Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide, previously worked as a financial advisor and firm executive. He served successively as CEO of Reinhardt Werba Bowen Advisory Services and Assante Capital Management.

Expert Positioning

When it comes to choosing their advisors, affluent investors care more about one characteristic than any other. If you think it's investment acumen, you're wrong. Your reputation? Sorry. It's not even client service. Instead, what prospective clients value most is your level of expertise.

Consider that 91% of high-net-worth investors in a 2006 study cited "overall expertise" as a very important reason for selecting their advisor. By contrast, just 65.2% cited reputation as a key factor, while a mere 26.6% said the advisor's investment performance was a main driver of the selection decision.

EXPERT POSITIONING
This is easier said than done for many advisors, who are uncomfortable describing themselves as experts. They think they need to get some sort of license or other official qualification in order to call themselves an expert. Not so. The way to become known as an expert is simply to raise your hand and call attention to yourself and your knowledge.

You may be uncomfortable with the concept of being perceived as an expert, but remember this: You don't have to know everything. In our work with hundreds of nationally recognized "experts," we can say with assurance that none of them knows everything. These advisors have mastered the art of positioning themselves as experts, and because they are perceived as experts, they are. But remember, once you've named yourself an expert, credibility becomes your bottom line, so you had better back up your claim with creative and effective insights.

Positioning is, in fact, the art of controlling perceptions-how clients and prospects see you and your team. Your goal is to be first in the minds of members of your market niche. There are four steps to positioning yourself successfully as the expert that affluent investors need you to be: identify your compelling value proposition, write your positioning statement, create your elevator speech and deliver your call to action.

THE VALUE PROPOSITION
Over the years, you've developed a specific skill set that you can provide to your clients. These skills might be in the areas of asset management, financial planning, retirement planning or others. But while your particular skills are very important, research tells us that clients and prospects are looking for something that goes deeper than a specific skill set. They want an advisor who is an expert at solving their financial challenges.

Your first step in effective positioning is to claim your value proposition—your expertise in solving your clients' financial challenges—and commit to being seen as the expert they want. Recognize that affluent investors have five key concerns they would like their advisors to help them address successfully:

• Preserving wealth. Most affluent clients were worried about losing their wealth even before this market downturn. Today they want help making smart decisions about their money. Many have lost confidence in their current advisors and even in the financial markets as a whole.
• Minimizing taxes. Mitigating income taxes is a concern for most investors with net worths of $1 million or more. For investors with especially high net worths, minimizing estate and capital gains taxes is also important.
• Effective estate and gift transfer. Ensuring that heirs, parents, children and grandchildren are taken care of with minimal difficulty and cost, in accordance with their wishes, is a major issue for the affluent.
• Wealth protection. Affluent investors want to keep wealth safe from potential creditors, litigants, children's spouses and potential ex-spouses, as well as from catastrophic loss.
• Charitable giving. Helping to facilitate and increase the effectiveness of their charitable intent is crucial to many high-net-worth investors.
  
  

The best way for top advisors to address these key concerns is through the wealth management process. Many position themselves as their clients' personal chief financial officer, who helps them think through their challenges while working with them (and their other advisors) to determine and implement solutions.

POSITIONING STATEMENT
Your positioning statement is a clear, brief description of the value you provide to your clients and prospects. It's a proclamation that should resonate with the members of your market niche. For instance, at CEG Worldwide, our positioning statement is: "We coach advisors to build simple and elegant wealth management businesses while becoming indispensable to affluent clients." When I worked as an advisor with corporate executives, my positioning statement was: "I help senior executives make work optional."

To create your own unique positioning statement, you first must determine who the ideal clients are that you will serve. What are their specific and unique needs? What benefits can you provide that they can't get from other advisors and competitors? Consider possibilities by inserting the name of your target market into each of the following:

• "I help (my niche) make work optional."
• "I help (my niche) make smart decisions about their money, so they can spend more time doing what they love."
• "I give (my niche) peace of mind."

As you can see, a great positioning statement has a strong promise of benefits to your ideal clients. It also offers to solve a problem that already exists in their minds. It must make your offer appear different from and better than your competitors' appeals.

Above all, it must be believable to you and your prospects. Try writing some out. You'll know you've hit on the right statement when you read one that tells the world what you really do—one that you feel both confident and passionate about.

THE ELEVATOR SPEECH
You'll need to be able to communicate your positioning statement briefly, on demand and in a compelling manner to members of your target market. A classic marketing tool, the elevator speech will quickly communicate your value to prospects in your niche. The elevator speech is important to your business development efforts and well worth spending the time required to perfect it.

One key to crafting a winning elevator speech is to keep it short, simple and concise. Imagine yourself riding in an elevator or sitting at a cocktail party or dinner, and an ideal prospect asks, "What do you do?" You have only the length of an elevator ride to describe in a compelling and memorable manner how you would solve an important challenge or fill a key need for that prospect.

A CALL TO ACTION
Say you make your elevator speech and the person expresses interest. You then want to deliver your call to action—a specific step the prospect should take to capitalize on the value you described in your elevator speech. Your call to action is typically to have the prospect schedule a meeting with you.

Draft at least two versions of your elevator speech and call to action, trying out each on staff and friends. Once you've decided on an effective version, practice it until giving the speech is second nature. Then begin to use your speech and call to action in your conversations when appropriate.

Your efforts to grow your business will benefit if you take the time to position yourself as an expert at meeting the needs of your niche market. So step up to the plate and take the risk of being an expert. By focusing your marketing efforts on this area that investors care about so deeply, you'll soon start pulling away from the pack and building a successful business full of ideal clients whom you look forward to serving.

Reprinted from: Financial Planning