Becoming the fall back advisor for high end clients

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Once you’ve devel­oped a clearly defined and dif­fer­en­ti­ated value propo­si­tion, there are many dif­fer­ent routes to get­ting the word out to high end prospects.You can build pro­file as the “go to” resource within a defined client group, build refer­ral rela­tion­ships with accoun­tants and lawyers or focus on devel­op­ing media pro­file in your community.

And then there’s the role of patience — one of the most impor­tant qual­i­ties to an effec­tive prospect­ing campaign.Recently, I talked to an advi­sor about the fine line between com­mu­ni­cat­ing that you’d LIKE to work with prospects on the one hand but that you don’t NEED to work with them on the other. In con­ver­sa­tions with prospects, you need to avoid any­thing that makes them fear that they may be rushed or pres­sured when meet­ing with you.

This brought to mind a con­ver­sa­tion with a highly suc­cess­ful, Chairman’s Club level finan­cial advi­sor some years back, who had decided to retire after a long career with one of the bank owned brokers.

He’d mapped out his retire­ment plans care­fully. Most impor­tant, he’d brought his daugh­ter into the busi­ness a cou­ple of years before from an analyst’s role with a well known insti­tu­tion; among her other qual­i­ties, she held a CFA.

He involved her in all his client meet­ings and let her increas­ingly take the lead in man­ag­ing key rela­tion­ships. As a result, none of his clients were sur­prised when he broke the news that he was step­ping back to a part time role and all of the con­ver­sa­tions about this went well.

All except the talk with one of his very largest clients, a highly suc­cess­ful ser­ial entre­pre­neur, on whom he paid a per­sonal visit to let him know of his plans.

This client’s response took him aback:

“Joe, I’ve really enjoyed our rela­tion­ship and you’ve done a great job for me. But I have to tell you that I’m going to be mov­ing my account.”

Caught com­pletely off guard, the bro­ker con­fessed to being sur­prised. He asked his client to tell him more.

“This is no reflec­tion on you or your daugh­ter” was the reply. ” Let me tell you what happened.

“For some time, I’ve sat on the board of a local hos­pi­tal — among the other board mem­bers is one of your com­peti­tors. Over the course of time, we chat­ted at meet­ings and got to know each other a bit.

“About three years ago, this guy called me and said he’d like to buy me break­fast, to talk about some invest­ment strate­gies he’d put in place for some busi­ness own­ers that he worked with that might be a fit for me.

“I told him that you and I worked together, that I was happy where I was and that this wouldn’t be a good use of his time.”

The client paused and then went on. “Frankly, the other broker’s response sur­prised me.

“He said  — I’m delighted to hear that. First, I’m delighted that you’re being well served. And sec­ond, in light of that I’m happy to hear that you aren’t look­ing at alter­na­tives — because I wouldn’t want my clients who I’m doing a good job for to be talk­ing to com­peti­tors either. But why don’t we have break­fast regardless.”

“So we had a very pleas­ant break­fast, talked about what was hap­pen­ing at the hos­pi­tal and our fam­i­lies, didn’t really talk much about invest­ments much at all.

“But I started get­ting his newslet­ter and invi­ta­tions to things he was putting on for his clients.

“About six months later, he called and invited me to a lun­cheon to hear a money man­ager in town from New York.

“Since then, he’s been in touch two or three times a year. We’ve had lunch a cou­ple of times, we played golf on one occasion.

“About a year ago, we were hav­ing lunch and he says to me: ‘I under­stand that you’re happy in your cur­rent rela­tion­ship and I respect that. But should there ever be a change, I very much hope that I’ll have the oppor­tu­nity to com­plete for your business.

“I told him that I thought that was a rea­son­able request. In light of that con­ver­sa­tion, I really feel that I have an oblig­a­tion to give him a chance to show what he can do.”

So here’s the inter­est­ing ques­tion: What had the incum­bent bro­ker and his daugh­ter done wrong to lose a multi mil­lion dol­lar account?

The answer: They really hadn’t done any­thing wrong … it’s just that another advi­sor had done some­thing very right, by posi­tion­ing him­self as the log­i­cal fall­back should there ever be a change in the sta­tus of this client’s relationship.

It takes a cou­ple of things to make this approach work for you — the right prospects and the right approach.

Start by iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial can­di­dates against whom you want to posi­tion your­self in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to the bro­ker described above. They should have three qual­i­ties — first, they would be a very sub­stan­tial addi­tion to your book, sec­ond, you have an exist­ing rela­tion­ship in place and third you like and are com­fort­able with them. Chances are that if you like them, they like you.

Once you have iden­ti­fied poten­tial can­di­dates, you have to sort out an approach that works for you.

To be effec­tive, this approach has to be both more aggres­sive and less aggres­sive than you’d use against a typ­i­cal prospect.

More aggres­sive because the fre­quency of per­sonal con­tact is much higher than with a nor­mal prospect.

And less aggres­sive because the con­tact itself is lower key. In fact, when it comes to using the “fall­back advi­sor” approach, you have no expec­ta­tion of that indi­vid­ual becom­ing a client in the near term, there’s not even a trace of “are you ready to buy yet?”

Instead, you are patiently posi­tion­ing your­self against the even­tu­al­ity of a change in their sit­u­a­tion. Remember, a key rea­son this works is both the value being pro­vided and the level of patience being demonstrated.

Because of the amount of time and patience required, you likely want to focus on only a few prospects in this fash­ion.  In the long run, how­ever, the time and patience to become “the fall­back advi­sor” against the right indi­vid­u­als can pay very big dividends.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: Accountants, Cfa, Client Group, Client Meetings, Conversations, Fall Back, Job, Lawyers, Part Time, Patience, Personal Visit, Profile, Prospects, Referral, Relationship, Relationships, Retirement, Serial Entrepreneur, Take The Lead, Value Proposition
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