Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Power of Role Modeling
San Diego: “Where do I look for help?” asked Alex, a new advisor who attended one of our workshops and then continued, “I’m new to the business, I’m getting better, but I could still use the advice of someone who’s ‘been around the block’ a time or two. When I look around my office, most of the advisors aren’t bringing in business, but that’s only part of their troubles. Most are in a funk, some are truly depressed, and others are on their way out of the business. My manager just doesn’t seem to have time for me”
You might look at this and say Alex needs to become more internally focused, not worrying about the others advisors in his branch. And to some extent, you’re exactly right. But where should new advisors look for guidance? They’ve been plopped into a financial war zone without a survival kit. The learning curve is steep in this environment; there’s a lot to master and not a lot of time to do it.
This recession has put more money in motion than ever before. Which is a perfect opportunity for new advisors who perform the right activities, the right way, to bring in new clients. And, obviously, this will lead to a serious income stream. But only a fraction of advisors (new or veteran) are capitalizing on this opportunity; aka, bringing in affluent clients. One of the major contributors to this poor performance is a mis-understanding of how to market financial services to the affluent. Which is why so few veteran advisors are capable of serving as mentors in today’s environment; they lack both the marketing and sales skills.
Experts will tell you that the use of a role model and/or mentor plays a critical role in personal and professional development. This type of modeling behavior starts when we’re in our formative years, naturally adopting the behavioral patterns of our parents. It’s instinctive.
The secret, later in life, is to replicate that process as it relates to our careers. Unfortunately, today, for a variety of reasons, most new advisors aren’t being inundated with elite advisors giving them guidance on how to grow their practice. There just aren’t that many advisors who are capable and or willing and able to serve in that capacity.
We have always found it helpful to look beyond the world of financial services, finding a historical or famous role model. It could be a business icon, a political leader, a sports legend, or really any other top performer. Take Sam Walton for example. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart (love it or hate it), is a phenomenal success story. His autobiography, Made in America, isn’t about financial services, tough economic times, or getting started as a new advisor, but it’s filled with practical advice from someone who’s achieved the highest level of success.
Whether it was Walton working night and day at his first little store, or his aggressive in-store promotions, or flying his prop plane from store to store well into his golden years, there are plenty of life lessons for those of us looking to build our careers. Walton was truly a person who knew his strengths, saw an opportunity, and spent his every waking moment trying to make his dreams a reality. At this point, it’s time to ask yourself two critical questions:
Who is your role model?
What would he or she be doing in this financial tsunami?
If Sam Walton was transplanted into today’s environment as a twenty or thirty something, picked up by a financial firm, and told to bring in new clients – or else. What would he do? He’d look at this as a huge opportunity to land the accounts of the countless, jaded affluent investors in his area. You can be certain; he’d find a way to succeed in a big way.
As Walton wrote in Made in America, “…if I were a young man or woman starting out today with the same sorts of talent and energies and aspirations that I had fifty years ago, what would I do? The answer to that is a little harder to figure out. I don’t know exactly what I would do today, but I feel pretty sure I would be selling something, and I expect it would be at the retail level, where I could relate directly to customers off the street. I think I’d study the retail field today and go into the business that offered the most promise for the least amount of money.”
Financial services, anyone? What provides more opportunity for less start-up?
The opportunity is there for those who want it bad enough. The first step is to get your head in the game. All too often, we’re looking for that magic secret from a top advisor, or that “how-to” book full of industry best practices, hoping that we’ll find the perfect answer for taking our careers to the next level. Rarely does this perfect answer exist.
If you haven’t already, pick a role model who is either doing the right activities and getting real-time results in today’s tough environment, or select your Sam Walton from history books. Then make a personal commitment to learn everything you can about them, identify some of their most admirable qualities, and work hard to live up to their benchmarks. They became successful for a reason, and more times than not, their habits are worth replicating.
You might look at this and say Alex needs to become more internally focused, not worrying about the others advisors in his branch. And to some extent, you’re exactly right. But where should new advisors look for guidance? They’ve been plopped into a financial war zone without a survival kit. The learning curve is steep in this environment; there’s a lot to master and not a lot of time to do it.
This recession has put more money in motion than ever before. Which is a perfect opportunity for new advisors who perform the right activities, the right way, to bring in new clients. And, obviously, this will lead to a serious income stream. But only a fraction of advisors (new or veteran) are capitalizing on this opportunity; aka, bringing in affluent clients. One of the major contributors to this poor performance is a mis-understanding of how to market financial services to the affluent. Which is why so few veteran advisors are capable of serving as mentors in today’s environment; they lack both the marketing and sales skills.
