Strategy Highlights

Week 38
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Strategy 9: Form Profitable Strategic Partnerships

Building your wealthy client pipeline

There are distinct steps in the process for forming profitable strategic partnerships with centers of influence.

1. Identify potential partners.

Your first step will be to connect with potential partners—specifically, the top-notch centers of influence, typically accountants and attorneys, who have wealthy clients and who are very motivated to increase their revenues.

2. Conduct discovery.

You should gain a solid and complete understanding of each COI’s business model, goals and obstacles. There is an efficient methodology you can use to develop these insights, which Strategy 9 provides. For simplicity’s sake, we identify discovery as one step of the process, but it’s actually perpetual. You should stay current and informed about the professional and—when it makes sense—personal worlds of your partners.

3. Secure the commitment.

Based on your understanding of a prospective center of influence, you decide whether he or she would likely make a good partner and whether you want to commit to the partnership. Always remember that you select the centers of influence you are going to help become thought leaders. They do not choose you.

4. Create the agreement.

At this stage, you and your partner will arrive at a clear understanding of what to expect from working together. The agreement in this context is not a legal contract but a well-articulated understanding of each party’s roles and responsibilities.

5. Implement the thought leadership solution.

When you implement the thought leadership solution, you will most likely make your partners more successful, create the economic glue that binds you together and, through the law of reciprocity, drive new wealthy clients to you.

6. Track results.

In tracking results, you will quantify the value you deliver to your partners in the form of additional revenue as well as the economic benefit you are receiving in return. You will focus on tracking revenue and income more than on the number of client referrals.