At a glance
- Ranking top clients by revenue and pulling their shared traits produces a picture of relationships after years of advice, not of the prospects marketing is being sent to find.
- The column uses a hypothetical advisor's top 30 households to show the gap.
- Reframing 'who we serve' around those triggers—a deal, a death, a payout or a deadline—gives marketing a segment to target, the column says.
Most ideal-client profiles are accurate, and that is the problem, WealthManagement.com argued in a column published Oct. 29. Ranking top clients by revenue and pulling their shared traits produces a picture of relationships after years of advice, not of the prospects marketing is being sent to find.
The column uses a hypothetical advisor's top 30 households to show the gap. The profile read: married couples 58 to 64 with $1.5 million to $3 million in investable assets, within five years of retirement. First-meeting notes instead described a 52-year-old facing an early-retirement package deadline, a physician who had just left a group practice, and a widow three weeks into managing life insurance proceeds.
Reframing 'who we serve' around those triggers—a deal, a death, a payout or a deadline—gives marketing a segment to target, the column says. It also tells marketing which professionals to partner with and which questions to answer.
Reported by the Practice management desk from WealthManagement.com. Published . Corrections