Through many market cycles over the years, I’ve been saying that a good financial advisor is at his or her highest level of refer-ability during times of volatility. Money becomes more topical and many people start to have nagging doubts about the track they are on - both in terms of their current advisor and financial plan…
by Duncan MacPherson
Use my summary of John Kenneth Galbraith’s book A Short History of Financial Euphoria to add impact to your messaging to be compelling and attractive to clients:
As a financial advisor, you know all about the distinction between the message and the messenger. The message is more about the products and services you represent. The messenger is more about you and your ability to be the voice of reason to clients during times of intense turbulence and uncertainty....
The statement "every business is built to be sold" may sound counterintuitive, especially to business owners who have dedicated their lives to building and growing their enterprises. However, upon closer examination, this assertion reveals itself to be a valuable piece of advice for all entrepreneurs, including financial professionals.
Leading up to 2023, what made a financial professional successful? What activities did they focus on? What did their team actually implement? Do years of experience necessarily mean that you will be more successful? Does having a larger team mean that you run a better practice? Overall, where does the industry stand in practice management?
An Always On approach to conversion and convergence propels you down a path where you can eventually pivot from a strictly organic B-to-C growth model to a scalable B-to-B growth model. It enables you to buy an undervalued business from a retiring competitor or colleague. You can attract protégés who have plateaued because of the friction of the world, who can draft in behind your process and replicate your outcomes without being left to their own devices…
The Fee-for-Service business environment is a fascinating business model and very conducive to scale. For comparison, look at other sectors that don’t just transact, but can create recurring revenue, lift and scale...
If you get to the point where you say, “it’s go time” on the business-to-business (B2B) model and you’re confident in your business to consumer (B2C) IP and adoptability, the next things to clarify before you go to market are your hook and your B2B process...
Part of our core mantra is that service is branding. Service is marketing. If that sounds like a generic statement to toss in for the sake of it, allow us to clarify. A while back we had a consultation with a pretty substantial Advisor…
A quick tribute to Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, here. You probably weren’t expecting another Spider-Man reference, but to paraphrase, with great knowledge comes great power and great responsibility. The lesson is simple, gather FORM knowledge and engage ALL meaningful stakeholders into the process as the relationship unfolds.
As you can gather by now, the recurring theme throughout this book is “have a process.” It can seem tedious at times, but the multitude of benefits on the other side of development and deployment are worth the effort.
A quick word about seeking out options for outsourcing some of the commoditized aspects of your Technical Ability and Core Competency (TACC) over to bona fide models and platforms that are proven to add efficiency to your overall deliverables. As an example, a financial professional in his 50s was hitting his stride and finding renewed enthusiasm for his business by...
The energy shifts from the first to the second meeting. Leading up to your first meeting, the prospective client might have felt some apprehension – but that was squelched quickly – and then moved to a state of anticipation for the potential of the relationship. As you onboard the soon-to-be client, the mood shifts to validation. This is where your actions continually confirm their decision and appreciation that this might even be better than they expected.
Meeting with Prospective Clients If you’ve ever been to a large sporting event and a spontaneous chant or wave erupted and took hold throughout a stadium filled with thousands of people, it’s essentially a social form of phase transition where the energy in the building evolved into an organic harmonic pattern. After a concert or theatrical show, the crowd bursts into an applause where the clapping is in sync and transitions to a standing ovation – nobody told them to do it. It’s said that two metronomes will synch up within 30 minutes. It’s said that the hearts of two people in close proximity and with affection for each other will start beating together.
A best practice that can take more time to produce, but strongly reflects and supports your branding strategy, is content marketing. When you create and promote your content, and make it the call to action, you ask the world to ask for your thought leadership IP, rather than asking for appointments or new business. You are attracting with permission marketing, rather than chasing with sales techniques.
A Process to Engage Strategic Partners
For many professionals in your inner circle of strategic partners, and for those connected to your clients that you haven’t met yet, understand their wiring. It doesn’t always occur to them to proactively make introductions. Their head is down, grinding out their technical deliverables. They might think in terms of 101-level networking, but not all of them are very savvy beyond that. It isn’t an innate skill for everyone, and it certainly wasn’t taught to them in school. In the absence of the entrepreneurial pedigree – they’re running a practice not a business – there is a higher degree of skepticism when it comes to this type of initiative…
Another client of ours – who was admittedly just going through the motions initially with our process – got jarred one day. In the space of an hour, he received an amazing degree of praise and an incredible referral from a raving client, and then got fired by a raging client. It was enough to tip him over to a sense of resolve…
The idea of getting together with a client to rehash something that has already happened is just one reason why some of your clients might brush it off and tell you, “Hey it’s all cool. I’m busy, I trust you. Whatever you think.” You might convince yourself that it’s great that your client feels that way. It’s not great. It’s great that they trust you, but not great that they don’t see the merit in getting together. That’s where loyalty fatigue and drifting are born. The noise-cancelling headphones are now officially off and competitor messages are going to be heard…
In business and in life, it’s not about wins and losses but about how you play - and if and when you’ll stop learning and growing. Getting set in our ways is understandable, especially later in life. Coasting is easier, so it’s impressive seeing someone on the back-nine of life still committed to health and wellness, attending yoga sessions and gym classes…
In the spirit of reaching people who count, rather than counting the people you reach, we strongly urge you to have a laser focus on your primary addressable audience – people who are already convinced. Your existing relationships have a degree of familiarity and trust for you – that train is rolling – so let’s add to that momentum before you expend the effort to get new ones moving.
