Posts Tagged ‘Advisory Boards’

Are You Willing to be Accountable to Your Clients?

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

One thing pre­vent­ing us from get­ting more clients is our unwill­ing­ness to take their advice.

Susan Ham­mond, who con­ducts and blogs about cus­tomer advi­sory boards, posted a provoca­tive ques­tion last week. She won­dered whether some com­pa­nies have avoided an advi­sory board because of the account­abil­ity involved. There is a big risk and assem­bling some of your best clients unless you are will­ing to take their advice, what­ever it might be. In fact, this is prob­a­bly the biggest risk in orga­niz­ing an advi­sory board. Many  more advi­sors tell me their biggest fear is that some­thing neg­a­tive might hap­pen dur­ing a meet­ing, although I have yet to see that hap­pen. I have dif­fi­culty even imag­in­ing it happening.

A reluc­tance to take a prac­tice in a cre­ative new direc­tion clients would find valu­able, or to can­cel plans for expan­sion in a direc­tion clients do not find valu­able, is some­thing I see more fre­quently. It is the dark under­belly of the per­son­al­ity it takes to suc­ceed in the advi­sory busi­ness. We have to per­suade clients to do things they don’t want to do, like save for the future. Like stay­ing in the mar­ket as it reaches its low point. We are in the busi­ness of telling peo­ple what they should do. We know best. But, when it comes to cre­at­ing value for clients, “I know best” is wrong. In that sit­u­a­tion, the client knows best.

Scott Carl­berg is a mem­ber of the advi­sory board for John Gugle of Alpha Finan­cial Advi­sors in Char­lotte, North Car­olina. In a video inter­view about his expe­ri­ence, he says “done right, a client advi­sory board will deliver some news you don’t want to hear. But you have to face those things if you want to cre­ate a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.”

Are you will­ing to take your clients’ advice, and cre­ate a finan­cial prac­tice tai­lored specif­i­cally to their wants and needs? Many advi­sors won’t. They will take their prac­tice where they, the advi­sor, wants it to go. But the advi­sors who will be account­able to their clients will dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from their com­peti­tors and will find it much eas­ier to attract new clients.


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Are You Willing to be Accountable to Your Clients?

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

 

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

One thing pre­vent­ing us from get­ting more clients is our unwill­ing­ness to take their advice.

Susan Ham­mond, who con­ducts and blogs about cus­tomer advi­sory boards, posted a provoca­tive ques­tion last week. She won­dered whether some com­pa­nies have avoided an advi­sory board because of the account­abil­ity involved. There is a big risk and assem­bling some of your best clients unless you are will­ing to take their advice, what­ever it might be. In fact, this is prob­a­bly the biggest risk in orga­niz­ing an advi­sory board. Many  more advi­sors tell me their biggest fear is that some­thing neg­a­tive might hap­pen dur­ing a meet­ing, although I have yet to see that hap­pen. I have dif­fi­culty even imag­in­ing it happening.

A reluc­tance to take a prac­tice in a cre­ative new direc­tion clients would find valu­able, or to can­cel plans for expan­sion in a direc­tion clients do not find valu­able, is some­thing I see more fre­quently. It is the dark under­belly of the per­son­al­ity it takes to suc­ceed in the advi­sory busi­ness. We have to per­suade clients to do things they don’t want to do, like save for the future. Like stay­ing in the mar­ket as it reaches its low point. We are in the busi­ness of telling peo­ple what they should do. We know best. But, when it comes to cre­at­ing value for clients, “I know best” is wrong. In that sit­u­a­tion, the client knows best.

Scott Carl­berg is a mem­ber of the advi­sory board for John Gugle of Alpha Finan­cial Advi­sors in Char­lotte, North Car­olina. In a video inter­view about his expe­ri­ence, he says “done right, a client advi­sory board will deliver some news you don’t want to hear. But you have to face those things if you want to cre­ate a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.”

Are you will­ing to take your clients’ advice, and cre­ate a finan­cial prac­tice tai­lored specif­i­cally to their wants and needs? Many advi­sors won’t. They will take their prac­tice where they, the advi­sor, wants it to go. But the advi­sors who will be account­able to their clients will dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from their com­peti­tors and will find it much eas­ier to attract new clients.

 

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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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Don’t Ask For Referrals – Ask For Advice

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Let me intro­duce you to the most pow­er­ful busi­ness build­ing ques­tion I ever learned.

The ques­tion was taught to me by Bruce Peters, my coach and men­tor and my pre­de­ces­sor in doing client advi­sory boards for finan­cial advi­sors. I have used it in many sce­nar­ios regard­ing many ser­vices. I have used it in sales pre­sen­ta­tions and per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions. I fre­quently ask it on behalf of advi­sors at their client advi­sory board meet­ings. It is a pow­er­ful ques­tion. Here it is:

If you were in my posi­tion, try­ing to do what I am try­ing to accom­plish, what would you do?

