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Client Acquisition Tips from Bill Cates

When you’re on the phone with a prospective client – do you wing it? Do you play it by ear? Or do you have a specific process you know usually works if you follow it?

The 4 bases you want to touch to help you score more high-level clients are:

1. Create Engagement with the Prospect
2. Discover & Quantify Their Gap
3. Provide Value Quickly
4. Tell Your Prospect You Think You’re a Great Fit and Why

Make sure you click the link to this blog post where I go deeper with each of these strategies.

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For this moment in time, I’m going to assume you are highly referable. I mean, you are getting referrals and introductions without asking for them – from prospects, clients, and centers of influence – right?

Your referability (or lack thereof) will make or break your ability to get referrals and turn them into introductions.

Since you don’t want to ask too soon or ask too often, how else can you be appropriately proactive? By promoting referrals.

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Your prospects think you are there to sell them something.

Even if you are 100 percent committed to doing what’s in their best interest – which could mean you not winning the business – they still think your motive is to get them to do business with you.

So how do you shift this dynamic?

I have two totally different approaches for you to consider. Both can work. And, yes, it’s possible to blend the two. (I’ll show you how.)

And check out the video associated with this blog for some concrete ways professionals put these strategies into action.

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Are you a lazy event networker? Could your event networking use a kick in the kiester?

The most successful event networkers take the time to do one thing that most people don’t (that’s why they’re so successful).

They use the powerful strategy or Personalized Event Networking.

It’s simple! It’s easy! It will produce results for you!

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If I ran into a good prospect for you and your business, how would I know it and how would you like me to introduce them to you?

That phrase summarizes the topic for this week’s blog post. Last week I provided a checklist of things you can do to create more productive referral relationships.

Let’s drill down a little deeper, shall we?

We don’t want Word of Mouth! We don’t want weak Referrals! We DO want Connections or Introductions! We want prospective clients waiting and wanting to hear from us. We want prospects who are a perfect fit for our business, ready to do business with us.

Wow! Wouldn’t that be nice? So how do we do that?

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Hopefully, you have already realized that a great Referral Partner can be worth a lot more to your business then any one client.

My question for you is this… “Do you have a clearly laid out plan – and are you working that plan – to meet great Referral Partners on a regular basis?

It is my belief that hardly a week should go by without some activity to meet new Referral Partners and/or strengthen current Referral Partners.

This blog post provides you with a 10-strategy checklist for referral productive Referral Partnerships.

To get your checklist for productive Referral Partnerships, keep reading…

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A quality center of influence can be worth some much more than any one clients. Creating productive relationships with COIs usually take time, so you need to think long term. With that said, sometimes COIs can produce results in short order.

The best way to illustrate this is with an example from my own financial advisors. To protect the guilty, I’ll change his name to Alex.

To discover the simple, 2-step process Alex used to start the flow of referrals, keep reading…

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You’ve probably heard the reports. “They” are saying, “You can’t ask for referrals” or “Stop asking for referrals.”

Allow me to quote my high school basketball coach, “Horse Manure Cates!”

Now… I do agree that we should think in terms of introductions and not simply referrals.

But that’s now what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people who keep reporting Fake Referral News like…

FAKE REFERRAL NEWS #1: “Asking for referrals doesn’t work.”

FAKE REFERRAL NEWS #2: “Your clients aren’t thinking about helping you.”

Why is this fake referral news and what should you be doing about it?

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When I tell people that I hate going to networking events, I usually hear, “What? The Referral Coach doesn’t like networking? Isn’t that blasphemy or something?”

Well… I didn’t say I hated “networking.” I truly enjoy forming relationships with lots of people in an effort to bring value to them and vice versa.

I just don’t like the event part of it. Talking to strangers and all that. I’m actually kind of shy at those things.

For the 10 things I do to produce results at networking events… READ ON!

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During a coaching session, Daniel and I were talking sales strategies and he asked me, “Bill, when it comes to looking for new clients, are you hunter or a farmer? Do you constantly hunt (prospect) for new business or do you just farm the clients you currently have?”

I thought about this for a minute and replied, “Actually, I’m more of a trapper. I like to apply the principles of value-centered marketing so people see me as a resource and come to me to me for further assistance.”

So which strategy is best for you? Perhaps some combination of all three?

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Referral Coach