Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Recently, an advisor who had successfully persuaded an investor with many millions of dollars to open an account asked me how to turn this foothold into a larger share of this client’s assets.
Managing or controlling clients’ full investment portfolios is what makes one a “trusted advisor,” but few advisors attain this status. Advisors can’t overcome this challenge, particularly with larger clients who may have other historical relationships in place and in some cases don’t want to concentrate all their assets with one advisor.
There are four steps to increasing your share assets in cases where other advisors are also working with a key client.
Need a keynote speaker for your conference?
If you’re looking for a speaker to inspire and energize advisors, consider Dan Richards.
Dan shares fresh, leading-edge perspectives on ways to attract new clients and communicate more effectively with existing ones – and helps each audience member create a personalized plan of action to grow their business and better serve their clients.
For more information about booking one of today’s top experts on client marketing for your next conference, contact [email protected] or call 416 900-0968.
Share your goal with clients
When talking to top clients, be careful that they don’t feel that your primary goal in every interaction is to gain additional assets, rather than focusing on doing the best possible job with the money they’ve given you. Here’s one way to articulate your goal of increasing assets that is unlikely to offend any reasonable client:
“ My goal with all the clients I work with is to earn the right to be their primary advisor. And over time that would be my objective in our relationship also.”
Begin with the end in mind
The late Stephen Covey was best known for the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” One of those habits was to “ start with the end in mind” – to clearly articulate your key goal going into any decision and then to have that goal shape your actions.
So if a key goal with large clients is to increase your share of their assets or become their principle advisor, use that as a frame of reference for all your interactions. I talked to one advisor who uses an “assumptive” approach – he acts as if he was this client’s only advisor, unless he gets feedback that suggests he should back off. For example, he engages clients in conversations about estate planning and offers to facilitate family discussions around estate plans
Many affluent investors have large gaps when it comes to their estate plans; this was highlighted in some research by US trust, profiled in this article.
Put a plan in place
If you want to gain additional assets, you need to show clients the benefits of consolidating assets with you.
An article last November described how an advisor (Jon) spent 20 minutes at the beginning of 2012 to create a four-page plan for a key client (Bob) and gained $2 million in new assets as a result.
Here’s an extract from that article:
At this point, Jon had a clear goal: to increase his share of Bob’s assets. He then identified three things to make this happen.
First, in a meeting in January, he offered to have his assistant Mary each month compile consolidated performance of all of his accounts. Starting in February, a week after each month end, Mary contacted Bob’s accountant to get all of his statements, then created an excel spreadsheet to track month-over-month performance and any portfolio changes; this was sent to Bob and his accountant within three days.
Second, Jon sought out opportunities to get to know Bob well. He discovered that the local business school from which Jon graduated hosts an ongoing breakfast and lunch speaker series with successful business leaders.
One of those was a presentation by the chief marketing officer of a fast food chain that is a key competitor of the franchises that Bob runs. When Jon invited Bob to this talk, Bob changed a previous commitment to attend – and asked if it would be possible to invite two of his fellow franchise holders. The session took place at 5 pm and cost $25 – Jon invited Bob and his fellow franchise holders to dinner afterwards to talk about what they heard. When he offered to pay, Bob would have none of it and insisted on picking up the bill.
Finally, in June Jon arranged a meeting with Bob and his accountant to talk about duplication and overlap in the holdings in Bob’s accounts. He pointed to some areas where there was an obvious opportunity to make improvements – and offered to help coordinate and quarterback Bob’s investments.
They agreed to meet again in a week’s time – at that meeting, Bob told Jon that he’d decided to streamline the number of advisors he was going to work with going forward …. and would be transferring $2 million in new assets to Jon as a result.
Be patient
There’s an old axiom in politics that governments don’t get defeated, governments defeat themselves – and then the opposition capitalizes on that.
The same applies to relationships that your clients have with other advisors. You can be doing a great job, but given the power of inertia it may take some time before you're rewarded with more assets. Position yourself as the alternative to the other advisors with whom your client works, so that when something goes wrong and one of those advisors drops the ball, you’re able to capitalize.
That can take longer than you like, but in this business, patience is one of the most undervalued attributes. It’s undervalued when it comes to managing money - and when it comes to attracting new clients.
Click here to read last November’s article about the 20 minutes that led to $20 million.
And if you’d like to get a copy of the four-page Client Opportunity Template that Jon used, send me an email at [email protected]. Once you receive the template, amend it to fit your practice and how you work. The goal here is quite simple – to develop the right format for you in order to focus activity on your top 20 clients – who knows, your story may have the same happy ending as Jon’s.
conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his written and video commentaries, go to www.clientinsights.ca. Use A555A for the rep and dealer code to register for website access.
Read more articles by Dan Richards
