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 June 19, 2015
 The magic six, ideal client acquisition
How do I acquire more ideal clients starting today? What is a simple way to implement immediately to grow my business? What is the best process to find them? Monday morning when you go to your calendar and you don’t see a lot of potential new ideal clients, what do you do? I would start by setting up appointments with some of your ideal clients, either for a progress update meeting or for a coffee. The goal here is to help people in other areas of their lives and become the quarterback, and meet new centers of influence.
How many centers of influence give you referrals? Would you like more? In your progress update meetings, ask your clients about their team, which I call the magic six. The six are
- Accountant
- Lawyer
- Realtor
- Mortgage broker
- Insurance agency and
- Banker
Your CRM is the critical part of the process
The magic six strategy works this way. Every client you have in your contact manager (CRM system) should have the names of six people who they work with related to their financial future. These are key business relationships that every person has. You can tackle the magic six in two different ways. First ask your assistant or receptionist to fill in the magic six when they come into your office, or alternatively ask your clients about these people when you do your next financial review. Either way, you are discussing referrals. If the client does not have six business contacts ( which they should, hey everyone needs a good tax advisor) then you have the ability to give out referrals in those missing areas. If you get the names of six new people, then you can ask the client if they would refer them and if they think they are excellent professionals. Two things will happen, first if they say they are excellent professionals, then you can call those professionals, introduce yourself and say, I am always looking for excellent professionals to refer my clients to. You got their name from a mutual client. Any professional will want to meet with you if it is a mutual client, otherwise jeopardize the relationship. Or second, the client says they are not happy with that service from that professional and it give you an opportunity to provide a referral to help serve that client better. Either way you are discussing referrals and that is a good time to use your referral talk ( which you should have and know stone cold) .
Having a team of professionals behind you makes you look increasingly valuable to a client with large investment, estate, or tax problems. Build a network of professionals to help your client’s overall financial plan. Have a list handy to give to clients, and market your services and education to these professionals.
Benefits of creating your quarterback service
- To help your clients’ overall financial planning and advice needs and gain referrals by referring your clients to your external team of professionals
- To gain years of valuable advice and knowledge by building a team of professionals
- To make yourself more referable
If you meet with 5 ideal clients next week, and ask them about the magic six, that is 30 potential centers of influence to meet, have a coffee with and possible referrals. Always find your best centers of influence through your clients and keep a record of them on your CRM. Why not have a team of 10, 20, 30 centers of influence to give and get referrals from. Make it a rule of thumb that you try to give out one referral per day. You are filling in six people on your quarterbacking team for every client. There should be at least one potential referral and one potential center of influence to meet! That can add up to a lot of referrals in one year! Only giving them to five people might not be enough unless you have a partnership arrangement that is fully disclosed to the client.
Show your centers of influence your value
The most interesting thing happened to me when I shared my value proposition and case studies of some of my top clients to a group of centers of influence. I wanted to showcase our value. I invited a dozen centers of influence to a luncheon. At the end of the luncheon three of the twelve centers of influence came up to me and wanted to become my client. That was not the goal, it was actually better than the goal which was to build a referral team. Next Monday ask for the magic six from your ideal clients!
If you would like to discuss how to build your unique value proposition, contact www.advisorpracticemanagement.com to learn how to outsource this task.
Advisor Practice Management’s goal in all of our initiatives is to elevate standards of practice for financial advisors and their teams. Remember, any marketing initiative should include communication with your compliance team.
Let’s work on your business. Start by emailing us. Why not?
Enthusiastically yours,
Grant Hicks, CIM, National Director Practice Management
Advisor Practice Management
www.advisorpracticemanagement.com
909-17th Ave SW, 4th Floor
Calgary, Alberta T2T 0A4
Tel 587 390 3148
Cell 403 970 8895
Email grant@ghicks.com
PS Where do you want to be in 3 years?
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