Stop Asking for Referrals: A Revolutionary New Strategy for Building a Financial Service Business that Sells Itself by Stephen Wershing

Author:Stephen Wershing [Wershing, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 2012-09-10T14:00:00+00:00

BECOME THE BRAND

Owning a spot on your client’s brain means that you have described and reinforced the specific kind of client and client problem in which you specialize so thoroughly that when anyone describes that problem to one of your clients, he cannot help but have you pop into his mind. Your goal is to establish so firmly in your client’s mind the particular prospect circumstance you seek that when someone describes it to him and tickles that spot on his brain, your name naturally will fall out of his mouth.

Every time you describe what you do and for whom—on your website, in your marketing materials, and in the articles and white papers you write—you must reinforce that special skill and value. Everything about how you describe your practice needs to promote that particular benefit and advance your claim on that spot in your client’s brain a little bit further.

When you can make your firm synonymous with the solution your target clients are looking for, new business will arrive automatically.

When you need to blow your nose, what do you call the thing you reach for? A Kleenex, of course. But that’s not what it is. It’s a facial tissue. So why don’t we call it that? Because the brand Kleenex has done such a superior job of identifying itself with the solution a facial tissue represents that we all have come to call the generic solution by the brand name. We might ask for a tissue, but it is highly unlikely that we would ask for a Puffs or a Scottissue or a Windsoft. Even if we buy one of those brands, there is a good chance we still ask someone to pass us a Kleenex.

When you want canned fruit suspended in a jiggly green mold, what do you look for? Jell-O. And if you say Jell-O to anyone, they know instantly what you’re talking about, even though it is not the only brand of instant gelatin. And although it is not quite as common as it used to be, the verb for duplicating documents used to be Xerox. As in, “Would you please Xerox this in time for the meeting?”

So what does all this have to do with financial advice, anyway? The idea of your brand becoming identified with a particular solution or experience can help you to build your firm the same way it helped those consumer products to achieve market dominance.

Rob Brown is an attorney who specializes in employee stock ownership plans. It is all he does. While his firm goes by the typical Four Names, LLP, its website is www.esopplus.com. He has a national reputation for counseling business owners who are interested in the idea of employee ownership, and not just as a succession strategy. Perhaps most impressive, partners at large regional and national law firms unhesitatingly refer clients to him if the topic of employee ownership comes up. (Most of the time, partners in larger firms will refer only to specialists within their own firm. You can get some serious demerits for referring business outside the firm.

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