How to Win Younger Wealthy Clients

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

A new report from Cisco indi­cates that wealthy investors under 55 have less trust in advi­sors and dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions than older clients, and offers some ideas on how to attract them. A Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle that referred to this study and another high­light the impor­tance of a care­fully researched value propo­si­tion and ser­vice model.

The Cisco study, writ­ten up in wealth man​age​ment​.com, is pri­mar­ily a sales pitch to buy tech­nol­ogy for your prac­tice. Big sur­prise. Nev­er­the­less, it had some very inter­est­ing data with sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for you as you update your mar­ket­ing plan. Among the findings:

• This is a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket – Investors under 55 with over $500,000 in investable assets rep­re­sent 37% of investable assets in the US.

• They are the most likely to move – In the sur­vey, 20% of this group indi­cated they were some­what or very likely to change advi­sors within the next 12 months. Older age groups had a far less like­li­hood of mov­ing. Not only does this mean that you are most at risk for los­ing your younger clients if you don’t pro­vide them what they want, but another impli­ca­tion is that mar­ket­ing strate­gies aimed at older investors are much less likely to be suc­cess­ful at attract­ing them away from their cur­rent advi­sor. Younger investors rep­re­sent a risk and an opportunity.

• Younger investors have less trust in advi­sors – among respon­dents 65 and older, 58% trust advi­sors more than they trust other investors and only 7% trust fel­low investors more than advi­sors. Among respon­dents under 55, how­ever, only 32% trust advi­sors more and 22% trust fel­low investors more than advi­sors. So, refer­ral mar­ket­ing is even more crit­i­cal with younger investors and tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing is likely to be less effective.

• Expec­ta­tions are key –clients under 55 report their inter­ac­tions are not valu­able enough with their finan­cial advi­sor. The study reports that these clients said they want:

• more per­son­al­ized rec­om­men­da­tions and advice

• more dis­cus­sion of strate­gies rather than investments

• more fre­quent interactions

• more infor­ma­tion (includ­ing charts and graphs) prior to and dur­ing meetings

Now, the sur­vey respon­dents prob­a­bly did not actu­ally say those things – they prob­a­bly checked those boxes on a form. It may be that they actu­ally desire more per­son­al­ized rec­om­men­da­tions and more dis­cus­sion of strate­gies, but I sus­pect that this could be a good indi­ca­tion that they place a higher value on finan­cial plan­ning than invest­ment management.

What I feel con­fi­dent about tak­ing from this sur­vey is that younger clients have dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions about how they will inter­act with you. Maybe it is via the high-tech, high def com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels Cisco wants to sell you, or maybe it is sim­ply some­how uti­liz­ing the com­puter desk­top to inter­act with you and save a trip to the office. Regard­less, it is clearly a good idea to have a con­ver­sa­tion about whether the come-to-my-office-quarterly model is your client’s preference.

The other study the Jour­nal arti­cle ref­er­enced is dis­cussed in this arti­cle in the cur­rent issue of Finan­cial Advi­sor, explor­ing the desires of even younger investors, the Mil­len­ni­als, born between 1980 and 2000. Clients in this cat­e­gory, once they have taken care of their basic needs, want to use their invest­ments to change the world. The wealth­i­est among them may not have supe­rior invest­ment returns as a pri­or­ity. If they get only ade­quate returns but advance their social goals, they feel successful.

What I take from these stud­ies, and oth­ers like them I have seen, is that explor­ing your ideal clients’ expec­ta­tions and incor­po­rat­ing them into your value propo­si­tion and client processes offers tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity. Build­ing a prac­tice around what your ideal clients want – what they want to accom­plish Whether it is sav­ing enough for retire­ment or chang­ing the world), how they want to get there, how they want to meet with you and how often (which may include Skype, video con­fer­enc­ing, per­son­al­ized web­sites, remote inter­ac­tive plan­ning tools like Mon­eyGuide Pro, or even sim­ply fewer meet­ings and more phone calls) – can dra­mat­i­cally increase the like­li­hood they will tell their friends about you. And, espe­cially for wealthy investors under 55, that word-of-mouth is likely to be the best way to attract them.

