Best Case Scenario Exercise

Transcription

1 Best Case Scenario Exercise To implement the Precision Marketing Approach you must get an exact definition of your Best Case Scenario. This process is far more defined than what is typically referred to as your Ideal Client Profile. Ken Grace, Top of the Table member from Detroit calls the Best Case Scenario a forensic assessment of your sweet spot. Determine exactly where to put your marketing efforts for the very best results. Your Best Case Scenario will show you where you can accomplish more in less time. Focus on your best check not the biggest check. Every January, re-profile to find your new Best Case Scenario for the year. Learn how to find, sift, sort and select prospective clients that fit your current Best Case Scenario, work at the top end of your competency scale, but within your comfort zone. The business will be easier for you. The Best Case Scenario process was developed by Wayne Cotton, CLU, and is used to guide Cotton System Owners Cotton Systems Ltd. All rights reserved Call 1 (877) or 1 (250)

2 2003 Integrated Productivity Systems Ltd 2003 Integrated Productivity Systems Ltd Instructions to determine your Best Case Scenario It is very important that you determine your ideal client profile. We call this situation your best case scenario. By focusing on the right profile of a prospect, you can experience exponential growth. It happens because you focus on seeing the right person (situation) every time. Once you determine the correct profile of a prospect, you focus all your new client acquisition activities on people who fit that profile. Your best case is not the same as your biggest case. Best means best! These are cases where you can develop a very good amount of business in a very reasonable amount of time, still doing things for people, not to them! Do not get in the habit of chasing jumbo cases. While it sounds exciting, the risk is too high. Big cases take too much time and contain too many inherent risks that can be showstoppers. Stop being an opportunist and instead, be a strategist. You can probably do a half a dozen best cases for every single biggest case. If you commit to acquiring one new client per week that is on profile, you can literally double your income in a singe year, without risk. But you must learn how to work smarter, not harder. You must focus on the right profile. Don t guess at this profile. You must define it. Here s how you determine your current profile of a prospective client. Determine your top ten sales over the last two years, from an income generation perspective. Include all the transactions from one economic unit. If it is a household, include all sales that occurred in that family. If it is a business, include all sales that resulted in that one business. If you added more for a client who you previously sold, include the total amount of business on that client in your top ten list, if the total revenue generated shows the situation should be in that group. Limit your search to the last two years. When you have isolated these top ten files, write the client names across the top of the Best Case Scenario worksheet. Then fill in the data beneath each name. There are 10 characteristics of the client and 10 characteristics of the sale. Next, review all 10 clients in each of the characteristics categories. You are looking for the similar seven. Generally speaking, you will find six or seven situations that look very much alike. If you have been operating in massive diffusion, you may need to look at your top twenty clients to find the similarities. The similarities will help you determine your Best Case Scenario, or your current profile of a prospect. These are situations where you have demonstrated skill. You have been there seven times before! When you find situation number 8, number 9 or number 10, you know exactly what to do. You have competence and confidence in these situations. This is also the profile where you will have consistency in results. Remember something else. These cases are your top ten. They have generated a fair amount of revenue. If you do one sale per week with someone who fits this same prospect profile, you will experience a huge growth of business in the next year. But it will be easy because you are competent with this profile. Then the following year, re-profile. Determine your top ten from the past two years and upgrade your profile. Once again, your production will dramatically improve. You will never do all your business on-profile. Life doesn t work like that. Education, experimentation, computerization and organization will all help to grow your profile. Meanwhile, be firm with your commitment to acquiring one new on-profile client per week. If that is 40 new clients from 40 work weeks each year, you will enjoy amazing growth. Naturally, you will continue to service your existing clients, so your overall case rate will be much higher than 40 cases in the year. Use these Best Case Scenario worksheets to determine your current profile of a prospect. Do not guess! Don t say, I want to be in the market. Start with the actual market where you are today, then grow into new markets over time. We have left lots of space under each area, so you can detail a fair amount of information. Best Case Scenario Worksheets The four pages are designed to fit together in a format that will allow you to see all the details of your project. Put the Characteristics of the Client page one and two side by side, then add the Characteristics of the Sale. The four pages for this exercise are laid out as follows: Best Case Scenario CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLIENT CLIENT NAME AGE MARITAL STATUS CHILDREN OCCUPATION SOCIAL STYLE MARKET SPECIFICS INCOME SOURCE(S) INCOME LEVEL TYPE/VALUE OF ASSETS GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION Best Case Scenario CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SALE TYPE OF SALE SOURCE OF PROSPECT APPROACH USED NUMBER OF INTERVIEWS TOTAL TIME INVESTED CONCEPT OR SELLING SYSTEM NUMBER OF CASES WRITTEN PRODUCT(S) SOLD REVENUE GENERATED 3-YR REVENUE POTENTIAL REFERRAL SOURCE PROFILE SUMMARY Characteristics of the Client 1 Characteristics of the Client PROFILE SUMMARY Characteristics of the Sale 3 Characteristics of the Sale 4 Best Case Scenario 2

