Show Some Love
Some years ago, I had a pastor whom I loved. But, I never seemed to be able to get his attention. After services each Sunday, I would wait in the handshake line to speak a word of encouragement to him and let him know I appreciated the sermon or was praying for him. Invariably, while shaking my hand, he was anxiously looking over my shoulder to see who was in line behind me. He was never in the moment. I eventually left the church. A few years later, he was caught in an adulterous affair and lost his ministry. Pretty sad. He wasn’t satisfied with what he had, and he wasn’t willing to continue to invest in his relationships because he was always looking for the thrill of the next one.
I used to be on the marketing treadmill, too, until one day I was told that my existing clients were having to wait sometimes 3 or 4 weeks for an appointment. Clients were complaining that they could not get me on the phone. A few were threatening to leave me. I was frustrated about not being more attentive to my clients’ needs, but felt the pressure to focus on getting new ones. I felt I was acting like my former pastor, and I was ashamed. I was just too busy, and something had to change. My clients weren’t getting the love, and it was my fault. I was too focused on the next client to love the ones with which I had been blessed.
Unlocking the Potential
For the record, we have about 250 client families in our practice. We manage around $140M. I averaged 5.5 appointments a week last year. Things are pretty good. We’re blessed. How did we get here? It was a three-step process. First, I realized I had over marketed and that I needed help. We seriously curtailed our seminar schedule and I broke down and brought on another advisor. Not a loser from the industry who couldn’t make it somewhere else. I brought one up from operations. I started training him and helped him get licensed. In time, I was introducing him into my clients relationships, and he started doing some of the lighter planning and transactional work. Second, I identified about one third of my client base and began shifting the majority of the responsibilities for managing their accounts to my new associate advisor. This transition took some time, but we managed it well and it was successful. Third, we reorganized the practice’s revenue structure from commission only to hybrid. We started charging fees. This was a daunting task, but we buckled down and got through it, emerging victorious on the other side.
Love Your Book
Once I was able to reduce the number of client families I was personally responsible for, I was able to give them the love they needed and deserved, either personally or through my associate advisor. We started focusing more on spending time with them and attending to their needs. Clients went from zero or one appointment a year to three or four. Three things happened. Client attitudes started to change, referrals shot up, and new business started rolling in from these relationships. We eventually cancelled our seminar schedule all together, even though we still had $10,000 of unused credit we had paid to our marketing company for upcoming seminars that would never happen. We were content. We went from a growth pace of 10-15% per year to more than 30% per year, and that with no active marketing plan. Our marketing plan was replaced with the concept, “Love the Book!”
Now, we continue to win new clients exclusively through referrals and our business is robust. As the practice grows, we add new associate advisors who are gradually introduced into existing client relationships and eventually take them over. No advisor, including me, is allowed to manage more than around 85 families, yet we bring on more than 50 new client families a year. About every 18 months we graduate a new advisor from our paraplanner track and everybody transitions clients to the new associate. We are thriving, and our clients are well cared for. Everybody wins. The goal of marketing is to eliminate its need.
[…] Stay tuned for Part II… […]
I recently went through this process in my personal life. As a young woman who absolutely adores people, I bought into the idea that my value was based on the number of friends/followers I accumulated. I had so many friends that my calendar was booked three weeks in advance. If a friend was sick or heartbroken, I didn’t have the time to take them soup and comfort them. I felt guilty all the time for being a terrible friend to so many people. So I slowed. I stepped down from all my committees and projects and engagements, and I took soup and cookies to the people who needed my comfort. All of the sudden, the quality of my relationships skyrocketed and true friendships emerged. I suddenly had a tight-knit group of friends who encouraged and prayed for one another, and who, in turn, made more of a lasting difference in their respective communities. Because we stopped struggling to take on the world ourselves, we were able to plant a church together that now serves soup and cookies to hundreds of individuals who needed comfort.
We are not meant to do it ourselves, for our glory. We are meant to help each other create something of significance.