BachrachBlog

How much of the winter Olympics did you watch?  Apolo Ohno was certainly a hit with winning so many medals.  During various interviews, he said a few things that I thought you might want to ponder and consider how you can apply what he said into your life for even greater success.

 “Before you go to sleep at night ask yourself one question: Did you do every single thing you could today to make sure that you did your best? It’s hard to answer ‘yes’ every single day.” Apolo Ohno; Short-track speed skater

“I don’t like to look at it as competition. It’s about me conquering myself… me being able to face my own fears, distractions, and weaknesses and say that I overcame them.” Apolo Ohno; Short-track speed skater

As the comedians like to point out, it’s because you stop looking after you find them, of course!

Perhaps the same could be said for systems and processes for building and running a successful financial services business.

- What do you do after you find a client service model that works?
- What do you do after you find a client acquisition process that works?
- What do you do after you find a system for building and leading your team that works?

If you are still looking, it’s probably because you have not yet found an integrated system that covers all the bases for building a highly successful financial services business. What are the bases?

1. A predictable way to be paid to deliver a superior client experience that is not dependent on events out of your control like the market or the economy or the underlying products.
2. A predictable way to consistently acquire new Ideal Clients.
3. A process to build and lead your team to help you produce results in both of these key areas crucial to being a highly successful financial advisor.

What is your predictable way to be paid to deliver a superior client experience that is not dependent on events out of your control like the market or the economy or the underlying products? How do you consistently acquire new Ideal Clients? How do you build and lead your team to help you produce results in both of these key areas for being a highly successful financial advisor?

While there are proven systems to produce these results, the bottom line is that there is no silver bullet. As the famous saying goes, “the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” Once you identify the process or the system or the method for serving clients, acquiring clients, and building a team, the real work begins to successfully implement these systems and methods. This may explain why so few advisors are producing consistent results in these crucial areas.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison

Successful advisors accept that there is no silver bullet and are willing to do the work their goals require to achieve them. Maybe you already have a great system or perhaps you still need to find one.

The bottom line is that the sooner you find your keys the sooner you can drive your car. Looking for the keys doesn’t produce any desired results. It’s the driving that gets you somewhere you want to be.

To learn how our turn-key business model can help you have your Ideal Life in 4 years or less by building an Ideal Client Community, by referral only, give us a call at (800) 347-3707 to schedule a complimentary consultation. Or, go to www.billbachrach.com to schedule your complimentary Success Road Map® interview with one of our coaches.

Enjoy the interview with Rick Barrera about why he joined forces with Bachrach & Associates and the benefits to Advisors.

Rick is a marketing expert and author of “Non-Manipulative Selling,” “Collaborative Selling,” and “The Dollars and Sense of Service Delivery.”  Penguin has just released the second edition of his book, “Overpromise AND Overdeliver: How to Design and Deliver Extraordinary Customer Experiences” which has made both the Business Week and Wall Street Journal best sellers lists.  Each year he works with leading organizations such as Intel, Lexus, JD Edwards, Harley-Davidson, General Electric and Hewlett Packard helping them reach new levels of excellence. He is now working with Bachrach & Associates.

Find out for yourself the benefits of this joining of forces between Bill and Rick.

To listen to this interview with Rick Barerra, go to: http://www.baivbfp.com/assets/audio/mp3/barrera/index.php

In coaching advisors for more than 21 years, I’ve observed a key distinction between those who succeed at a high level and those who operate at a more mediocre level. Successful advisors are willing to do uncomfortable things. I’m talking about things that are uncomfortable for everyone. Successful people manage to do them, while those who aren’t succeeding at a high level will do just about anything to avoid the feeling of discomfort. I can understand why advisors don’t like to make cold calls; they’re uncomfortable for just about everyone (and we don’t recommend making them). But I’ve noticed that many advisors are reluctant to do something even as simple as asking for, obtaining, and following up on referrals.

About a year ago, I took a week off to go on a very long bike ride. While my friends and I were logging over 100 miles a day and pushing ourselves up one hill after another, it occurred to me that very few people deliberately do things that make them uncomfortable. In fact, most people are so self-conditioned to avoid discomfort that they think people who seek discomfort are stupid, reckless, or gluttons for punishment. I often get just this kind of feedback when I tell people about my “vacation.”

