Thursday, December 8, 2011

Tis the Season to Socialize

Toronto: “I had three client appointments cancel last week,” moaned Anthony, then adding in some frustration “I’m not going to bother chasing down people during December, nobody want to discuss business during the holidays.”

Anthony was obviously upset and his emotions weren’t allowing him to think clearly. Without boring you with our entire conversation, suffice it to say I shifted the conversation to the motto elite advisors adhere to throughout the holidays; tis the season to socialize.

Amongst the many nuggets uncovered in our latest affluent research, there is one factoid that every advisor working with affluent clients must understand; advisors who socialize with their affluent clients have 3xs the center-of-influence penetration over advisors who only have a business relationship. This presupposes that the advisor has a healthy business relationship in both cases. The same factoid holds true for referral alliance partners; CPAs, attorneys and the like.

One might think that once advisors are armed with this information that they’d make socializing with their affluent clients a priority. Not so. For some reason, many advisors struggle with the concept of mixing business with pleasure. From our perspective, this type of strategic socializing should be part of an advisor’s marketing budget. And the holiday season is the ideal time to invest both your time and money into getting social with your affluent clients, referral alliances, and their respective centers-of-influence.

Let me walk you through five simple ‘Tis the Season steps that might help you breeze through this holiday season like an elite advisor...

1. Make a list of the clients, referral alliance partners (CPAs, attorneys, etc.), and active pipeline prospects that you can get face-to-face with during this window.

2. Take your calendar and start mapping out how you envision your social schedule to play-out through December. Lunch, dinner, drinks, parties, and so on. This requires pairing social activities with each individual on your list. Consider this your planning phase. But don’t let it overwhelm you, the idea is to use it as a starting point.

3. Determine your strategic intent for each social interaction; sourcing a name, having your client bring a guest for you to meet, asking to be introduced, gathering more personal information that can be used to “surprise and delight” sometime in the future, getting invited to a holiday party (You’ll find yourself getting invited naturally; you won’t have to force it.) and so on.

4. If can’t possibly make all the invitation calls yourself, carefully assign these “strategic socializing” names amongst your team. Be careful with this, many of these people will need a personal invitation by you. Regardless, as you work to fill your calendar it’s a good idea to have twice a day huddles with your team, morning and evening, to make certain everyone is on the same page with your calendar.

5. Attend every holiday party or social get-together you can that involves these affluent centers-of-influence. You’ll also want to host one or two of these events yourself. Remember, intimate events are more powerful – they don’t need to be big bashes, nor do they have to break the bank. They can be low-key as they’re social.

For those clients where geography makes it impossible for this type of personal socializing, a thoughtful gift (bottle of wine, champagne, fruit basket, etc.) is a nice touch. You’ll want to compliment your gift with a “holiday greetings” phone call.

As you probably have some, if not a lot of these steps already completed, use the above to stimulate your thoughts and conversation within your team. There is no one way to socialize with strategic intent, but not getting to know your clients and referral alliance partners on a personal level is a big mistake.

Tis the season to socialize!!