Benefits of the Advocate Approach

The advocate approach was developed in response to research that ClientWise conducted with over 500 of the most successful financial advisors in the business who have vibrant, highly profitable practices. This approach was then field-tested. For those financial advisors who followed the steps of the advocate approach and did the necessary work, the approach created highly successful results with significant growth in client numbers, amount of assets managed, and significant increases in revenue for the financial advisor. To see the potential that engaging in this process holds for you, conduct the exercise in Figure 10.2.

Enter your best estimates in the fields of Figure 10.2 and do the calculations to get a clearer idea of what the payoff could be in building an LCA network for your firm.

This exercise allows you to put into real numbers the benefits of using the advocate approach. For example, if a financial advisor cultivated only a small contingent of three to five client advocates who, in turn, introduced three to five of their close associates, friends, and family throughout the course of the year, that would lead to 10 to 25 new client relationships annually for your business. In turn, if the same numbers applied when building professional advocates, that number would double, leading to a total of 20 to 50 new client relationships each year. That’s more than power in numbers—it’s power in relationships. Over the last decade in coaching advisors and teams building these processes, I’ve learned firsthand that the advocate is the gift that keeps on giving. Once you establish the advocate partnership and nurture the relationship by building a custom service model for them, they not only will continue to share their relationships and network with you, they will also accelerate the sharing. You’ll find you have more and more in common over the many years you’ll work intentionally together. One key hint here: You must build a custom service model for them and continue to spend time together. This is step 5 of the process, and you’ll hear more about this later in this chapter.

The advocacy approach has five steps, as shown in Figure 10.3. It’s an elegant process, one that should be learned and mastered by all of the members of your team, especially your lead advisors.

Discover

The advocate approach begins with something you already know well: having the ClientWise Conversation™ with a client. The goal here is to get a sense of whether the client appreciates and understands what you do, understands the benefits received by being in a relationship with you, and can articulate them. Here, you are discovering, or assessing, whether this particular client is well suited to be an advocate for you. In addition, you are gathering information on any other professionals that you may want to bring into your advocate network.

It’s now time to pick up the phone and ask your most promising potential advocates for a face-to-face meeting. Your side of the conversation doesn’t have to follow this script exactly, but the gist will be this: “As my business continues to grow, I’m always looking for ways to improve what it is that we do as a firm to serve clients just like you. I’m meeting with a very select group; I value your opinion and would welcome your feedback on a few items. Would you be willing to meet with me for twenty to thirty minutes over a cup of coffee or lunch?”

When you meet with your client, begin the ClientWise Conversation™. Let’s review the five questions that make up the ClientWise Conversation™:

1. What is the one thing you value most about how my firm and I serve you?
2. What is the one thing you would most like me to change or improve about my firm and how I serve you?
3. If you were to describe the services that my firm and I offer you, to clients like yourself, what would you say?
4. If you were to describe what we’ve achieved together for as long as we’ve worked together, what would you say?
5. Among your other professional advisors in your life, who do you trust the most and why?

By the time clients are done answering these questions, you will have a clearer sense of how well they understand and appreciate what you do, as well as how effective they are at articulating your frame. You also will receive a review of their trusted advisors, or even possibly get the names of some new ones for you to reach out to.

You will need to think about how and when to reintroduce the ClientWise Conversation.™ You’ve already conducted it once, but this will be your chance to do so again, since your client has been informed about your new frame.

As for when, let some time pass between when you conducted your last conversation with the client (which will be the Client Renewal Conversation) and when you conduct the next ClientWise Conversation™ to be respectful of the client’s time. This will also give the client the opportunity to experience receiving your services and support within your new frame, before you jump back in to learn more about how well they understand and appreciate what you do and how well they can articulate what you offer. Leave this up to the client, but there will be some that you go back to and some you won’t. For the ones you do return to, you shouldn’t wait more than six to eight weeks at the most.

Some advisors worry about bothering the client with another conversation. That is why we are careful to allow sufficient time to pass between the Client Renewal Conversation and the next ClientWise Conversation™. In addition, the ClientWise Conversation™, with its very specific steps and recommendations around how to conduct it, will ensure that you remain respectful of the client when speaking to him or her (see Chapter 6 for details). Remember, too, that it is recommended that you conduct the ClientWise Conversation™ on a periodic basis with every client to gauge from time to time how effectively you are framing your firm. You are not conducting this conversation for self-serving reasons but because you truly want to serve the clients better by understanding from their answers how you are doing in their eyes.

