Today’s Most Effective Marketing Tool

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

How do you decide where to focus your mar­ket­ing efforts?

Con­ver­sa­tions with advi­sors and a recent arti­cle have per­suaded me that for many finan­cial advi­sors, the sin­gle best vehi­cle for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients is a reg­u­lar and fre­quent e-newsletter. Quite sim­ply, done con­sis­tently and to a rea­son­able stan­dard, I know of no other tool that right now gives advi­sors the same impact and return on effort.

Let’s define our terms here: By fre­quent I mean a min­i­mum of monthly and prefer­ably twice monthly; and per­haps even weekly. The com­mit­ment of time is sub­stan­tial, in fact it becomes the focal time of your communication.

Off­set­ting that invest­ment, advi­sors who’ve done this tell me they’ve been sur­prised at the pos­i­tive response from clients. Just as impor­tant, the right e-newsletter can be a great vehi­cle to stay top of mind with prospec­tive clients. And while the time com­mit­ment is sub­stan­tial, the cost is sur­pris­ingly inexpensive.

At the bot­tom today is a recent arti­cle by Debra Tay­lor, who recently wrote in Hors­es­mouth about her expe­ri­ence launch­ing an e-newsletter.

Here are some other lessons from advi­sors who send clients reg­u­lar e-newsletters.

Make it substantive:

If you’re going to ask clients to read some­thing fre­quently, you need to ensure that they get new insights that make it worthwhile.

Doug MacGray is a lawyer and Penn­syl­va­nia based advi­sor who spends each week look­ing for inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics and charts. Each Sun­day he dis­tills these down into a one page newsletter.

Another exam­ple is an advi­sor who each Fri­day sends an email under the head­line “Your crit­i­cal read­ing this week­end,” with links to arti­cles and videos from For­tune, the Econ­o­mist and other cred­i­ble sources.

Remem­ber though that peo­ple are busy; try to keep the newslet­ter to one page, two at most.

Build a routine:

Once you’ve started send­ing reg­u­lar e-newsletters, you’ve made a com­mit­ment that clients expect you to stick to. That’s why you may want to start monthly and then increase fre­quency. It’s always eas­ier to ramp up fre­quency than to reduce it.

Estab­lish a sched­ule for devel­op­ing con­tent, and be sure to include a com­pli­ance approval in the process. Con­sider giv­ing a mem­ber of your team respon­si­bil­ity for man­ag­ing the logistics.

Make it personal:

Inject your own views and per­son­al­ity into the newslet­ter. In the arti­cle that fol­lows from Hors­es­mouth, Debra Tay­lor talks about the impact of pho­tos of her and her staff.

This arti­cle first appeared in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment pub­li­ca­tion for finan­cial advi­sors. Click for a free 90 day trial subscription.

http://​www​.hors​es​mouth​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​j​o​i​n​/​j​o​i​n​.​a​s​p​?​O​f​f​e​r​C​o​d​e​=​N​A​IFA
Debra Tay­lor, CPA/PFS

Reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion is prov­ing to be a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor in finan­cial mar­ket­ing these days. As one advi­sor has dis­cov­ered, pro­duc­ing your own e-newsletter is not as hard as you might think; and is tremen­dously effec­tive in stay­ing top-of-mind with clients and prospects.

For years I’d wanted to cre­ate a client newslet­ter. So I eval­u­ated the many options avail­able includ­ing Emer­ald Pub­li­ca­tions, and the quar­terly ser­vices offered through my broker-dealer.

How­ever, I never felt com­fort­able imple­ment­ing any of these; to me they always appeared canned and not focused on our client base. Our clients are pri­mar­ily high-net-worth indi­vid­u­als, who are not affected by such things as a 0% cap­i­tal gain rate for incomes under $69,000.

So instead of pur­chas­ing what for us would be an inad­e­quate prod­uct, we did with­out a newslet­ter, until recently.

