Rewriting the “four Ps” of marketing
The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.
Doors will open for you if you are perceived as being an expert at what you do.
Allan Freeman came to us deeply frustrated. At the time, Allan was 52 years old and had been an advisor for over 28 years. For the previous ten years, his income ranged between $250,000 to $300,000, a high income by most standards, but not in New York City, where Allan lived. As Allan put it, he had the same lifestyle as his younger brother who made $100,000 and lived in South Carolina. And furthermore, while his brother enjoyed a fairly relaxed life, Allan was running hard.
When our coach asked Allan what he was looking for, he said he wanted to earn $500,000 plus. Most of the peers he respected were in that range.
We asked Allan how these top advisors managed to generate their incomes.
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” Allan said, “and, the truth is, I think a number of them got lucky.” Our coach thought Allan might say something like this, and when he probed for clarity, Allan explained how one of his peers, Stan, hit the big time because one of his clients became CEO of a multinational corporation. And from that client, the doors to high-flying executives suddenly blew open. If it weren’t for that one client, Stan would probably still be eking a living out the way Allan was.
Allan was being coached by our founder and CEO Norm Trainor. Norm found Allan’s picture of Stan’s success revealing, and quite mistaken. He asked Allan what things he was trying to do to break into Stan’s level, other than getting lucky, of course.
Allan outlined some of his promotional activities. For the past few years, he had conducted seminars and networked through his synagogue, which helped him grow his client base. His seminars attracted a broad base of prospects and his networking was generally unfocused. Not surprisingly, Allan dealt with a hodgepodge of clients.
Allan limited his success because he lacked a developed marketing plan that made sense for an advisor.“Allan,” Norm explained, “in traditional marketing, there’s something called the 4 P’s: product, price, promotion and place. You’re following these to some extent, as evidenced in the promotional activities we just covered. But I don’t think the answer lies in further developing these 4 P’s – they’re not state of the art anymore. At The Covenant Group, we’ve recast the 4 P’s. When working with advisors, we focus on: prestige, problem finding, packaging solutions, and prospecting. These are the 4 P’s that make
a substantial difference in an advisor’s career.”
Norm asked Allan, “If you knew someone who in your eyes had a great deal of prestige, who was preeminent in what they did, would you have a problem introducing this person to a friend or acquaintance.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s a badge of honour to say I know someone who is preeminent in what they do.”
“For you, Allan, the key to growing your business is establishing your prestige in the eyes of your clients and prospects. But you can’t establish prestige when you’re working with an extremely diverse client base. Prestige is a reputation for excellence and expertise that precedes you. You can only feasibly establish prestige in a narrow band, in which clients talk to each other and to other prospects. When your clients and prospects are isolated from each other, you’re starting from scratch every time you deal with someone new.”
Allan and I then developed his target markets, the narrow bands he’d focus on. One of his target markets was owner-managers of businesses.
Norm then showed Allan that he could significantly increase his prestige in his target markets by working with other people who work with those markets, such as CPAs and attorneys.
And then, of course, there is the simple fact of being worthy of prestige, and that’s where problem finding and packaging solutions come in.
Norm explained to Allan, “Today, the money skill is not problem-solving. It’s problem finding. Let’s look at what a problem is. A problem can only exist when there are two conditions. One: you need a goal. Two: your means of achieving that goal aren’t working. If you don’t have a goal, you don’t have a problem. If your means of achieving your goals are working, you don’t have a problem.
“These days, the best advisors focus on goals. Before seeing a prospect, they gather as much information as possible to give them an understanding of the prospect’s goals. And when they get face to face, they ask questions that touch upon the prospect’s goals. Then they tell stories that demonstrate a superior understanding of how to achieve those goals. Once a problem is found they are very effective at packaging solutions.
Norm explained, “Earlier, we talked about Stan. Let’s take a closer look at him because in my experience, being lucky doesn’t have much to do with success. I know lots of people who’ve had the same ‘luck’ as Stan who haven’t achieved Stan’s success. Recently one advisor told me how a client of his made it big in the tech industry and then dropped him as his advisor. This was the same luck Stan had, but the result was the opposite. The difference is prestige. With his client, Stan had established himself as an expert in problem finding and packaging solutions. His client knew that Stan had the ability to deal with the increasing complexity of his situation. With the other advisor, the client felt that his advisor didn’t have the capacity to problem find and package solutions for someone in his position. For that client, an upgrade in problems necessitated an upgrade in advisor.
In Stan’s case, the prestige he’d established with his client opened doors to other clients. And this is where the last P comes in – prospecting. Your prestige earns you the right to prospect. Because you are perceived as being good at what you do, clients and centres of influence willingly introduce you to people they want you to meet. When you prospect you are transferring the prestige you’ve developed with one client to many clients.
Allan was excited by this new way of approaching his business. Within the next few months, he began implementing the 4 P’s. His plan was to go narrow and deep. He placed some ads and did articles for a publication for CPAs, and began to network with selected CPAs who worked primarily with business owners. This helped build his profile in the accounting community, and eventually led to some key referrals. Over time, he developed strong relationships with a number of CPAs, impressing them with his ability to find problems and package solutions. The prestige he built with them led to opportunities with their owner manager clients. One of those clients would turn out to be Allan’s counterpart to Stan’s big client.
In a conversation with one of his CPAs, Allan was able to expose a number of losses and risks one of the CPA’s clients faced, and a number of gains that client could enjoy through effective tax planning. The CPA introduced Allan to his client, Marvin, the owner of a construction company. The CPA was happy to make the introduction because bringing attention to these risks and returns made him look good in his client’s eyes. Allan put together an expert solution to Marvin’s current problems, but then, fourteen months later, Marvin landed one of the city’s coveted contracts. His business exploded, and Marvin took Allan along for the ride, leading him to his affluent suppliers, bragging to them that he had the best advisor in the business.
Now, two years later, Allan has, at last, surpassed his half-million-dollar revenue goal. And perhaps most importantly, Allan felt rejuvenated and excited about what he was doing.
Lessons Learned
The presenting problem for advisors these days is marketing, so it’s crucial to understand how the top advisors market themselves. The work The Covenant Group has done with top advisors has taught that all top advisors have a quality that we call prestige, or alternatively preeminence. Their clients, and the people within the markets they deal with, all recognize that they are experts in what they do. Their prestige is what gives them currency in the marketplace and opens doors to key clients. Allan’s original promotional activities opened doors, but not the right doors. Once Allan examined his business in light of the new 4 P’s, he was able to see that no amount of promotion was going to get him to the next level. To do so, he needed to build prestige. And to enable that prestige to open the right doors, he needed to build strong networks in his target markets. It’s the robustness of your network, the number of connections and the strength of those connections that determines the level of prestige you can attain. Allan has established a level of prestige with owner managers in the building industry that will sustain his success far into the future.
________________________________
The Covenant Group is referred to by many as where entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and authors of the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High-Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.