Bill Walton presents to small business sales organization at Citrix:
A great day with the SMB team. Connected sellers to the needs, passions, obsessions of small business owners. Themes: Value creation, meaning more, and issue fluency in the business owners industry. SMB owners can work any 18 hours a day and wear many hats. They need authentic people to support them and they need results now. Thank you to Michelle Neal, Director of Sales Effectiveness. You are a Value Creator! 

With the Wealth Management, Banking and Insurance industries changing practically weekly, firm leaders should be taking a hard look at their talent - specifically their sales leaders. They’re the true pivot point in an organization and when trained well, MAKE MONEY FOR THE FIRM.                     FACT - Investing in sales leadership can yield top line revenue gains of up to 29% according to Wilson Learning.  The role of the sales leader has morphed over the years, from “top closer” to “product expert” to "administrator." To win in this era of digitial client acquisition, these pros need to be freed up to coach and develop producers.
 
Listen to this engaging conversation with Bill Walton and Dr. Matt Woolsey, the nation’s leading authority on transformational leadership. You’ll be given a roadmap on how to make sales leadership a strategic advantage in your organization – one that you can drop to the bottom line. Topics include:
 

• “The Managerial Covenant”: Getting producers to commit to bigger goals
• The difference between general leadership and sales leadership
• The four competencies of effective sales leaders
• What sales leaders in financial services need to start doing, and STOP doing
• Managing across multiple generations
• Finding more time to coach

 
Click on the link to enjoy the show:
https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/108308/transformational-sales-leadership-what-is-it
 
Share your comments with us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/billwaltonsalestraining) or Twitter (@wfwalton) or at bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining.com.

​I spent the day at IN|VEST 2018 yesterday in NYC as an evangelist, a trainer and thought leader. The conference was well produced and the speaker roster couldn't have been a better fit. The goal - provide concrete ways to leverage digital wealth technology internally and externally to drive seamless financial experiences that feel like consumer experiences. Here's a list of the key observations. Please excuse the brevity:

• This is the right conference at the right time
• Investors want faster/cheaper/more personal/seamless/simple. Think Uber
• AI in the next 12-18 months will be prevalent and drive engagement
• This is still a persona-based business
• A key expectation of the digital client: "Show me you know me"
• Consumers want the ability to go from purely digital to human hand holding

REMANING QUESTIONS and TO DOs:

• Know what level of financial literacy you want to target
• How will you gauge the right level of profitable "personalization" 
• This is about speed - can your internal culture keep up? 
• Internally - figure out what your people do best, automate the rest
• Create holistic offerings vs. siloed services for investing
• Do you have the right data - consumer data, AI, etc and the actionable insights from it? 

For more insights, call or text  917-439-3271 and I'd be happy to share more.  - Bill

Financial professionals all agree that they need new clients. But the challenge    of balancing a healthy client base and dealing with an endless flow of admin is crowding out the time for a strategic prospecting effort. The result? A prospect-when-I-get-to-it approach that barely moves the needle. Without a dedicated prospecting effort, advisors, planners, bankers and insurance pros face real revenue gaps in their practice. In order to respond, this book provides a proven system that will get the growth readers need that positions them as credible, not salesy. 
 
Taming the Four Headed Dragon gives Bankers, Private Client Advisors and Insurance pros an easy-to-adopt process that validates what they’re already doing well while giving them the three things successful prospectors possess:

1. Laser beam focus on an ideal client type
2. The messaging to connect credibly
3. The time to commit to a planful approach

Without these three things, prospecting becomes tactical and sounds transactional. That's not a good thing since most any client worth attracting is with another firm and individual. Inside you’ll find:

• Templates for prospect messaging (with great samples!)
• Ideal client “declarations” to share with COIs
• Meeting agendas and constructs to make sure every contact pays off
• Closing process that gets prospects to commit

Click here to see what readers have said about Taming the Four Headed Dragon: https://www.4headeddragon.com.
 
Start winning more that your share of new business by ordering your personally signed copy of Taming the Four-Headed Dragon. Go to https://www.4headeddragon.com to order. Most credit cards accepted. For an earlier start on your client acquisition efforts, download your free copy of the chapter that helps you ask for the business. Click here to get yours: ​www.billwaltonsalestraining.com/freedownload2.html.

In part one, we talked about the coffee talk meeting as a co-created experience. The key is to build momentum for next – the all-important second meeting in business. Here are 10 tips to ensure you get your share of the pie in your next coffee talk meeting. 

1. Asses a client type category that you think your prospect falls into such as a Rental Car CFO, top producing commercial Real Estate Executive or Brand Director for large Pharma. This can help you get some fluency in the specific trends these folks encounter.
2. Introductions: Try it’s nice to “see you” vs. nice to “meet you” It implies more intimacy and projects confidence.
3. Check timing: ask if your contact still has the full hour that was pledged. You want to make sure you can bring your conversation to a good segue if time gets cut short.
4. Ask these three “journey” questions during your meeting for light discovery 1.) What’s been your journey? (Gets at the prospects view of their path) 2.)Where are you now? (Gets the prospect to divulge the current state) 3.)Where are you going? (Gets at goals, and potentially some dissatisfaction in the current state)
5. Take notes selectively. In your notebook, draw four rectangular boxes one over another on one page. As you hear a key point, fill in the box. Remember this is a connection meeting, not a court case.
6. Based on your journey question answers, offer to help in your own special way of authentic generosity.
7. Context is king - if your meeting is scheduled for an hour – protect the last 10 minutes like gold.  Use this time to play back and clarify key points and suggest a next meeting.
8. Have one specific ask. This should be tied to what you thought the client type (prospect) could realistically help you achieve. Link the ask to the value of the current conversation and extend that to a second meeting.
9. Craft a hand-written thank you as soon as you can. Bullet your playback points as a tee-up to meeting #2.
10. A few days later, send an email follow-up that looks something like this:

 
“Hi Ellen, it was great seeing you this past Tuesday and thanks for being so generous with your time. We covered a lot of ground together but wanted to follow up on some of the things we both thought were important:
•    This is the video of my Chamber talk on messaging
•    A Whitepaper on what the best are doing around prospecting in wealth management
•    A link to my blog post on social media that I told you about. Nice tie to your team’s challenges.

Thanks also for your help in connecting me to Steve over at TKD Securities. I know we said that we’d connect at the end of the month - here are some additional dates and times for us to reconnect on the prospecting topic. Please feel free to pick one that works or suggest another. 
•    June 6 – after 12p
•    June 7 – all day
•    June 13 – before 3pm
 
Thanks again, Ellen. I look forward to seeing you soon." 

If no response in two weeks, send a calendar invite with the same message above around timing flexibility. This assumes that you made firm and purposeful connections in the coffee talk meeting and the next meeting was implied and agreed upon.  

As always we value your comments and success stories. Please send all good news to bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining.com. 

CLIENT ACQUISITION EXPERT BILL WALTON LAUNCHES “THE CLIENT SIDE PODCAST”           TO SHARE SALES SUCCESS STRATEGIES WITH WEALTH MANAGEMENT PROS
Co-hosted by branding expert Shakira M. Brown, the podcast aims to help financial services firms “mean more” to clients.
​



​FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE– Award-winning financial services client acquisition specialist Bill Walton, founder of Bill Walton Sales Training (billwaltonsalestraining.com), recently launched the Client Side Podcast (https://clientside.podbean.com) to share strategies wealth management professionals can implement to acquire and retain more clients. Co-hosted by award-winning media and branding expert Shakira M. Brown (smbstrategicmedia.com), the podcast will cover how being a “thinking partner” and practicing the “joy of helping” can attract new prospects and offer more value to clients.
 
In the premiere episode “The $30 Trillion Chase,” Walton and Brown address the $30 trillion chase: the $30 trillion dollars that has begun to shift from one generation to the next as baby boomers pass on their legacies. Plus, discover how to “Mean more to clients” in Walton’s “Bill-ism” of the episode. Listen now and subscribe to hear future episodes at https://clientside.podbean.com.
 
With more than 20 years of experience helping financial services firms “mean more” to clients, Walton applies his expertise to help professionals in the wealth management industry win and retain more business who are often burdened with limited time and resources. Walton launched “The Client Side Podcast” to further share his signature “just add water” value added programs and live pipeline coaching approach with a larger audience. Along with his two books, Taming the Four-Headed Dragon and The Winning Way with Brian Tracy, the podcast aims to help professionals in wealth management, banking and insurance mean more to their clients.
 
