Warren Buffet said “price is what you pay, value is what you get.” Define Yourself. Define who you are and who you're not. Use the contrast principle. Let them come to their own conclusions; and remember, how you start that relationship will impact how it will unfold over its lifetime.

We help our Blue Square Method clients define and refine their processes to ensure they start their client relationships right and never need to negotiate their value. See if you are a fit for Blue Square: www.paretosystems.com/blue-square

In this episode of The Blue Square Method, Duncan discusses the importance of establishing processes and sticking to plans.

Your commitment to proactive and reactive service driven by your Service Matrix makes you referable, but you have to go beyond that. You can't be your own best kept secret. You've got to make it easy for your clients to tell your story.

Join Duncan, vacationing in Okinawa, Japan, as he discusses the importance of balancing service to others with service to yourself for both personal and professional development.

How many times have you heard the phrase, 'It’s not the quantity but the quality that really matters'? This statement is definitely true when considering a financial advisor’s book of business. Yet despite this reality, a large number of advisors have a difficult time grasping the concept that bigger is not necessarily better. In fact, more often than not, advisors dream of building a very large client base. It seems that in this business, there is a false belief that size does matter! One thing’s for sure, in this day and age, a large book of business means one thing – considerably more work. Gone are the days where an advisor can be assured that a client is competitor-proofed with an annual or even bi-annual call. 

Client right-sizing is one of the first areas we tackle when working with a new client in our one-to-one coaching program. However, it is often a difficult subject to broach as many advisors going through our Pareto Systems program are looking for guidance to grow their businesses in order to increase their net incomes. Instinctively, they believe their action plan should begin with increasing the number of clients in their book, not paring down their number of clients. This is where many advisors miss the mark.

Are you looking to boost your income by increasing the size of your client base? If so, you should consider some important questions. Before answering, think hard about what each question implies:

1. Could your business, as it’s running now, handle a dramatic increase in new clients?
2. Would a substantial increase in business create some level of chaos in your office? As you know, there is a lot involved in bringing on even one new client (or at least there should be!)
3. Would an influx of new clients result in a decreased level of service for all your clients as a whole?
4. Would you need to add an assistant to the team in order to keep track of all your clients and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks?
5. Might the new business, in fact, cause you to lose focus on the clients who really matter in your book, your Top 20%? And if, as a result, you lost even a handful of your top clients, would that have a dramatic effect on your practice?

There is a specific process to “growing one’s business.” It is often important for an advisor to reduce his/her number of clients before adding new ones. The point is to clear out the old ones to make way for the new (and improved) ones! This gives the advisor the opportunity to let go of clients who aren’t necessarily adding to his/her income but are certainly draining on time, or have attitudinal quality that don’t align with the advisor’s.

If you take anything from this article, please remember that to increase your income, you don’t necessarily need more clients, just different ones and more engaged ones. Another thing to consider is that to remain at the same income level you are at now, you could most likely drastically reduce your client base by letting go of clients who are not significantly contributing to your business.

To begin client right-sizing, it’s important that you first take a hard look at your client base (hopefully you are already utilizing a fully encompassing client classification system), then make some critical decisions. Who is your ideal client? Who is no longer suitable as a client? Who takes up too much of your time? As you can imagine, by re-evaluating who an ideal client may be, then letting go of the clients who don’t , or most likely always won’t, fit the bill, you become much more efficient overall. Let’s face it, some clients are more of a hassle than they should be. They may eventually cause you to lose focus of the clients who really do deserve your full attention and your valuable time.

With a smaller book of business, you are once again able to gain control of your practice. By going through this process, you are now in a position where you are able to really service your top clients. As you know, when you spend more quality time with the clients who count, they really begin to appreciate your services, regardless of what is happening with the market. As long as you are in constant contact with your top clients, they will feel as though you are looking out for their needs. If at the same time, you are in the habit of re-stating your introduction process, those same top clients will brag about you to their friends and family. This will no doubt increase your rate of introductions and soon enough, more ideal clients. 

So before haphazardly taking on new clients, remember this: bigger is not always better!

Continued Success!

Contributed by Duncan MacPherson

It's never a bad idea to go back to your existing clients and start to reframe gradually how they perceive you and describe you. You are the gateway to their success, but because the commoditization and the velocity of noise, it's easy for that value to be trivialized.

Help them understand your practice and your process, not just that you're a good person. Get them to buy into that panoramically. You'll competitor-proof them through the entire journey and into the next generation and make it easy for them to articulate your value to others.

Among the qualities that can make you better at what you do, a profound one is this - even at the highest level, the mindset is that the clay is soft. There's no fixation on inertia confidence, the best don't mistake movement for achievement, they are always trying to refine and optimize what they do. They never stop learning. Even if it is subtle, minor adjustments, they can lead to major improvements.

In this episode in the Blue Square series, recorded while vacationing in Japan, Duncan discusses how to decommoditize your value and ensure that your clients understand and appreciate what you can do for them over the lifetime of the relationship.

Outline the introduction process; explain the why, the who and the how. Don’t leave your clients to their own devices to figure out how to make an introduction. This closes the gap between endorsement and introductions.

In this episode of the Blue Square series, recorded while vacationing in Japan, Duncan looks at how giving starts the receiving process, and the positive, reciprocal effects smiling triggers.