The Key to Finding More Clients Who Look Like Your Ultimate Clients
An advocate is a person or group of people who have an almost inexplicable desire to see you and your practice succeed; they are promoters, campaigners, and supporters of your business. In addition to clients, advocates can be personal acquaintances, family members, prospects and other professionals.
Think about your practice. Do you know someone(s) who goes out of their way to give you referrals or introduce you to new people?
They are your advocates.
Most of us would benefit from building greater advocacy in our businesses. When you know the steps, it’s a simple, quick and efficient strategy for taking your practice to a new level of success. You could completely eliminate all of the other marketing and prospecting you’re doing (and save a bunch of time and money).
Highly qualified referrals
Obviously, one of the biggest benefits to regularly promoting advocacy in your practice is an increase in referrals. In addition to increased referrals, you tend to strengthen the loyalty of your existing clients. Your best clients really enjoy offering their advice – they realize that your success is intertwined.
Advocacy is a two-way street.
Plus, advisors who promote advocacy are more professional. Properly implemented advocacy techniques lead to references that are more qualified and ready to do business. Building recurring advocacy is truly a unique strategy for finding new clients who look like your ideal clients.
Here is a quick list of the steps:
Step 1: Create a simple list of your possible advocates. Start with your clients and add other people you believe would be good sources of referrals, like prospects, professionals or personal acquaintances.
Step 2: Refine your understanding of the uniqueness and commonalities of those people you have identified as potential sources of advocacy. Your goal is to develop resources for lists of potential referrals. Ask yourself a few questions: To which civic or social groups do your advocates belong? How about companies or industry groups? Are they on boards of charities or local corporations? Simply record several of these characteristics for each potential advocate on your list.
Step 3: Use your research to create a list of promising referrals for each advocate you intend to call or meet. This will mean spending time surfing the internet, reviewing telephone books or researching club directories and annual reports. The more time you spend, the more successful you will be. Creativity is a must.
Step 4: Get together with your advocates and leverage your knowledge; this means talking with each one about the importance of advocacy and the work you have done in anticipation of your call or meeting. Go through your referral list one at a time and ask for feedback. For each reference you secure request permission to use your advocates name when you make your initial contact.
Step 5: Finally, meet with your references. Set the stage by reviewing your unique value proposition (UVP) and your approach to advocacy. Your referrals need to understand your approach to both managing (UVP) and growing (advocacy) your business. You will stand out from the crowd as a true professional.
Success story…
A few years ago, one of our members decided on a 90-day referral gathering cycle using our advocacy approach. He did all of his research during the first 30 days (Steps 1, 2 and 3), held client meetings during the next 30 days (step 4) and spent the final month meeting with his referrals (step 5).
Over the first complete cycle, the advisor was able to increase his assets under management from $50 million to $75 million, a 50% increase, just by applying our advocacy process to his practice. During the next quarter he added another $25,000,000 in assets. And though the pace slowed down in subsequent quarters, this advisor continued to rely on advocacy as his only strategy for marketing and prospecting.
If you’re trying to add more ideal clients to your practice, give our advocacy approach a try. It’s a proven process for growing your business.