Reputation trumps referrals

In Cerulli’s research, many clients cited reputation as the main reason for selecting a new advisor, with referrals coming in second. (Other important factors were quality of service and fees.) Reputation especially mattered among older and younger clients, with one-third of clients over age 80 and almost 20% of clients in their 30s pointing to an advisor’s reputation as the critical factor in their decision.

Your profile in your target client community has always been important, but this research gives added urgency to managing your reputation. Today, you need to treat your reputation as an essential business asset, just as you would any other critical asset in your business. Your reputation is too important to be left to chance; you need a plan to build your profile and reputation in the community that you serve.

Let’s suppose you decide to invest three or four hours a week to enhance your profile and reputation. Here are four ways to spend that time:

– Take a lead role in the right charity

Many advisors are extensively engaged in good works, not with any business goal in mind but simply as a way of giving back to their community. Any efforts to make your community stronger should be applauded. But if your goal, in addition to giving back, is to build visibility among existing and prospective clients, then something else is required – and that’s to stand out by having a leadership role.

When I talk to advisors who report that community activity had an important role in building their businesses, they invariably held a visible position. If part of your motivation for volunteering is the impact on your reputation, you’re better off focusing your efforts and becoming a leader in one organization than attending meetings of four or five groups but never playing a senior role. Once you’ve decided on the organization on which to focus your efforts, a simple rule of thumb is to volunteer to serve on the fundraising committee. Fundraising is both critically important and the task that typically has the least number of volunteers eager to help.

Picking the right charity is important as well. In many communities, the most “prestigious” charities also have the most competition from other volunteers. Again, if part of your goal is to enhance your reputation, you’re better off focusing on a charity that’s one or two steps down in glamour.

– Get published

Writing for a key publication is the starting point for many advisors who seek to enhance their reputation. First, spend a couple of hours reading past issues of the key publication for your target audience. Then, contact the editor, explain that you work with a number of members of that audience and ask if you could submit an article on the key financial challenges for this target community. If the answer is yes, ask about guidelines for column length.

Research the target community’s particular problems and needs. Get this initial article right. Before submitting it, run it by a couple of members of the target group to get their suggestions.

Now, let’s assume the publication runs your article. Your next step is to follow up with the editor to explore his or her interest in a followup piece, with the ultimate goal of becoming an ongoing contributor. Don’t expect the phone to ring when those articles appear. Remember, the reason you’re doing this is not because people reading your article will call you; it’s to be able to post a link to your site as a credibility builder and enable you to reach out proactively to members of your target group.

As an example, one advisor I have talked to specializes in working with faculty members at a large local university to convert their pensions after they retire. Fifteen years ago, he started with one client in this group and spent the time to understand the intricacies of the options for retiring faculty. He then approached the person responsible for the quarterly newsletter for faculty. Since then, this advisor’s column on financial planning has run in every issue of that newsletter. That column has been instrumental in making the advisor the safe choice for faculty at that university, who today represent more than half of his clients.

While writing articles is a great credibility builder, there’s nothing like having your website list you as an “author” (and offering interested prospects a copy of your book). Whether an e-book or a hardcover volume, technology has made self-publishing a book easy and cost-effective. In an interview last autumn, an advisor described how publishing a book helped to position him with existing and prospective clients alike.

– Get quoted in the press

To become the go-to expert for a group, spend 30 minutes each week reading the publications that target them and that they read. Not only will you learn more about this group’s issues, but you can watch out for articles that touch on financial or business topics.

Drop a note to the writers of those articles, commenting on what they’ve written. Your goal is to make a positive comment, but also point out something they may have missed. If you’ve been published, you can attach an article you’ve written. The author of the article may be an employee or a freelancer who does ongoing work for the publication. In either case, your goal is to position yourself as a resource that he or she can talk to and quote for future articles. If the writer lives in your city, suggest connecting over a coffee to talk about the challenges that you hear from the group that you’re serving. And, again, post links to any articles in which you’re quoted on your website.

An advisor I know who specializes in planning for people approaching or in the early stages of retirement is the go-to source for journalists in his city. Whenever he sees an article on retirement issues, he contacts the journalist responsible. Because this advisor is knowledgeable and works on delivering pithy quotes, he has become the safe choice for local journalists writing on retirement planning issues.

– Build an online brand

The final way to build your reputation, especially if you’re targeting a younger demographic, is to build your online brand. Here’s an excerpt from an article on this subject by Brian Lauzon from the U.S. website Wealth Management.com:

“Defining a differentiated brand and value proposition by becoming a thought leader for their target market is one way advisors with limited resources can foster their reputation, and making their work “findable” online will help get it noticed. Collectively known as content marketing, producing, collecting and sharing content that appeals to a particular audience is an incredibly effective (and accessible) way to position oneself as an expert.

“Blogging, content curation and social media are three tactics available to any advisor with ideas that they wish to share and an audience with whom they are willing to engage. Think of content marketing as a supercharged replacement for the quarterly newsletter. The message is far less dependent on the timing of its dissemination and its value accrues over time because it resides on the web waiting to be found by future prospects.

“Younger generations do their own homework. Rather than seek the opinion of their peers, their first instinct is to turn to the almighty purveyor of knowledge and expertise (Google) and figure it out for themselves.”

The benefits of a strong reputation aren’t limited to converting prospects. The stronger your reputation within your target community, the more comfortable clients will feel in introducing you to their friends.

Spending three or four hours a week elevating your profile by using one of these strategies could be one of the best investments you make.

Dan Richards is CEO of Clientinsights (www.clientinsights.ca) in Toronto. For more of Dan’s columns and informative videos, visit www.investmentexecutive.com.

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