Are you asking yourself the right questions to succeed?

The fastest way to grow your financial planning or insurance business is to get clear about what you want and how you want to get there.

Here are the questions you should be asking yourself:

1. Who do you want to serve? Telling the world that you work with everyone and do everything for them is the surest way to stunt your professional growth. Do you have an ideal client you can describe to someone?

Think about your best clients. What do they have in common? Maybe they’re professional women. Maybe they’re business owners or medical professionals. Maybe they’re young families. Focusing on one kind of client makes your marketing much easier and more effective.

2. How do you want to serve them? These special clients may have a multitude of needs. If you want to ensure your success, though, your best bet is to lead with just one of them. The others will come to the surface in your fact-finding. However, opening the door with just one will get you better results.
3. What is your belief about them and how that product/service helps them? Why you chose that particular client and the particular need you identified is based upon your beliefs about them and that need. Get clear on what those beliefs are.
4. Why did you choose them, and why are you the best person to serve them? Simon Sinek tells us, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” What’s your why?
5. How are you/will you be reaching them? Instead of thinking about marketing to the world, think about marketing to your ideal clients’ particular needs. How can you reach them directly? How can you reach them through other professionals who serve them? These are the only places you should be spending your time, energy and money.
6. What’s your goal? What do you want to happen in your work with these people leading with this one product or service by the end of the year? In the next three years? In the next five?
7. How passionate are you about this? On a scale of 1 to 10, how passionate are you about this ideal client and the product or service you’re leading with? If it’s less than a 10, it’s not likely to work for you. What would make it a 10?
8. What will get in your way? What will slow you down or stop you in your pursuit of these ideal clients? We need to watch out for whatever these are for you.
9. What more do you need to learn about your product/service so that you can be the best possible resource for these clients and the need you’re offering to fill? If you’re offering income tax savings in retirement to medical professionals, what do you need to learn that you still don’t have a handle on? Identify anything that’s missing, and create a plan to learn it.
10. What more do you need to learn about communicating with your ideal client to bring this service/product to them? Here again, figure out what’s missing, and create a plan to learn it or find resources that can provide what’s missing.
11. How will you hold yourself accountable to bring your ideal client your message? When you know how you’re going to reach them, find a way to ensure you’re working on doing that every day. This will be your No. 1 priority.

Answer these questions and your business will start to move in the direction it needs to go.

Sandy Schussel is a performance acceleration coach who has been working with financial advisors for more than 20 years, helping them break through to higher production levels.

Learn more about how focusing your efforts increases your success:

• Watch “Effective goal-setting for MDRT qualification” and listen to how an MDRT member uses her why to set her goals. (MDRT member exclusive)
• Read “How to package your brand” to learn how to target high-net-worth clients (COT and TOT member exclusive)
• Read “Find and dominate your niche” to discover how an MDRT member found an underserved market. (MDRT member exclusive)