Let’s exam­ine the value of this ques­tion in the con­text of get­ting refer­rals. Peo­ple are com­ple­mented by being asked for advice. It gets their cre­ative juices flow­ing. It elic­its the kind of infor­ma­tion you want while strength­en­ing the rela­tion­ship rather than dete­ri­o­rat­ing it, which is what hap­pens when you ask directly for referrals.

For exam­ple, how does a typ­i­cal client feel when asked “who do you know the can use my ser­vices?” Now, how do you sup­pose the client would feel if, after pro­vid­ing a descrip­tion of your tar­get client, you ask “if you were look­ing for other peo­ple like this, what would you do?”

First, this puts a lot more con­text around the request. It is a lot eas­ier to recall peo­ple of a cer­tain descrip­tion than it is to think of peo­ple “who could poten­tially use our ser­vices.” It engages their cre­ativ­ity. If any­one comes to mind, there is a good chance your client will offer their names. If not, they have a grace­ful way out. There is no wrong answer. You may even get some good mar­ket­ing ideas from them.

As I men­tioned, this ques­tion can be used in all kinds of sit­u­a­tions. If you had to describe the value of these ser­vices to other peo­ple like you, how would you do it? If you are try­ing to pro­vide the ideal ser­vices to busi­ness own­ers like your­self, what ser­vices would you offer? If you were try­ing to con­nect with your trade asso­ci­a­tion, how would you do it? If you had to fill the posi­tion of recep­tion­ist like I need to, where would you look to find the best can­di­date? If you were try­ing to improve your per­for­mance in this one par­tic­u­lar area, what do you sup­pose you would try first?

Learn how to uti­lize this ques­tion and you will find your­self receiv­ing much more use­ful feed­back from clients and cen­ters of influence.


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The Benefits Of Being In The Learning Mode: Can You Hear Your Clients?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

The Ben­e­fits Of Being In The Learn­ing Mode: Can you hear your clients?

by Stephen Wershing

If you want greater share of wal­let and more refer­rals, peri­od­i­cally you need to be lis­ten­ing and act­ing on feed­back. When it is time to receive that feed­back, it is crit­i­cal that you be in the “learn­ing mode”. When I facil­i­tate client advi­sory boards, I coach advi­sors to have a Zen mind. I encour­age them to be in the state of open­ness. It is a lit­tle like prac­tic­ing a form of med­i­ta­tion called mind­ful­ness – accept ideas as they arrive, exam­ine them with­out judg­ment, per­haps set them aside for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, and move onto the next suggestion.

Get­ting into and stay­ing in the learn­ing mode is hard. As humans, we have a reflex­ive ten­dency to respond to ques­tions with answers. Com­pound­ing that, we are in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing answers. It is our job to share our exper­tise and tell peo­ple what to do. There are times, how­ever, when we need to switch roles and get feed­back on what we’re doing. If we want to improve our prac­tices, we need our clients’ guid­ance. And in that sit­u­a­tion, answer­ing does not help. What do you learn when you answer? Noth­ing. How do you get bet­ter when you answer? You don’t.

Always seek value in these inter­ac­tions. Ask what can I learn from this client? What can I learn from this sit­u­a­tion? Look for ques­tions to ask. If you are asked a ques­tion, try fol­low­ing the answer with another ques­tion. If pos­si­ble, ask a ques­tion instead of answer­ing. Here are some examples:

Before I answer that, what about this is impor­tant to you?

What would it mean to you if I could do that?

What would you say is the biggest con­cern you have that is prompt­ing that ques­tion? (Which is a less threat­en­ing way of ask­ing “why do you ask?”).

The need to dis­cuss this was high­lighted by a con­ver­sa­tion I had with an advi­sor yes­ter­day. We were dis­cussing the agenda for his first client advi­sory board meet­ing. He said “I’m not sure what to put on the agenda, I don’t know what they want to hear about.” My response was that a meet­ing like this was not about what they wanted to hear, it is about what they have to say.

There is a time to answer. When it is a time to lis­ten and the clients turn to speak, the longer you can stay in the learn­ing mode, the more your clients will tell you how to do more busi­ness with them and how you can attract more clients like them.


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To Get Referrals, Your Clients Must Understand Your Target Market

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, Advi​sor​Check​list​.com

When Andrew Sul­li­van, of Sul­li­van and Schlie­man in Atlanta, formed his client advi­sory board, one of their top rec­om­men­da­tions was to give each of them a card list­ing his ser­vices and accom­plish­ments. Their request was “tell us how to sell you.”

In a recent client advi­sory board I facil­i­tated, the par­tic­i­pants told the advi­sor “tell us who your ideal client is, so we know who to refer.” It is not the first time I have heard that kind of feed­back from clients.

