Many characteristics contribute to being exceptionally successful at serving the ultra-wealthy. First and foremost is the ability to find suitable prospects who are inclined to do business with you. After all, no matter how technically skilled you are, your expertise will go to waste without clients.

Successful prospecting hinges on two questions:
1. How expert are you in your field?
2. How powerful is your professional brand?

But there's a lot of confusion about the relationship between expertise and brand that acts as a stumbling block for many professionals.

The Importance Of Expertise
Professionals tend to equate their potential business success with their mastery of specialized material. Trusts and estate lawyers, for example, often base their level of expertise on their knowledge of tax law and their ability to apply this knowledge. Investment advisors regularly define their expertise based on their skill at managing assets. This is all well and good. The problem comes when these professionals equate their technical proficiencies with business success.

Admittedly, being a true expert in one's field is, or at least should be, a very important criterion for business success. But being an expert does not inherently translate into being able to source the very wealthy.

The ultra-affluent-and most likely everyone else-wants to work with exceptional experts. Who, for instance, would want to have their life-deciding surgery performed by some second stringer? It's no different when it comes to investment management or estate planning or any other professional service. Going back to those two critical questions, let us pose a third:

3. What is more important to cultivating the ultra-affluent, your expertise or your professional brand?

We've just pointed out that the ultra-affluent want to work with experts. So you might conclude that expertise trumps brand. In a perfect, rational world, that would be correct. However, the world we inhabit is far from perfect and rational. In sourcing the ultra-affluent, it turns out, brand outshines expertise all the time.

Let's examine the logic by creating an Expertise/Brand Matrix (Figure 1). In this matrix, a high level of expertise coupled with a strong professional brand makes you a Talented Leading Authority. You're as adept as any of your competitors, and the right people among the very wealthy and other types of professionals know who you are. The former attribute means you'll do an exceptional job for your ultra-affluent clients.  The latter means you'll have the opportunity to do so. This is the best place to be.

If you have a high level of expertise, but lack a professional brand, you're a Hidden Talent. Given an opportunity to work for a very wealthy client, you'll do an exceptional job. The only complication is that if you can't find very wealthy clients, there's no way for you to apply your expertise.

Professionals who lack expertise and professional brands are the Incompetents. They can scrounge out a living, but it's unlikely they'll be working with very many of the ultra-affluent.

Lastly, we come to the Incompetent Leading Authority. This is a professional with a solid brand among the very wealthy and other types of professionals. The fact that they're not very competent need not prevent tremendous professional success. A lack of real expertise is rarely an obstacle to sourcing new ultra-affluent clients if they believe you're a leading authority. For advisors in this group, being perceived as an expert is the key-regardless of their skill level.

Talented Leading Authorities and Incompetent Leading Authorities are actually on the same playing field. The reason is really quite simple. When it comes to choosing professionals in complex, specialized and unfamiliar fields, the ultra-affluent and their advisors are usually incapable of making proper evaluations.

It's the rare investment advisor, for instance, who can determine if a life insurance program put together by an insurance specialist is truly optimal. Along the same lines, few P&C providers understand the components and mechanics that go into a loan. Professionals more often depend on a professional's reputation when making referrals than a critical evaluation of the professional's background and skills.

A Leading Authority?
Because perception is so important, you will have a hard time cultivating wealthy clients without an effective professional brand. Developing a brand over time is actually easy. Creating a brand that will enhance your ability to source wealthy clients takes work.

After more than a quarter century working in the private wealth industry, examining the mindsets, behaviors and decision-making processes of the very wealthy and the best practices of professionals, we can conclude that there are more Incompetent Leading Authorities than Talented Leading Authorities. There are also many more Hidden Talents than both types of Leading Authorities, and even a greater number of Incompetents.

When it comes to building a book of wealthy clients, Leading Authorities dominate. Incompetents are rarely successful except for the rare wealthy client or two-often relatives. Hidden Talents tend to stay hidden. Hence, the competition is among the Leading Authorities-and, as we've stated, they're on equal footing.

When we've run conferences and workshops, and we've asked who in the audience is in the top 10% of their profession, nearly everyone, if not everyone, raises their hands. It's that easy to say you're an expert. But, if you tout yourself as an expert, you need to ask yourself a question: Who believes you?

Your positioning as an expert is dependent on what potential clients and other professionals believe. The following exercise can help you clarify whether you're perceived as an expert.
Write down how you describe yourself to prospects and professionals. Describe your expertise.
Identify five clients who can refer their peers to you and five professionals who can refer their clients to you.
Write down how you think each of these individuals would describe you to a prospect. What would each one say is your area of expertise? Do you have proof to back up your assumptions?
If your description of your expertise differs from your clients' and your professional network's, you're probably a Hidden Talent.

Like the greater majority of professionals focusing on the ultra-affluent, your professional brand can probably use some polishing. Being an unknown expert-a Hidden Talent-might result in a good living, but it does little if your goal is to build a business with the ultra-affluent.

Russ Alan Prince is Private Wealth magazine editor-at-large.

Bruce H. Rogers is chief insights officer for Forbes Media's newly reorganized Forbes Insights division and CMO Practice.