Quick, who is your ideal client? If you can’t answer this question within 30 seconds, you’ve got some explaining to do—particularly in this time of turmoil.

I talk with many independent financial advisors and I’d say that more than 75 percent of them can’t tell you exactly who their ideal clients are. There’s some deep-seated fear that if they declare a niche of 35-65 year-old scientists who work in the New York metro area, a Gates or Wozniak will be lost.

With the financial system wracked by turmoil, independent advisors have an opportunity to reshape their businesses. Yes, some clients may leave your firm. But as has happened during previous times of turmoil, independent advisors will come out way ahead.

We have witnessed the destruction of the giant Wall Street firms and people’s confidence in them. As much as the public distrusts Washington politicians, the public trusts Wall Street even less. Your marketing effort must communicate how you’re different from Wall Street salespeople. (I’ll be talking about how to separate your firm from Wall Street at our webinar this Friday at 4 p.m. ET.

Instead of dwelling on the market’s collapse, start planning how you’re going to come out of this mess on top. Stay focused on behaving like the firm you’ve always wanted to create. Decide who the ideal clients are that you are going to want to work with most. That’s the first step in preparing for the next phase of this financial crisis—rebuilding and recovering. Doing it now in the throes of the crisis may seem like a lot to ask, but only by envisioning the future you want to create will you be able to actually take steps in that direction.

Declaring your ideal clients is important because it provides a roadmap for your marketing, client-acquisition, and client-retention efforts. And you are going to be fielding questions from many scared investors in the months ahead who no longer want to work with a broker affiliated with a once-swaggering financial giant, but you need to decide which of these people are the best-fit for the advisory firm you are trying to build. While asking you to think about anything other than the crisis may be difficult, there is no shortage of good reasons to declare your ideal clients now:

• It’s differentiates you instantly from the giants. Bank of America and Citigroup are firms for the masses. By specializing, you create exclusivity. Your firm is a boutique that excels in handling certain types of clients, and you cannot afford to spread yourself too thin because your service is so personalized.
• You’ll establish yourself as an expert. When you elucidate who you work with, you attract more of that type of client, thus cementing your expertise for a certain type of person’s needs. Consider how you select a physician when you have a specific health ailment— you want the doctor who specializes, right? A GP is fine for routine care. But when you have a problem to be addressed, you want a specialist. People with money issues want a specialist, too.
• You can charge more, work less, and maintain a smaller client roster. Serving a very select group of clients frees you to dedicate yourself and your time to their unique needs. It’s a lot simpler, cost-effective, and time-efficient for an independent advisory firm to provide outstanding service to a smaller number of clients with similar needs than to compete with Bank of America.
• You get more bang for your marketing buck. It’s expensive to advertise to the masses—especially in an industry as commoditized as financial services. It’s expensive to try to create marketing materials when you’re trying to be all things to all people. A tighter focus makes your advertising and marketing goals clearer and more achievable.
• You establish relationships with a strategic network. Once you’ve identified the ancillary services that your clients most often require, you can establish or further cement relationships with your strategic alliances. Seek out CPAs, estate attorneys, and insurance brokers who’ll be knowledgeable about the services your ideal client frequently requires. Suddenly, you have a team and a referral network.
• You do what you’re best at and enjoy most. Most independent financial advisors genuinely care about their clients and want to help them, and part of the helping-people equation is chemistry. You’re much more likely to feel chemistry with the clients that you really believe you can help. Paring down your client base to the subset of ideal clients that you most want to help allows you to offload clients who aren’t as good a fit for your firm.