W. Lloyd Williams

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Three Channels of Marketing

Until a practice becomes an Exponential Business and has over a hundred unsolicited introductions a year, it must focus on three areas of marketing simultaneously. To maintain consistent revenue a practice must have short, intermediate, and long term revenue sources.

Short Term Revenue

The best source for short term revenue is conversion of non-fee clients to fees. This first step helps simplify the management of the practice and creates and immediate increase in revenue. To learn how to transition your non-fee clients to fees read pages 133-138 in Attract Clients.

Intermediate Term Revenue

The most effective means to create revenue in the next quarter is the Mini Dinner. Invite one of your top twenty-five advocates to dinner and ask them to invite another couple that looks just like them. Then the six of you go to an exclusive restaurant for dinner together and talk about life, not business. The more exclusive the restaurant is the better. The dinner gives your prospective couple the opportunity to meet you. There is no need to convince them of your expertise, your client's attendance is proof enough. They need the chance to see if they like you. The next day offer to take them through the same analysis you do for your clients at no cost or obligation to say thank you for the evening together. If you conduct ten dinners over the next twelve months and close eight of the ten, this will be an outstanding source of intermediate term revenue with clients that look just like your top twenty-five.

Long Term Revenue

Over the next twelve months identify the next dream and next action for each of your top one hundred clients and help them achieve their dreams faster. As you become a strategic partner for change in their life, they will want others to benefit from your partnership and you will begin to receive unsolicited introductions. For more information read pages 31-92 in Attract Clients.

As you complete converting your clients to fees over the next twelve to eighteen months your long term strategy will begin to create introductions. If you will use all three simultaneously it will only be a matter of time before your short, intermediate, and long term revenue are secure. Those these steps are easy to implement few will follow through to completion. If you do your practice will be on the way toward and auto-pilot exponential business.

Let's Talk: Risk of Referrals

Less than 5% of clients give referrals on a consistent basis. Why is this number so low despite our efforts to deliver great service to our clients? I believe it is because of the inherent risk of referrals. When your client endorses you to somebody else, they put themselves at risk to loose two relationships. They have the chance of losing their relationship with their friend whom they have referred and they have a risk of breaking up their relationship with you. Not because of something they have done, but because of something outside their control. Because if the referral doesn’t work out with you, who are they going to blame? And if he loses his best friend, whom is he going to be upset with? You. That’s why people don’t make referrals, there’s too much at risk. But if you can find a stranger that they don’t know, and have them talk with the stranger about what it is like to work with you. This is a safe way for them to learn the Language of Endorsement™.

As the client answers the strangers questions he is building an endorsement script. So the more they are a reference with you, the more comfortable they becomes talking about you.

This is the simplest way to remove the risk of referrals.

Let's Talk: Relationship Model

For years, experts have maintained that, before you can build trust, you need to build rapport. But these days, everyone knows the basics of marketing and selling—a strong handshake and straightforward eye contact, for example. These techniques are now so overused that the stronger the handshake and the longer the eye contact, the more uncomfortable the prospect becomes, feeling they are dealing with a used-car salesman rather than a professional. Over the last decade, surveys of baby boomers have consistently yielded the same result: investors are chiefly interested, when dealing with financial advisors, in information that can help them make better, more informed decisions. They want an expert, someone who knows what they are talking about and can provide them with better knowledge. Rapport building is not the beginning of the relationship process— expertise is. This is even more important following uncertain economic times.

How should you approach the "head, heart, feet" relationship-building process? First, you'll need to identify whether a client or prospect is a thinker or a feeler.

Prospects who are feelers tend to process information in their hearts. Typically, a feeler will accept the advice or recommendation of a third party regarding your expertise. When attending a conference or workshop where the speaker has the endorsement of a larger group, for example, the feeler will tend to assume speaker is an expert, then spend the bulk of their time trying to see whether they feel comfortable with them. They will ask themselves, "Do I feel I can trust this person and what their saying?"

A thinker, on the other hand, will spend the bulk of their time trying to figure out whether the speaker knows what they is talking about. They will continually ask themselves, "Is this person an expert?" Once they determines that the speaker is indeed an expert, they will trust them implicitly, then move quickly to the "feet" stage.

Very rarely do prospects have enough information to understand whether you can truly deliver on the promises you make. This is why using references or advocates is a critical step in the marketing process. A solid reference will bolster a prospect's trust and reassure them about the quality of your performance.

As you review this relationship-building process, take a moment to answer these three distinct questions:

• Do you have advocates up-front to disclose your expertise on the topic at hand? • During the conversation, do you allow an exchange of dialogue where trust can be built? • Do you use reference advocates to help the client better understand your ability to follow through on your promises?

Using this approach to building relationships allows you to better understand and meet your prospects' needs. And by identifying whether a particular prospect is a thinker or a feeler, you'll be able to focus your time and attention on the area of your presentation that's most important to your prospective customer.

Let's Talk: Head, Heart, & Feet

Winning prospects' trust doesn't begin with building rapport—despite years of expert testimony to the contrary. To kick off solid relationships with prospective customers, you'll need to focus on one thing: positioning yourself as trustworthy. Suppose a couple, after spending an hour in your office, leaves thinking exactly the same way they did when they arrived. Somewhere in that hour, you've fallen short. To win new business and forge solid relationships, you need to change prospects' perspectives, build trust, and demonstrate that you can deliver on your promises. I call this three-step process "head, heart, and feet."