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Tags: Age Groups, Cisco Study, Driven Practice, Fellow Investors, Implication, Investable Assets, Market Investors, Marketing Plan, Marketing Strategies, Older Investors, Referral Marketing, Respondents, Service Model, Street Journal Article, Traditional Marketing, Value Proposition, Wall Street Journal, Wealth Management, Wealthy Clients, Wealthy Investors
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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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Referrals can Expand Your Circles of Influence

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

Mar­ket­ing your orga­ni­za­tion has many inter­con­nected com­po­nents. The adver­tise­ments you place in print pub­li­ca­tions must carry a sim­i­lar mes­sage to those you dis­play online as well as the blog posts, news­pa­per columns or newslet­ters you write. In this mar­ket­ing mix, we some­times for­get about one of the most pow­er­ful chan­nels: Word of mouth.

Rec­om­men­da­tions, refer­rals, and intro­duc­tions from the clients you cur­rently serve can sig­nif­i­cantly impact your cir­cles of influ­ence. Because referred prospects are typ­i­cally in the same social or finan­cial groups as your exist­ing clients, the prac­tice of gain­ing intro­duc­tions can ele­vate your access to your ideal client. It may also shorten the lead vet­ting process, as those mak­ing the refer­ral are famil­iar with your areas of exper­tise and services.

Have you incor­po­rated a refer­ral process into your mar­ket­ing strat­egy? How do you use your client cap­i­tal to gain access to desir­able prospects?

Cold call­ing may result in a few sales leads, but it is a time-intensive process and can be less effec­tive than ask­ing cur­rent clients to sup­ply names of or even make intro­duc­tions to the kind of peo­ple you want to attract. In order to boost the num­ber of prospects you put into the mar­ket­ing pipeline, cre­ate a stan­dard process that you and your employ­ees can fol­low when ask­ing to be intro­duced to ideal clients.

At The Covenant Group, we encour­age entre­pre­neurs to not only guide clients through the refer­ral process, but request per­sonal intro­duc­tions. Refer­rals can some­times be pas­sive. The way you deliver ser­vice will impact your abil­ity to secure per­sonal intro­duc­tions, rather than refer­rals of names to add to a cold-calling list. When a client actu­ally intro­duces you to an acquain­tance or busi­ness asso­ciate, whether by email, let­ter or in per­son, it is fur­ther affir­ma­tion of that person’s trust in your abil­i­ties, and can assist in clos­ing the sales cycle with a new prospect.

In client meet­ings, dis­cuss how they feel about your ser­vices. Ask them to affirm their con­fi­dence in you and describe the value that they see in the rela­tion­ship. Then out­line your ideal clients (this helps the per­son you are talk­ing to think about high-quality prospects) and ask him or her a few ques­tions to jog mem­ory of peo­ple who may fit this pro­file. As they start to think of poten­tial refer­rals, you can ask for an intro­duc­tion. Arrange a meet­ing that will make it easy for the client to intro­duce you. After­ward, be sure to thank the client and keep him or her up-to-date about how the meet­ing and new rela­tion­ship progresses.

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

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Acquaintance, Advertisements, Affirmation, Business Associate, Circles, Cold Calling, Covenant Group, Financial Groups, Marketing Organization, Marketing Strategy, New Prospect, Personal Introductions, Pipeline, Print Publications, Prospects, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Sales Leads, Shauna, Word Of Mouth
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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.

