Soapbox: Your Best Resolution for Growth in 2010

Here’s an achievable New Year’s resolution for advisors who want to build an affluent practice: revamp your marketing. Even as advisors worry about falling profits, client retention, and attracting new business, with the right marketing plan it’s possible–and more critical than ever–to improve your performance with both wealthy and affluent investors.

The first step is to become a student of the affluent and their expectations, and re-examine your approach to marketing to reflect this knowledge. Old techniques such as public seminars, mass mailings, and cold calling no longer yield strong results. Nor do presentations that focus primarily on product offerings. This means your focus should be on people, not simply selling your services as products. In other words, building long-term, mutually profitable relationships with the affluent and wealthy requires a full understanding of how they define value and make purchasing decisions, as well as the psychological needs that drive and influence them.

Step two is to make a conscious decision to expand your practice. Think about how you can grow your investment offering or client base to capitalize on opportunities as the financial markets and economy rebound. Focus on specific groups and become the go-to financial resource for them. It’s not enough to target business owners or doctors or money-in-motion in 2010. This year and in the years ahead, to be successful requires you to narrowcast.

Think about today’s major broadcast TV networks, which are losing money and audience to cable networks that know and deliver to their market base and are thus growing at substantial rates. The same goes for advisors. Instead of believing you will target business owners, identify specific groups within that market: tool-and-die shops, auto repair, fast food restaurant owners, and so forth. If you wish to target doctors, narrowcast by focusing on cardiologists, radiologists, or pediatricians.

Once you’ve determined how and with whom you want to expand, you can position yourself with the right centers of influence in your chosen markets. By this I mean the leaders–executive directors, presidents, board members, or other professionals such as attorneys and bankers–who support and work in the markets you’ve chosen.

The next step: Raise and exceed your clients’ expectations. Again, your focus should be on building long-term relationships, not executing transactions. Use as a model the average hourly employee at every Ritz-Carlton hotel, who receives 240 hours per year of education on topics such as service, decorum, presentation, and communication. The Ritz knows that elevating client experiences, not just service, in every area is crucial to their marketing strategy because it creates delighted advocates who help build and sustain the brand’s image of luxury and excellence. In contrast, the average sales professional reads only one book a year on marketing and elevating client experiences, according to Sales Management Magazine.