Let's start with "head." During your meeting with a prospect, you want them to undergo a transformation: to add to their knowledge base and change the way they views things. They may come in thinking one way, but they leave with greater knowledge, more information, and a new perspective that challenges them and demands that they respond.

The next step: "heart." Prospects are always on the lookout for evidence of whether or not you're trustworthy. To convey your credibility quickly and effectively, engage each prospect in a dialogue—a give-and-take that demonstrates that you understand them and their particular configuration of needs. Doing so will help you earn their trust and respect.

Finally, "feet"—the stage where the prospect contacts existing clients and learns that you've made a difference in their lives, that you do what you say, that you show up on time, and that your team follows through on what you promise. Now their ready to engage their feet and to build a relationship with you.

Let's Talk: The Aim of Marketing

Clients learn about us by what we do and not what we say. Our actions reflect what is most important to us. If our customer contact time is spent talking about our products, our services, and ourselves, the customer soon understands what is truly important to us and it is not the customer. As Peter Drucker says “the aim of marketing to to make selling superfluous, to so know and understand our clients that the products fit them and sell themselves.” The financial services industry even has the “Know Your Client” Rule and we all agree this is important. The problem arises when we start to work with the customer. Our need to close the business, to generate revenue, and to feed our families, forces us to speed up the process and “get to the close.” These motives reveal themselves in our initial contact, when we do not focus on the client and their needs but rather on our agenda. If this shift from the customer to ourselves is generated by what motivates us, are we realizing what we truly want? Or are we selling ourselves short and settling for something less than the best in our business. In the coming weeks we will look at what we really want as business owners. Before that we need to understand how relationships are built.

Binding Your Presentations

channelbind Creating a professional image is doing the small things right. Throughout my career we used a channel lock binding system to create hard cover presentations. ChannelBind is the best company on the market today. After you purchase your binding machine you can baind as many covers as you desire. We had the cover embossed with "Confidential" and our contact information so we could use them for any type of presentation.

The website includes a video that explains how the system works. This will separate you from the herd.

Retireability Factor: Most Important Financial Concept

retireability No matter what business you are in, everyone wants to maintain and enhance their lifestyle throughout their lifetime. This basic desire is forgotten many times when clients visit their financial advisor. The products and services offered by the advisor are insignificant if this primary concern is overlooked. Why is the most important financial concept rarely discussed? What is retireability? Some say they have no desire to retire or do not believe they will ever be able to retire because of the difficulties in the economy. Retireability is not just a state of mind of wanting to retire, it is also a capability of having the resources to fund that desire.

"Anything the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

-Napoleon Hill

Though many would like to retire, most do not know what is required. This is where many people prematurely jump into a financial plan. Analysis of what you have is the last step in determining your Retireability Factor.

First, your advisor needs to know you. What is your purpose in life, what is important to you, what challenges are you facing now, what opportunities would you pursue if those challenges disappeared, what are you passionate about? These questions help your advisor know you. They need to understand your life story because without it how can they know what is important to you?

Second, your advisor needs to know where you want to go. What is your life dream, the vision of your future you and your spouse discussed when you were just dating? Too often this is a black and white, out of focus picture of the future. It needs to be a widescreen BlueRay movie with surround sound. The more we are able to visualize our future the faster it becomes a reality. Make sure your advisor helps you clearly define your dream for the future. A clear vision of your future becomes the catalyst for making it a reality.

Third, now you will need to determine why this dream is truly important. Is this dream necessary or just a nice idea? Unless your dream is vital you will not put the required motivation behind it to make it a reality. So take a moment and consider why this dream is necessary for you to achieve.

Fourth, at this point your advisor should ask when do you want to make this a reality? Too often we push our retirement into the distant future, when most of us can start to retire now. Why not start doing now what you want to do in the future? How many people do you know delayed their desires until retirement only to miss their dreams because of health concerns or an early death? This is unfortunate because everyone can start to retire now. By making your retirement urgent you can enjoy now what many will wait for and lose.

Fifth, now comes the difficult question, how do we make this a reality? If your advisor knows who you are and where you want to go and you believe this is truly important and you would rather start sooner than later, then they will be able to do the analysis necessary to create a plan of action to make this dream a reality. Too often this analysis is attempted before these questions are asked and answered. The result is clients are unprepared. These questions set the stage for the last step.

Sixth, and finally. After the important questions are answered and understood, both you and your advisor can go through the analysis necessary to build a bridge to where you want to go. Now your advisor can ask what do you have and it will have a context and can be used in the analysis to determine how to build your action plan to take you from where you are to where you want to be in the future.

Too often advisors start off talking about the money and then never get back to asking you about your life. This results is prescriptions being written before proper examination and diagnosis has occurred. In the health care industry this is called "malpractice".

This conversation creates a different result. These six questions, asked in this order will assist both you and your advisor in creating a compelling future, and building a road map to achieve your dreams.

This conversation is not a fifteen minute meet and greet. To do this properly you and your advisor should set aside a couple of hours. You can not tell your story in a few minutes and your vision needs to be more than a vague concept.

If your advisor is not doing this with you, find someone. If they will not take the lead, then require them to slow down and listen to you first, before they try to give you a solution.

We will talk more about the "retireability factor" in the coming weeks. If you find the information helpful send it to someone you value.

Two Books for the New Year

makingitallworkDavid Allen as just released his new book Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life, following the success of Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything. His new book Making It All Work pulls all his thoughts together in a very organized way. This book is much easier to read and implement and has many new tools. I recommend it highly.

enough John Bogle the founder of Vanguard Funds has written another important book. Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life is a must read.