Why Are Core Values Important?

Business growth, hiring the right people, and attracting your Ideal Clients –that's what establishing your Core Values can do for your business.  Entrepreneurs that fail to identify their Core Values are missing a great opportunity to grow both personally and professionally.  By identifying your Core Values you could completely change your business and where you are going in the future.

Ponder these questions:

*What does your company really stand for?

*What values are important to you?

*What do your clients receive from your company that is of great value?

At some point, you'll need to hire additional staff if you want to grow your business and have a life at the same time. When writing your employment ad, how will you position your company so that you attract talented, ambitious people? You can start with telling them what your company stands for and what you believe in.

When meeting with prospects, you'll want to educate them on your guiding principles and what makes you different. Communicating your Core Values helps you to attract the kind of clients that you are best at serving.  

Sample Core Values:

Responsibility – Transparency - Full Disclosure – We are paid to manage clients' accounts and there is full disclosure as to how we are paid.

Ethics – Honesty – Integrity – We do what's right for the client.

Holistic Approach - We look at our clients' entire financial situation, not just their investments.

Security – Protection – Safety - We help to limit risk for our clients.

Teamwork – Everyone in our office works together as a team to help our clients accomplish their goals.

What do you do with your core Values once you've created them? Write Your Mission Statement Based on Your Values.

At some point in time solopreneurs and small business owners alike seek to grow their business, get new clients, and hire new employees. Core Values can help you accomplish these goals.

Suzanne Muusers

Business Coach for Financial Advisors

What Do Values Have to Do with Success?

Everything! Success comes to us easily if we know what makes us happy, what we VALUE, and what we stand for in life.

A person who has integrity knows what they value.  If we live life based on our values, we have integrity. We don't make mistakes as often as those who don’t know what they truly value.  Long term happiness comes from knowing what you value- what you STAND for in your business and your life.

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values." Dalai Lama

I'm helping an advisor reposition his practice in the market place. In essence you could say that he is reinventing himself.  After many years of experience, a great many lessons learned, and a dose of luck his practice has grown to provide a decent living but not the kind of fulfillment you might expect.  The advisor wasn't attracting the type clients that are a joy to for him to work with.  After working on his Mission Statement and Practice Values, he was able to draw to him just the kind of clients that are joyful and profitable.

Values are like a COMPASS – drawing to you what you want

Business success comes from running your business based on your values. Your passion comes out in the way you manage your business.  If you'd like to attract more ideal clients, read this "How to Article" about how you can create a Mission Statement based on your values.  The article has a long list of sample values and my own Mission Statement.

Grow Your Business and Prosper!

Suzanne Muusers

Business Coach for Entrepreneurs & Financial Advisors

Do you Really Know Your Ideal Clients?

I bet you think you know who your ideal clients are… but do you really?

One of the questions I ask prospects during a sample coaching session is "Who are your ideal clients?" I like to get a feel for how much work an advisor has done regarding finding out who their ideal clients are and what makes them tick. Once you find out what makes them tick, you can find out where they hang out, which makes your Marketing Plan much easier to implement.

Invariably I hear answers something like this:

"I work with individuals or business owners who have more than X investable assets"

"I target clients who are over age 50"

"I like clients who pay me"

"I work with clients who need advice"

If any of these answers sound like you, you may need to work on an Ideal Client Profile.

When we have a firm idea of our Ideal Clients it is far easier to find them and attract them.  An Ideal Client is your Target Client on steroids.  Take all the demographics and a dose of who you love working with and that is your Ideal Client.  What do your ideal clients do for a living? What organizations do your Ideal Clients belong to?  How can you fine tune your networking to attend events where your Ideal Client congregates?

 How to spot an Ideal Client:

• They know they need a financial advisor
• They are busy and don’t want to manage their investments
• They understand investing strategies, but want and need professional advice
• They have discretionary income to invest, at least $25,000 annually
• They meet your investable asset minimum ($100,000 to $500,000)
• They are fully honest with you and disclose their assets, debts, and goals
• They are willing to pay for your professional advice
• They will likely inherit a considerable sum in the future
• They are friendly and courteous
• They value your service
• They like and trust you
• They are ready for action
• They take responsibility for their decisions
• They have realistic expectations
• They are willing to invest in their long term financial success
• They act on your advice/suggestions
• They are open to new ideas
• They refer other A clients to you

One of the many benefits of engaging in deeper research regarding ideal clients is that you become more referable. If you're able to educate allied professionals about who you'd like as clients, you're more likely to get referrals to them. Make this an area you research this year!

Grow Your Business and Prosper!

Suzanne Muusers

Business Coach for Entrepreneurs & Financial Advisors

Marketing Plans, Target Clients, and Ideal Clients – part 3

Our house is almost built. We put together the foundation (our Target Clients), the walls (our Ideal Clients), and now we are attaching the roof (your Unique Strategic Position) to tie it all together.

