When an advisor decides to segment their book they are faced with difficult choices. They want to have more time to take care of their best clients but find it hard to give away the smaller clients due to a variety of reasons. Many advisors have gone into their book and identified their ideal clients, their second best clients, the clients they tolerate and the clients they’d like to hand off but haven’t gotten around to it.
Sound familiar?
Well, if you’re ready to move beyond this potential stumbling block, the first step is to segment your clients. In doing this you will both set your minimum (assets and\or revenues) for new relationships and the maximum number clients you’ll work with on a going forward basis. We call the “min\max” balance. The maximum is represented by your core group of clients…no more A,B,C segmenting. An individual Supernova advisor has no more than 100 core clients.
At this point, you may still find there are a handful of clients who are part of your business because they just “need” to be. These are “butlers” in Supernova terminology. They are the children of a major client or essential to your acquisition program or just the kind of person you need to accommodate ‘if you plan on getting into heaven.’
The best examples are the grown children of your largest clients that don’t meet your minimum but will some day. They are probably critical to the next generation of your practice and need to be included in your client list. Or perhaps a COI who sends you a lot of referrals, but doesn’t quite hit your ideal client target.
Unlike your 12/4/2 core client strategy, butlers are contacted 4 times a year with one of those contacts being an in-person meeting…we call it 4/1. The time commitment to three butlers is equal to one core client. Therefore if you have 21 butlers that is equal to 7 core clients, making the maximum number of clients you should have 93 instead of 100.
However, keep in mind that even though you may meet with butlers less often, they still might call the office and require time outside of your regularly scheduled meetings. If you have 21 extra people calling your office with questions or needs that can be a lot of calls! Our experiences with butlers has been if there isn’t potential for growth with their portfolio they may be better off with another advisor who has a lower minimum than you.
Butlers are an accommodation. They are NOT an excuse to keep clients that don’t fit your business. Choose your butlers wisely.