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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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How to Design a Referral Marketing Strategy – Results from Client Engagement Think Tank, Part Four

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

In my first three posts on our client engage­ment think tank, I set the stage for a dis­cus­sion of a refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan. What we found in our round­table dis­cus­sion with advi­sors is that many do not tar­get prospects par­tic­u­larly well, don’t use the tar­get mar­kets they have defined in their client onboard­ing process, and they don’t have a plan to attract refer­rals from that tar­get group. So now that these obser­va­tions are in the open, how do you write a plan to sys­tem­at­i­cally attract refer­rals? Here are a few basic principles:

1. Do an excep­tional job – this may seem obvi­ous, but many advi­sors I speak to want to know how to get refer­rals and do not ques­tion how the qual­ity of their work may be part of the cause for not receiv­ing more. Rather than ask “Why don’t my clients pre­fer?” Asked “What can I do better?”
2. Get client feed­back – In order to find out how good a job you’re doing, and what you could do bet­ter, have a sys­tem­atic way of obtain­ing feed­back from your clients. Whether through sur­veys or advi­sory boards, have a struc­tured way to ask ques­tions like How my doing? What am I really good at? What unique value do I bring to the relationship?
3. Define your tar­get mar­ket – Many advi­sors do not do enough work in defin­ing who exactly their best tar­get prospects are. Even many of the arti­cles I have read on tar­get mar­kets only offer the shal­low­est and most super­fi­cial advice. It is not enough to define the tar­get mar­ket by pro­fes­sion, a faith com­mu­nity, or an age range. And don’t even get me started on investable assets. You need to go beyond the obvi­ous and develop a more sub­tle and nuanced descrip­tion of the peo­ple you can ser­vice most effec­tively. One of the advi­sors I work with ini­tially told me his tar­get mar­ket was “women.” To be effec­tive, you need to have unique skills and ser­vices that con­nect with a group. There­fore, that group needs to be less than 52% of the pop­u­la­tion. Ulti­mately, we arrived at a descrip­tion that included “women who have just recently or are about to take con­trol of their fam­ily finances for the first time in their lives.” These are not the “sud­denly sin­gle” or the cases of “sud­den wealth.” Many of these women are still mar­ried, and the fam­ily net worth has not changed. One exam­ple is a woman whose hus­band was recently diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The fam­ily and assets have not changed, but she was fac­ing the fact that she was about to be in charge. It is a group of peo­ple with sim­i­lar needs, shared con­cerns, in need of sim­i­lar services.
4. Research the needs of your tar­get audi­ence – Now that you have deter­mined who your tar­get mar­ket is, con­sider what they might need from you do not cur­rently pro­vide. Per­form a “gap analy­sis” on your prac­tice ver­sus the ideal prac­tice for that tar­get audi­ence. Go back to your clients who are in that tar­get audi­ence and get their opin­ion on your research. Ask ques­tions like “if I wanted to work with other peo­ple just like you, what ser­vices would I add that would make me the ideal advi­sor?” Bring them the results of your gap analy­sis, and ask “do you think I should add ser­vices like these?”
5. Design your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy – Once you have tai­lored your prac­tice to your tar­get mar­ket, design a strat­egy for com­mu­ni­cat­ing your area of spe­cialty and your spe­cial­ized ser­vices. Let your clients know specif­i­cally what kind of new client you are focus­ing on, and what spe­cial skills you bring to the table to work with them. Learn how to describe what makes you unique for that tar­get audi­ence so that you can clearly artic­u­late it to the peo­ple you meet. Let peo­ple know that you worked with your best clients to tai­lor your prac­tice to that tar­get group.

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Tags: Advisory Boards, Client Engagement, Client Feedback, Faith Community, Find Job, How To Get Referrals, Investable Assets, Marketing Plan, Marketing Strategy, Profession, Referral Marketing, Relationship, Strategy Results, Surveys, Systematic Way, Target Group, Target Market, Target Markets, Target Prospects, Think Tank
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A “Wow” Experience Is Not Enough

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

We have been told that to attract refer­rals and clients, we have to pro­vide a “wow” expe­ri­ence. But that’s just not enough on which to base a busi­ness devel­op­ment or refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan.