Today we will examine how to use your Unique Strategic Position, or your expertise in your marketing plan. A Unique Strategic Position is how you stand out from the crowd. You’ve created a profile of your Ideal Client. You should now know where to find them. You’re getting an idea of their challenges, so now you’re ready to tweak your Unique Strategic Position.

Look for an unmet need in the marketplace and design a marketing tactic around that need. In the financial advisor example in part 1, I said “A great place to market your services would be at the local Home Builders Association.” By networking at events where your Ideal Clients congregate, you will have a much higher close ratio than if you went to your local chamber of commerce, where all types of business owners gather. Targeting your Ideal Client allows you to work and less and close more sales. You work less because you learn all about your Ideal Client’s challenges and you become used to solving the same set of problems.

In this example, you can create a Unique Strategic Position by designing marketing activities that help your Ideal Client. We all have problems or challenges no matter what industry we’re in. What type of special report can you write that helps your Ideal Client solve a problem? How can you position yourself as the expert ready to save the day?

For our financial advisor, he could create two marketing tactics.
1. Plan a talk to the Home Builders Association about the different types of retirement plans and the pros and cons of each.
2. Write an article or special report that addresses solutions to their problems

Suzanne Muusers
Grow Your Business & Prosper!
Business Coach for Entrepreneurs & Financial Advisors
http://www.prosperitycoaching.biz/

Marketing Plans, Target Clients, and Ideal Clients – part 2

Today I will be investigating how your Ideal Client makes a difference in your marketing plan.

An Ideal Client is your Target Client on Steroids. For instance, I work especially well with financial advisors. My Target Client is an independent male financial advisor aged 30-55 with assets under management from $40M to $200M and can reside in any state since I work via phone.

After interviewing several of my Ideal Clients, I came up with the following profile. My Ideal Client is already successful, but he realizes he could be doing far more than he is doing now. He can easily afford my fees and willingly hires me to help him bring in more assets under management, attract high net worth clients, get more organized, increase his profits and help him take more time off.

He recognizes that while he may be able to do this on his own, if he hires a business partner that doesn’t share in his profits, who pushes him to do more than he would on his own, he is likely to be more accountable and therefore more successful. He’s ready for action, takes FULL responsibility for his success and tells me when I am not pushing him enough. He’s open to new ideas and is willing to do some things that might be viewed as scary by other advisors who are not as successful as he is.

The best part about my financial advisor Ideal Client is that he refers business my way because he is such a big fan (he will refer entrepreneur clients to me, but probably not other financial advisors because he views me as his competitive advantage and doesn’t want other advisors to know he uses a business coach).

Differentiating your Ideal Client from your Target Client helps you create a laser sharp focus of exactly who you want to work with and eliminates those that are not right for you. And it helps you determine where to find your Ideal Client.

So my question for you is “Who is Your Ideal Client?”
Create a profile today of your Ideal Client so you can best figure out where to find them.

Suzanne Muusers
Grow Your Business & Prosper!
Business Coach for Entrepreneurs and Financial Advisors
http://www.prosperitycoaching.biz/

Marketing Plans, Target Clients, and Ideal Clients – part 1

Creating a marketing plan for your small business is like building a house. You need a foundation to build upon. You need supporting walls to hold up the structure. You need a roof to cover the building.

Far too many businesses have a throw it at the wall approach to marketing without a thought to strategy of how the whole house fits together. This makes for an ineffective marketing plan.

An effective marketing plan includes two very important elements: a strategy aimed at your Ideal Client using your Unique Strategic Position.

Today I will be explaining a Target Client in order to set the stage for how an Ideal Client is different and crucial in your marketing strategy.

If you’ve done much reading or taken any marketing courses you may have run across two terms related to clients: a Target Client and an Ideal Client. There are profound differences between the two.

A Target Client is a demographical profile of the type of customer you want to target. Clues to who you want to target lie in your current favorite clients. Examine your records to see if there are any patterns. Do you seem to have quite a few clients in a specific industry? Have you developed an idea of what it is they seem to need?

A Target Client Profile includes things like age, gender, profession, income, education, and geographical location. Completing this type of profile helps you establish where you will best find your clients.

How do you approach marketing? Do you decide what to do based upon products and services you already offer? Or do you try to find the holes in the structure of your target client’s abode? Do you look for unmet needs where you could slide in with the perfect solution and save the day?

An example: You are an independent financial advisor. You may find that your typical client is 45 to 60 year old male small business owner in the home building field who is concerned about taxes and having enough saved to fund retirement. He is also monitoring the cost of health insurance for his employees, the cost of managing his workplace 401(k) plan, and finding a buyer for his business when he retires.

A great place to market your services would be at the local Home Builders Association. What kind of short talk could you put together that addresses the concerns of this client?

Next time: Ideal Clients and Your Marketing Plan

Suzanne Muusers

Business Coach for Entrepreneurs and Financial Advisors

http://www.prosperitycoaching.biz/