In his speaking engagements, Bill describes Being Done™ as when your practice has evolved to a point that you serve a finite number of clients and no longer have to spend time marketing yourself. He goes on to describe how this allows you to recapture the time you would have spent marketing yourself and redirected it towards serving your clients.
Because many Advisors and Managers have been exposed to what I call Old World sales training, there is a pronounced tendency to misinterpret what Bill says. The most common misconception is, “He just told us to stop growing our client-base,” and that is not even remotely true.
Being Done™ is really a reality check. By definition, everyone … in every industry …has to be “Done” at some point. That's because the Being Done™ is driven by the relationship between quality and time.
Quality is a controllable element of business. You determine the level of quality you want the market to associate with your performance (or you embrace the level of quality your firm establishes, if you are not an independent Advisor). That level of quality you provide becomes one of the most critical factors of your performance and market positioning, and delivering it requires a certain amount of time.
Time, on the other hand, is a non-controllable element. There are only 168 hours in the week, and there is nothing you or I can do about it. In combination with quality, the limitation of time forces us to accept the reality that we can only serve a finite number of clients.
There inherently comes a time when you reach a “saturation point.” This is the point when the maximum number of hours you have to serve your clients has been exhausted. For you to serve any additional clients requires one of two things: a degradation of the quality of the service you provide … or the creation of more time. Correspondingly, a degradation in the quality of service you provide offers a high potential for damaging your reputation and creating a higher rate of client attrition. Additionally, it is almost impossible to create time without risking the balance in your life (i.e., sacrificing personal time to fulfill expanded business commitments).
While the first additional client or two in excess of your saturation point may not have any significant impact, the problem grows exponentially over time. It also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of long-term failure because as quality deteriorates, client attrition accelerates … and from a corporate perspective, Advisor attrition accelerates as well.
The Old World solution is to ignore the time restriction and “just work harder” with the goal being to add more clients faster than you are losing them. The problem is that you generally cannot add them quickly enough and your reputation is heading the wrong direction. So, choosing to ignore the reality that you can only serve a finite number of clients only serves to fuel a bad decision. At some point, you have to admit that Being Done™ applies to you because you just cannot avoid the limitation brought about by time.
You see, the Old World approach is predicated on the non-sequitor that “all revenue is good revenue.” That is a fairly myopic view of business because growth is only good if it is profitable, and damaged reputations as well as client and Advisor attrition all carry a cost.
The reality is: good business is not all about Revenue. It is really all about establishing a high-trust relationship with your clients and delivering a consistent quality of service. That is what drives practice optimization and profitable growth. The New World model recognizes that consumer expectations are changing. Consumers are becoming more demanding of service since product differentiation is fairly nominal. Most companies can offer competitive products. Their point of departure is based upon how well they serve their clients.
The Old World model creates an environment in which clients only entrust 20 to 25 percent of their financial needs to any individual Advisor (i.e., they rely on four to five Advisors instead of one). The New World model focuses on developing a high-trust relationship with clients, consistently delivering a high-quality of comprehensive services, and growing by qualified referrals. That behavior pattern earns a greater percentage of the client’s business and places his or her trust in one Advisor … you! As a result, the New World model typically attracts 100 percent of the client’s financial needs. That is a 4:1 or 5:1 advantage in revenue with no additional infrastructure cost and your marketing efforts become driven by your existing clients.
In the New World paradigm, you inherently:
(1) Grow faster and more profitably;
(2) Reduce client attrition and thus sustain profitability;
(3) Reduce the cost associated with Advisor attrition and loss of productivity (from a firm’s perspective); and,
(4) Lower your Compliance exposure (because an emphasis on quality rather than marketing reduces the probability of errors). By definition, when you run out of time and refuse to allow the quality of your services to degrade, you are “Done.”
While this all makes sense from an independent Advisor’s perspective, what if you are managing multiple Advisors? The good news is that it still makes sense … because, from a corporate perspective, you have the capacity to create time. You do that by adding Advisors who follow the New World model. As they optimize their contribution to your firm’s business by growing profitably and preserving your firm’s reputation in the communities you serve (be they local, national or international), you simply add Advisors to create more time. After all, the time that needs to be created is the time that is spent serving clients, and that translates into an expansion of your Advisor-base. The key is to keep all Advisors within the firm focused on Being Done™.
