THE 21ST CENTURY ADVISOR Article by Steve Moeller The financial services industry has experienced tremendous change. Today, major shifts continue to occur in the minds of your wealthy clients and prospects. Financial consumers are demanding much more for far less. Many of them are starting to seriously question whether traditional financial advisors add or subtract value. Many of them are deciding to manage their money themselves, trading their own accounts on the Internet. Do you know how to harness this fundamental change? Or, as these winds of change blow against you, do you just row harder? Most highly motivated financial professionals continue to market their products and services in the same old way. They rely on cold calling and expensive mass marketing campaigns. These tactics were always labor-intensive, but in today's more competitive marketplace, they're far less effective than alternative strategies. Because traditional marketing tactics require so much effort, many advisors decide to do nothing and just hope they get enough referrals to pay the bills. Five Rules You Need to Know for the 21st Century There are five key marketing rules that you can follow that will be the key to your success in the new millennium: 1. Develop a long-term vision and plan. Most advisors focus on short-term prospecting activities instead of long-term business-building strategies. They hunt for the next hot product that will propel them to success. But success comes only when you have a clear vision of what you want and an intelligent plan to achieve it. 2. Establish a systematic lead-generating process. A business lives or dies by its ability to attract customers or clients. Advisors who achieve the greatest success are often not the most technically competent or the best salespeople. They are the best marketers. Developing a process for consistently generating leads to ideal prospects is imperative. 3. Restructure to generate recurring revenue. All businesses have two goals: to maintain positive cash flow and to build equity for the future. Recurring revenue--predictable income that regenerates itself without further effort from you--can solve both challenges. 4. Focus on people rather than products. Financial professionals have become product experts, but they don't study the subconscious hopes, dreams and fears that motivate their clients to act. The next generation of financial service entrepreneurs will need to know much more about their customers. 5. Specialize in a niche. In many professions, such as law and medicine, practitioners have responded to information overload by specializing. But most financial advisors are still generalists. They believe the key to success is to be all things to all people. This mass-market mentality is a prescription for mediocrity and ultimately failure in the client-centered marketplace. If you want to specialize in such services as estate planning or qualified plans, that's fine. But you must focus your marketing efforts on the specific groups of people or niches that can benefit most from your specialized services. By following these fundamental rules, you'll harness the market forces in the new millennium to attract ideal clients with less effort. They'll bring their business to you and you won't have to chase them anymore. Copyright © 2000 by Steve Moeller, Tustin, CA. All rights reserved. Steve Moeller is one of North America's foremost experts on marketing financial services to the wealthy. Over the last decade, Steve has studied and researched the best strategies for building a super profitable financial services business. He is a highly sought-after financial services industry speaker and management consultant. He is the author of "Effort-Less Marketing"and other learning tools and coaching programs. To find out more about his coaching programs, learning tools or to find out how to hire Steve to speak at your meetings, call 800-678-1701 or e-mail bizviz@businessvisions.com. For a freesubscription to Steve Moeller's Client-Centered Advisor e-mail editor@businessvisions.com.