Experts will tell you that the use of a role model and/or mentor plays a critical role in personal and professional development. This type of modeling behavior starts when we’re in our formative years, naturally adopting the behavioral patterns of our parents. It’s instinctive.
The secret, later in life, is to replicate that process as it relates to our careers. Unfortunately, today, for a variety of reasons, most new advisors aren’t being inundated with elite advisors giving them guidance on how to grow their practice. There just aren’t that many advisors who are capable and or willing and able to serve in that capacity.
We have always found it helpful to look beyond the world of financial services, finding a historical or famous role model. It could be a business icon, a political leader, a sports legend, or really any other top performer. Take Sam Walton for example. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart (love it or hate it), is a phenomenal success story. His autobiography, Made in America, isn’t about financial services, tough economic times, or getting started as a new advisor, but it’s filled with practical advice from someone who’s achieved the highest level of success.
Whether it was Walton working night and day at his first little store, or his aggressive in-store promotions, or flying his prop plane from store to store well into his golden years, there are plenty of life lessons for those of us looking to build our careers. Walton was truly a person who knew his strengths, saw an opportunity, and spent his every waking moment trying to make his dreams a reality. At this point, it’s time to ask yourself two critical questions:
Who is your role model?
What would he or she be doing in this financial tsunami?
If Sam Walton was transplanted into today’s environment as a twenty or thirty something, picked up by a financial firm, and told to bring in new clients – or else. What would he do? He’d look at this as a huge opportunity to land the accounts of the countless, jaded affluent investors in his area. You can be certain; he’d find a way to succeed in a big way.
As Walton wrote in Made in America, “…if I were a young man or woman starting out today with the same sorts of talent and energies and aspirations that I had fifty years ago, what would I do? The answer to that is a little harder to figure out. I don’t know exactly what I would do today, but I feel pretty sure I would be selling something, and I expect it would be at the retail level, where I could relate directly to customers off the street. I think I’d study the retail field today and go into the business that offered the most promise for the least amount of money.”
Financial services, anyone? What provides more opportunity for less start-up?
The opportunity is there for those who want it bad enough. The first step is to get your head in the game. All too often, we’re looking for that magic secret from a top advisor, or that “how-to” book full of industry best practices, hoping that we’ll find the perfect answer for taking our careers to the next level. Rarely does this perfect answer exist.
If you haven’t already, pick a role model who is either doing the right activities and getting real-time results in today’s tough environment, or select your Sam Walton from history books. Then make a personal commitment to learn everything you can about them, identify some of their most admirable qualities, and work hard to live up to their benchmarks. They became successful for a reason, and more times than not, their habits are worth replicating.
New Good (Bad) Ideas
We’re coaching a team that’s comprised of a very successful senior advisor, a new advisor and two support staff. Shortly into one of our initial coaching calls, Jim, the new advisor spoke up, “After coming back from a conference last weekend, I've come to the realization that there are plenty of ways to become successful in this business".
He’d been to a conference put on by a fund company and couldn’t wait to share the “new” ideas he gathered from other participants. Before we dissect these three ideas, let me forewarn you that none were “new”, none were right for him, and all three gave us a window into how easily he could be pulled off track.
Here's what he shared with us:
* I found this company that sells high net worth lists in our area. I'm thinking I should buy one, send them mailers, and hold a few seminars. It's simple math; if I buy 5000 mailers, I'll end up with a handful of qualified prospects.
This sounds good and worked for plenty of advisors in the old days. It's not effective nowadays because the affluent are more cynical and skeptical than ever. They’re not selecting a person to oversee their family’s finances based on a postcard and a nice dinner. Not to mention, if this method does bring in new accounts, they’re typically small and not worth the time, money and energy spent attracting them.
* There was an advisor at the conference who was telling me how he worked with community banks to manage their trust assets. I know a banker and he knows bankers. This could be a huge new initiative.
We've heard numerous success stories built around this exact concept. The problem was that this new advisor had almost no connection to this market and no idea how to provide the service he was trying to sell.
* I heard about this firm that helps you buy financial practices. Do you think it's a good idea?
For a new advisor, absolutely not. In the long run, no matter how great a practice you buy, you've got to know how to sell and service the affluent. At this juncture, it was apparent that Jim was losing his focus and running the risk of getting caught-up in low-impact activities – and he was not selling his teams services to affluent families in his community at all.