A cou­ple of months ago, another advi­sor put me on his mail­ing list by mis­take, and I started receiv­ing his weekly e-newsletter. I imme­di­ately fell in love with the con­cept, graph­ics, and ease of dis­tri­b­u­tion. So we con­tacted the soft­ware provider, Con­stant Con­tact, and have been send­ing out our own e-newsletters for the past six months. It has been the most effec­tive mar­ket­ing tool we’ve imple­mented in years; pos­si­bly ever.

If you’re think­ing of doing a newslet­ter, here are some of the insights we’ve devel­oped in writ­ing, edit­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing our pub­li­ca­tion each week.

Cre­ate a schedule:

We write our newslet­ter, “The Week Ahead,” on Mon­day; and edit it by Tues­day, because we must sub­mit it to com­pli­ance no later than Wednes­day for dis­tri­b­u­tion by the next Mon­day at 5 p.m. (We also include a printed copy of the newslet­ter in meet­ing pack­ets to dis­cuss dur­ing our client meetings.)

Make it personal:

One of the most pow­er­ful aspects of our newslet­ter is the per­sonal touch that every­one feels upon read­ing it. It’s almost like a com­pany Face­book page.

• Share pho­tos: We try to include pho­tos in every issue, mostly of client events, client birth­day cel­e­bra­tions, or con­fer­ences that we attend. We have included pho­tos of base­ball games, wine din­ners, clients’ new­born chil­dren, me pre­sent­ing at a recent con­fer­ence, and port­fo­lio man­agers we have recently met with. The pho­tos have become so pop­u­lar that when we omit­ted pho­tos in last week’s pub­li­ca­tion, we had sev­eral clients com­plain to us, ask­ing, “Where are the photos?”

• Share per­sonal thoughts: In addi­tion to includ­ing pho­tos, I write the lead col­umn, “From Where I Sit” (FWIS). Some weeks FWIS is about an impor­tant mar­ket devel­op­ment, such as aus­ter­ity mea­sures in Europe or the down­grad­ing of U.S. debt. Other weeks, the col­umn focuses on a lighter or sea­sonal sub­ject such as “giv­ing thanks.” In all instances how­ever, I try to keep the mes­sage short (100 to 300 words) and personal.

Pro­vide strong content:

While you want to set a per­sonal tone, the newslet­ter must offer valu­able infor­ma­tion or it just becomes clut­ter. Here are the sec­tions we include:

• Dis­play your research: In the left col­umn of the first page, we list all my broker-dealer research department’s recent pub­li­ca­tions with links to access them. We also include other note­wor­thy pub­li­ca­tions, such as recent pieces pub­lished by Black­Rock; or other port­fo­lio man­agers we respect. Indeed, your local whole­salers will be happy to pro­vide you with plenty of content.

• Mar­ket update: After the FWIS col­umn, we fea­ture a weekly mar­ket update that focuses exclu­sively on the week’s activ­i­ties in the mar­kets. The mar­ket update dis­cusses what drove the action. A quick chart shows returns of the major indexes and returns for the week and year-to-date. We use an out­side mar­ket update that is already compliance-approved and costs us about $300 per month.

• Did you know: This sec­tion cov­ers a vari­ety of top­ics: We might share inter­est­ing trivia, or high­light recent awards or other recog­ni­tion we’ve gar­nered. For exam­ple, in Novem­ber we posted the fol­low­ing“News tid­bit”: Did you know that the aver­age Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Farm Bureau, will cost 13% more this year?

• Per­sonal finance cor­ner: Run­ning 100–300 words, this sec­tion focuses on issues such as whether you should lease or buy a car; the impor­tance of long-term care insur­ance; credit card reward pro­grams, or best travel and air­line websites.

• Please take our sur­vey: We always link to a sur­vey. Our the­ory is that you should be able to com­ment on our firm, just as you can com­ment on inter­ac­tions you have with hotels like the Four Sea­sons or your local car deal­er­ship when your car gets ser­viced. We use Sur­vey­Mon­key and review the feed­back once a month in our weekly team meeting.

