Building Your Business Owner Client Base

Referral Resources that will help acquire Business Owner Clients

Referrals are a great way to grow your business – it speaks volumes when you are recommended. There are a couple of ways to help referrals along and here are the best practices that have worked for me.

First on my list are property and casualty insurance brokers, commercial insurance brokers. You see the signs and advertisements, like your independent insurance agent. These are the people that provide coverage’s such as workers compensation, liability insurance for business owners.

They definitely have our clients. They are looking for another source of income because whether you know it or not, that business has been hurting over the years because margins have gone down and every time you read about California and other places having to drop their workers compensation rates, picture if you were the agent.

Now the rates dropped, and you are getting a percentage of what that income is, what that cost is, and all of a sudden they are laying off people? They are losing employees, so you take a percentage, their 10% or whatever they make and that percentage is eroding.

Independent commercial agents really need our help because they are not life insurance experts, and they can’t do what we can do. The great thing about them is they have the business owner clients and they have the relationships with the business owner clients. They can get us in the door very, very quickly.

Many of them can be found at networking events. Once you build alliances with them, and you actually do some business, the property and casualty broker will be very excited once they’re seeing some revenue coming in where they’re not really having to do much for it. I suggest you bring in some bagels or something to chat with them and get to know them.

Accountants and Attorneys are a great group of professionals that will have resources for referrals. This is a relationship that will allow for an alliance of referring clients to each other.

My third suggestion would be Business Broker. I have received business from them and people who buy and sell businesses because they know what’s going on. The same rules apply, take some time and get to know them through breakfast or dinner meetings.

Another one, probably the most recent one would be Valuation Specialist. These are people who value businesses and they provide valuations for either estate planning, or business succession planning because without that your client will not have a bonafide plan. So they know who’s who and they know what’s what.

There are many of these alliances that are only limited by your imagination. But when you ask the question of yourself, who has my business owner clients and better still who has a trusted relationship with those clients, that’s what we want.

Every one of the clients you have should know that you are capable of working with business owners. Your friends, your family, your nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, whoever they are, don’t assume that because they don’t own businesses they don’t know people that do. So that’s an area, you definitely want to keep mentioning, it starts at home. Everything begins at home. Those are the people that trust us the most.

The key is to START a process that will help you grow your business and locate your ideal client. I will continue to share additional steps that will assist you with attracting the business owner client. If you need assistance and would like to join my mentorship program, learn more…