Everyone wants to work with the best and super-rich clients with $500 million or more are able to afford the services of the most talented, erudite and ingenious professionals. For wealth managers, lawyers, accountants and others, being aware of how the extremely wealthy source expertise is the roadmap to sourcing the super-rich.
There are three core ways the super-rich source professionals. In order of viability they are:
1. Referrals from other professionals: The most capable professionals know other professionals who are also extremely capable. So high-end private client lawyers know leading wealth managers and visa versa.
Your ability to develop strong business relationships with other non-competing professionals is almost always essential if you want to work with the wealthiest people in the world. These types of referrals are so powerful because you they transfer the hard-earned goodwill of the other professional to you. Also, the super-rich and the professional making the referral knows that if you—in any way—do not perform amazingly well, the relationship between the super-rich and the referring professional is likely to be damaged. The logic is that no professional would make such a referral unless you are really that good.
It is important to note that as you move up the wealth ladder to the super-rich and to the realm of billionaires, referrals from other professionals increasingly becomes the only reliable way to consistently access these extremely wealthy individuals.
2. Referrals from peers: With the goals of learning and networking, a growing number of the super-rich are increasingly attending exclusive national and international events. Your ability to constructively connect with them at these events is growing.
The super-rich have regularly attended Bilderberg and World Economic Forum events. However, more and more, they are joining mastermind groups, connecting with many successful individuals who are very willing to share their experiences with the professionals they employ.
3. Industry prominence: Some professionals are well known—for all the right reasons—among their peers (i.e., competitors) and other professionals who are also working with the super-rich. They have a powerful and influential professional brand that attracts wealthy clients and professionals.
Industry prominence plays a very powerful role, albeit often indirectly in the decision making processes of the super-rich, when it comes to finding new experts to work with. By creating or cultivating targeted expertise, you can establish yourself as a thought leader. As such, you are meaningfully improving your ability to attract very wealthy clients. Moreover, as a thought leader, you can intensify your ability to get referrals from other professionals and get referrals out of elite mastermind groups.
The approaches used by the super-rich to find experts to work with prove very useful in helping make sure they are engaging some of the very best. If your want to work with the exceptionally wealthy, you have to capitalize on how they source professionals.
Russ Alan Prince, president of R.A. Prince & Associates, is a consultant to family offices, the ultra-wealthy and select professionals.
