Improving the Connection with Your Prospects and Clients

Have you considered what is going to propel growth in your business in the coming months and years? Schwab conducted a research study in March 2009 which shows the greatest 3 enablers of growth are:

1. Closing the deal with prospects - 75%
2. Maintaining quality service - 73%
3. Adding new technology for scalability - 67%

So what is your strategy for closing more prospects more quickly and improving client service? How are you going to maintain and enhance your client service? Success comes back to the old adage "know thy client". People pay lip service to this, but do they really do it? And how well?

My view is that you will not know the motivations of your prospects and clients and how to communicate with them until you objectively know their DNA behavioral style. Once you know their DNA you can more quickly build a deeper relationship and also match them with the right choices for purchasing your products and services. Trust will be developed very quickly and your sales will increase.

This is the foundation of our DNA Marketing system (go to www.dnabehaviormarketing.com). Our DNA Marketing system provides you with an online behavioral marketing system whereby all of your prospects and clients can complete a profile online on your website. From there you will be able to seamlessly communicate with the prospects and clients on their terms and also customize your product and service offerings based on who they are. Using this system will deepen and scale your marketing. Also, this approach addresses one of your greatest barriers to growth which is not having enough time for business development and marketing.

Advisor Trust

The theme at this week's FPA Conference in Annaheim centered on trust. Becoming the trusted advisor is not a new idea however, it is increasingly talked about.

The question is how do you become the trusted advisor? How do you accelerate trust in your advisory relationships, and for that matter in any relationship?

Building trust is directly related to how you behave in relation to others. What many do not know is that the starting point for trust starts with your behavior. If you do not trust yourself, then you will not trust others and others will not trust you. What we have learned from research is that some people are not naturally wired not to trust and hence will always have more inherent difficulty in building trusted relationships. So, these skeptical people have to be more conscious in developing trust with clients (and their team).

Interestingly, based on our extensive behavioral profiling of financial advisors, over 70% of them would be low on trust or more skeptical. So, why do you think there is such a lack of trust of our industry, and now being trusted is being valued so much? It is also fair to say that being completely trusting as a person can be naive. Some skepticism is reasonable so long as it is healthy.

Now, you need to address how you are going to improve your level of trust. The first step is gaining clarity of who you are, your talents and your life purpose. When you have the personal confidence to be who you are your fears start going away and generally trust builds. We help people through this step by having them firstly take the Business DNA Natural Talents Profile.
The second step is to uncover your client relationship management performance. We do this by having you take the AdvisorTRUST 360 Profile. In essence, the profile is a behavioral client performance evaluation. The process involves you rating yourself and having at least 3 clients each rating you on 75 performance items across the following 7 key areas:

1. Communication
2. Results
3. Relationships
4. Emotional Intelligence
5. Trust
6. Advisory values
7. Advisory competence

The profile report identifies areas of strength where you are positively building trust with clients and areas where further development is required.

With this information a coaching program can be put in place to help you improve your trust and level of client satisfaction. The reality is that every person will have performance aspects needing development across these 7 areas. Even those who inter personally may naturally build strong trust could be lower in demonstrating advisory trust in terms of the results and processes side of their service delivery.

If you would like to learn more and participate in the AdvisorTrust 360 Profile please contact us at inquiries@businessdnaresources.com

Bringing Children Into The Family Business

In my work with entrepreneurs and family business owners there are quite divergent views about whether to bring children into the family business when they are young adults, or even at any stage. Some say never and others have a desire to perpetuate the family association with the business. There are cases for both. Of course, rationality plays into it and the family legacy.

In my own case, I had to work through many of the issues because our family had a pastoral (cattle ranching) business which I eventually managed for a number of years. I enjoyed it from a business perspective but ultimately did not have the passion to make it a life long endeavor. My brother was not interested at all.

The big issue is, do the children want to be involved in the business? Then importantly, what is their passion for the business?

On one side it is wrong to force the children into something they do not want to be part of. However, is it wrong to deny them the opportunity? Often parents do not want the children in the business to avoid family problems by not mixing family and business.

I believe each case needs to be looked at on its merits. The starting point should be the DNA of the family members and also the DNA of the family and the DNA of the business. By looking at the question from the inside out, the answer will soon be apparent. If the children have a very strong passion for the business then the next issue of how they are involved should be looked at. Who can blame them if the business has been discussed around the dinner table every night for 20+ years?

In considering the involvement of the children, their aptitudes and abilities need to be examined. Passion is one important aspect, having the capability is another. Often this will come down to the role they play - certainly at the start. Thrusting them into a leadership role without experience and knowledge could be a disaster. Protocols need to be put in place for evaluation and determining their place on merit.

Overall, a family governance structure will be needed which properly regulates decision making. The decision making structure needs to be separate for each of the family, investments and business. They are all quite different areas. A key part of this will be the involvement of children in the business.

New Financial DNA Developments for Addressing Risk Tolerance

Risk tolerance is a much talked about area in financial planning and it is one core component of an investor's unique financial behavior - what we call their Financial DNA. It is so fundamental that we are always talking about it and making decisions with reference to it.