Last week, I was dis­cussing with an advi­sor his strat­egy for uti­liz­ing his client advi­sory board to gen­er­ate refer­rals. Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, he said “We have to make sure we deliver such a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence that the clients will tell every­one about us.” This is a phi­los­o­phy I have heard many times. As a busi­ness devel­op­ment strat­egy, it has some seri­ous shortcomings.

One issue, of course, is that there is no gen­er­ally agreed upon def­i­n­i­tion of “wow.” Too often, when I have heard an advi­sor say this, they then went on to pro­vide their own inter­pre­ta­tion of “wow”, and that is one way to dis­ap­point clients. What mat­ters is that you exceeded the client’s expec­ta­tions, not your expec­ta­tions of what the client wants. And all clients are dif­fer­ent. For that mat­ter, how will employ­ees under­stand what “wow” is? And how can they deliver it if they can­not clearly trans­late it into behavior?

I remem­ber one time I estab­lished a new rela­tion­ship with a bank. There was some form that I neglected to sign or some­thing.  The man­ager, in her pur­suit of deliv­er­ing the “wow” expe­ri­ence, drove to my office to deliver it to me. My reac­tion was “Why is there a bank man­ager in my lobby? The mail would have done just fine. I don’t need to be inter­rupted right now.” My assis­tant went out to see her. She ded­i­cated a mean­ing­ful por­tion of her day to drive some­thing to my office, as tes­ta­ment no doubt to their ded­i­ca­tion of deliv­er­ing an out­stand­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.  And if it had any effect on my atti­tude toward the insti­tu­tion, it was mildly neg­a­tive. She focused on her assump­tions of a great expe­ri­ence and ignored my expectations.

The big­ger issue of “wow” is that too many peo­ple say it. And, yes, most do not deliver it, but YOU do.  I know. But how will prospects know that? If a prospect inter­views five advi­sors, and they all say they deliver an amaz­ing client expe­ri­ence, how will that help the prospect to choose you?

If you ded­i­cate your­self to con­sis­tently deliver “wow” how will you oper­a­tional­ize that? If you are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing “wow” then you must have pro­ce­dures around it and they must be mea­sured. Much, much bet­ter to define exactly what your ser­vice com­prises, and explain that to clients.  Bet­ter yet, ask them if that is how they would most like things to be han­dled. Then cre­ate processes to deliver  that con­sis­tently and man­age to those processes.

If you com­mit to deliv­er­ing a “wow” expe­ri­ence, you will thrill some clients and it will gen­er­ate some refer­rals. Peo­ple are attracted (and make refer­rals) to firms that rep­re­sent spe­cific solu­tions and expe­ri­ences that par­tic­u­lar clients seek. Define what those solu­tions and expe­ri­ences are, and test them with clients. Once you have deter­mined what the tar­get clients’ expec­ta­tions are, build processes to meet them con­sis­tently and exceed them peri­od­i­cally. Then you will have a per­for­mance goal all your employ­ees and clients will appre­ci­ate, and that they will tell oth­ers about. And that will yield a much greater return than sim­ply “wow.”

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Tags: Advisory Board, Assumptions, Attitude, Business Development Strategy, Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Dedication, Mail, Marketing Plan, No Doubt, Philosophy, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Relationship, Some Serious Shortcomings, Testament, Wow
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Five Things You Can Do To Attract Referrals In 2012

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

As you put your 2012 busi­ness and mar­ket­ing plans into action, what are your plans for attract­ing refer­rals this year? One of the biggest rea­sons we do not attracts more refer­rals than we do is because we do not have a for­mal, writ­ten plan on how we will attract them. Just like busi­ness plans and finan­cial plans, achiev­ing your goals with refer­ral mar­ket­ing begins with a plan.

To help you get started, here are five things you can include in your plan that will help you attract referrals.