Since time dictates that you can only serve a finite number of clients, Being Done™ has another parameter: you are not “Done” until you are only serving clients who fit your Ideal Client Profile. An Ideal Client Profile defines the monetary and personal characteristics of people you enjoy serving. Why not develop a practice that ultimately focuses on individuals you fundamentally enjoy and who also appreciate working with you?
This is another break from the Old World paradigm that “all clients are good clients” (a corollary to “all revenue is good revenue”). The reality is that all clients are not created equal. Do you presently serve people who are difficult and who refuse to implement the recommendations you make in their best interests? Or do you serve people who cannot afford the level of service you offer? If so, have you ever asked yourself why?
Old World sales training makes serving difficult clients almost part of a game. Have you ever heard the term “overcoming objections?” The next time you hear it, ask yourself, “Why would I want to waste my time serving people who object to my recommendations?” There are 300 million people in the United States alone; surely you can identify enough individuals who can afford your services and who appreciate them rather than spending your time serving individuals who either cannot afford you or do not respect your advice.
To optimize your practice, you need to develop a short list of criteria that clearly identifies the characteristics you seek in an Ideal Client (e.g., some defined level of income or net worth, a willingness to delegate the management of their financial resources to a professional; a demonstrated level of community involvement, etc.); whatever characteristics appeal to you as an individual. By clearly identifying the type of clients you are interested in serving, you can clearly communicate the related characteristics to the clients you presently serve; thereby, helping them refer appropriate individuals whom they think would enjoy working with you. Imagine day-after-day, working with people you enjoy and who respect and follow your advice. How would that impact the way you feel about your career and the way you show up for work?
Corporate management might be shuddering at this point, “What about all those clients who don’t fit the Advisor’s Ideal Client Profile?” The short answer is that those clients can be retained and served as well … and in a more intelligent manner. Rather than force relationships that “don’t fit,” Non-Ideal Clients can be reassigned to Advisors whose Ideal Client Profile better correlates with those clients’ characteristics. For example: suppose a client’s income or net worth is below the standards of a top performer. That client’s economic characteristics might be well within the range of a more junior Advisor. Similarly, a client’s personal characteristics might be more in alignment with one Advisor’s Ideal Client Profile than they are with another Advisor’s Ideal Client Profile (i.e., one Advisors favors serving individuals who are dedicated to their faith; another Advisor does not). Why not match the Advisors and clients in a way that is beneficial to both? By doing so, you lower the risk of attrition of both parties, which has a huge impact on productivity and profitability.
Another reality is that some clients do not merit being served by a direct channel (i.e., by physically sitting in the presence of an Advisor). Large firms should follow the lead of other industries by providing different “channels of distribution” to serve those needs. For example: use 800 numbers to serve clients who are more collaborative and consistently seek, but do not necessarily follow, advice; or create website applications to serve the needs of do-it-yourselfers whose sole criterion might be to “shop price.” By matching the channel to the needs of the consumer, you will inherently improve service (from that client’s perspective) and expand the profitability of your firm by lowering the cost of the channel.
In the New World paradigm, you have to admit:
• Time is uncontrollable and at some point you will run out of it
• Other than through expansion (or the use of other channels), you cannot create time for business purposes without sacrificing personal time in a way that negatively impacts the quality of your life
• The quality of your life contributes to your job satisfaction as well as your personal satisfaction
• You can identify the span and quality of services you are committed to provide
• You can identify the type of clients you genuinely enjoy serving who correspondingly value the span and quality of services you are committed to provide
• You can communicate your Ideal Client Profile to your existing clients
• Your time is better spent serving clients than it is prospecting for them
• You can identify other Advisors (or channels) to serve those clients who do not fit your Ideal Client Profile
• You are a professional and deserve to enjoy what you do and take pride in how you do it.
If you can admit to the above, you have taken the first step on your way to Being Done™. It is not a threatening concept; it is merely a reflection of the limitation of time … and how to leverage it. I encourage you to explore the reality of Being Done™ and the life-changing impact it can have on your commitment and focus to provide the best quality of service to yourself, your clients and your industry. May your journey to Being Done™ begin today!
