Often though, I’m just there to lis­ten and to empathize … it’s amaz­ing how often clients tell me they have no one to talk to about these issues.

At times, that con­ver­sa­tion ends up con­sum­ing our whole meet­ing and we resched­ule. Occa­sion­ally I’m able to point to clients or peo­ple I know who’ve run into an issue sim­i­lar to theirs and ask if they’d like me to find out whether that other per­son would be will­ing to talk about their expe­ri­ence. And where clients are really strug­gling and need more help, I have a cou­ple of psy­chol­o­gists who I refer peo­ple to.

I know this won’t be every advisor’s cup of tea … most of the guys in my branch really don’t want to get into the soft stuff with clients.

But for me, there are four ben­e­fits to start­ing off meet­ings with that ques­tion — ‘What’s hap­pened in your lives since we last met that I should know about, whether good or bad?’

First, I think it sends a pos­i­tive sig­nal about my con­cern for every­thing going on in my clients’ lives.

Sec­ond, it helps me do my job bet­ter, by ensur­ing that plans reflect clients’ cur­rent circumstances.

Third, where clients have pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing in their lives, which is most of the time, I’m able to con­grat­u­late them and talk about their good news a bit, I find that estab­lishes a pos­i­tive tone.

And finally, where clients are deal­ing with tough issues, I think it’s part of my role as their finan­cial advi­sor to make sure I know about that and to sup­port them as much as I can.

This advi­sor is right when she says that this approach won’t be a fit for every advi­sor. But it’s still worth think­ing about how you’re going to begin client meet­ings to max­i­mize the chances of a suc­cess­ful out­come, how­ever it is that you define suc­cess. And per­haps this advi­sor will inspire you to apply your own cre­ativ­ity on the ques­tion of the best way to start client meetings.

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Tags: Accountant, Circumstances, Colleagues, Compensation Model, Definitions, Extent, Family Members, Finding A Way, Global Financial Crisis, Insurance, Introductions, Investments, Measure Success, Professionalism, Referrals, Relationship, Team Members, Term Success
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The Art of Obtaining Introductions

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Simon’s back­ground and cul­tural expe­ri­ence gave him a great advan­tage in his cho­sen career as a finan­cial advi­sor. Unfor­tu­nately, he was not aware of it. When we first started work­ing together, it was clear that one of Simon’s strengths was his network.

Born and raised in Lebanon, he spoke Eng­lish, French and Ara­bic. His clien­tele con­sisted pri­mar­ily of peo­ple from his native coun­try. Unfor­tu­nately, it was a small com­mu­nity that he had vir­tu­ally tapped out. He did not real­ize that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the peo­ple in his nat­ural mar­ket cre­ated the great­est oppor­tu­nity to grow his business.

We teach advi­sors that the first step in mar­ket­ing is to define your ideal client. Your ideal client pro­file con­sists of demo­graphic and psy­cho­graphic characteristics.

Demo­graph­ics involve the sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of a pop­u­la­tion e.g. age, income, net worth, type of employ­ment, mar­i­tal sta­tus etc. Psy­cho­graph­ics is com­prised of the atti­tudes, attrib­utes and val­ues of the group e. g. solu­tion seek­ers, value rela­tion­ships, strong fam­ily val­ues, opin­ion lead­ers, givers etc.

The key to Simon’s suc­cess in grow­ing his busi­ness was to lever­age the psy­cho­graphic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the peo­ple in his nat­ural mar­ket. The peo­ple of Lebanon and the Mid­dle East in gen­eral, place a high value on rela­tion­ships and trust. In build­ing his busi­ness, Simon spent count­less hours drink­ing cof­fee with prospects and clients. Cof­fee is a sta­ple of rela­tion­ship build­ing in the Mid­dle East. Before the peo­ple in his com­mu­nity would buy from him, he earned their trust over cof­fee, games of backgam­mon and chess. His invest­ment in build­ing rela­tion­ships and estab­lish­ing cred­i­bil­ity paid off in spades. A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of friends and rel­a­tives became clients. His large net­work of friends and fam­ily enabled him to increase his rev­enue to $250,000.00 in his fourth year as a finan­cial advi­sor. Then, his income stopped growing.

The most impor­tant mea­sure of the degree of trust or cred­i­bil­ity in a rela­tion­ship is the extent to which peo­ple will­ingly intro­duce, rec­om­mend or refer you to the peo­ple that are most impor­tant to them.

There is an art and a sci­ence to obtain­ing intro­duc­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions and refer­rals. Intro­duc­tions are far more effec­tive than refer­rals. With an intro­duc­tion, your client or cen­ter of influ­ence pro­vides the lever­age. They are the ones who arrange the meet­ing with the prospect. In the case of a refer­ral, you have to employ the lever­age. The art of obtain­ing intro­duc­tions is quite sim­ple. We teach a five step process.

The first step is to con­firm your rela­tion­ship with the nom­i­na­tor. It goes some­thing like this: “Sam, now that you have had a chance to see the type of work we do, how do you feel about it?” When the client responds pos­i­tively, you affirm their con­fi­dence in you by feed­ing back what you have heard and encour­ag­ing them to expand upon how you have made a dif­fer­ence in their lives.

The sec­ond step is to describe your ideal client. You might say the fol­low­ing: “That is good to hear, because you are the type of client that I want to work with. Let me be more spe­cific…”  Then, you sum­ma­rize the demo­graphic and psy­cho­graphic char­ac­ter­is­tics of your ideal client.

