Lowder / DeVries Trusted Advisor Confidential

The Insider''s Guide To Landing Right-fit Clients
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-957651-63-7
Verlag: Indie Books International
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 125 Seiten

Reihe: Trusted Advisor Confidential

Being a trusted advisor means you are good at what you do. There is a myth that if you do good work, then clients will find you. However, just being good is not good enough. The biggest mystery for trusted advisors is how to attract increasing numbers of right-fit clients on a regular basis, without wasting time or money. Trusted Advisor Confidential shows you the secret to letting the stars guide your business development efforts with the NavSTAR Client Acquisition System. This six star proactive system enables trusted advisors to generate a significant, predictable, and sustainable book of business.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lowder, Craig

Devries, Henry

Leseproben

2 Insider’s Guide To Landing High-Paying Clients: Meet The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. Poet John Masefield Quit being reactive in your client acquisition efforts. Start being proactive. A proactive system enables trusted advisors to generate a significant, predictable, and sustainable book of business. Proactive client acquisition can systematically produce results when applied correctly and managed scientifically. The main message of this book is this: client acquisition is a science that must be artfully executed, especially by trusted advisors. Like any other science, there are scientific client acquisition principles to follow. Much like in the field of medicine, there needs to be a diagnosis before a prescription. The diagnosis, while artfully detected, is based on a body of knowledge. After a prescription, there needs to be intense monitoring of the patient. In medicine, they call it the vital signs. In client acquisition, we call it the key performance indicators (KPIs). Here is the good news. The dream of creating a client acquisition system that will generate significant, predictable, and sustainable book-of-business growth is obtainable; however, you must try to learn how other successful trusted advisors have done it and then apply that knowledge. The Added Benefits The primary benefit of adopting a proactive and systematic approach is to generate significant, predictable, and sustainable book-of-business growth. Here is a rundown of the other key benefits: Shorter Client Acquisition Cycle. There is an adage in business development that time kills deals. The longer a deal takes to close, the less likely it will actually close. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System seeks to close more deals by shortening the buying process. Higher Lead-To-New-Client Conversion Rates. Leads are like at bats in baseball. Increasing your batting average means converting more of the leads into new clients. Small increases in conversion rates can have a huge impact on gross income and net personal income growth. More Upselling And Cross-Selling Opportunities. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System helps trusted advisors focus on the number of deals. Increasing the number of transactions can significantly affect gross income and net personal income growth. Larger Transaction Sizes. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System helps trusted advisors focus not just on the number of deals but also the size of the deal. Increasing transaction size can significantly affect gross income and net personal income growth. More Profitable Client Acquisition. A culprit for lower gross profit client acquisition is discounting. Many trusted advisors have bought into the belief that discounting is the only way to close new business. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System seeks to minimize discounting and raise gross profit margins. Longer Client Retention. A proactive approach helps trusted advisors focus on retaining the “right” existing clients for a longer period of time. Extending client retention time frames can appreciably increase gross income and net personal income growth. More Cost-Effective Lead Generation. One of the tragedies for trusted advisors is the number of wasted leads. Another tragedy is when leads are generated inefficiently and/or ineffectively. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System will assist you in measuring your lead-generation cost-effectiveness. Better ROI On Marketing. By eliminating lead waste, the natural result is an increased return on investment from marketing. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System will assist you in measuring your marketing ROI. Less Trusted Advisor Stress. Overall, the NavSTAR Client Acquisition System reduces stress on growth-minded trusted advisors. When trusted advisors have a client acquisition system they can count on, they can produce more predictable and sustainable client acquisition results. The Voyage Begins With Personal Dreams Before setting out on their voyage, a trusted advisor needs to determine their destination by specifying and documenting their personal dreams, the things they really want out of life for themselves and their loved ones. The best way to do this would be by developing a bucket list and/or a vision chart of their ideal life if they had all the time and money in the world to live that life. Once a trusted advisor’s personal dreams have been documented and internalized, now is the time to delve into how one’s professional goals are aligned to support one’s dreams by mapping out goals and action plans designed to ensure life abundance. The following story illustrates one such trusted advisor journey. The Margaret Reynolds Story If you tear up at a Hallmark card or movie, Margaret Reynolds might be the reason why. Reynolds began her career at Hallmark Cards Inc., where she held executive roles of general manager and lead strategic officer. She was known for her natural inquisitiveness and innovative inclinations, never resting with the status quo. She became a trusted advisor when she opened her independent consulting practice in Kansas City in 2001, and by 2008 had added a second office in Nashville. What was the key to her business development success? The answer is knowing the numbers. Tracking metrics for leading indicators can provide an early warning system that is invaluable to any business, giving it more time to react and increasing the probability of achieving breakthrough growth. “Leading indicators are measures of progress on key variables that determine if the strategy is working,” says Reynolds, author of the 2015 book that coauthor Henry DeVries helped her publish, Reignite: How Everyday Companies Spark Next-Stage Growth.3 NavSTAR Client Acquisition System Strategy #3 The “Book Is The Starting Line” strategy: A book is the number one marketing tool, and a speech is the number one marketing strategy for trusted advisors to attract high-paying clients. A book is the best business card/brochure a trusted advisor could ever produce. The right book can be an asset to every trusted advisor on the team. Her book is part of her proactive system. The book helps her speak regularly before C-level executives. In her book and her talks, Reynolds explains: “Sometimes, as organizations track leading indicators and anticipate being off at year-end, they will perform short-term heroics to supplement strategic results, such as holding a fire sale.” Trusted advisors in rough income seas are frequently tempted to do the same thing. “While this may help in the short run, leading indicators suggest that implementation is not achieving the desired results and either the implementation effort is falling short or the strategy needs to be revisited,” says Reynolds, who authored a second book, Boost Your GrowthDNA, in 2019, as part of her smooth selling strategy.4 A trusted advisor who wants to be seen as a thought leader does not author just one book. The NavSTAR Client Acquisition System: An Overnight Success Thirty Years In The Making If you are about to embark on a proactive business development voyage, you need to know who the skipper is and their first mate. Okay, so here is the truth about the skipper, straight up. Lead author Craig Lowder, creator of the NavSTAR Client Acquisition System, didn’t go to Harvard, didn’t go to Stanford, and you won’t find a bunch of letters after his name. “I once went as far as having MBA on my business card, but you won’t find it there anymore,” he says. “Mine was a blue-collar family just outside the rust belt, where I learned that it’s not only what you know, but how you apply it,” says Lowder. “I learned a couple of other important lessons back then that still serve me today.” One is that teamwork is a critical component of success anywhere—whether you are playing shortstop on a baseball field or navigating the challenges of the global economy. That’s why as president of his own business development consulting firm, Craig only works with trusted advisors who are willing to listen, think, and contribute to their own personal development and their company’s success. Success comes to a team, not individuals. Coauthor Henry DeVries has similar philosophies. Inspired by his business partner Mark LeBlanc’s teachings, Henry has a profile of his ideal fit client he wants to work with on business development and book publishing. Craig’s second lesson is nothing beats experience. “I’ve been mentored by some of the best in the business—people like Brad Sugars, Verne Harnish, Larry Wilson, Jeffrey Gitomer, Keith Cunningham, and Mark LeBlanc—but I’ve learned the best teacher is experience,” says Craig. And Craig has had his share. During his thirty-plus years as a business development manager and trusted advisor, he has worked with over sixty B2B and B2C companies and individual trusted advisors, increasing their gross income by 22 to 142 percent the following year. But it has not all been smooth sailing. Through it all, Craig has seen the good and...