Deciding how to extend all of your time, resources and energy to provide Comprehensive Financial Services to your clients includes determining Ideal and Non-Ideal Clients.

With this in mind, and before we define exactly who are your current Ideal and Non-Ideal Clients, let’s consider a concept that will serve you well: Not all Non-Ideal Clients are the same. They fall into different categories.

Considering that reality will help you decide what, if anything, to do with your Non-Ideal Clients once you identify them.  Following are some examples of client classification groups that will assist you in sorting Ideal Clients from Non-Ideal Clients:

1. I like (enjoy) this client (Potentially one of our ten Ideal Client Exception Slots)
2. I DO NOT like (enjoy) this client
3. Client will meet the Ideal Client Profile within the next 48 months
4. Client will unlikely EVER meet our Ideal Client Profile

Let’s face some facts: if you have a large number of Non-Ideal Clients, and you attempt to offer all of them fully Comprehensive Financial Services, you run the risk of straining your resources. Even if you pulled it off, your personal life, not to mention your quality of life, would suffer.  It could prove expensive and burdensome.

Can you really say that you are currently serving your Non-Ideal Clients in a way that best serves them?

Perhaps they would be better served by another advisor who is competent, worthy of trust and at an earlier stage in their career, and has more time to spend with some of these clients.

How to politely disengage without experiencing a drop in revenue:

First, refer to the 12 categories of Non-Ideal Clients outlined in Module 8 and create a process for politely disengaging from each category type.  Each process will be an action sequence including some or all of the following:

• Email
• Physical letter
• Phone call from someone on staff
• Phone call from Trusted Advisor (TA)
• Meeting with someone on staff
• Meeting with Trusted Advisor (TA)

In our experience, disengaging from Non-Ideal Clients, while sometimes uncomfortable, is much less uncomfortable than anticipated.  Advisors usually predict the distress initially felt by clients after a polite disengagement to be more than the actual reaction.

Consider that the best way to honor these clients that you can no longer serve as well as you once could, is to acknowledge that the time has come to allow them to seek another advisor who can better serve them, since your growing Ideal Client community requires, deserves, and is paying the freight for your undivided attention.