As a highly competent advisor with years of experience, it’s easy to assume that your accrued expertise is all you need to successfully acquire new clients at a steady pace.
You have a respectable book of business that you’ve built over the years delivering dependable advice and tremendous value.
Clients are happy and your business is relatively stable.
With all of that, it’s easy to assume new potential clients would instantly recognize and appreciate your expertise and decide to hire you.
But while your competence and credibility might have got you to where you are today… it’s not going to get you to where you need to be tomorrow.
The reality is, there are many advisors in your market with the same kind of credibility as you.
Up until now, you could rely on your competence and credibility to bring in new clients.
But here’s the big news: competence and credibility have been commoditized.
In other words, being good at what you do is no longer enough to differentiate yourself from other advisors.
New advisors are coming into the market and increasing the amount of choices available to potential clients.
But you may be saying to yourself: “I’m a trusted advisor. My clients trust me and that’s the main way I have differentiated myself up until this point”.
I’m sure that is true, but here’s the problem…
The fact that you are a trusted advisor to your current clients has zero leverage or relevance to new potential clients who don’t yet have a relationship with you.
Going into a sales conversation as a trusted advisor forces you to rely on your competence, positioning you like other competent advisors.
But, if you become a Trusted Authority, your sales conversations proceed from a profoundly different starting point.
You are positioned as the “only choice” for your ideal client, and you don’t ever have to sell yourself because they are simply ready and open to working with you.
Becoming a trusted advisor is what happens AFTER you make the sale. But BEFORE you can even make the sale, you need to become a Trusted Authority.
How do you do this?
Simple.
Your classic advisor mindset of: “Get me in front of the right prospects and they’ll trust me, I’ll be fine”, needs to change to: “Help me create a Trusted Authority sales process so that BEFORE I meet a potential client, they ALREADY trust me”.