Ask your clients how they describe you – Refer­rals hap­pen when your clients men­tion you to their friends and busi­ness asso­ciates. (Not when you ask for them.) For that refer­ral to turn into a client, what your clients tell their friends needs to be accu­rate and com­pelling. Is it? This can also be a great way to find out what your clients believe is most valu­able about what you do for them.

Make sure your clients know your ideal prospect – When your clients send you refer­rals, are they the peo­ple you most want to attract as clients? If not, then your clients don’t know who you are look­ing for. Help­ing them under­stand your ideal prospect is a great way to let them know you are try­ing to make your prac­tice grow and to gen­tly remind them that you would appre­ci­ate refer­rals with­out putting them on the spot by ask­ing for names and num­bers. And, of course, it helps them be aware of who the best refer­rals would be.

Change one thing in your prac­tice based on client feed­back – Some­times it is what we do and some­times it is how we do it, but there is always a way we can improve what we do that will make clients more excited. And the more we tai­lor what we do to what our clients want most, the more loyal they will be and the more enthu­si­as­ti­cally they will refer us. Look through client sur­vey data or ask your advi­sory board for clues about how you can improve.

Stop doing one thing that doesn’t add value – We all do things that clients per­ceive makes us valu­able and things that clients don’t par­tic­u­larly care about. Drop­ping some­thing that does not add value frees up time to do more of what clients really value.

Ask cen­ters of influ­ence who they are ideal clients would be – Ask­ing COIs about their spe­cial­ties, unique skills, and ideal prospects opens the oppor­tu­nity to talk about your unique value and ideal clients. It also demon­strates that you can be an asset in help­ing them build their busi­ness. It will not guar­an­tee that you will get refer­rals, but it is the most pro­duc­tive approach.

If you want to be suc­cess­ful in attract­ing refer­rals, start with a well thought out refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan. These ideas can help you get started.

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Tags: Achieving Your Goals, Advisory Board, Business And Marketing, Business Associates, Business Marketing, Business Plans, Client Feedback, Client Survey, Friends, Marketing Plans, People, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Survey Data, Year One
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For More Business, Prospect Fewer Clients

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

It is utterly against the DNA of most advi­sors, but if you want to be a suc­cess at attract­ing refer­rals you must choose not to pur­sue good prospects.

A lot has been writ­ten about tar­get mar­ket­ing and hav­ing a niche. Yet I am sur­prised by how many advi­sors I meet who can­not bring them­selves to com­mit to a mar­ket because it means not attract­ing some prof­itable clients.

Here’s a clas­sic exam­ple: I was con­duct­ing one of my Secrets of Refer­ral Mar­ket­ing work­shops and we were dis­cussing find­ing a niche. We talked about how spe­cial­iza­tion and aim­ing at a small part of a mar­ket can bring more clients than that advi­sor can suc­cess­fully ser­vice. Think about it – if you are the one advi­sor that 1% of the peo­ple in your geo­graphic area really needs, how many poten­tial clients is that? Where I live, that’s about 800 house­holds. So it is okay to basi­cally ignore 99% of the pop­u­la­tion. If you can be the advi­sor with the most com­pelling value propo­si­tion for that tar­get mar­ket, what do you need to achieve your goals? Ten per­cent of that poten­tial mar­ket? 20%? And that’s with­out leav­ing town. I can drive an hour east or west and have another mar­ket almost as big.

Every­one agreed. If we designed an irre­sistible mes­sage for the 1%, we can accom­plish as much as we would ever want to. Nods all around. Is every­one okay with that idea? Yes, all the par­tic­i­pants say it makes per­fect sense. We will deter­mine who we can spe­cial­ize in, and cre­ate plans that will suc­cess­fully attract them, even if no other prospects (out­side the niche) respond to the message.

An advi­sor raises his hand. “So, if I meet a prospect out­side my tar­get at a cock­tail party, and he has a rollover of $1 mil­lion, and I tell him what I do and it doesn’t inter­est him at all, it’s okay?” Yes, it’s okay.

