Good idea: Cloning your most profitable relationships
Better idea: Developing your best clients into a marketing team committed to building your business.

Imagine the payoff. Your best clients proactively and consistently open doors for you and serve as your consultant as you develop strong positions in the most profitable markets.

Doable? Advisors all over the country are successfully leveraging their clients to grow their business in the most profitable way. How do they do it?

They have a clear strategy of identifying the right clients, they commit to forge strong personal bonds, and they proactively recruit and train their clients to be effective commandos.

First, the strategy. Advisors analyze their client base and select only those clients that they enjoy and respect, have an extensive network of contacts who meet their target client profile, and are willing to actively refer. Let's call them Advocate candidates.

Advisors then implement a "Super A" value strategy in which they proactively deliver a total value service package bond and become "the financial quarterback" for the family or business unit. This includes making sure the family has a written and comprehensive financial plan and a schedule of regular reviews. The comprehensive plan includes everything from budgets, education, retirement, long-term care, special needs, and estate issues. Their client appreciation activity is thoughtful and individualized.

These advisors proactively, consistently, and strategically focus on forging strong personal bonds with select clients. They make a commitment to these clients as people, not just as owners of assets. While providing this service, they proactively find out as much as possible about family, career, and cultural backgrounds. This information provides insights on core values and impact the type of investments with which the client is comfortable. They dig deeper to discover and understand their clients' passions and visions - both personal and professional. They make a commitment to listen deeply to what's happening in their clients' lives - to the challenges and achievements their clients are experiencing in both personal and professional lives.

And they respond to what they learn by helping the client in a very personal way and thus forge a stronger bond by making a huge deposit in the relationship trust account.

A few examples: An advisor learns that his client's child is a passionate Boston Red Sox fan. The advisor gets a Red Sox hat autographed by Nomar Garciapara, gift wraps it, and sends it to his client so his client can give it to his son for his birthday. The advisor made his client a hero and brought a moment of great joy into their family. Another advisor sees that a client walking with a limp and provides the client with names of specialists that can help with that specific problem. Another advisor learned that a client's daughter recently lost a job and arranged two job interviews for the daughter.

Proactively discovering passions and active listening to what is happening in clients' lives provide many opportunities to forge deep bonds and demonstrate the extraordinary value of having a relationship with you.

(Part Two in september issue of The Referral Mastery Tip) Coming Soon!

See also
You may want to reference the earlier issues of the Referral Mastery Tip by clicking here. In an earlier Referral Mastery Tip and Tele-seminar, we reviewed the importance of understanding your clients' objectives and securing client agreement on the structure and the strategy of the portfolio. We also covered how to use client reviews to address client disappointment and re-affirm the portfolio objectives, structure, and strategy. (Or risk management objectives, strategies, and policies)