The value proposition is not an elevator pitch (How many elevators do you get trapped in?). It’s a brief, concise statement that defines you and leaves someone wanting more. If they’re intrigued, they’ll give you permission to elaborate. If they aren’t, they ask about your tie. Just embrace the exercise of not winging it and avoid the long-winded data dump. Some people want to know what time it is, others want you to build them a clock. Some want to enjoy the bratwurst, others want to know how the sausage is made. Be led by them.
An excellent example of future pacing is how a fee-for-service financial provider can enable a client to expand their thinking by looking far down the road and re-imagining how the trajectory of the relationship will impact them. Take a typical first generation, self-made affluent client who sets a goal to become financially independent. They follow the advice of their financial professional, stay…
Ultimately, what a comprehensive branding strategy does is create trust with a prospective client and then maintain it over the long haul once they become a client. Sharpie has accomplished that very well. For a prospective client, your branding strategy activates their critical thinking and ignites their emotions. They see that you could address an unmet need that has developed - or it creates contrast relative to an existing service provider they have grown tired of, and any others they are meeting with to kick their tires…
How does your value currently stand out? How does it make someone feel initially, and then after the passage of time? You probably know the names Marion Morrison and Norma Jean. Marion Morrison was better known as John Wayne. It’s not to say that he couldn’t have been as popular had his stage name been Marion Morrison - Shakespeare talked about a rose smelling just as sweet. Norma Jean could have been just as…
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When we talk to fee-for-service professionals and ask them how their clients would describe them, most say things like, “Well, my clients would say they trust my ability, my integrity and my professionalism.” They rattle off qualities and skills and intentions, all of which are important, and there was a time when that was enough. Today, your qualities and skills and intentions are in fact a minimum requirement....
Simply put, it’s someone’s interpretation for value being offered that aligns with a want or need that they have – even if occasionally that want or need is subconscious. Branding activates an awareness for and trust in something that often triggers an instant appreciation for how your value can benefit their life…
One of the biggest factors conspiring against change is time. For many of us, there doesn’t seem to be enough time - but is that true? Time is the one thing we all have the same amount of. A key distinction is moving beyond a mindset of time management to time allocation. How do you allocate your investments of effort?
When many people max out and realize that something has to give, often the first action they take is to work longer hours, start prioritizing and or delegating tasks and even reassigning clients. That’s a good start, but often superficial and unsustainable. Ultimately, we don’t want you to work harder...
Your technical ability is a foundation to build on. It’s promissory on an outcome and the performance of your core deliverables, and you don’t want to be living and dying strictly by that sword. Practice management is promissory on a client experience – it represents what it means to be your client over the lifetime of the relationship…
It’s important to be deliberate, intentional and unwavering with the clients you choose to surround yourself with. It’s just as important with the members of your team. There is an accretive, collaborative array of benefits that come with the right philosophy.
Our Philosophy about Legacy In the spirit of building something rather than selling something, one of the many things you are building is a legacy in real time. A legacy is something that people primarily look back on, but being mindful of it as you are developing one creates a special energy. One of the best quotes we’ve ever encountered on legacy is this, “Society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.” That speaks to the gathering momentum that is generated by a vision and code-of-conduct that culminates in an admired legacy...
The highest form of emotional intelligence is how you help someone who just shared news with you that was not so great and caused them grief. You might know someone who is almost angelic in how they cushion and absorb someone else’s pain, not by giving advice or an opinion.
A successful F4S professional understands that trust is the lifeblood of meaningful long term relationships, but if trust is so important, let’s expand on this and consider for a moment what it is specifically that your clients trust.
When we ask our F4S clients to list specific things that their clients trust, we usually hear things like professionalism, integrity, knowledge, confidentiality, fiduciary responsibility and the like. All of which are important – but those are the qualities, skills and intentions
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There is a profound difference between doing something because of compliance and obligation and doing something because of deeply seated desire. One of the many examples we’ve seen that personifies the human spirit in terms of self-motivation comes from the world of athletics.
