Quantify Their Buy

Attract prospects to who you are -
not just what you do

As a high-achieving advisor working in the affluent marketplace, your best day is when somebody gets you.
 
You feel heard and valued, and the joy isn’t about ego and pride, it’s about helping someone move their personal needle a little bit closer to their dreams. It’s your innate ability to help people move to or move through essential barriers and topics. Your clients can find a commodity elsewhere, but this, your relationship, they can only get from you.
 
You know you excel in this area, however the art of articulating it is elusive. There isn’t much bandwidth applied to quantifying its value. Yet standing in your clients’ shoes, this is what matters most.

Which comes first, your tools or your trade?

If you’ve excelled for decades in the affluent or super affluent marketplace, the quality of your technical intellectual capital goes without saying. Except that it doesn’t. You have flow charts and financial models, old-school white boards and powerful technology. When a prospect comes through your door for the first time, or a longstanding client returns for that next big life-with-wealth challenge, you’ve got oodles of proof. Pictures and words on paper quantify the value of your Craft Capital, making their buying decisions tangible. 

If a professional peer asked you how your intellectual capital stands apart, how would you answer? Many would reference their Craft Capital: advanced expertise in the affluent marketplace, planning processes, technical strategies, investment philosophies and methodologies, insurance expertise, proprietary products or bleeding-edge technology.

Great firms have a natural inclination to sharpen these tools. Investing in education, designations and technology, you twist and turn the dials of the machine. You also take great care in how you communicate this capital. Simple, elegant flow charts and plain-English summaries help prospects and clients absorb their choices. 

These tools of your trade are crucial, yet they only tell half the story. 

Quantify their buy: Inspiration Capital

What if there was a second form of intellectual capital that mattered more to your prospects and clients – a wordless language of behavior that everyone sensed but no one articulated?

Inspiration Capital is your relationship capital – the magic and nuance of your trade. This secret sauce is the reason right-fit prospects become clients and right-fit team members see your firm as their forever home. It’s the innate drive to give yourselves fully regardless of place and circumstance. It’s why your best clients rely on you for wisdom and insight about their life worth, not just their net worth.

This second form of capital matters more to clients than your tools. It's the one thing in their advisory world that is literally irreplaceable. Yet, if you ask these same clients why they value your relationship, they often use general phrases such as: 'They have my back' or 'They get me', or my 'My wife feels safe with them'. They struggle to quantify your relational value because they haven't been given language to make it tangible.

It turns out that when clients are given words to fill the void, it deepens their perception of value. As humans, we rely on language to frame our experiences. Quantifying your Inspiration Capital deepens your clients’ perception of value. It gives stickiness and portability to your previously elusive secret sauce. Clients hold on tight to their experiences and talk about them in meaningful ways with their peers you’d love to meet.

Filling void with value: Inspiration Capital quiets the noise

Consider the myriad of sales organizationsand financial institutions constantly grabbingfor a piece of your prospects’ bandwidth. Few, if any, articulate and quantify the prowess of their Inspiration Capital. Why not step to the side as they pummel your prospects with virtues of craft? Climb up to high ground and make the value of your Inspiration Capital tangible. Let it be the golden truth that differentiates you from all those others who claim to do what you do. The white noise of news feeds and media hype doesn’t stand a chance against the magic of your secret sauce -as long as you can explain the secret.

Let's get started

Great advisors long to be valued for who they are, yet most lead with the sale of their Craft Capital. If this resonates, consider allocating energy and focus to packaging your Inspiration Capital. Help prospects hear your full and true value early and profoundly. Create a little paper proof to make it tangible.

Five power questions to begin your journey

Ask your top five clients for a 15-minute call. If it’s helpful, consider sending this article to explain your project.

5 Power Questions

If all high-end firms offered the same technical intellectual capital, why would you work with our firm?

Digging a little deeper, into what you just shared, what is the significance for you - either personally and/or in business?

Picture the last big decision or project we worked on together. How did our conversations influence your perspective about the topic?

For that same project, how did our conversations influence how you felt about your choices?

How did our exchanges influence how you felt post-implementation?

After you’ve completed at least five interviews, set aside quality time to debrief them with your team or partners. Using white boards or large Post-It paper, cull and record common themes. Push yourselves to go deeper than those general phrases noted earlier. 

Next, begin creating your paper proof. Leverage your genius for flow charting concepts, yet discipline yourself to quantify experiential value, not technical or business factors. Capture a cherished client’s journey with your Inspiration Capital – from a fist of stress to the exhale of a confident choice. 

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