3 Definitions Age Put in the ages of the adults involved in this file. When you get to Profile Summary, you will want to put in an age range. The people in your similar seven may be in the age bracket, for example. Be definitive. Marital Status Enter the current situation. Children Put in the number of children, including their current ages. This will show an age range, but may not be an important consideration when you are defining your profile. Occupation Be specific. If you are entering the name of a medical doctor, put down private practice, researcher, specialist, hospital, etc. You may find some common threads in this area. Social Style If you have taken training on social styles, you may wish to enter which category your client(s) fit in. Is their style that of a driver, an analytical, an amiable, or an expressive? If you are not familiar with these categories, you can use other phrases to describe the person. You might use such words as friendly, talkative, a leader, fun or serious, if you wish. These may be descriptions you may use when determining a profile. For example, one of our customers has the category friendly on his profile. He only wants to do business with nice people. As a result of this characteristic, when prospecting, he only does business with friendly people. Market Specifics This would include such factors as an ethnic market or a gender market. Other factors for here might include hobbies and special interests. Income Sources How does this person earn an income? For some, there may be multiple sources. Use income from both the client and spouse in these evaluations. Income Level This is a good one. While people can t be totally specific on the income of others, this is an important category and may be a consideration for your final profile. Type and Value of Assets In what areas of investment does this client have assets? What is the value of those assets? This is an important category that might also include homeowner status. Geographic Location You may not be too concerned with this area. But think of what would happen if you prospected for people who live within 25 miles or kilometers of you? Soon you would be having meetings in your office. You would save a lot of travel time. Type of Sale How would you describe this sale? Was it a transactional sale or a planning trail? You may have other definitions you wish to use. Be consistent with your definitions. Source of Prospect How did you find the lead? Was there anything unusual done here? Approach Used How did you get in front of the person? Did you do anything unique or different? Number of Interviews This is important as you may find that some situations took many more interviews than others. This is a consideration when determining your profile. Include your closing interview and delivery interview. Total Time Invested This is another important consideration. Some cases take a huge amount of case preparation time, this reduces your revenue per hour. Concept or Selling System What was your process here? Did you do full fact-finding, followed by presentation, or was there another method of communicating the concept? Did you use a computerized financial planning or evaluation process? How did you handle this? Number of Cases Written Often one economic unit generates several sales, yet constitutes one client. For this category, define how many actual product transactions were involved. Products Sold This is important. Once you find your similar seven, you realize that when you find sale number eight, the results will probably mirror the results of the similar seven. This category will help you define the results you achieve. Revenue Generated This is a very key category. How much revenue is generated during the first year of this sale? You may receive your compensation as some now, some at quarterly bonus, or some as other allowances. You may be charging fees or using residual income. Total the first year. Three Year Potential There may be some guesswork here, but what is your estimate of the three year revenue potential of this account? This value can be an important factor in determining your best case scenario. You may wish to capitalize the value of future income. Referral Source Is this person (or couple) a great source of additional personal recommendations? This can be an important factor, as some people will help you generate far more revenue as a result of their constant flow of personal recommendations. Summarize When you finish inputting the data for each characteristic, you will look for the common characteristics of the similar (six or) seven and summarize them in the right hand column, called Profile Summary. In some categories, it will be easy to identify the similarities. There will be a common thread running through the ten client situations. In other areas, you may find only three or four with similarities. There is another consideration. Look for the situations in which you like to do business. Being able to enjoy what you do and feeling good about the services you provide is also an important consideration. Another consideration is to look at the sale to see that it isn t based on a tax angle or a product that could suddenly be eliminated. Base your sales on solid ground and don t take a chance on getting wiped out with a technical or product change. When you do this exercise, you may find that your very largest client is eliminated, as the situation is not even close to your similar seven. So be it. You are looking for the similarities, as those are the situations where you will obtain consistency in results. Don t forget, you will do this exercise once a year. You will grow into your target market by evolution, instead of the revolution that usually occurs when you jump into a target market. Good luck with the profiling exercise. While it takes time, it won t take you that long to determine your best case scenario. Once you are armed with this information, get busy finding people who fit that profile. You will not outline all ten characteristics to a client who is about to help you with referrals. Five or six characteristics are probably adequate. But it is helpful to have a very clear definition of where you do your best work. Refer to the examples on the next page. By reviewing the characteristics of the client, you can reasonably assume that the next person you see who fits your profile, will generate the average level of income you received from the similar seven. With this information, you are equipped to determine exactly what you need to do to hit a certain income qualification in a year. Look at the routine business you generate from existing clients each year, then add the revenue from the new on-profile clients you plan to acquire in the next year. Now you know how to create an exciting level of growth... without working harder. Best Case Scenario 3

