As a financial professional, you can take control of your own career and financial destiny. So how do you compete in a world of me-too products and indistinguishable service offerings? In a “smart people business,” how do you tell the right people that you’re one of the really smart ones?
In a word: brand.
Your brand must stand for something valuable in the minds of critical segments of the affluent and centers of influence. While only one piece of the entire marketing puzzle, your brand can be a very central piece.
Many professionals struggle with making potential clients aware of their expertise. Brands provide you with that awareness and are a shortcut to an emotional and intellectual connection with the affluent and centers of influence. Brands also add value to commoditized services and provide protection against competitors.
If you want to build your practice with the affluent, however, the answer is not a brand per se—it's a dual-impact brand. A high-quality and highly motivated professional with a powerful dual-impact brand can cultivate a disproportionate percentage of the wealthy as clients. Delivering professional services to this group requires that you upgrade from a traditional branding strategy that might appeal to only a singular affluent audience and to one that would appeal to two audiences: the affluent and centers of influence.
Your dual-impact brand results in a recognition premium. For example, it not only ameliorates pressure from the affluent to cut your fees, but also permits you to charge more for your expertise. In the current environment, the value of having name recognition as a top professional cannot be stressed enough.
Operationally, you’re building two partially interrelated brands. One brand is geared to the affluent. This brand will also need to resonate with centers of influence. The other brand is geared to the centers of influence and might not have any appeal to the affluent.
When it comes to the strategic branding process and all aspects of cultivating the affluent, your ability to constantly think along both these twin tracks is simply smart business. Well-structured brand equity translates into greater achievements by enabling professionals to more efficaciously source, close and maintain the wealthy as clients.
When you have a powerful dual-impact brand, you’re positioned to obtain significantly more qualified introductions from other clients as well as from centers of influence. A dual-impact brand also results in a shortened sales cycle. Thus, you’re able to generate more revenues quicker.
A powerful dual-impact brand conveys to the affluent that you have the solutions they’re looking for and conveys to centers of influence that you’re a talented professional who can provide high-caliber solutions to their wealthy clients and help them personally achieve greater success.