As you proceed through the ClientWise Conversation™ with your clients, we recommend that you begin to segment your clients into those who are already LCAs, those who have the potential to be LCAs, and those who are not likely to be loyal advocates.

Build Your List

After you conduct the ClientWise Conversation™, it’s time to build your list of potential client advocates (professional advocates come later in the process). To make that determination, you will have to consider which clients are currently actively engaged in partnering with you to make the necessary introductions to prospective clients for your benefit and the benefit of the prospective client. Evaluate who is sending you new clients, at what level are they sending you new clients, how valuable those introductions are, and whether the number of introductions from each client is increasing or decreasing. From there, you will be able to determine and build a list of which of your clients will be your best LCAs.

It bears repeating that not all clients will become (or have the potential to become) client advocates. In truth, you will have more clients who are not client advocates than those who are. As a result, you will want to invest your time in developing advocacy with those clients who either are already or are likely to become an integral part of your advocate network.

As you determine who your current LCAs are, consider the following points as well. Those clients with the potential to be loyal advocates generally provide multiple introductions, and established advocates almost always generate multiple introductions. In addition, advocates enjoy sending good, valuable introductions to you, not just individuals who have little potential to serve your practice. Indeed, some advocates refer clients who generate fees that are worth as much, if not more, than the original referring source. Plan to track where your introductions to new clients are coming from so you can be sure to get clear on who your strongest LCAs are.

Educate and Engage

After you have interviewed your clients with the ClientWise Conversation™ and built your list of current and potential LCAs, you are ready to assess the findings of the recent ClientWise Conversation™ and share those findings with the clients.

Once you have a handle on the findings of the ClientWise Conversation™, approach your current and potential client advocates on the phone to educate and engage them. Take this time to share the ClientWise Conversation™ findings with these clients and ask to set up a meeting to discuss the clients’ advocacy or possible advocacy.

As a review of the steps just discussed and to expand on them, the process should go as follows:

• Request a meeting by phone.
• State the purpose of the meeting (to share what you’ve learned from the ClientWise Conversation™ and get the client’s take on whether he or she thinks you’ve gotten it right, or not).
• Share the key findings from your worksheet.
• Acknowledge the client’s continued help and insights, and mention two or three things that have been useful from the conversation. It is important that you offer things that have been authentically useful or illuminating for you.
• Ask the client for permission to have a third, larger conversation.

Note that you will not have this educate-and-engage conversation with all of the clients who you initially interviewed at the beginning of the advocacy approach. You will use the results from the Loyal Client Advocate Approach™ Key Findings Worksheet—and your intuition and discretion—to determine how many clients you intend to educate and engage and who those clients are. Plan to start with those clients who already appear to be advocates and then move to those who appear to be potential advocates. Prioritize who you speak with first on the basis of where you see the best potential for return on your time and effort and the best potential to build deeper, more engaged relationships.

Note that there will be some clients that you will determine, based on their feedback, that you’re not likely to return to. However, those that were eager to connect with you and were willing to share their input, you will likely want to go back to. These are the folks that will be eager to learn what you’ve discovered and who want to know about the changes and improvements you plan on making to your business and team.

When you request another meeting, be sure to protect the relationship by giving the client permission to say no if the client appears hesitant. At this point, the client will have either said an unqualified yes, maybe, or no. Don’t push for a yes if the client is reluctant. You will have a chance to ask again if you think that it will not injure the relationship. If the client says no, accept it gracefully and thank the client again for his or her time and opinions to date. For those clients who are willing to have the next meeting, thank them and tell them you will call in the next week or so to schedule another conversation. That conversation will be step 4, define, in the Loyal Client Advocate Approach™.

Finally, watch your time. This conversation should last no more than an hour unless the client seems to be so engaged that he or she doesn’t want to stop. It is critically important that in that hour, you complete the entire conversation.

