The Loyalty Ladder: Turn Clients into Advocates

While the list of consulting programs we provide at USA Financial is long, we’ll focus here on how we help advisors identify what is really happening with the people they serve.

This is the first of two revealing exercises; this one called The Loyalty Ladder - or more fundamentally, “What Do You Have?” For many advisors and teams we engage with, understanding what and who actually exists in their 50, 100, 200, 500 etc. households they serve is a confounding mystery. A mystery that often contains immense opportunity. Not just for generating revenue or getting introductions, but for creating that most valuable asset - more time! – as well as a much more efficient team and process.

In order to maximize this particular Opportunity Gap it is important for us to ask our advisors "What do you have?" Or, asked another way, "Who are you working with?" That is why when we start working with an advisor or a team we never ask, “how many clients do you have?” It's an inappropriate question. What we ask instead is “how many households do you serve?” We start with that larger number and then break it down into three categories: Customers, Clients, and Advocates.

The first group, Customers, we describe as people that are doing business with you, but we also know they're doing business elsewhere. It may be that they do their wealth management with you but perhaps they’re doing their risk management and insurance someplace else, or it could be that they have a second advisor, just to mention a couple of examples. Obviously, we’re not downplaying the revenue that these folks generate, but typically these relationships are a product of timing and/or convenience and they rarely progress further with your practice.