“We’re in the midst of a massive shift in generational wealth, and wealth management firms need to be ready to shift their focus,” said Walton. “These companies need to avoid heading down a commodity path in their respective sectors. I’ve spent years helping businesses meet client expectations and aim to encourage a value creation approach – one that offers insight over product and service – through this podcast.”
 
Listen to the first episode of the Client Side podcast and subscribe for future episodes at https://clientside.podbean.com.
 
The Client Side Podcast is recorded at IBIS Venue Center in Hamilton, NJ. Learn more about these professional meeting spaces by visiting www.ibisvc.com.
 
For questions or comments about the podcast, email podcast@clientsidepodcast.com. 
 
About Bill Walton
Bill Walton is the CEO of Bill Walton Sales Training a Client Acquisition firm with over 20 years of experience in helping financial services firms "mean more" to clients. He has worked extensively in wealth management, banking and insurance as a sales coach, facilitator and author. Learn more about Bill Walton and download the free whitepaper “The New Era in Prospecting in Wealth Management” by visiting www.billwaltonsalestraining.com. Visit his blog for even more tips on client acquisition at: https://www.billwaltonsalestraining.com/blog.
 
About Shakira M. Brown 
Shakira M. Brown is an award-winning PR and marketing expert with over 20 years of experience leading communications strategies for various small and high growth corporations, public companies, celebrities, personalities and professional services firms. As a speaker, Shakira as “The Small Biz Whisperer” has addressed audiences of her peers in public relations around the country. Shakira is available for speaking engagements; please contact shakira@pradviser.net with inquiries. 
  

Thanks for reading part 1 in our series that spoke to the need to connect uniquely with HNW prospects with CREATED wealth as their main characteristic. In part 1 I wrote about serial entrepreneurs, mature business owners and C-Suite execs and the pebbles in their shoes that Wealth Management firms can address. In addition to this client type approach, firms need to be ready for the millennial-like client who will be looking for their own brand of relationship with you... or with another firm.
 
So to continue our client acquisition glide path, let me share with you three more client types that should also be part of your HNW prospect segmentation. This set of client types can best be associated with INHERITED wealth. Source of wealth is hugely important when making distinct connections with HNW prospects:
 
Client Type # 4 – Family Office
Potential Problem Areas

• Most assets in Real Property
• Direct ownership
• Perceived need for institutional diversification
• Lacks a total snapshot of true wealth

Prospecting Opportunity

• Commercial Banking
• Structured titling (Real Estate)
• Experience with investors that have direct ownership
• PIMS – aggregating personal information and reporting
• Single view cash and payments management

 
Client Type # 5 – Large Asset Owners
Potential Problem Areas

• Concentrated in one subset (i.e. Timber)
• Need to pass on illiquid wealth
• Diversify away from real assets
• Complicated family dynamic across generations

Prospecting Opportunity

• Structuring of liquidity for real assets
• Lending against real assets
• Specialty asset management (purchase or ongoing management)
• Generational planning and wealth transfer

 
Client Type # 6 – Philanthropic Organizations
Potential Problem Areas

• Board of advisors – Investment Committee
• Focus on prudent management with need for annualized returns to break even
• Not big on change or adapting to new approaches
• Board engagement – varying tenures, decision making, impact stewardship

Prospecting Opportunity

• Investment policy statements
• Legal support for Fiduciary
• Outsourced CIO
• Real asset investment
• Targeted asset allocation

 
For more ideas to support an effective client-type prospecting strategy, sign up here for a link to the corresponding chapter in my book, Taming the Four Headed Dragon (https://www.4headeddragon.com)
 

For nearly three years you’ve been hearing from me on the need for a client type approach to new client acquisition.  We are in the midst of a massive shift in generational wealth and Wealth Management firms need to be ready for the millennial-like client who will be looking for their own brand of relationship with you. Those in client facing roles must shift their focus – private client advisors on whole are not achieving their appropriate share of wallet with clients, relying too heavily on AUM and pressing issues of the day. I actually write about this in my book Taming the Four Headed Dragon – current clients, compliance and events are crowding out the time needed for a dedicated prospecting effort.
 
