Central to being effective cultivating centers of influence is developing an in-depth understanding of them and their business models. Only then is it possible for you to provide viable value-added expertise to them. However, what’s more often the case is that financial advisors aren’t committed to or capable of effectively profiling the various professionals they’re looking to for affluent client referrals.
In a study of 549 financial advisors, it is clear that very few of them have a well-rounded and deep understanding of the centers of influence they’re seeking to obtain affluent clients from.
About two-fifths report being aware of the goals—personal or professional—of the centers of influence they’re pursuing. A quarter of the financial advisors say they have a solid understanding of the other professionals’ affluent clientele. Less than one in five of the financial advisors surveyed claim to have a deep understanding of the business model of these other professionals. Just about 5% of financial advisors report they’re aware of the critical concerns impacting these centers of influence.
What’s evident by evaluating the best networking practices of both ultra-successful professionals and self-made millionaires is that these insights and perspectives are core to building very powerful and meaningful relationships with centers of influence. Based on these best practices, we developed an assessment instrument that captures the requisite critical information.
The Assessment Instrument
There are five broad components of the assessment instrument. Let’s now consider—in broad brushes with a few examples—these components.
Attributes are the central and often defining characteristics of the person. We usually look to address:
Demographics
• Personal factors.
• Years in business.
Professional situation
• Technical expertise and particular competencies.
• Strengths and weaknesses.
To ensure a solid and ongoing alignment of interests, you’ll have to cognize the center of influence’s professional situation. You’ll also need to be keenly aware of his or her goals (see below), as well as how these goals are actualized based on the professional’s particular business model.
Contacts are the people the individual knows and can access. There are many components to this category, and all these facets need to be ascertained. The most pressing and informative components are:
• Nature of contacts.
• Source of contacts.
• Strength of contacts.
• Connector capabilities.
The one degree of separation of affluent clients’ contacts is usually the most important one for building your affluent clientele. You need to determine the number of potential affluent clients as well as the quality of the relationship.
Resources are the “assets” and means at the center of influence’s disposal. This goes beyond the people they know and can impact. It’s important to be able to get your hands around these other possibilities. What you want to know is:
• Types of recourses, which are available to the centers of influence.
• Form of control with respect to these resources that is most commonly either direct or indirect.
It’s not only who the center of influence knows, but also their ability to deliver other resources that can prove quite useful in enabling you to acquire new affluent clients. The center of influence’s firm’s marketing capabilities, for example, can be very helpful to all parties in accessing new affluent clients.
Intent refers to the individual’s preferences, needs and wants as they translate into interim objectives, which feed into larger goals. These various goals and objectives are evidenced in their needs and wants, so they must be taken into account. The three categories of goals are:
• Financial goals.
• Strategic business goals.
• Personal goals.
We habitually recommend that the centers of influence you want to win over have personal financial goals. It’s very helpful if they’re “hungry.” They should be very keen on becoming more successful in their careers and be highly motivated to become a whole lot wealthier. If a center of influence is on cruise control to retirement or independently wealthy, there is very little you can do to motivate him or her or add economic benefit.
Crucial concerns are the dominant and persuasive issues and interests the person is presently dealing with. Everyone is a “naked emperor.”
Simply put, you need to know:
• Those concerns that are dramatically impacting decision-making.
• Those concerns that affect a center of influence’s ability to focus, respond and follow through.
• Those concerns that result in dysfunctional behavior, with examples.
Gathering this detail and amount of information takes time, usually a lot of time. To completely and accurately fill out the assessment instrument can actually take years. While centers of influence will likely share some information fairly readily, going deep is a long-term process because high degrees of trust are required before much of this information would be shared.
To get high-caliber introductions to the affluent from centers of influence, you don’t need to know everything; you certainly don’t need to fill out the entire assessment instrument. Very likely, you’ll be getting a steady flow of new affluent clients from a center of influence with only a comparatively minimal understanding of them, their businesses and the lives they lead. Still, over time an amassment of data will heighten your ability to create that flood of new affluent clients.
Customizing The Assessment Instrument For Centers Of Influence
The assessment instrument is rather ubiquitous and is heavily based on the thinking and actions of self-made millionaires. It’s common for many high-flying self-made millionaires to regularly and carefully evaluate the people they’re doing business with, or are considering doing business with, along the lines we’ve just discussed.
While we touched on centers of influence in our discussion of the assessment instrument, it is useful to make them the focal point. Consider, for example, the following few questions for centers of influence when it comes to the attributes section of the assessment instrument:
• How does the center of influence respond when an affluent client asks for a referral?
• What are the ideal characteristics of affluent prospects for his or her services or products?
• How does the center of influence want to work with other professionals he or she provides affluent client introductions to?
• How does the center of influence source new affluent clients?
• What’s the center of influence’s detailed views on the services you provide?
There are overarching as well as center-of-influence-specific questions for each component of the assessment instrument. What you need to do is think through what you need to uncover in order to build a relationship with other professionals that translates into them sending their affluent clients to you for your services.
Conclusion
Absolutely essential to creating a flood of new affluent clients is effectively profiling centers of influence. Only by understanding them well will you be able to first discern if they’re worth pursuing and then how to best work with them so they can deliver their affluent clients to you.
The assessment instrument briefly described here has proved to be extraordinarily effective in profiling centers of influence. Either using this methodology or employing some similar profiling system in a focused manner for each center of influence you’re approaching is a necessity.
What’s important to keep in mind is that it takes time and practice to become proficient with the assessment instrument or any other profiling system. However, as you work with it, you’ll become much more capable, and along the way you’ll be building your affluent clientele from referrals from these centers of influence.
Russ Alan Prince is president of R.A. Prince & Associates Inc. and executive director of Private Wealth magazine.
Brett Van Bortel is director of consulting services for Invesco Consulting, the sales consulting group within Invesco Distributions Inc. The opinions expressed are those of Russ Alan Prince and Brett Van Bortel, and are based on current market conditions and subject to change without notice. These opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals.