While there is certainly no shortage of ways to market your practice today, I can't think of a better one that offers a bigger opportunity than building strategic alliances with other professionals. But how do you quantify that opportunity? And how do you know how much business you can expect from a relationship with another professional? Let's answer this question. Before you implement any new marketing strategy, you should know upfront what to expect it to yield for you.
A Simple Equation
The number of clients multiplied by the average amount of investable assets per client equals the size of the opportunity.
When I began building strategic alliances in my practice I set the following guidelines for myself. Before I formed an alliance with anyone I first had to ask, "How many clients do you have, and how many of those are over the age of 50?"
The primary reason for asking these questions is because this is the market I work with, the baby boomers. For me, to justify the level of relationship I was going to put in place, the CPAs, enrolled agents and accountants I approached had to have at least 300 clients over the age of 50.
Why 300 Over the Age of 50?
I stumbled across a study online done by the Nielsen company in 2009 that revealed the average couple in the U.S. over the age of 50 has approximately $150,000 in investable assets. It made sense to me that someone over the age of 50, who was paying a professional to prepare their taxes, should on average easily have $150,000 in investable assets. This then meant that each alliance I formed with a CPA who had at least 300 clients in this category represented a $45 million opportunity.