Expe­ri­ences like this raise two crit­i­cally impor­tant points. First, there is clearly a strong will­ing­ness, even an enthu­si­asm, on the part of clients to make refer­rals. This is not really sur­pris­ing – Julie Littlechild’s research has shown that as much as 91% of our clients are will­ing to refer. (It also demon­strates why par­tic­i­pants on an advi­sory board tend to be a firm’s best refer­ral sources!)

Sec­ond, it is the strongest proof I can imag­ine that advi­sors must clearly define what they do and for whom. They must be able to describe their niche, their tar­get mar­ket. Remem­ber, these advi­sory boards are com­posed of the advi­sors’ best clients – the ones who should know best what they have to offer.  And yet, they asked for guid­ance on what kind of clients the advi­sor hoped to attract.

If you believe you have defined your tar­get client, here is how you can test how well you have done. Try this exper­i­ment – next time you talk to a cou­ple clients you are on par­tic­u­larly good terms with, and who would be will­ing to take a minute for a lit­tle thought exper­i­ment, ask them this ques­tion: If I sent you into a cock­tail party in the next room full of all kinds of peo­ple, and I asked you to refer a cou­ple of them to me as prospec­tive clients, how would you fig­ure out who would be the best ones to send to me?

I sus­pect that most clients would answer “I don’t know.” And if that’s the response, you will know why you aren’t get­ting more refer­rals. Your clients are not sure who you’re look­ing for. And what­ever you have done so far to define and com­mu­ni­cate your tar­get mar­ket, your value propo­si­tion, and your ideal client, you still have work to do.

Defin­ing who you want as clients and what unique solu­tions and expe­ri­ences you pro­vide to peo­ple like them are the foun­da­tion of refer­ral mar­ket­ing. Get those two things right, and attract­ing new clients becomes much easier.

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How to Attract Referrals Systematically

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

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.

Clearly posi­tion your­self with your clients, your prospects, and the pub­lic. Come to own that par­tic­u­lar spot on people’s brains, and when some­one expresses a need for that kind of advi­sor they will nat­u­rally think of you


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The Advisor Your Clients Crave

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Stephen Wershing’s pre­sen­ta­tion asks some very impor­tant ques­tions for advi­sors to con­tem­plate. Great ques­tions lead to great answers, and the last posi­tion you want to find your­self in, is with a prospec­tive client sit­ting in front of you, think­ing to them­selves, “So what?” or worse say­ing it out loud. The objec­tive of your client com­mu­ni­ca­tions should be to rein­force to your clients the “Why did I become your client?”, and to keep the “What have you done for me lately?” answers fresh.

Make a point of scan­ning through the pre­sen­ta­tion for the ques­tions. If you hover your pointer over “more,” you can full-screen the viewer.

The Advi­sor Your Clients Crave on Prezi

Stephen Wer­sh­ing, CFP® coaches finan­cial advi­sors to be more effec­tive and suc­cess­ful, and attract more clients and refer­rals, by devel­op­ing more client-connected and client-driven prac­tices. His process of col­lect­ing sys­tem­atic and objec­tive client feed­back and using it to reori­ent an advisor’s prac­tice effec­tively engages an advisor’s best clients to drive the strate­gic plan of the busi­ness. He con­sults finan­cial prac­ti­tion­ers on many prac­tice man­age­ment issues, includ­ing strate­gic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, client advi­sory boards, and imple­ment­ing tech­nol­ogy. Read more from the author/contributor here.

Source: Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice


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The Conversation is the Relationship

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

The num­ber of refer­rals finan­cial advi­sors receive from clients is directly related to how often they meet with clients and what they dis­cuss besides their port­fo­lio when they do.

David Whyte, in works like his book The Three Mar­riages, makes a point about suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships. Two peo­ple talk­ing about what they hope for, expect, and accom­plish together are not hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about their rela­tion­ship, the con­ver­sa­tion is the rela­tion­ship.

So it is with finan­cial advi­sors, accord­ing to the arti­cle “Secrets of Refer­rals” in Finan­cial Plan­ning mag­a­zine this month by Julie Lit­tlechild. The arti­cle describes the con­clu­sions of her soon to be released study Anatomy of a Referral.

Her research shows that the kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion an advi­sor has with clients has a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on whether those clients become “engaged.” In her prior research, she estab­lished that engaged clients pro­vide prac­ti­cally all an advisor’s referrals.

Engaged clients have a deep rela­tion­ship with their advi­sor” she writes. That rela­tion­ship grows out of keep­ing clients focused and on track toward their goals, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship, and solic­it­ing client feed­back on the kind of expe­ri­ence they want.  So, it is enor­mously impor­tant to dis­cuss a broad range of clients con­cerns dur­ing meet­ings tak­ing a long view.  And an objec­tive process of obtain­ing sys­tem­atic feed­back, includ­ing sur­veys and client advi­sory boards, is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of your client ser­vice plan.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the right type and fre­quency is, in large part, the rela­tion­ship. And main­tain­ing that rela­tion­ship is the most direct path to engaged clients and more referrals.


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