Define

You have now laid the foundation for conversation. You have done the research, identified your highest potential LCAs, and asked them for a larger conversation about working more closely with you. You have a list of clients who have indicated that they are willing and want to have this larger conversation with you. You are now ready for the conversation that actually moves into your most important request of your LCAs: the request for introductions.

What you will be engaging in is not the typical referral conversation; this part of the conversation will help you create a working relationship with your client. It will teach you how to ask for the right kind of introduction so that your client can connect you to exactly the kind of prospective clients you are looking for: the ideal client that you defined when creating your new frame.

The conversation will be as follows:

• Request a meeting by phone.
• State the purpose of the meeting at its beginning.
• Protect the relationship by providing an out if the client is not willing to become engaged on a deeper level with you and your practice.
• Protect the relationship by reinforcing confidentiality.
• Ask directly for the client to work closer with you to develop new clients.
• Share your ideal client type.
• Be specific in asking the client to make an introduction.
• Thank the LCA for the conversation and any introductions that have been given, and ask whether you can be of service in any way to the LCA.

For those who are potential advocates, you will aim to educate and engage them around advocacy; for those who are already your advocates, you can focus on deepening their connection to their role as an advocate.

Develop

You now have active LCAs. You have done the work to start the relationships and are on your way to finding these relationships rewarding both personally and professionally. Indeed, most financial advisors who develop LCAs regard them as some of the most meaningful and significant relationships in their lives.

Those financial advisors have not only undertaken the actions that create the relationships, they have also continued to nurture and deepen their LCA relationships. They do this not only because it makes sense from a business standpoint but also because the relationships create a foundational community of good, successful people who support one another.

Your work moving forward will be to design how you will develop, nurture, and sustain your LCA community. You must start by recognizing that the LCA relationship is different from your relationships with other clients. The client advocate relationship, at its best, is a tremendously intimate relationship because LCAs regularly put their reputations at risk by recommending you. They have that much faith in who you are and that much faith in your ability to serve those who are important to them.

You must recognize the scope of the LCA’s very personal investment in a working relationship with you in your business and engage with him or her with equal personal investment. To nurture and sustain these relationships, you must do three things:

1. Develop rules and a structure for handling introductions with each LCA into which the LCA has real input.
2. Develop a special service model for LCAs that reflects the depth of your relationship with your LCAs.
3. Stay in touch with your LCAs regularly and at a significant level.

None of these actions are particularly difficult to achieve, but they all take intention, partnership with your LCAs, and a personal touch on your part. Much has been written about the best, most effective ways to generate referrals, but note that this method is not about generating an endless stream of referrals. Rather, it is about partnering with a select group of clients who meet all of the criteria to be considered advocates.

Steps 1 and 2: Discover and Contact

You have already conducted the first step of this process when building your LCAs, so you will not need to repeat that step now, but it is included here to show the full process from start to finish.

The second step is to build your list of potential professional advocates, to categorize and prioritize them according to current versus potential advocates, and then to contact these professionals. When deciding who goes on this list, don’t just include the professionals that your clients recommended—also consider all of the professionals you already know and/or work with. Aim for a list of 50 to 75 professionals and centers of influence.

There are many centers of influence to consider as your advocates. For some on this list, the introduction process will be a two-way street; for others, it is just a one-way boulevard in your direction.

• Valuation consultant or business broker
• Realtor
• Certified public accountant
• Personal coach or advisor
• Attorney
• Chamber of Commerce leader
• Business owner
• Community or political leader
• Other financial advisors
• Doctor
• Church or synagogue leader
• Professor, teacher, principal, other school officials

This list of possible centers of influence can help you brainstorm who you’d like to include on your customized list of potential professional advocates.

After collecting the names and phone numbers of other professional advisors and centers of influence from your clients, it is time to list and prioritize them. To ensure that you are investing your resources where they are most likely to pay off, it is helpful to focus first on those professional advisors who will help you best serve your ideal client type, as defined by you during the earlier step 2 of the reframing process (see Figure 10.5).

Once your list of professionals is built, it’s time to contact your target professionals. One of the hardest things for some financial professionals is to make the first contact with another advisor. Even though it may be uncomfortable, your goal should be to meet with every one of the high-potential professionals mentioned to you during your client meetings.

