IDEAL Plan Coaching Weekly Column #71

Tip – Build a professional team to make a bigger client impact.

Much has been written about offering advanced planning to make a bigger impact on your clients and upgrade your positioning in the marketplace. But how do you do it? You’ll need a professional team.

Clients often already have numerous professionals giving them advice. They have you, a CPA, an attorney, and maybe some others. The problem is that the advice isn’t being coordinated.

That means there is an opportunity. True wealth managers build professional teams that work together to create advice for the benefit of their shared clients. But that isn’t the only benefit. This incredible service model drives business growth and differentiates you from the competition.  

Here are the steps for forming your professional team.

Step 1. Consider the needs of your ideal clients. Everything starts with your clients. You need to know what they need. What specific advice or expertise do they want that you cannot deliver by yourself?   

Step 2. Identify candidates. Ideally your best clients work with some professionals that you already know and like. If not, get busy asking your own clients who they work with and get their sense of those people’s professionalism and knowledge. Then approach them directly. You are looking for people who have a passion for your market, want to grow their business, and are willing to share ideas.  

Step 3. Establish a guiding principle for team success. Present professional candidates with a vision of being client stewards or some other aspiration that supports your branding. They need to commit to meeting frequently to create the best possible coordinated, conflict-free advice.

Step 4. Create synergy. Effective teams need time to find their footing. Everybody needs to contribute. Start by meeting regularly to discuss new solutions to problems your target market may have.  Team members need to see each other as powerful allies for client impact and business development too.

Step 5. Do a trial-run. During a team meeting present an actual client’s advanced planning case. Use the team’s advice to enhance the plan recommendations. Then present the plan to the client and offer two choices – install the plan with you and your team or you’ll help them install it with whomever they desire. Either way, the client gets the benefit of the coordinated advice (make sure you point that out!). Clients often take the easy path so don’t be surprised if they choose your team for plan implementation.

This new level of service is so powerful that your teammates will want their own clients to go through the advice creation process too. This is when everyone wins – the client, you, and your teammates.

Before making improvements to your business, you should use our complimentary IDEAL Plan Builder. Click here to learn more about the IDEAL Plan Builder.  It will help you identify the areas that need help the most.

IDEAL Plan Coaching helps advisors create an ideal advisory practice — one where you serve the clients you want, the way you want, while living the lifestyle you want. Each week their founder, Richard Boone, will share key tips and insights to help your business.

Go to www.idealplancoaching.com or call 916-871-8744 for more information on our new coaching offerings. You can also click here to schedule a complimentary business consultation.