Your Recovery Plan
You should start with setting your goals for the period after the crisis. You also need to build on, confirm and readjust your strategic relationships. As you’re building greater rapport with others, you want to catalog business opportunities. While doing this, you’ll also likely be adjusting your goals.
Set high-end goals for the new normal. It’s possible that many wealth managers will double their pre-crisis revenues in two years once the recovery starts. Lawyers, no matter what their field of expertise, could also boost their revenues 25% or more from where they were before the crisis within two years once the turmoil passes. Accountants will be able to more quickly double their pre-crisis revenues because of the role they’re playing today.
Essentially, most any professional will be able to dramatically improve revenues.
What will your annual earnings be when this is over? It can be very useful to set high but realistic goals. It’s also important to realize that you need to give yourself a time frame. In our experience, two years is pretty good. So two years into the recovery, what are your annual earnings going to be?
Adjust to the new normal. It’s very unlikely that when the crisis ends, business will go back to the way it was before. More likely, a lot of people are going to be making adjustments, which we can only hypothesize about today.
I, for example, anticipate using videoconferencing more often. It’s become a necessity. Some of the changes in the ways people interact will be predictable, others unexpected. You’re likely going to need to modify the ways you operate.
Work on your strategic relationships. You need to keep improving the relationships you have with other professionals, especially those who refer business to you. While many of you are likely calling these people and sending them materials, it’s likely you’re taking a one-size-fits-all approach, and even if you’re connecting, you’re not having any substantial impact.
The approach I use is called the “Everyone Wins Process.” It’s a way to get results without manipulation or persuasion. The idea is that the more everything is about the other person, the more successful you’ll become. It means you need to concentrate on and understand other people’s agendas. You do this through discovery, finding out what clients’ and other professionals’ concerns and anxieties are.
Most of the conversations you have with these people are going to be about life, not your services or products. Wealth management is not high on the list of topics for most ultra-wealthy people. If it returns, it will be because affluent families have addressed higher priority concerns and are willing to turn to their personal financial situations.
Cataloging business opportunities. While it’s important to make other people and their concerns the center of the discussion in this process, it’s also important, if you want to win business after the crisis, to catalog business opportunities and build a backlog.