Will everyone respond positively to your request and be willing to meet with you? No. But a surprising percentage of professionals will, and many of the most successful centers of influence in your community will be happy to, as well. The most successful financial advisors have learned that their success is directly related to their degree of connectedness to others in the community. On the basis of our research and experience at ClientWise, I can confidently predict that at least half of the people you call will meet with you.

Step 3: Qualify

The third step of building professional advocates is to understand each professional’s practice and explain your practice as well to these advocates—to deliver your frame. We recommend that you do this in two separate meetings, using the first meeting to learn about what the professional does in his or her practice and then, if you are still interested in working with this professional, using the second meeting to educate the professional on your own frame.

At the first meeting, plan to

1. set the agenda (i.e., purpose of the meeting, what you want to cover, the amount of time allocated, and “check-in for acceptance”);
2. ask specific questions to better understand the professional advisor and his or her practice, and take notes;
3. begin to discern whether you want to work with this professional advisor; and
4. schedule the next appointment, if you see the potential for a mutually beneficial relationship.

Some sample questions to consider asking are

• How did you get started in your profession?
• What is it about your profession that appeals most to you?
• What distinguishes you from others in your field?
• In your opinion, what is the most challenging factor people in your profession face today?
• How do you promote your services?
• With the exception of anything that might be considered confidential, what are some of the things you and our mutual client have accomplished?

After the interview is complete, take time to discern whether you want to work with this professional advisor. Follow the guidance of author Janet G. Elsea in her book First Impression Best Impression and consider what the professional looked like during the interview, what he or she sounded like, what he or she said, and how well he or she listened. What are your initial instincts, thoughts, and/or feelings regarding whether you would be able to have a productive relationship with this professional?

At the second meeting with the professional with whom you’d like to collaborate, it’s time to take out your capability deck and use it to communicate all that you now do. That’s step 4 of the following recommended process:

1. Set the agenda (i.e., purpose of the meeting, what you want to cover, the amount of time allocated, and “check-in for acceptance”).
2. Recap what you learned from the first meeting to confirm your understanding and convey that you listened carefully to what the professional advisor had to say. Look for an acknowledgment from the professional advisor that you got it right. Now you may move forward.
3. Once you’ve received that acknowledgment, ask for permission to discuss your practice.
4. Run the professional through your capability presentation to educate them on your frame.
5. Ask the professional advisor how he or she would describe you and your practice.
6. Schedule the next appointment to manage expectations and mutually define the desired introduction relationship, which is to be based on mutual advocacy.

Step 4: Define

Once the proper groundwork has been laid (as described in the previous three steps), it is time to talk business from a mutual advocacy perspective. The third meeting is when you mutually define the desired professional relationship. Start, as always, with you setting the agenda. Next, acknowledge what you value most about the other professional advisor’s practice and then seek an acknowledgment about what he or she values most about your practice. You might also discuss the synergies in the way each of you serves your clients.

You can then proceed to ask the professional advisor to describe his or her most desired client types so you understand what type of introduction the advisor would most like you to make for him or her, followed by you describing your most desired client type.

Last, plan to discuss your expectations for the relationship with the other professional. Keep focused on the possibilities of working together and discuss what that might look like. Authenticity and openness are fundamental to establishing and maintaining productive relationships.

Once you and another professional advisor understand each other’s most desired client types, it is important to promptly manage each other’s expectations about how you might collaborate and work together for the benefit of others. Nothing strains a new advocacy relationship faster than one party thinking (often erroneously) that the other is not holding up their end of the bargain. It may be helpful to summarize your working relationship in a document or e-mail, so you both can use it for reference.

Step 5: Develop

The last step in the process of building your professional advocate network is to continuously develop and maintain the network you’ve worked so hard to initiate. Plan to speak and meet with your professional advocates on a regular basis, as often as monthly, if possible. Over time, if your relationship with a particular network member proves to be unproductive for you despite your best efforts, drop it and invest your resources where they are likely to produce a better return.

Remember, it’s not quantity that counts here, but quality. You don’t need to have a list of 50 professional advocates. No one has the time or resources to maintain that many relationships. A handful of professional advisors who are committed to working closely with you for mutually beneficial reasons is all you need.