Strategy Highlights
Week 40
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Strategy 9: Form Profitable Strategic Partnerships
Steps for implementing the thought leadership solution
Your execution of the thought leadership process with your strategic partners is the most important part of building your wealthy client pipeline. We break down the process into manageable steps:
Step 1. Understand your partner’s business model.
During your discovery meetings, you should uncover key traits of the business models of your attorney and accountant partners. These will help inform the types of thought leadership content you provide and how your partner can use the content most effectively.
Step 2. Determine the type of expert your partner wants to be.
It is much easier to help your partners position themselves as the experts the wealthy want when you focus on one or two areas of expertise and one or two types of clients. Generally, most attorneys and accountants want to be thought leaders for fairly broad audiences. For example, an attorney may look to be a thought leader when it comes to charitable giving or, broader yet, wealth planning. These areas of expertise are potentially applicable for all wealthy families.
Step 3. Provide optimal thought leadership content.
High-quality thought leadership content is tailor-made for the wealthy to address their very specific financial, business, family, charitable and lifestyle concerns. Your ability to provide this content to your partners will make you very valuable to them. You will share two types of content from CEG Advantage with your strategic partners: the monthly VFO Inner Circle Flash Reports and the five monthly VFO Inner Circle Special Reports. CEG Advantage provides tools for you to customize this content on behalf of your partners, or you may create accounts for up to five partners that will allow them to access and customize the content directly.
Step 4. Provide guidance in using thought leadership content.
Simply giving your partners even the most sensational thought leadership content is not enough. You also have to help them make the most of the materials. The greatest value you can add at this point is to help your partners make clear connections between specific pieces of your thought leadership content and the specific individuals who would benefit from receiving them. It can be very useful to organize your thinking by placing your high-quality thought leadership content into two buckets: financial/legal content and human interest content.
Step 5. Follow up.
To achieve meaningful results from distributing thought leadership content, there has to be follow-up. Your partners simply will not gain new business without making direct contact with clients and prospective clients. In fact, your partners should not send content to specific individuals unless they are willing to take the time to follow up with each recipient.
Step 6. Keep the pipeline full.
Helping your centers of influence become thought leaders requires systematic, consistent effort. These are extended discourses between your partners and their wealthy clients and prospective clients. Essential to this consistency are regular meetings with your partners. Monthly, face-to-face meetings are usually optimal. Unless you meet on a very regular basis, the odds are slim that your partners’ thought leadership efforts will be very successful or that they will actively refer and promote you to their wealthy clients. Make these meetings a top priority.