Book Number 9 on my Book-a-Week list for 2011: Tested in the Trenches: A 9-Step Plan for Building and Sustaining a Million-Dollar Financial Services Practice
by Ron Carson, CFP, CFS, ChFC, and Steve Sanduski, MBA, CFP
If you are a financial advisor who wants to grow your practice, this book is a must-read. Ron Carson and Steve Sanduski provide a practical, step-by-step guide to achieving big success as a financial advisor. Carson and Sanduski are principals of Peak Productions, a financial advisor coaching, software and consulting company that has worked on five continents. Carson has 20 years experience as a financial advisor with over $1 billion in invested assets. Sanduski is considered one of the country’s leading authorities on financial services marketing and practice management. Clearly, these guys know what they are talking about!
To give you a glimpse of the book’s contents, here are the 9 Steps they reference, and that their chapters are built around:
- Step 1: Gain Personal and Professional Clarity Through the Blueprinting Process
- Build the Foundation, Identify and Live by Your Values, Find Your Meaningful Purpose, Develop a Compelling Vision for Your Future, Develop a Personal and Professional Mission Statement, and Set SMAC-Certified Goals
- Step 2: Get the Right People on the Team
- Put More Science into the Art of Hiring and Compensating Staff
- Step 3: Systematize Everything
- Elevate Your Service by Following the System
- Step 4: Improve Your Effectiveness
- Differentiate between the Vital Few and the Trivial Many; Get and Stay Fit
- Step 5: Build Your Brand
- Move Your Business from Commodity to Singularity
- Step 6: Build Relationships and Communicate
- Reach Out and Touch Your Clients and Prospects
- Step 7: Focus Marketing Efforts on Top Clients and Prospects
- Get the Most from Your Marketing
- Step 8: Deliver Client Events
- Deepen Relationships and Have Fun Doing it
- Step 9: Follow the Habits of Top Achievers
- Do What Works; Putting it All Together
Throughout the book, the authors provide entertaining, relevant, easy-to-understand stories and examples that make their points stick, and make you excited about implementing the steps. For example, one of the opening stories illustrates what they call “Love Affair Marketing.” Carson tells the story of a time when he and his wife were getting ready to host a big party, and somehow the 12-pack of root beer he had purchased didn’t make it home with the rest of the groceries. When he called the store to report the problem, the young clerk on the phone asked if it would be o.k. if he delivered the soda to their home in the next 30 minutes. Not only did the clerk deliver it in less than 30 minutes, he brought a gallon of vanilla ice cream to go with it so they could make root beer floats! Because of this extraordinary and unexpected service, Ron became an evangelist for this particular grocery store. And this, he says, is what we want our clients to be for us. The book is full of ideas to help you do that, and questions that help you uncover how you can implement “love affair marketing” and each of their other concepts, in a way that feels authentic to you.
For financial advisors who truly want to grow, this book is a fabulous consulting guide. I highly recommend it!