On May 10, I am once again co-chairing the one-day Top Advisor Summit in Toronto.

Last fall, I talked to an advisor who’d attended last spring’s Summit. He was inspired by a talk on how to develop referral relationships with accountants by an advisor who’d brought in $30 million in assets in 2008 via referrals from accountants.

This advisor walked away from that talk determined to adapt some of the ideas he’d heard and last year implemented a process to focus on accountants of key clients in his own practice

Here’s the five step process this advisor put in place last year

Step 1.Identify key accountants

He began by asking top clients who their key accountants were and whether they were happy with the job they were doing for them – almost the answer was yes.

Step 2. Get permission to call

He went on to say that from time to time clients asked him for a suggestion on an accountant and he’d like to contact this client’s accountant. He also said that he’d like to discuss the client’s situation with his or her accountant to ensure it was fully coordinated - and asked the client to sign a form giving the advisor permission to share the client’s confidential information.

Step 3. Make the initial contact

I’ve written before about the words that open the door to conversations with accountants: “We have a client in common.”

He used this when making the initial call to the accountant – and also said that their mutual client had given him written authorization to talk about his or her financial situation.

He went on to say that he’d like to talk about the client’s affairs and to discuss any way that he could help simplify the accountant’s task – and also said that he’d heard great things about the accountant and would like to learn more about him or her.

He suggested they get together over lunch or a coffee to talk about this – he didn’t have a single instance where the accountant he called said no.

Step 4. Engage the accountant

When they sat down, they initially talked about the client’s situation. After that, the advisor’s goal was to get the accountant to talk about his or her own practice – the advisor deliberately set out to spend little or no time talking about his own work. In the advisor’s experience, the more time the accountant spent talking, the better the meeting seemed to go.

Step 5. Plant a seed for follow up

At the end of the meeting, the advisor thanked the accountant for sitting down – and depending on how the conversation went, he wrapped up in a couple of different ways.

In some cases, he asked permission to copy the accountant on all the articles, reports and other information their client received.

In others, he invited the accountant to attend an upcoming workshop in his office that he was also inviting their client to.

And in two or three, where there was especially good chemistry and a close fit in terms of clients, he closed by saying: “From what you’ve told me, I think we serve similar types of clients and are very much on the same wavelength. Would you be interested  in sitting down to explore doing some joint marketing together, perhaps starting with having you come in to talk to my clients and having me come in to talk to yours?”

As a result of this approach, last year this advisor met with 20 accountants of key clients. All of them are now on the distribution list for information he sends clients, he’s had a number attend presentations in his office and received his first two referrals. He’s also in the process of launching a joint marketing initiative with one of the accountants he met last year.

“All of this was a big investment of time last year” this advisor said. “But by making this a real focus in 2009, I made lots of new contacts with accountants, deepened relationships with existing clients and think I’m well positioned to get a return in terms of new clients in the coming year. Even though it was time consuming, I think it will end up being one of the best initiatives I’ve put in place for a long time.”

For more on the 2010 Top Advisor Summit and for information on special pricing to attend, go to www.Topadvisorsummit.com.