4 Profile Examples EXAMPLE ONE EXAMPLE TWO EXAMPLE THREE EXAMPLE FOUR years old years old 55 years old years old Married Combined incomes No children No businesses Responsible people Live within 25 miles of here Executives or professionals Homeowners Married with children Household income of $150,000-$250,000 Friendly people Business owners - have been in business at least years Trying to figure out how to get out of business Live in our city Married Adult children Income from a pension plan Income producing assets in excess of $1,000,000 These are a few examples of actual customers. The range of possibilities is endless. In cities, you can be very specific about your profile. In smaller towns, you must broaden your profile, or travel more miles to find more people who fit your profile. As your business grows build a support team around you. A licensed person can service many of your existing clients, while you continuously upgrade your profile. To that end, always say we not me. We will help you delegate to others, with clients accepting the benefits of more than me. REMEMBER: Your profile should be in an area where you have competence, confidence and can get consistency in results. Newer advisors must keep this profile very basic, until there has been adequate time for education training and experience to produce clear consistency in results then, reprofile annually. You can always go up, but it is hard coming down. Profile Examples 4

5 Best Case Scenario CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLIENT CLIENT NAME AGE MARITAL STATUS CHILDREN OCCUPATION SOCIAL STYLE MARKET SPECIFICS INCOME SOURCE(S) INCOME LEVEL TYPE/VALUE OF ASSETS GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION Characteristics of the Client 5

6 PROFILE SUMMARY Characteristics of the Client 6

7 Best Case Scenario CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SALE TYPE OF SALE SOURCE OF PROSPECT APPROACH USED NUMBER OF INTERVIEWS TOTAL TIME INVESTED CONCEPT OR SELLING SYSTEM NUMBER OF CASES WRITTEN PRODUCT(S) SOLD REVENUE GENERATED 3-YR REVENUE POTENTIAL REFERRAL SOURCE Characteristics of the Sale 7

8 PROFILE SUMMARY Characteristics of the Sale 8