So to make things easier (As BWST always does), I've provided a window into six client types. Each come with their unique problems or aspirations not yet met. I've also provided some nuances to be mindful of when surfacing opportunity during your prospecting. The first set of client types will be those associated with CREATED wealth. (Part 2 will address prospects associated with INHERITED wealth). Source of wealth is hugely important when making connections with HNW prospects:
 
Client Type #1 - The Serial Entrepreneur
Potential Problem Areas

• Always putting capital back into the business
• Low liquidity; need for credit to build the business
• Has not addressed wealth transfer
• Perception that there’s no time, light on planning

Prospecting Opportunity

• Give them permission to take care of their future and the family
• Recommend retirement, education funding, real estate investments
• Know that they’re always looking for the next investment, be ready with ideas
• Secure financing options for expansion

 
Client Type #2 - The Mature Business Owner
Potential Problem Areas

• Often concerned family is not interested in carrying on in the business.
• Ideas to scale or exit the business; use of proceeds
• Unclear around business succession planning
• Hesitant to take money out of the business, release control
• Uncoordinated team of advisors

Prospecting Opportunity

• Sell a coordinated team of advisors and the full firm
• Commercial banking to manage the balance sheet of an entire family business
• Structuring support: title, contracts, controls
• Next generation planning
• Credit

 
Client Type #3 - The C-Suite Executive
Potential Problem Areas

• Concentrated wealth (in their company stock)
• Many ask if they're giving enough away
• Information overload
• Liquidity events that don't signal the market
• Taxation of stock options
• Volume restrictions

Prospecting Opportunity

• Emotional distance and discipline
• Legal support
• Risk Planning
• Coordinated advisor team
• Philanthropic advisement, board recommendations

For more ideas to support an effective client-type prospecting strategy with High Net Worth individuals, sign up here for a link to the corresponding chapter in my book, Taming the Four Headed Dragon (https://www.4headeddragon.com)

The Differentiator in Retirement Relationships: Be a Value Creator 
Most Account Management training has been available for over 20 years. But business has changed as have the expectations of clients in Retirement. The record keepers that command the lion's share of the plans in the Fortune 500 all deserve a seat at the table. But a rare few keep it year in and year out. The ones who do- they are the value creators. 
 
High performing Retirement relationship management teams are taking a value creation approach to clients - an approach that speaks to the need to offer insight over product and service virtues. These firms are on a mission to avoid heading down a commodity path in their respective sectors. 
 
Research from the Sales Executive Council and Harvard Business Publishing speaks to the need to trade on the insights RMs bring to multiple stakeholders, rather than acting reactively with one "buyer". With the help of Bill Walton Sales Training, these value creators are moving farther upstream in their client's business strategy and planning. They're leveraging genuine curiosity and insight as retention tools, and conducting better conversations with key stakeholders as a result.

There is great upside in celebrating the role of the RM in Retirement. RMs have an opportunity to deepen conversations with their HR partners – partners that need to create value for their own organizations beyond benefits. An opportunity exists for a common language among RMs to create value for clients and drive ideas that support mutual objectives.

Here are a few recommendations for those looking to create a legion of value creators in their organization:

• Create a balanced client interaction grounded in insights valuable to CFOs,  HR Heads, and Benefits Managers. Don't forget the Benefits associates that never go home on time. 
• Steep yourself in the jobs of key stakeholders. Google their job descriptions to see what truly keeps them up at night (so you don't ever have to ask that question).
• Practice conducting engaging and focused discussions about business pressures and drivers - pressures and drivers your solutions can potentially remedy. 
• Proactively build business issue-specific, value-based relationships with “Accountable Executives” in accounts. Accountable Executives are the true "intrapreneurs" in the organization - they get stuff done and love developing people. They're the leaders people want to work for. 
• Get clients to view your RMs as industry "thinking partners". Create the wonderful confusion among stakeholders so they wonder if your RMs actually work for the organization!  

​To grow more value creators in your organization, send me at note at bwalton@billwaltonsalestraining and I'll send you a fresh copy of our new whitepaper titled The Era of the Value Creator.