"Optimizing and Leveraging" your Hidden Marketing Assets

What does it mean to "optimize and leverage" your business?  Sounds complex, let's see if we can make it a bit simpler:

If you focus on:

• Getting the maximum return, 
• for the least amount of expense, 
• for the longest duration of time … 
• on everything you are currently doing now, 
• have done in the past … 
• and will do in the future

 then you're "optimizing and leveraging" and doing a whole lot more than your competition, I guarantee it.

And if you focus your efforts on optimizing and leveraging your Hidden Marketing Assets then you're even further in front.

Because those are the assets that don't cost you any more in advertising or overheads - the increased revenue you generate from your Hidden Marketing Assets goes pretty much straight to your bottom line.

Sweet, right?  I'm excited - how about you?

Talk soon.

Richard

Build empathy and feel the love

Talking with your clients about their estate planning in the right way is one of the best methods I've come across to build empathy, to really connect with them.

When you see someone for the first time, they'll often be nervous, right?  Their experience of getting professional advice might be pretty limited - going to see a lawyer or a financial advisor is probably a big deal for them.

And not all advisors appreciate that, and how it can put their clients - especially their new clients - on edge.

Now, if you're helping someone new with their estate planning and you wade in and start telling them all about you, your firm, the latest estate planning rulings and Supreme Court decisions, you'll make things ten times worse.

Just talk to them!  Like a normal person.  Not like a lawyer or a financial advisor.  God knows there's enough of that going on without you joining in.

Find out about them.  Their families, their home, their pets, their work, their friends ... their lives.  The stuff that's important to them, the things they want to take care of in their estate planning.

And once you've got your new client calm, relaxed, settled, once you've built rapport and once they understand that you're a real person, just like them, and someone they know, like and trust ... then you can talk about anything at all, even the boring stuff, and they'll be happy to listen and learn.

And that's one of the secrets of Marketing With Estate Planning - it shows you how to add the human element into estate planning.

Give this a try with your next new client.

Cheers

Richard

Coming Soon - Exciting New Estate Planning Profits Product

A quick heads up on something new coming up very soon.

Up until now, Estate Planning Profits has been a consulting business - helping owners of boutique legal and financial services businesses who are already doing well but want to do even better- backed up by my flagship members' program, Marketing With Estate Planning.  And I'm very proud of it.

And today I want to let you know that there's a new Estate Planning Profits product on the way -  a new program that's designed to help any boutique legal or financial services professional expand and strengthen their business, all based around the power of "Hidden Marketing Assets".  Can't announce the name of the program yet because it's not finalized, so stay tuned for updates.

I'm pretty excited about this, and about the potential for helping more people than I ever have before.  And I promise you'll be the first to know once everything's ready to go.

Have a great week, talk soon.

Richard

Kick ass and hold noses!

 Just read a great quote over at Robin Elliott's excellent joint venture blog:

General George S. Patton believed he was a reincarnated warrior leader. He said, “Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that “we are holding our position.” We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!” He made no apologies and never compromised, in spite of massive pressure.

We're all guilty of "holding our position" at one time or another.  And that's only natural, because that keeps us in our comfort zone, right?

But how comfortable are we really when we're just "holding our position"? 

The possibilities once we get outside that comfort zone are endless.  And while that's exciting to think about, it's also pretty scary.

Because once we step outside the zone and start taking on "the enemy" (whoever or whatever that might mean for each of us), holding him by the nose and kicking his ass in true Patton style, then our reasons for limiting ourselves begin to disappear and we have to take responsibility for our lives - because there's nothing to hold us back anymore!

Love it.  Thanks Robin, just what I needed - a reminder that there really is no comfort zone, and that life is all about advancing, every day.

Have a good one.

Richard

Rebranding successes and disasters

As you've probably worked out by now, I'm not a big rap for branding as a marketing strategy for most businesses, especially small businesses.

I'm more of a direct response kind of bloke - if you can't track and measure the response you're getting from a marketing exercise, think long and hard about laying out your hard earned cash on it.

But branding is a totally valid and logical exercise for many large businesses, especially those that operate in mass markets.  Think Coke, Microsoft, Coles, Woolies.  They live and die on the results of their branding campaigns.

And if your branding efforts stink, you'd better be quick about rebranding before you lose your market and your shirt.

Even as small and medium business owners, we can all learn plenty about consumer behaviour and psychological responses from branding campaigns and strategies.

So take a few minutes and have a look at this - a great Business Insider article on the best and worst of rebranding, on the big stage.  I like the UPS story best.

Enjoy!

Richard

Best thing I've seen this week

Check this out guys, just brilliant.  (Thanks to Sam de Brito at SMH for the link.)
VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Dealmaking 101, Arab style

This just in from my boys, who have lots of Arab friends and a great sense of humour:

Dad: I want u to marry a girl of my choice.

Son: No

Dad: The girl is Bill Gates' daughter

Son: Ok!

Dad goes to see Bill Gates.

Dad: I want your daughter to marry my son.

Bill Gates: No

Dad: My son is the CEO of the World Bank 

Bill Gates: Ok!

Dad goes to see the President of the World Bank

Dad: Make my son the CEO of your bank

President: No

Dad: He is the son-in-law of Bill Gates

President: Ok!

That’s the Arab way of doing business.

And that's also Dealmaking 101 right??  Look at the situation in front of you from every angle you can think of, and you might just be surprised by the possibilities.

Have a great weekend.

Richard