In early September, I hosted a round table lunch in Vancouver with eight successful advisors.

A key topic was the frustration  most were experiencing in attracting new clients.

In discussing this further, consensus emerged that for almost everyone in the room, the number one objective for this fall is developing prospecting momentum, so that they hit the ground running in January.

 Three things need to happen to build prospecting momentum this fall.

 Step One: Giving client development priority

 First, you have to make prospecting a top priority.

Over the last few year many advisors have gotten away from focusing on client development in a systematic fashion, giving it priority and investing time and money against it. Quite simply, advisors were getting enough new assets from market growth and referrals that they didn’t need to go through the pain of prospecting.

Referrals are clearly the best way to attract new clients – the difficulty is that given markets over the past year and the typical client mindset today, for the next while at least most advisors are not going to get sufficient referrals to achieve their business goals.

What  most advisors need to do is identify a two tier approach to client development – with a continued focus on referrals, supplemented by another prospecting strategy

And they need to make that other prospecting strategy a core priority in their business. 

Step Two: Make a commitment to client development

To develop prospecting momentum, you have to invest consistent time against it.

Too many advisors see client development as something to do with the time left over in their day or their week. They simply don’t give it the priority it needs.

Start by making a decision on how much time you’re prepared to allocate to client development each week. This will vary with the advisor but the first step is to say okay, this is the amount of time I need to commit – it could be three hours, six hours, ten hours or twenty hours.

Once you’ve made a decision on the amount of time you’re prepared to commit, go to your calendar and make an appointment to spend that time.

So if you’re spending six hours, you can block off three hours on Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon or you can block off 90 minutes from 2 to 3:30 every afternoon from  Monday to Thursday.

 The key is to treat this like you would an appointment with your most important client and to cancel that commitment the same way you would an appointment with a key client.

Step Three: Pick a strategy to focus on

The final step is to develop a consistent process to use that time.

Successful advisors have learned the importance of a consistent process when it comes to existing clients.

But when it comes to client development many are all over the place – they try a little of this, do a little of that – so end up diluting their effectiveness and never develop any traction.

Here are four client development processes that advisors are seeing results from today:

Focus on professionals

One advisor who attended the Top Advisor Summit in April was inspired by a talk on developing referral relationships with accountants.

As a result, he has blocked off lunch time every Friday and on hour each Wednesday.

In that hour, he calls the accountants and lawyers of his key clients, after getting clients permission to do so – and says the six magic words:  “We have a client in common.”

Then he goes on to say: “I’ve heard great things about you. I’d like to buy you lunch or schedule time for a coffee and talk about our common client, he’s given me written permission to share his information with you.

I’d also like to learn more about the kind of work you do and also tell you a little bit about what I do.”

At the lunch, this advisor focuses most of the time on getting the accountant or lawyer talking. At the end of the lunch, he offers to put them on the distribution list for the material their common clients receive. He’s had 100% take-up on this offer – and has started seeing referrals come as a result.

Building your prospect pipeline

Earlier this year, another advisor began emailing his clients an article every second Friday – something from the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the most credible sources he could find.

He carves out two hours every Friday morning to call people he knows – people from his golf club, guys he went to school with, people he knows casually.

And what he reaches them he says that the reason he’s calling is that he’s recently begun emailing clients articles from publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Economist and clients have found these very useful. And in light of concern about markets, it occurred to him that the person he’s talking to might find those articles helpful also – and that he’s calling to see if they’d be interested in being added to the distribution list.

His goal is to add three to five prospects to his pipeline each Friday morning. He’s received a good response to his calls and to the emails – and has started seeing meetings with prospects happen as a result.

Become a go-to resource

In a post in August, I talked about how one advisor positioned herself as the go to resource for a major employer in her community when the company announced layoffs. She responded by organizing some lunch time and after work workshops at a hotel across the street from its offices, in conjunction with a lawyer and accountant who she recruited to participate in this.

As a result, not only has she ended up with clients but she’s started getting unsolicited calls from other employees of this company who have heard her name.

Click here to read more about this: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=199

Turn client sandwich lunches into prospecting events

In a post in April, I talked about how advisors can use a series of sandwich lunches in their boardroom for clients to communicate with prospects as well. The idea is to get nine people into your boardroom – six of them existing clients, three of them prospective clients.

One advisor began doing this in January and he now runs these lunches in his boardroom every two weeks – this has become the major driver of his client development focus. When he follows up with the prospective clients, typically he gets a follow up meeting in at least one of the three cases, in the other two people almost always agree to be added to the distribution list for information he’s sending clients and give him permission to follow up down the road.

Click here for the article about organizing sandwich lunches http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=164

And here to listen to a free webinar on how to make these sandwich lunches happen: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=180

Remember, there is no one right approach to bringing new clients on board – only the approach that is right for you.

Think about whether you need to use this fall to develop prospecting momentum for your practice. If the answer is yes, remember those three key steps –  give client development the priority it deserves, make a firm commitment of time to focus on it and pick an approach that works for you and stick to it.

Do those three things – and chances are that when it comes to client development, you’ll hit the ground running in January.