When confronted with something uncomfortable, most of us just won’t rise to the challenge, even if it means failing to achieve our goals. However, when we’re forced into an uncomfortable situation with absolutely no choice in the matter, we human beings have an incredible ability to rise to the occasion. People successfully move beyond being fired, going through divorce, dealing with life-threatening illnesses, or surviving the death of a loved one. Often they tell us, “It was the best thing to ever happen to me. I’m stronger, better, and more equipped to live a more productive, successful, and happy life.” This is great news because it means we all have the capacity to handle discomfort. We simply have to choose to harness it to achieve our goals.

So why do we avoid deliberately putting ourselves in “controlled” uncomfortable situations to make ourselves stronger, better, and achieve higher levels of success and happiness? More important, how can we do this on purpose so we can be stronger, better, more successful, and happier?

At the 1940 convention of the National Association of Life Underwriters, a gentleman by the name of Albert Gray said, “The common denominator of success—the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful—lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” Gray’s words are often quoted within our industry, yet even more significant are the lines he spoke next: “The things that failures don’t like to do are the very things that you and I and other human beings, including successful men, naturally don’t like to do. In other words, we’ve got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of men, and is therefore unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices.” In other words, successful people push themselves beyond their natural discomfort to do whatever is necessary.

When it comes to asking for referrals and following up, for example, I look at it as a necessity—you can’t build your business without it. As far as I can tell, there’s no comfortable method for filling your appointment calendar. But if you don’t have any experience doing the things that are optional and uncomfortable, you’ll probably tend to avoid them.

What discomfort are you avoiding that needs to be faced in order for you to be the success you’re really capable of being? Are you asking yourself “what if” questions that discourage you?

• What if I hire the staff I really need, but it doesn’t work out? (Implication: I’ve wasted time, effort, and money.)
• What if I confront a staff person who isn’t getting the job done and they quit? (Implication: I’m stuck doing paperwork for a while and I’m forced to go out and find the right person for the job.)
• What if I ask for referrals and I offend a client? (Implication: The client fires me and tells everyone in the community what a bad person and advisor I am.)
• What if I follow up on a referral and they don’t appreciate my call? (Implication: They call my client because they’re angry. Then the client gets mad that their friend is mad so the client fires me and tells everyone in the community what a bad person and advisor I am.)
• What if I make that investment in my business and it doesn’t turn out like I hoped? (Implication: I’ve wasted my time, effort, and money.)
• What if I give a client bad advice? (Implication: The client fires me and tells everyone in the community what a bad person and advisor I am.)

If questions like these are standing between you and your success, stop asking such lousy questions and try these four ideas instead!

1. Ask better questions.

Maybe you’re focusing on the wrong bad things. The consequences of not asking for referrals and following up are much greater than the worst-case scenario your imagination can conjure up.

Instead of focusing on all the bad things that might happen if you do what needs to be done, ask yourself what will happen if you don’t do it. Here’s one answer: You’ll end up being mediocre. Which is worse: being mediocre or dealing with the discomfort required to be successful?

Mark Allen, the six-time Ironman Triathlon world champion, asks the question, “Are you willing to do the work that the goal requires?” If you’re not succeeding at the level you really want, you might want to spend some time thinking about that question. If you want to be a successful financial advisor—someone who has the right number of ideal clients to generate enough gross business revenue to live the life you want—are you willing to do what it takes?

2. Give yourself empowering answers.

As long as you’re talking to yourself anyway, why not focus on the positive? What are some amazing, incredible, fantastic things that could happen? What might happen when you consistently and effectively ask for referrals and follow up? What might happen when you have the right staff doing the right things? What might happen when you make that investment in your most valuable asset—yourself?

3. Stop making excuses.

It’s amazing how often I hear advisors say, “That successful person was just in the right place at the right time.” No, the truth is that nearly every successful person has worked hard and taken uncomfortable actions consistently and diligently over a long enough period of time to become successful today. Stop making excuses and choose to face the uncomfortable situations that will lead to your success. Instead of criticizing the people who have become successful, choose to do the work and join them.

4. Make it a habit to choose discomfort.

The next time you find yourself avoiding something just because it’s uncomfortable, do it anyway. This applies to both personal and business decisions. Have you been putting off a preventive or diagnostic medical procedure because you know it will be uncomfortable? Have you been avoiding a personal issue or uncomfortable conversation? Schedule that doctor’s appointment, mammogram, or colonoscopy. Visit that friend in the hospital. Talk to that family member about how you really feel. Make an appointment to draw up your will or trust. Join the gym and go work out, even if you don’t look perfect in your shorts! Yes, these things may be uncomfortable, but do them anyway. Practice choosing discomfort. It will eventually come more naturally to you and the results will inspire you.

