Buckle Up

How compelling is your first business interaction with a potential client? Is your Initial Client Interview designed so that it literally “knocks the socks off” of your potential client? If not, maybe you should re-think. In the old days, I had an effective lead conversion process that yielded Ideal Clients. It was designed to be effective for me, and my firm, but come to find out our potential clients found it tedious & unpleasant.

So I over-hauled my Initial Client Interview so that it was shorter & more compelling for my potential client. Instead of investing 1-3 hours going through a, quite thorough, series of open-ended questions, designed to give me the big picture, while offering little in return for the meeting, I began asking much more big picture questions about what they wanted in life.

I began focusing on outcomes and expectations. I’d ask clients to share “the why” behind their long-term objectives with our firm. I always get potential clients to paint the picture of what the ideal future will look like, if our relationship is successful. In asking the potential client to flash forward a year and share what success would look like, I was able to provide a work product after every Initial Client Interview.

After we had this compelling conversation describing all the elements necessary for a successful relationship, I provided every potential client with a 1-page game plan documenting what they want to accomplish & why. All the elements they want to achieve, long-term, but pulled together into an elegant 1-pager that provides a breakthrough of clarity along with precisely what needs to happen next.

When you meet with a potential client to discuss whether or not you should do business with each other, the question is can you transform that Initial Client Interview into an experience they will value? In our case, we went from offering this process at no charge to setting a fee for this Initial Client Interview. Can you imagine creating an Initial Client Interview that’s valuable whether or not you end up doing business together?

If you’re in any high-end service business, you can create a client conversion experience, like this, that they’ll enjoy & remember. If you’re a high-end retail Financial Advisor, we’ve got many specific tactics to share, just contact us.

Either way, I recommend you make the commitment to assess your lead conversion process and if it’s “all about you” rather than creating a compelling experience for your potential client, then overhaul it. Your Client Acquisition & new business revenue generation goals will thank you later.