We’ve come to truly appreciate the spirit of McNamara’s Fallacy, though we may challenge the notion that if you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it, in some cases. In business, we can’t live solely by the metrics, especially as a fee-for-service professional. No matter how thinly you slice it, there are always two sides – in this case we mean the measurable and the meaningful…
The Blue Square Method was written for the successful fee-for-service professional who has reached or is approaching a fork in the road in their personal and professional life. Life is good today, business is steady and you have every reason to be content while riding your momentum, but perhaps contentment in-and-of-itself was never the goal? You appreciate what you have, but you aspire to something more. We’re not talking about just more money and quantitative success. We’re also referring to qualitative success: Amplifying your sense of gratitude, purpose, balance and fulfillment.
There is an art and science to working ON yourself and ON your business. We’ve experienced first-hand that you can learn a lot from reading a book. You can learn even more from writing one. The exercise of creating something is powerful. It forces you to dig deep and study a subject in a more meaningful way, and that knowledge can be retained…
Because top performers are busy, some tend to drift into patterns and either put off or forget to work on themselves. When it comes to change, some are reluctant because they feel that disruption is risky. Keep in mind, the best are forever improving but rarely swinging for the fences. World class golfer Justin Rose has a great mindset. He would say…
An Always On approach to conversion and convergence propels you down a path where you can eventually pivot from a strictly organic B-to-C growth model to a scalable B-to-B growth model. It enables you to buy an undervalued business from a retiring competitor or colleague. You can attract protégés who have plateaued because of the friction of the world, who can draft in behind your process and replicate your outcomes without being left to their own devices.
There are many benefits to evolving your business from just having clients “trust you” to having an IP-driven enterprise. Growth is consistent, the client experience is consistent, your team is stable, and hassle factor is reduced, among other things.
Life is full of lessons that come in the form of examples and warnings; examples of things done properly, and warnings where errors in judgment were made.
The most effective people in virtually all fields of endeavor study and assimilate both the lessons of adversity through mistakes (external forces) and adversity engendered by misconduct (internal forces). Learning from that information creates predictable outcomes for themselves in the future...
If you think about a twenty-minute conversation with a great client, you talk about their Family, Occupation, Recreation and Money. The first three relate to why financial independence is important to your clients. The last item speaks to how you get them there…
I just want to point out - and again, it happened this morning - but I noticed a trend that more financial professionals are, among other things, trying to achieve red-line and plateau avoidance. Everyone’s working hard, but they’re trying to unlock another level of professional contrast, productivity, and grow further up market….
Clients should be loyal to a process not just to a person and performance.
Stephen Covey, the legendary author of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, advised that we should always begin with the end in mind. It is for that reason we suggest that you apply a mindset of building a business with the intention of selling it for maximum value at some point in the future.
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Now that you’ve taken the stewardship over salesmanship model on board and are a serious developer of your personal brand, you may be wondering to what degree social networking and the on-line ecosystem can affect your strategy and overall business development efforts...
One of the best ways to put the odds in your favor and fast-track the process is to create content and virtual deliverables that enable a client to subtly plant the seed in a friend’s mind, so that friend can begin to evaluate you on his or her own terms…
Many people in business are transactional in that they sell something to a client but that may be the one and only time they do business together. Think of a car salesman, real estate agent, or the guy who sold you an air conditioner or installed your pool. There is a very good chance you will never do business with them again. Sure you might refer someone their way or you may need servicing down the road, but more than likely it will be "one-and-done"....
The challenge nowadays, and particularly if you deconstruct the educational system and how we’re teaching young people, is that there is so much pressure put on them to be perfect at such an early age that there’s a paralysis of failure embodied within those younger generations.
I see it all the time. I am constantly contacted by parents with kids who they think have elite-level potential…
I’ve seen business leaders, CEOs, high net-worth financial advisors who just, at some point in their career, decide they’re going to turn the dial down. They’re going to throttle back the effort - and I don’t necessarily want to expose it as “complacency” because I don’t think that’s what it is...
Is your business predictable, sustainable, duplicable and scalable? That is driven by your proprietary process. It’s documented. It’s not in anyone’s head. It is a pure intellectual property that supports all the things that I can only get from your business.
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If you want to improve your productivity, the best place to start is by examining your activities. Look no further than the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. In most cases, about 80 percent of your business stems from about 20 percent of your clients. It makes sense, therefore, that you consistently invest 80 percent of your time – both pro-actively and reactively – on that 20 percent.
What would happen if you took a month off tomorrow; would your business run like a Swiss watch, or would there be chaos?
One advisor summed up the responses of many professionals quite well: “The only thing scarier than me taking a month off would be if my assistant took a month off. I don’t really even know what she does fully…”
