Hales: A lot of advisors who think they have a niche actually don’t. They are targeting entire demographics like millennials or women. We need to identify your mega market, your market segment and then your market niche. What the heck are these things, and how can you identify them for yourself?

Well, your mega market is just a broad category of clients that usually involves relationships, making money, health, hobbies or sports. What’s important here is that they see themselves as a group, and they have similar financial issues, but people who see themselves as a group will have associations and conferences, and they have magazines, and this is how you find them. Then we need to take it a step further to get to your market segment. Your market segment is just a group within your mega market that you can speak to directly. This might be because you have some sort of expertise that you can share, or you have some sort of common ground with this segment of the market. It’s important because this is what actually opens up opportunities, relationships and conversations. You don’t want to skip this personal element, but then we’re going to take it a step even further, right down to your market niche.

Your market niche is just a small slice of your market segment that you can potentially own. This is the strategic sweet spot of maybe 1,000 to 10,000 prospects with only 20 to 200 advisors serving them. You are going to be engrossed in this niche all day, every day. We want to make sure that you know, like and actually care about their problems. This can be super overwhelming to do on your own, but it’s my niche to help guide financial advisors through this process. After over a decade in financial services, I know what works and the steps that you need to get there. This is your chance to align whom you really want to work with, with what you genuinely want to do, and where you feel you can make the most impact.

It’s not just financial advisors finding clients; it’s clients finding financial advisors because that’s what creates this powerful connection.

Haney: Our marketplace is the association marketplace. You may be familiar with associations; MDRT happens to be one. Associations have members — who could be professional, technical, all kinds. In the United States, there is an association for everything. And there is also an association for associations. That’s actually where we spend most of our time. It’s called ASAE, American Society for Association Executives. That’s where all the association professionals and those who are in that industry come to play.

The first thing that we had to do to be effective was to amplify the brand. Our brand was built around the fact that we understood better than anybody else what a day in the life of an association professional was like. And I say this very proudly: All three principles of our practice have the designation CAE, which stands for Certified Association Executive. So all three of us could do their jobs. We could be hired for that. I use it as an example to tell you how strategic it is when you say, “I really want to connect at an industry-based level because I want my audience to see me that way.” It makes a huge difference.

We knew the language of associations, and those are the conversations we chose to have, which were often not about money or insurance or any of the stuff that we were good at doing. We started having conversations that were actually meaningful and relevant to our audience, which then led to conversations that were meaningful and relevant to our practice.

We did elevate our thought leadership very strategically. There is a book that you have to study to take the CAE exam. In that CAE book, there is a chapter on risk management. Do you know who wrote the chapter on risk management for insurance purposes and for associations? Yeah, you guessed it. What a great way to demonstrate that you really get what they do when they actually have to get through your stuff to take the exam, to get those credentials. So, very frequently, we get people who reach out to us almost on a monthly basis these days, saying, “You know what? I just took my CAE, and I realized that we should probably be working with you, because you wrote this chapter that was really challenging, and that I didn’t really understand, so thanks for that.” They are usually not super happy about the chapter, but they are happy to work with us professionally.

Associations do not need more people to sell things to them. And, by the way, most of your clients don’t either. We sit on the same side of the table with them, and we help them do mission, vision, value and membership engagement. We just happen to do it a little bit differently than some of their paid employees. We also volunteer in just about every possible way that we can in that association community. Show up where they are showing up because they are telling you, by doing that, that matters to them. Well, it should matter to you too.