1. A clearly-defined strategy designed to get your clients to love you; 2. A systematic way of delivering your service; and 3. The right technology to enable delivery of this service profitably. Put all three together and you will be able to do some extraordinary things for your clients and for yourself. Falling in Love Do you remember falling in love? I remember some of the things that I did while dating my wife, prior to us getting married. I would send flowers, call her for no reason other than to talk, bring her unexpected gifts, open doors for her and other things to show her that I genuinely cared about her. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to remember when I did any of those things on a regular basis for her now. I guess you can say that I take her for granted. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t that the way most businesses treat their clients? At the beginning we pay a lot of attention to them. Then, over time, you get comfortable, sometimes so comfortable, that you take them for granted. It’s human nature. The way to prevent inconsistent service is to have a systematic way to ensure that you are truly paying attention to your relationships. Client relationships are like anything else, the more time and effort we put into them, the more successful they will be. The E-Myth Point of View and the Virtual Office Concept The E-Myth Point of View is all about building your business so that it is the vehicle to help you reach your personal goals. The way that you do that is by thinking more like a true entrepreneur and developing the business management systems that will free you from the day-to-day activities of running a business that drain your energy. The work of the entrepreneur in you is to develop the vision and strategy for your firm. Your job is to focus not on what you do, but on what you should do. And what you should do is develop a business that serves your clients in an extraordinary way for life. Without a clearly-documented and shared vision of what you are trying to accomplish with your business, there is no passion. Without passion, there is no love. In an E-Myth business, systems run the business and people run the systems. Your goal should be to develop a process-dependent business, not a people-dependent business. This fits per- fectly with the virtual office concept. The people running the business systems do not have to be employees; they can be Virtual Work Partners. The more systematized your business, the more effective and more efficient it will be, resulting in a high-margin practice. The biggest benefit my clients get when they think about outsourcing a function is that it forces them to think about their current cost of doing business. Most advisors never think about the true cost of writing the plan or managing the portfolio themselves. By thinking about outsourcing they begin to get a better understanding of their cost of doing business. One function that you will probably never outsource is the client relationship, which means you need to develop your internal systems for managing client relationships. CRM - Business Strategy vs. Technology Initiative If you want to run a high-margin virtual business, you need a way to better manage your client re- lationships. This is where CRM comes in. But, I am not talking about the software (yet); I am talking about the concept. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Every business needs a customer relationship management system. The focus of your own CRM initiative should have more to do with your business strategy and how to manage each client relationship and less to do with what technology you choose. Technology is an enabler, not the end game. I think that sometimes advisors are in such a rush to find a CRM solution in a software product that they forget all about the client. The bigger picture, the bigger opportunity, is to develop a re- lationship so strong with your clients that they do in fact love you. The software is just one piece in the picture. Larger companies, both within and outside of your industry, dream of having access to the amount of client data, information and insights that you, the independent financial advisor, has ac- cess to. So why don’t you use it? Why do you treat all of your clients exactly the same way? Ad- visors tend to treat all clients as equals in terms of service, no matter how valuable they are to the firm. In sports, the most valuable players (MVPs) get rewarded with the most lucrative contracts. In business we need to take care of our most valuable clients (MVCs) with the best possible ser- vice. Pick a client from your client database. Any client. Now ask yourself, what are your company's objectives for this customer? What is the strategy you have devised to achieve those objectives? Who will you hold accountable to ensure that this strategy is carried out? And how will you evalu- ate the success of your strategy? Most firms find these questions difficult to answer. Most com- panies simply don't have individual client strategies. Some companies have marketing strategies, but their marketing strategy is basically the same for every client. A better marketing strategy would be to identify differences and the similarities within your client base and then use that insight to build a better relationship with your most valuable clients. We will call this Client Relationship Marketing TM – a different way to look at the letters “CRM.” Your Client Relationship Marketing System Your basic strategy is to build stronger relationships with your most valuable clients by delivering additional services, which will naturally lead to better referrals and distinguish you from your com- petition. The eight steps to building your own Client Relationship Marketing system are: 1. Identify your clients as individuals using demographic and psychographic attributes; 2. Group and segment your clients by common attributes; 3. Determine which individual and groups of clients are your MVCs; 4. Develop additional interactions specifically for your MVCs; 5. Plan how you will implement those interactions; 6. Implement – deliver additional services; 7. Monitor and quantify results; 8. Customize interactions over time based on your growing understanding of your MVCs. Ideas You Can Use Step #4 in this Client Relationship Marketing system is all about interacting with your clients be- yond the typical client communications, i.e., quarterly statements, periodic face-to-face reviews, market updates, etc. We are talking about extraordinary touch points... special interactions re- served for your MVCs designed to build life-long relationships. Here are some ideas we have im- plemented in the businesses of financial advisor clients: A) Calls for no reason – There are roughly 50 working weeks per year. What if you had a list of your 50 most valuable clients and you called one each week for no reason other than to stay in touch? B) Birthday Calls – Call your clients on their birthday. Some of their family members probably don’t call them on their birthday; C) Birthday Flowers – Send flowers to your clients’ spouses on their birthdays; D) Private Client Events – Hold small, intimate private client events with non-financial topics that are of interest to your MVCs. (Remember, if you do not have a process to gather this type of information, you will not know what their interests are). Allow them to bring a guest. This will do two things. First, your existing clients will feel special, like part of a small com- munity. And, their guests will realize: “My stockbroker doesn’t do things like this for me.” Here are some examples of non-financial topics advisors have used for these types of pri- vate client events: • Gourmet Cooking at Home when Time is an Issue; • Wine Education and Tasting; • How to Prevent Identity Theft; • Personal Security Issues (delivered by a local police officer); • Health and Nutrition; • Boating Series — Buying/Selling, Boat Safety, Boat Maintenance (obviously this advisor has a target market of boat owners); • Unique Vacation Opportunities. You will have other ideas based on the interests of your MVCs. Use the list provided here to stimulate your thinking. Systems, Systems, Systems For each idea you choose to implement you will need a detailed documented system to ensure execution. For instance, let’s say you decide to call clients on their birthday. To implement this idea you need a system. Your system might look something like this: Birthday Call System 1. Write a short script to start off each birthday call; 2. Run a weekly report of all of your clients who have a birthday this week; 3. Place clients’ birthdays on the weekly calendar; 4. Assign the person who will be accountable for calling; 5. Make the call on their birthday. Of course you will want to automate as many steps in this system as you can. This is where your CRM software becomes really valuable. Conclusion Your best clients probably already love you and are eager to help you succeed. Implementing a Client Relationship Marketing system in your business will ensure they stay in love with you and will help you grow with some really great referrals. The key is to focus on your MVCs, the ones you would like to replicate. This will ensure that you grow your business profitably. Building your business is a process — a process of continuous improvement. You should always be on the lookout for ideas, technology, or Virtual Work Partners who can help you reach your goals. And now I need to go do something special for my wife!