Imme­di­ately another par­tic­i­pant objects. “But we have to say some­thing that would get them inter­ested – he would be a great client!”

From the day we enter the pro­fes­sion, we are trained to pur­sue any prospect who could be prof­itable. Even­tu­ally, we end up with a diverse client base that can be a chal­lenge to ser­vice and a value propo­si­tion that attempts to attract every­one and is com­pelling to prac­ti­cally no one. When we first try to mar­ket to a tar­get audi­ence, we find our­selves unable to resist the dilemma of “and I do that, too. And that…” It is coun­ter­in­tu­itive.  As much as we have dis­cussed it, many, maybe most, advi­sors still can­not bring them­selves to focus on a sin­gle, tar­geted client profile.

But if we want peo­ple to talk about us, to refer us, we need to be known for some­thing spe­cific. And that means leav­ing a major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion out of your mar­ket­ing and prospect­ing plans.

Nar­row and deep beats wide and shal­low. Less is more. Get known for being the sin­gle go-to advi­sor for some­thing spe­cific, and you can even­tu­ally get to the point that many of those prospects find you.

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Tags: 1 Million, Business Prospect, Cocktail Party, Dna, Households, Niche, Participant, Participants, Perfect Sense, Population, Potential Market, Profession, Prospects, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Specialization, Target Market, Target Marketing, Value Proposition
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The Two Times Clients Refer You

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

There are two times peo­ple will think to refer you – and, no, when you ask is not one of them. They are just after they have a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence with you and when a friend expresses a need for a solu­tion you represent.

Clients will talk about you after a meet­ing or inter­ac­tion, pro­vid­ing it’s mem­o­rable. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to do much to prompt it beyond giv­ing them an expe­ri­ence worth talk­ing about. Peo­ple nat­u­rally dis­cuss with friends what’s been hap­pen­ing recently. If you take care to cre­ate a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, you have done what you can. Ever get an unso­licited refer­ral from client soon after meet­ing with them? That’s this effect in action.

The bad thing is this effect does not last long. Maybe a day or two. A longer-lasting way to stim­u­late refer­rals is to have your clients asso­ciate you with some spe­cific solu­tion or expe­ri­ence. This is doc­u­mented in Julie Lit­tlechild’s report  Anatomy of the Refer­ral. When asked the ques­tion “what were the cir­cum­stances of the last refer­ral (you gave to your advi­sor)?” 48% said “because a friend asked for a rec­om­men­da­tion” and 57% said “because a friend described a finan­cial chal­lenge.” The key, then, is to define what solu­tion you rep­re­sent so clearly that when a friend expresses a need to your client you nat­u­rally pop to mind.

Your refer­ral mar­ket­ing pro­gram should start with defin­ing what solu­tion or expe­ri­ence you rep­re­sent. Define that in con­junc­tion with clients and adopt their lan­guage for it. Using their lan­guage rather than our own indus­try spe­cific tech­ni­cal descrip­tions helps them remem­ber. It must be dif­fer­ent than other advi­sors.  It must be a rea­son your clients come to you specif­i­cally and not just to a finan­cial advi­sor gen­er­ally. Have a plan to com­mu­ni­cate that descrip­tion often and in dif­fer­ent ways. Keep remind­ing them what you excel at and what you deliver.

Con­sis­tently drive that mes­sage deep into the clients mem­ory. Once it’s there, you will find your clients refer­ring you more con­sis­tently. Our clients are pre­sented with oppor­tu­ni­ties to refer us all the time. The ques­tion is whether they will remem­ber to rec­om­mend you when the oppor­tu­ni­ties arise.

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Tags: Anatomy, Circumstances, Cli, Conjunction, Different Ways, Excel, Experience Worth, Financial Challenge, Interaction, Julie Littlechild, Marketing Program, Memory, Must Be A Reason, People, Pop, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Specific Solution, Technical Descriptions
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