Combine best practices to create new wealth

The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.

Greg Stevenson was an advisor who operated at a level few others reach. Although he was not a typical advisor with typical problems, his case is interesting because the principles he applied to his business can be applied by any advisor, at any level.

When we first met Greg he had been a financial advisor for six years. Prior to that, the 48-year-old had spent 15 years at a Fortune 500 company, where he had worked his way up from line manager to senior executive. When Greg first became an advisor he built on his experience in the business world, by specializing in meeting the needs of business owner/managers. His confidence in front of business managers and the experience that he brought to the table put his clients at ease and enabled him to earn their trust. Selling into the business market made Greg very successful. In fact, before very long he became the number one salesperson at his company. Unfortunately, for a person as driven as Greg, just being the number one advisor in his company wasn’t enough.

When we first met Greg, he had done $400,000 in annual revenue in the previous year, but he dreamed of breaking the $1 million barrier, and that’s why he came to see us. He had heard us speak at his company’s last annual meeting and thought we might be able to help him restructure his business to take him to the next level.

The first thing we asked Greg when we sat down to talk was why he felt $1 million was so important. He smiled and told me, without shame, that he loved the idea of breaking into seven-figures, a level that few others in the industry had reached. It’s not uncommon for driven people like Greg to be attracted to the financial services industry for similar reasons. In work, we often encounter advisors who tell us the same thing. We have come to learn that money is, for many, a way of keeping score. Right or wrong, money is often used as a yardstick for determining the level of your success, and in financial services it is easy to compare revenue to see how you stack up against your peers.

However, Greg didn’t want to make $1 million just to boost his own ego. He planned to retire in five years, buy a yacht and sail the Pacific while he was still young enough to enjoy it. But he needed to bump up his production significantly if he was to enjoy the seafaring life he had fantasized about for so long.

The fact that Greg had made $400,000 in the past year, suggested that he wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. He worked hard, but efficiently. His pipeline was full of prospects, he had no trouble getting referrals because he gave excellent service, and he delegated many low-value tasks that would have taken up the time he spent in front of clients. But, as he described his business to me, I realized that there was a significant opportunity for him to operate creatively and take his business to another level.

At the end of that meeting, I described an idea to Greg that combined several of the Best Practices we teach. Many of them were advanced techniques, but for one, in particular, we were sure he was ready for. We were convinced it would enable him to break through the seven-figure barrier.

When we began working together, Greg had already defined his target market — business owner/managers — but we wanted him to drill deeper. He needed to apply one of our best practices, Develop and Utilize a Marketing Plan. Specifically, we wanted Greg to fine-tune his target market, by thinking about who his ideal client would be. We did some work together on that concept over the next couple of meetings, and Greg came up with a detailed demographic and psychographic description of his ideal client. He would concentrate on business owners/managers, 50-60 years of age, with  $250,000 personal annual income, at least a $2 million dollar personal net worth. They had to value integrity, teamwork, and fair compensation for valuable employees. He was aiming high but given his headstart in the market, we knew he could make it happen.

Greg developed a marketing plan for becoming the preeminent expert for those ideal clients, and then we looked at how he could get the most from his target market. One of Greg’s existing strengths was that he understood the problems faced by owners/managers and was able to relate to them very effectively. He helped them solve their challenges, and his clients had come to rely on his expertise. Understanding his client’s business was a big reason he had been so successful but to reach the million-dollar barrier, he needed to take his knowledge a step further. He needed to use another of our best practices, Know Your Client, to uncover the challenges faced by his ideal clients that other advisors weren’t meeting.

It required some creative thinking, but at our next meeting, Greg told me he had the glimmer of an idea. He had been struck by the fact that his clients had a high regard for their employees, and were highly motivated to keep them. However, many of those same owners were reluctant to implement stock option plans. In some cases the owners didn’t want to dilute their own interest in the company, in others, they worried about tax implications.

We discussed how Greg might solve that problem for his clients and came up with the idea of offering over-funded pension plans as an incentive for employees to stay at their company. Greg was familiar with the concept but agreed to really buckle down and learn it inside and out. Over the next few weeks, he read the income tax acts, product descriptions, everything he could get his hands on. He interviewed people who already had the plans and talked to representatives from the financial institutions that offered them. Before long he was an unqualified expert.

Finally, Greg needed a way to effectively present the pension plans to his ideal clients. In this instance, we came up with something a little off the wall but very effective. Instead of explaining the pension plan concept to his prospects and clients himself, Greg would use collateral professionals as intermediaries. He had been attending business counsels and estate planning groups for some time and so he was familiar with many of the better lawyers and accountants in his community. Now he needed to use those contacts.

Greg’s plan was to approach a prospect that fit his ideal client profile, establish that they needed to retain their executives and did not have stock option plans, and then ask to see the owner’s accountant or lawyer. Greg would present his concept to the owner’s advisor, and ask them to take it to the owner. In this way, he borrowed the credibility of the existing adviser-owner/manager relationship. The lawyer or accountant was able to help his or her client, and accrue billable hours. As well, the owner was able to safeguard his employees for the future success of the firm.

Over the next few months, Greg practiced and perfected his approach. He is now recognized as an expert in pension planning, by owner/managers and professional advisors alike. He has become preeminent in his community, and, even better, he has broken the seven-figure barrier. Last year, Greg took in $1.1 million dollars in revenue, on the strength of his new approach.

Lessons Learned

• Greg’s case shows how combining best practices in the field can produce startling results. Greg had been a successful advisor for some time but wasn’t able to take his business to the level he wanted until he learned the value of integrating the best practices into a coherent and effective approach.
• Greg saw that defining your ideal client profile and thinking deeply about your clients’ needs can open up new challenges for you to meet. When he identified the problems his clients were having retaining employees and their reluctance to offer stock options, he created an opportunity to distinguish himself from his competitors. Finally, Greg tied these two approaches together into a winning strategy by using collateral professionals to help him present his solutions to the owner/managers.
• If you want to break through to a new level like Greg, think about how you can combine some of your current approaches in new ways to differentiate yourself from the competition. Try to understand the pressing issues that your prospects face and look for creative solutions you can offer. By redefining your client base, your product offering and thinking laterally about how you present your solutions, you will create new opportunities to grow your business.

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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.