When it comes to choosing their advisors, affluent investors care more about one characteristic than any other. If you think it's investment acumen, you're wrong. Your reputation? Sorry. It's not even client service. Instead, what prospective clients value most is your level of expertise.

Consider that 91% of high-net-worth investors in a 2006 study cited "overall expertise" as a very important reason for selecting their advisor. By contrast, just 65.2% cited reputation as a key factor, while a mere 26.6% said the advisor's investment performance was a main driver of the selection decision.

EXPERT POSITIONING

What are the implications of this finding? The biggest one is that you must position yourself so that the clients you want to target see you as a true expert who can address their full range of problems, issues and opportunities.

This is easier said than done for many advisors, who are uncomfortable describing themselves as experts. They think they need to get some sort of license or other official qualification in order to call themselves an expert. Not so. The way to become known as an expert is simply to raise your hand and call attention to yourself and your knowledge.

You may be uncomfortable with the concept of being perceived as an expert, but remember this: You don't have to know everything. In our work with hundreds of nationally recognized "experts," we can say with assurance that none of them knows everything. These advisors have mastered the art of positioning themselves as experts, and because they are perceived as experts, they are. But remember, once you've named yourself an expert, credibility becomes your bottom line, so you had better back up your claim with creative and effective insights.

Positioning is, in fact, the art of controlling perceptions-how clients and prospects see you and your team. Your goal is to be first in the minds of members of your market niche. There are four steps to positioning yourself successfully as the expert that affluent investors need you to be: identify your compelling value proposition, write your positioning statement, create your elevator speech and deliver your call to action.

THE VALUE PROPOSITION

Over the years, you've developed a specific skill set that you can provide to your clients. These skills might be in the areas of asset management, financial planning, retirement planning or others. But while your particular skills are very important, research tells us that clients and prospects are looking for something that goes deeper than a specific skill set. They want an advisor who is an expert at solving their financial challenges.

Your first step in effective positioning is to claim your value proposition—your expertise in solving your clients' financial challenges—and commit to being seen as the expert they want. Recognize that affluent investors have five key concerns they would like their advisors to help them address successfully:

* Preserving wealth. Most affluent clients were worried about losing their wealth even before this market downturn. Today they want help making smart decisions about their money. Many have lost confidence in their current advisors and even in the financial markets as a whole.

* Minimizing taxes. Mitigating income taxes is a concern for most investors with net worths of $1 million or more. For investors with especially high net worths, minimizing estate and capital gains taxes is also important.

* Effective estate and gift transfer. Ensuring that heirs, parents, children and grandchildren are taken care of with minimal difficulty and cost, in accordance with their wishes, is a major issue for the affluent.

* Wealth protection. Affluent investors want to keep wealth safe from potential creditors, litigants, children's spouses and potential ex-spouses, as well as from catastrophic loss.

* Charitable giving. Helping to facilitate and increase the effectiveness of their charitable intent is crucial to many high-net-worth investors.

The best way for top advisors to address these key concerns is through the wealth management process. Many position themselves as their clients' personal chief financial officer, who helps them think through their challenges while working with them (and their other advisors) to determine and implement solutions.

POSITIONING STATEMENT

Your positioning statement is a clear, brief description of the value you provide to your clients and prospects. It's a proclamation that should resonate with the members of your market niche. For instance, at CEG Worldwide, our positioning statement is: "We coach advisors to build simple and elegant wealth management businesses while becoming indispensable to affluent clients." When I worked as an advisor with corporate executives, my positioning statement was: "I help senior executives make work optional."