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In the past 11 years, we’ve had two major bear markets and experienced the near collapse of the world financial system. Not surprisingly, many advisors lost revenue, lost clients and some even lost confidence in their ability to protect their clients’ assets during times of turmoil. Yet during this 11-year period of global upheaval, a select group of advisors prospered.
The good news is if you act now, you have the opportunity to become one of those select advisors who prospers over the next 11 years—regardless of what happens in the markets or the economy. The successful advisors of the future are the ones who are planting new seeds now and proactively taking control of their businesses.
In my work with top producers, it’s clear that they possessed several characteristics and a way of thinking that separated them from mid-level producers over the past 11 years. These three are worth emulating.
Check Out Steve's List of the Top 10 Activities for Million-Dollar Producers
Three Characteristics of Top Producers
1. Incremental Thinking Vs Order of Magnitude Thinking.
Let’s say you are a $250,000 producer today and your goal is to grow to $500,000. You can hit that goal using incremental thinking, i.e., working a little harder and making minor tweaks to your business plan. Conversely, if you want to grow from $250,000 to $2.5 million, then you need to engage in order of magnitude thinking, i.e., making major changes to your strategy coupled with better execution.
Top producers are order of magnitude thinkers. They realize that to reach a new milestone in their business, they have to continually reinvent themselves. What got them from $250,000 to $500,000 in production did not get them from $500,000 to $1.5 million, let alone $2.5 million in production.
Another way to view this idea is to picture your business along a growth curve. Incremental thinking will help you move up along a curve, whereas order of magnitude thinking jumps you up to an entirely new curve.
To become an order of magnitude thinker, try this simple exercise. Take your 2010 production and multiply it by 10. Now, ask yourself, what business model would you have to create in order to have a reasonable chance of growing your business by a factor of 10 in the next 5 – 10 years? Stumped? Here’s the good news. Those models exist and all you have to do is find them, study them, and decide if that’s a model you want to pursue.
For example, if you have $100 million in assets under management and you want to grow to $1 billion, then simply find the asset management firms that have $1 billion in assets under management and study how they got there. Call them up and ask them. You’d be surprised at how approachable they are if you are respectful, humble, and sincere. Ultimately, you don’t have to copy verbatim what they did but you can use the trail they blazed as a guide for the various ways to reach your order of magnitude goal.
2. Hail Mary Vs Blocking and Tackling
For many years, the Nebraska Cornhuskers have been one of college football’s preeminent teams (okay, they slipped a bit in the 2000s for you non-Husker fans). They’ve been consistently ranked in the Top 20 and have won five national championships since 1970. Yet, rarely have the Huskers had a highly touted recruiting class. Instead, Nebraska took good players and made them great by focusing on the fundamentals of blocking and tackling (and by feeding them a heavy dose of Nebraska steaks!)
Often, advisors come to one of my presentations and ask for that “Magic Bullet” that will change everything for them; the advisor equivalent of a completed “Hail Mary” pass that wins the game. Unfortunately, there is no “Hail Mary” pass for advisors. Rather, at its core, winning the “National Championship” in the advisory business requires the advisory-equivalent of blocking and tackling. It’s taking a great game plan and executing it flawlessly.
Top producers focus on blocking and tackling. Rather than trying to skip these basics and going straight to “the good stuff,” advisors would be better served by focusing on the nuts and bolts of building a great business such as consistently using systems and checklists, building deep relationships, always asking for referrals, and delivering a quality financial planning and investment process. Ironically, advisors will find that the nuts and bolts are the good stuff. By engaging in order of magnitude thinking and focusing on blocking and tackling, top producers combine the power of the mind with the power of fundamentals to generate powerful results.
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