Here’s the bottom line. To become an even more successful financial advisor, you’re going to have to do things that are uncomfortable. Remember the advice offered by Albert Gray and Mark Allen. Don’t let discomfort be the deciding factor in determining what you do or avoid doing. If you’re going to do anything significant in life, you must push past the discomfort. In doing so, you’ll also set a great example for people around you and earn their trust and respect.

In 2001, CEG Worldwide founder John Bowen conducted a survey of financial professionals. His question: “Do you think you’re client-centered?” Every one of them answered yes.

No surprise there. Most advisors care about their clients and, I suspect, that’s what these advisors thought John was asking them about. But when asked to apply twelve (12) objective criteria, only 14% of the advisors’ businesses were actually all about the clients. The majority of these businesses were set up to cater to the advisor’s preferences. (FYI, the 14% who were truly focused on clients were also attracting as much as 30 times as many assets under management as investment-centered advisors and doing especially well in the downturn that began the year the survey was taken.)

The truth is there are a lot of people who think they are client-centered, and who don’t behave that way. What’s more, most advisors agree that their businesses should be all about their clients, but they’ve never formulated or implemented a plan for actualizing this ideal. It’s the same as folks who say, “I have a healthy lifestyle,” but then smoke cigarettes and eat poorly. Maybe they go to a tanning salon and the gym so they can look good, but they really aren’t creating a health-centered life.

You can probably come up with dozens of new ideas for making your business all about them. Then again, maybe you’re stymied. Perhaps you’re thinking, I’d really like to do a lot more than I do for my clients, but another thought also crosses your mind: I don’t have the time, the energy, the staff, the knowledge, or the resources.

Your rationale may even include the idea that your clients won’t let you do more for them. I recently heard this at a meeting with the CEO of a major insurance company in California. He made an offhand remark about the wonderful things the agents do for “the clients who will let us.” I couldn’t just let that pass without comment, so I told him it shouldn’t be up to his clients. Of course, a client can choose whether or not they work with one of his agents at all, but the CEO needed to decide what level of service they were going to provide to everyone who works with them. When you get on an airplane and the flight attendant closes the door, does the pilot ask, “Does everyone want me to fly the plane today?” or “Does everyone agree with my flight plan?” An airline doesn’t give its passengers discretion about whether to board the plane on time or not, whether to take off as scheduled, whether to divert to another airport at their whim. And why not? Because the other passengers suffer when the pilot abdicates his responsibility to serving all of them equally.

How does this translate to your profession? When you commit to having an all-about-them business, you do what’s right for the clients. Period. No hemming or hawing, no allowing them to dictate how you run your business. You figure out what is in their best interests, and then you do it. You don’t simply revere the idea of doing what’s right for them; you actually implement every time. As Guy Kawasaki wrote in The Macintosh Way, you don’t compete on strategy; you compete on execution.

I know you really care about your clients and would really love to run an all-about-them business, but the question is how? How do you go from running your practice as it is now to operating the kind of business that puts the clients first? And if you think you already run a business that’s all about them, then how do you take it to the next level?

1. If my business were really all about them, how often would each client see me each year, and how much time would they get?
2. If my business were really all about them, exactly what would I do for each person?
3. If my business were really all about them, how would I make my clients’ lives simpler?
4. If my business were really all about them, how would they pay me for this value?
5. If my business were really all about them, how many clients could I do all this for?
6. If my business were really all about them, how many people would staff my office?
7. If my business were really all about them, would I have strategic alliances and partners?
8. If my business were really all about them, how would I take care of myself physically and emotionally?

This should be your objective: Once you’ve brainstormed answers to the eight questions above, make a list of everything you will be delivering to your clients and how it benefits them. (If you’d like to see what one highly successful advisor calls his “10 Client Deliverables,” go to www.TrustedAdvisorToolkit.com. You will be surprised, I imagine, to find that many of these benefits create a better, more manageable business for you, too.

For example, if you were to spend the kind of time with your clients they deserve, that would probably mean less clients, which would mean you’d need to work with clients who yield you more income per capita. You’d need to be extremely competent to work with these folks, and they’d expect you to be focused on your professional growth. Ultimately, you’d need to figure out a way to run a business that allowed you to become very good at what you do, to limit the number of clients, and to serve all of them very well.

So no doubt there’s a learning curve to contend with, new management practices to adopt, staffing issues to resolve, and client contact to be made. And that’s probably not all. It’s not an easy thing, being client-centered. But if you’re going to make it all about them, it’s what you have to do.