It took about three minutes for Jim to share his new strategies and then the balance of our coaching call was spent guiding him back on track. From early on, the senior advisor and mentor was doing his best to equip him with the marketing activities and verbiage he needed to go after the affluent (introductions, networking, strategic alliances, etc).
Whether it was an attempt to impress his mentor or basic impatience (the affluent make decisions on their time line), Jim was allowing himself to get frustrated. It usually took the tone of complaining that the senior partner wasn’t not giving him enough smaller clients and using the economy as an excuse for not being able to get any affluent prospects in front of the team.
The real issues for this advisor were two-fold:
1. He had lost his focus. As a result, he was about to deviate from his “critical path” - engaging in low-impact activities that would be a waste of time and money. He was allowing results, not activity, to determine his confidence. And because he had yet to bring in any new affluent clients, his confidence was shaken. This compounded his problem because any activity that put him front and center with affluent prospects pulled him out of his comfort zone and he was avoiding them. He was even intimidated by his social contacts because he knew he should be approaching them about business.
2. He was looking for that magic bullet that would catapult his career. Rarely does this happen. It’s far more likely that a series of “singles” will occur rather than a “homerun”. The singles come from getting personally introduced to new people, building relationships with potential strategic partners (CPAs and attorneys), networking in affluent circles, holding small client/COI events, and so on.
There are only so many ways to build a financial practice. This isn’t a new .com business model that’s changing its marketing plan every other week. This is a business that’s built on word-of-mouth influence. It always has been. The key is to master the activities, early in your career, that help you meet affluent people, develop rapport, and put them into your pipeline.
He’d been to a conference put on by a fund company and couldn’t wait to share the “new” ideas he gathered from other participants. Before we dissect these three ideas, let me forewarn you that none were “new”, none were right for him, and all three gave us a window into how easily he could be pulled off track.
Here's what he shared with us:
* I found this company that sells high net worth lists in our area. I'm thinking I should buy one, send them mailers, and hold a few seminars. It's simple math; if I buy 5000 mailers, I'll end up with a handful of qualified prospects.
This sounds good and worked for plenty of advisors in the old days. It's not effective nowadays because the affluent are more cynical and skeptical than ever. They’re not selecting a person to oversee their family’s finances based on a postcard and a nice dinner. Not to mention, if this method does bring in new accounts, they’re typically small and not worth the time, money and energy spent attracting them.
* There was an advisor at the conference who was telling me how he worked with community banks to manage their trust assets. I know a banker and he knows bankers. This could be a huge new initiative.
We've heard numerous success stories built around this exact concept. The problem was that this new advisor had almost no connection to this market and no idea how to provide the service he was trying to sell.
* I heard about this firm that helps you buy financial practices. Do you think it's a good idea?
For a new advisor, absolutely not. In the long run, no matter how great a practice you buy, you've got to know how to sell and service the affluent. At this juncture, it was apparent that Jim was losing his focus and running the risk of getting caught-up in low-impact activities – and he was not selling his teams services to affluent families in his community at all.
It took about three minutes for Jim to share his new strategies and then the balance of our coaching call was spent guiding him back on track. From early on, the senior advisor and mentor was doing his best to equip him with the marketing activities and verbiage he needed to go after the affluent (introductions, networking, strategic alliances, etc).
Whether it was an attempt to impress his mentor or basic impatience (the affluent make decisions on their time line), Jim was allowing himself to get frustrated. It usually took the tone of complaining that the senior partner wasn’t not giving him enough smaller clients and using the economy as an excuse for not being able to get any affluent prospects in front of the team.
The real issues for this advisor were two-fold:
1. He had lost his focus. As a result, he was about to deviate from his “critical path” - engaging in low-impact activities that would be a waste of time and money. He was allowing results, not activity, to determine his confidence. And because he had yet to bring in any new affluent clients, his confidence was shaken. This compounded his problem because any activity that put him front and center with affluent prospects pulled him out of his comfort zone and he was avoiding them. He was even intimidated by his social contacts because he knew he should be approaching them about business.
2. He was looking for that magic bullet that would catapult his career. Rarely does this happen. It’s far more likely that a series of “singles” will occur rather than a “homerun”. The singles come from getting personally introduced to new people, building relationships with potential strategic partners (CPAs and attorneys), networking in affluent circles, holding small client/COI events, and so on.
There are only so many ways to build a financial practice. This isn’t a new .com business model that’s changing its marketing plan every other week. This is a business that’s built on word-of-mouth influence. It always has been. The key is to master the activities, early in your career, that help you meet affluent people, develop rapport, and put them into your pipeline.
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