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Last week I spoke to an advisor with a billion dollars under management about how he turned his favorite activity into multi-million dollar clients.
This advisor – let’s call him Bob – has three rules for accepting new clients:
- They must be willing to go through an in-depth planning process typically lasting 60 days.
- They must have assets of $2 million or more.
- He must like them as individuals. When he sees a meeting scheduled with a prospect and if he’s not looking forward to sitting down with them, even if the prospect signs on, he’s learned this almost never works out.
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Given these constraints, three years ago Bob became concerned about a drop-off in new clients from historical levels. Then he implemented a simple initiative that has paid big dividends.
Converting passions into connections
Bob’s an enthusiastic golfer and many of his best clients are equally keen. In the spring of 2010, he invited his top four clients to join him on a one-week golf outing to Scotland, including a day at the Old Course in St. Andrews, often referred to as “the home of golf” with a heritage going back to the 1400s. It’s where the British Open is played and is one of the few courses of its stature open to the public.
Everyone paid their own way, although Bob organized the logistics. Once plans were finalized, he gave each client the opportunity to invite one close friend to join them, something which three of the four did.
And here’s where it got interesting: Even though there was no talk of investments or finances during the trip, within three months after returning he opened accounts with two of the three guests. Given their net worth and established relationships, he didn’t get all their money, but as long as they met his minimum, he was delighted to do business with them.
Since then, Bob has organized similar trips in the spring (to Scotland) and fall (to Ireland) of each year. His goal is to keep this trip to two foursomes, so he invites four clients. His experience is that at least one of the guests comes on their own. Where possible, he involves clients who haven’t done this before, although he usually gets at least one repeat golfer on each trip.
As a result of these golf excursions, Bob has consistently ended up with one of the guests as a client. As we talked about this, I recalled a conversation with a successful advisor named James who in 1990 went on a trip along with his wife to a high-end cooking school in Italy. Organized by a tour operator in his city, the $5,000 tuition for the week ($10,000 in today’s dollars) was a stretch at the time. There were 20 people on the tour, primarily couples sprinkled with some singles. Because the group was small and this lasted a week, he got to know the other attendees – a number of whom became clients afterwards.
Over the years, other advisors have told me about landing clients they met on high-end bike tours in France, heli-skiing in the Rockies, art tours to Russia, sailing in the Caribbean and on charitable service trips to South America.
What it takes to make this happen
If you’re interested in adapting the approach that Bob and James used to your business, there are six considerations to keep in mind:
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Focus on an activity you’re passionate about
The first critical ingredient is that this has to be a real passion for you. You can’t fake this; if you’re not a hard-core car fan, joining a Ferrari club with the goal of hanging out with Ferrari owners is unlikely to be an effective way to make connections, regardless of how much money the other members have.
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The right group
If you’re going to be spending serious time with someone, there has to be a basic level of compatibility on things like age and social status. You don’t have to match their levels exactly, but it’s unlikely that a 30-year old will strike a chord in a room full of 60-year olds or that a 50-year old tech-phobic advisor will connect with whiz-kid tech millionaires.
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The right size
When I asked Bob about whether he’d considered expanding the size beyond two foursomes, he said that any bigger and the dynamic would be altered. A highlight of his golf trips is the dinners each night; eight guys can converse around one table, but this becomes much harder with 12. You don’t have to be quite that rigid, but if one of your objectives in organizing or joining a group is to expand your network, it needs to be intimate enough that participants connect.
Any bigger than the 20 people on the Italian cooking class that James attended and you risk it being impersonal.
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The right length
Building relationships takes time. I spoke recently to an advisor who organizes an annual two-day junket to the Masters Golf Tournament in Atlanta for half a dozen clients and their buddies. He commented that while everyone always has a great time, this hasn’t been a great vehicle for getting new clients, in large measure because two days isn’t long enough to establish strong connections. If a consideration in organizing or participating in these kinds of events is to potentially convert some of the people you meet to clients, four to seven days is likely the appropriate duration to maximize the chances of seeing results.
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The right follow-up vehicle
I’ve written about how much longer it typically takes to convert prospects to clients compared to the past. Twenty years ago, prospects became clients days and weeks after an initial meeting; today it can take months and years. And the larger the prospect, the longer it can take.
That’s why you need a low-key communications vehicle that delivers clear value and keeps you top-of-mind with prospects. Each Friday, Bob emails interested clients a link to one (and only one) article that he thinks they might find interesting, under the subject line “ Your light reading this weekend.” One affluent attendee on the golf trip agreed to be added to the weekly email list. When he met with Bob to sign up as a client he said that a factor in his decision was that “ I hear more from you than the two other brokers I already work with combined.”
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The right mindset
The final ingredient is the right mindset. Your primary motivation in these events has to be the activity itself, with any new clients you attract a salubrious byproduct of your participation.
Arguably, one of the reasons that James was so successful in getting new clients from the Italian cooking class is that he had no expectation going in that this would happen. If attracting new clients is a critical part of what drives your involvement, this will become evident to the other attendees – and as soon as that happens, your chances of success plummet to something approaching zero.
As you think about how you’re going to spend your recreational time in the next while, consider whether you can adapt to your own situation the experience of Bob and some of the other advisors who’ve had success converting their passions to new clients.
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.
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