The Jewish Home | JUNE 23, 2022
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Mind Y
ur Business
Norm Trainor: Build Relationships for Life By Yitzchok Saftlas
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his column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include: John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; and Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over
400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, president of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.
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n a recent 710 WOR “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with the founder and CEO of the Covenant Group Norm Trainor (NT) on the topic of selling professional services to your dream clients.
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YS: One of the great lines I love that you share is “if you know how to open, you don’t have to close.” Let’s drill down on how does one go about identifying a real prospect. NT: One of the qualities of people who think in the long term, these high performers, is they align the strategic and tactical. Their work in sales, and every other facet of their professional lives, is very thoughtful. And typically, the starting point for every business, but particularly so in a professional advisory business, is getting three questions right.
The first of which is: who is the right client? The second: what is the right value proposition? The clarity of your value proposition drives everything. And the third is: what is the right exchange of value? What’s the benefit that the client derives and what do you receive in return? Let me give you an example. For a number of years, we’ve worked with David Simkowitz, a wealth manager at Simkowitz and Company, one of the leading wealth management firms in America. And David is a consummate professional. One of the things that differentiates David is clarity with regard to who is the right client. David’s client, typically, is a successful wealth creator. It is someone who has built a very successful business or created wealth through real estate, or in some other area. Often, they are first generation wealthy; they did not grow up wealthy. They’ve acquired a great deal of wealth, and now they want to move from wealth creation to wealth preservation. They too, like David, think long term; they
think multi generationally. And they’re concerned about the health, wealth, and well-being of future generations. So, David has real clarity, with regard to who is the right client. David also has clarity with respect to the value proposition that they provide. And let me give you an example of how it applies. One of our clients is a CEO of a multibillion-dollar family enterprise, and one of the things that he shared with me is, “Norm, the problem with most of our professional advisors is that they see our business through the lens of how they make money. And what I would really like them to do is take an integrative approach to the complexities that wealth brings.” You see the challenge for anyone is that you have to take what’s complex and make it simple without removing the complexity. It’s easy to make something simple; it’s very challenging to take what’s difficult and make it simple without removing the complexity. But the third question is, what is the right exchange of value? And here, it all starts with the mindset of the advisor.
Is that mindset, “I’m going to complete a transaction,” or “I’m going to build a relationship for life?” You have to get those three questions right. Right client, right value proposition, right exchange of value.
So, take me through the step-by-step process of identifying and landing your dream clients. The sales process involves a series of conversations. Where relationships matter, so do conversations. These conversations can take place in one meeting or over a series of meetings. Buying is a series of micro decisions, and each decision point involves a conversation. And the way in which you manage those conversations is critical to getting to “yes.” The sales process has a structure that includes how you attract people into a conversation, about what’s important to them, and how you can add value. You draw people into a conversation by focusing on what’s important to them. You create interest by describing