The third step is to ask your client: “Who do you know who fits these char­ac­ter­is­tics? If they have dif­fi­culty com­ing up with a num­ber of names, you can feed cat­e­gories such as, “Who is the most suc­cess­ful per­son you know?” “Which of your col­leagues fit the client pro­file I just described?”

Once you have been given a num­ber of names, the next step is to qual­ify the prospects and enlist the nominator’s help in meet­ing them. It is impor­tant to get six to ten names from your client or cen­ter of influ­ence before you ask ques­tions about each per­son in order to deter­mine whom you will pur­sue. The key is to iden­tify the peo­ple who most closely approx­i­mate your ideal client pro­file and then deter­mine with your client the best way to obtain an intro­duc­tion. Ide­ally, your client will arrange an intro­duc­tion to two or three of the best prospects and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions and refer­rals to the rest.

The fifth step is to keep your client informed with regard to your expe­ri­ence in fol­low­ing up with these peo­ple. Keep in mind that you always respect the con­fi­den­tial nature of each rela­tion­ship. How­ever, your client will want to know about peo­ple whom they intro­duce, rec­om­mend and refer who become clients. Your suc­cess with their net­work expands the equity in the rela­tion­ship for them and for you. When Simon learned to ask his clients and cen­ters of influ­ence for intro­duc­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions and refer­rals, his rev­enue dou­bled in the next year

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: Backgammon, Building Relationships, Client Profile, Clientele, Coffee Games, Countless Hours, Demographics, English French, Establishing Credibility, Family Values, Fourth Year, Games Chess, Introductions, Network Of Friends, Norm Trainor, People Of Lebanon, Solution Seekers, Spades, Staple, Statistical Analysis, Strong Family, Value Relationships
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Is Your Focus Narrow or Broad?

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

In defin­ing your busi­ness, there are a num­ber of deci­sions you have to make in order to appro­pri­ately posi­tion what you offer. You can choose to have a nar­row or broad focus to your busi­ness. By choos­ing a nar­row focus, you have opted to spe­cial­ize. A finan­cial advi­sor may choose to focus on a spe­cialty such as invest­ment advice, life insur­ance plan­ning or estate plan­ning and, con­se­quently, offer a par­tic­u­lar set of prod­ucts and ser­vices. Another way to nar­row your focus is to spe­cial­ize in defined mar­ket seg­ments such as retirees or pre-retirees. If you spe­cial­ize in the retire­ment mar­ket, your clien­tele would pri­mar­ily con­sist of peo­ple in their 50s, 60s and beyond.

A case in point is a suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with whom I work. He is 60 and has been in finan­cial ser­vices for 39 years. Through­out his career, he has been a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner and a spe­cial­ist. Today, he spe­cial­izes in estate plan­ning. He works with ultra high net worth clients. His aver­age case size is $150,000 of annual life insur­ance pre­mium and he earns about $3,500,000 per year. He aver­ages about one new client per month, usu­ally acquir­ing them through intro­duc­tions from sat­is­fied clients and col­lat­eral pro­fes­sion­als. The rest of his busi­ness comes from exist­ing clients.

The deci­sion to have a broad focus in your busi­ness implies that you pro­vide a broad range of finan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices. In effect, you seek to become a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner for your clients and assist them in real­iz­ing finan­cial health and well being. Typ­i­cally, this involves a finan­cial plan­ning process that takes into account the var­i­ous life stages your clients will expe­ri­ence and the strate­gies and tac­tics required to real­ize finan­cial secu­rity and inde­pen­dence through­out each stage. The intent is to pro­vide access to a broad array of finan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices to address the needs, wants and val­ues of clients through­out their lives.

One of the finan­cial advi­sors whom I coach entered the busi­ness in his 40s and wanted to work with more mature and afflu­ent clients. His ideal client is 50+, a mil­lion­aire who is retired or approach­ing retire­ment and con­cerned about the growth and preser­va­tion of wealth. Ini­tially, the finan­cial advi­sor focused on man­aged money and annu­ities. Recently, he added life insur­ance and liv­ing ben­e­fits to his prod­uct mix and began to offer fee-based finan­cial plan­ning. He works closely with other col­lat­eral pro­fes­sion­als such as lawyers and accoun­tants to pro­vide a com­plete range of finan­cial man­age­ment, tax and estate plan­ning ser­vices to address the myr­iad finan­cial and life plan­ning needs of his clients. He encour­ages his clients to turn to him for advice on any mat­ters related to their finan­cial health and well being. He views him­self as a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner who is able to serve a large clien­tele and draw upon a strong pool of spe­cial­ists to assist his clients in main­tain­ing finan­cial health and prosperity.

The deci­sion to be nar­row or broad reflects your pref­er­ences with regard to the work you enjoy and your com­pe­ten­cies. The core com­pe­tence for advi­sors who choose a broad focus is rela­tion­ship man­age­ment. A nar­row focus puts more empha­sis on the core com­pe­tence of knowl­edge and exper­tise related to the advisor’s specialty.

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: 50s 60s, Array, Case In Point, Case Size, Clientele, Collateral, Financial Advisors, Financial Health, Financial Planning, Financial Security, Financial Services, General Practitioner, High Net Worth Clients, Insurance Premium, Introductions, Investment Advice, Life Insurance, Market Segments, Narrow Focus, Norm Trainor, Retirement Market
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