Meeting #3 Strategic Alliance and General Business Update

I had my third meeting with Ron L. in my office on Thursday. Ron is my most promising candidate to become a strategic alliance so far and I was excited to see how the meeting would turn out.

The meeting did not go as well as I had hoped. First of all, Ron was 20 minutes late. Apparently he left his cell phone in the office and had a previous meeting run long. Then I made the mistake of introducing my manager, Ray to him before we got down to business.

Ray is a good guy and is knowlegeable about many subjects. The problem is that he tends to ramble on when engaged in a conversation. I was hoping for a quick 5 minutes and instead it turned into 20. Ron did comment that it was a nice touch for me to introduce him, but it left us much less time to accomplish the objectives of the meeting.

Once we got to my office we reviewed the Strategic Alliance Discussion Points. Ron agreed with analysis on which were the most important goals for him to reach. I also reviewed the details of his practice with him to confirm that I have been listening. The big finale is when we begin to brainstorm about finding ways we can work together to increase both of our incomes.

I went through the first two ideas which included becoming a gatekeeper for his clients. When a new client is referred to him, they can meet with me first where I will prepare a client balance sheet and help them outline their goals. Once this is finished, I can hand them over to Ron. Ron will save time by not having to make his initial consultation free, thereby increasing his billable hours. I will get the benefit of meeting new people with money in a friendly environment.

Ron is excited about this idea and it is definitely the one I will lead with in the 4th meeting.

The final snag in the meeting came when he looked at his watch and realized he was going to be late for his next appointment. We still had 3-4 different ideas to discuss. Ron said it would be ok to call him and discuss it over the phone the next day. I don't think this will have the same impact. However, I think I can schedule the 4th meeting and lead with the gatekeeper idea and have him agree to a trial run.

Next time I will let my manager know ahead of time that he can only talk to us for 5 minutes before I need to leave.

As for the status of the rest of my business, there are good things and bad things.
The good is that I have been very motivated so far this year. I have finally got in the habit of keeping track of weekly goals and making a to-do list every day. This has increased my focus and really makes me feel as if I have purpose in my day to day activities.

I have managed to solidify most of my Dad's relationships and even convinced some of them to move into separately managed accounts. I am disappointed that a couple of them are leaving. I really feel like they could have been saved if my Dad had let me start managing them sooner. I have had a couple of his clients already praise me for the amount of attention I am giving them and how they were close to leaving because my Dad had stopped calling them.

As for the bad things, it's mainly that my production is lagging slightly behind last years. Last year was not good and I am trying to move up from 300k to 400k in production. I am falling behind my goal. I have come to the stark realization that it can take 3-4 months to establish a strategic alliance with a good estate planning attorney. I am guessing that it will probably take an additional few months for a steady flow of new clients to start as well. This means I really need to focus on setting more appointments with different attorneys so I can stuff the pipeline. This also means that I may not have a noticeable jump in performance until the second half of the year.

In the mean time, I am beginning to schedule a series of client appreciation events/seminars and hopefully that may bring in some additional referrals.