A huge difficulty has been reliably measuring an investor's risk tolerance. One of the problems is that an investor's risk tolerance is assessed today but then a portfolio is developed for the long term which has to cope with fluctuating markets. Do you truly know what your client's risk tolerance for the long term is? How much of your assessment of the client's risk tolerance is based on current situational factors and their emotional impulses today about the market? Then add in the fact that a person's risk tolerance may differ across different asset classes. Of course, an advisor's own risk tolerance can color the situation resulting in the client "eating" the behavior of the advisor. There have been lots of examples where a group of advisors addressing the same case facts at the same time will come up with different risk tolerance assessments for the client.

After more than 10 years of studying financial behaviors, including risk, and performing research based on our online profiles Financial DNA Resources has now launched our "Behavioral Portfolio Report". You can download a copy of it here: http://financialdnaresources.com/FinancialDirections.

The Behavioral Portfolio Report provides a comprehensive and holistic analysis of a person's complete financial behavioral style resulting in the creation of what we call an "Inside-Out Portfolio". The inside-out portfolio gets to the level of asset classes and also tactical factors for investment selection. This then becomes the foundation for the financial plan and investment policy statement.

Fundamental to the Inside Out Portfolio is a superior analysis and quantification of the person's risk perception and risk attitude. In particular, our analysis uniquely dissects their:

1. Understanding of risk and return - if this is high then they are likely to see investment markets as less risky
2. Risk propensity to take risks (or be bold) - their behavioral inclination to make daring or bold choices
3. Risk tolerance - which is the ability to live with the consequences of taking risks

Interestingly, our research has shown that in 20% of cases people have a higher risk propensity than risk tolerance. This is critical for advisors to know as their client could take greater risks than they can stomach.

Core to our Financial DNA work has been the discovery of a person's natural "hard-wired" behavior - these are the behaviors that remain stable through a client's life. This applies equally to risk propensity and risk tolerance.

Recently, we have had people re-take our profiles to determine profile consistency with time gaps of over 3 years. The consistency level has been very high which is powerful considering the turbulent times we have been living in.

It is key to know a client's natural risk profile for building a portfolio as this is the behavior which will reveal itself when they are under pressure and generally throughout their life. This behavior is highly predictable. However, you do need to know the client's current financial preferences as well based on experiences and education. This will tell you where they are at now and how much portfolio variance they can accept, and what additional guidance they may need in the portfolio construction phase.

So, our view is that you cannot know enough about your client when you are advising them. Knowing all of the dimensions of the client's risk attitudes and objectively quantifying them is important for the "know your client rules" and more importantly to be able to have a transparent discussion with your client to properly manage their expectations. Using your intuition is very important but it alone is not enough. Now is the time to start educating your clients with much deeper and applied behavioral insight.

Dream Bigger Than You Can Think

In recent times I have done a lot of talking about your "success impediments". What is getting in your way to success? A lot of the time it is our own mind. We allow negative thinking to get in the way. This will be true at any time particularly when times are tough and we are fearful. Or it will happen because we have limited experience or a lack of confidence. However, we should never let the big thoughts go away. These big ideas could be a genuine opportunity that is being thrown your way. To start growing you need to firstly not throw the idea away. At least write it down in a journal or talk to a friend or associate about it. You never know what they too have been thinking or how they will provide you with another thought or idea which will liberate your thinking.

To grow you must think big. In my own case, whenever I have taken a big step or pursued a big idea it is because I have taken that dream and not allowed myself to get in the way. I am doing something right now in our DNA business with an idea which I would never have thought possible. Interestingly, the idea came to me on how we could use technology differently and within weeks I have seen futurists talk about this as the future and industry specialists talk about these types of delivery concepts. While I have the vision, I can also see from those around me who have the talents to implement it. So, I will not be the barrier.

Sure, thinking big takes courage but we can all do it if we want to. What dreams or big ideas do you have that could change your life? Would you be a fool to let them go?

The Big Question

Last week I participated in a learning program for fast growth businesses conducted by Verne Harnish (founder of Gazelles, Inc) who is world renowned as "The Growth Guy". Verne has run training workshops for and coached many great entrepreneurs all over the world. He has a very straightforward approach to helping an entrepreneur stay focused.

After listening to Verne for a while, and I have been in his workshops before, it became very clear to me that the Big Question we need to ask ourselves is: What is your success impediment? That is, what is getting in the way of your success? I believe we can continuously ask ourselves this question in every area of our life, at whatever stage we are at. In many instances, it is "you". So, the question becomes what are you going to do to get out of your own way? Are you self-aware of what is in the way? A lot of this is about your DNA. A lot of the time, we are not aware of what our natural blind spots are which are a core part of our behavior. Ultimately, people succeed or fail because of their behavior. Taking this further into a business or a family, the behaviors of the team or family member will also be important.

This is why coaching is very important. If you are an entrepreneur, Verne will certainly endorse that a coach is critical to your success in business. The same is true in life generally - a good life coach can really help your quality of life. If the coach starts by asking the big question every time then your feet will truly be held to the fire and the right focus will come.

Importance of Private Businesses to Business

When one looks at business, it is easy to miss or not appreciate the importance of private businesses and entrepreneurship. How often do you look to the larger public companies for opportunities, marketing and jobs? Probably a lot. This is what many first think of doing.

I would like to suggest that you change your thinking and focus on private companies. Information from the recent G8 Summit in Italy shows that 70% of the world's jobs are provided by private companies and 100% of job growth. This would mean the energy forces are with entrepreneurship for many business opportunities.

Think about this next time you hold a strategy session for your business.