Step One: Analyze Your Current Clients

The first step in re-starting your prospecting efforts is to analyze your current client households. To do this, you'll want to ask yourself a series of questions about your clients and your current and future business, such as;

1. What kind of business am I currently doing -- e.g., transactional? fee based? Trust? etc.
2. What kind of business do I want to do in the future?
3. How many households am I / my team currently serving? Remember, ideally around 100 households per financial advisor to provide premium service.
4. What are the average and median sizes of the assets I manage for the households I serve?
5. What percentage of each household's total investable assets do I manage?
6. What is the realistic potential for increasing that percentage?
7. Realistically, for each client household, what is the likelyhood that they will significantly increase their assets with me in the future?
8. What is the breakdown by revenue of the households I serve [this is another way of expressing question #4]?
9. How much time does an average top client household require to serve? [Both your time AND your staff's.]
10. How much time does an average bottom client household require to serve? [Again, both your time and your staff's.]
11. What kind of referrals has each household provided in the past?
12. What is their realistic potential for providing good referrals in the future?
13. What is the demographic breakdown of my current clientele?

That's a lot of questions. However, too few financial advisors /teams take the time to regularly analyze their business to determine how they are generating revenues, the quality of service they provide to all clients, etc. Unfortunately, the first wakeup call for many is clients leaving for advisors / teams that provide better service.

Answer these questions about your clientele and, based upon the answers, segment your households into five groups. Remember the 80 / 20 rule ; you receive 80 percent of your revenue from the top twenty prercent of your clients. How much time and potential revenue are you wasting on the bottom twenty percent of your clients? Next time, we'll discuss how to improve both your efficiency and your client service matrix. Thanks. kfg