• Impor­tant dates: Finally, we include a cal­en­dar of impor­tant dates such as: office clo­sures, upcom­ing sem­i­nars, and client events. For the lat­ter two, we include an oppor­tu­nity to RSVP and a description.

As you can see, the over­all tone of “The Week Ahead” is not busi­ness or “salesy” in nature. We use it as a way to con­nect with clients and keep them informed.

For more ideas, you can see a sam­pling of our newslet­ters on our web­site under the “Client Com­mu­ni­ca­tions” section.

Good luck to you, and happy pub­lish­ing! Have fun keep­ing in touch with your newslet­ter, and proudly dis­play it to your clients dur­ing your review meetings.

You’ll be glad you did.

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Tags: Conversations, Credible Sources, Critical Reading, Debra Taylor, Economist, Effective Marketing, Email, Financial Advisors, Fortune, Horsesmouth, Investment Advisors, Lawyer, Macgray, Marketing Efforts, Marketing Tool, New Insights, Page Newsletter, Prospective Clients, Recent Article, Time Commitment
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Seven steps to establishing rapport with prospects

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

The arti­cle below first appeared in the U.S. advi­sor web­site Hors​es​mouth​.com and is repro­duced here with permission.

These days poten­tial clients may need a lit­tle more time to get to know you before com­mit­ting to your invest­ment process. One advisor’s back­ground in coun­sel­ing gives him a host of relationship-building skills that you can apply to build­ing trust in your own first meetings.

In his first job out of col­lege, advi­sor Den­nis Nolte coun­seled home­less alco­holics at a Sal­va­tion Army in Indi­anapo­lis. While that expe­ri­ence is an uncom­mon launch­ing pad for a career in finan­cial ser­vices, the job taught Nolte, a psy­chol­ogy major, how to lis­ten to people-a skill that has paid div­i­dends over the last two decades.

Now, the Orlando, Fla.-based credit union advi­sor coun­sels middle-income employ­ees of Dis­ney World for Part­ners Wealth Man­age­ment. His client accounts range from $100,000 up to $1 mil­lion. His nat­ural curios­ity and com­pas­sion for peo­ple has trans­lated into a thriv­ing busi­ness. “Trust is awfully impor­tant when act­ing as a trusted advi­sor,” Nolte says. “Part of how you earn that is by actu­ally lis­ten­ing to what peo­ple are say­ing and what they need-and not think­ing about what you want.”

Iron­i­cally, he says, his job coun­sel­ing alco­holics taught him how to ask uncom­fort­able ques­tions, an impor­tant skill in his advi­sory busi­ness. “It’s the same kinds of ques­tions; it’s just before, you were ask­ing, ‘So, how much do you drink?’ and ‘Why did you get fired?’ or ‘How did that hap­pen?” vs. now, ‘Well, what are you mak­ing a year?’ or ‘Who has a ten­dency to over­spend?’ or ‘What type of inher­i­tance do you want for your chil­dren?’ I mean, they’re still embar­rass­ing, uncom­fort­able questions.”

Over the years, Nolte has refined his first meet­ing process to improve rapport-an espe­cially impor­tant focus in the last year. Here are some keys to his approach:

1. Treat the first meet­ing like a first date. For Nolte, the object is to learn as much about poten­tial clients as pos­si­ble in the first meet­ing. “I used that process when my wife and I first started dat­ing,” he says. “She and I met on a blind date, and when we were put together over the phone, I started ask­ing ques­tions. She said, ‘Look, if you don’t stop ask­ing ques­tions, we’re not going to have any­thing to talk about when we first meet.’”

Nolte sends out a fact-finding sheet sev­eral weeks in advance but finds most peo­ple don’t com­plete it, so he cov­ers the infor­ma­tion in the first few meet­ings. But, he says, “That’s the easy part of this, ask­ing all the questions.”

1. Set poten­tial clients at ease by lead­ing with non-financial mat­ters. Hardly anybody’s walk­ing in the door these days and say­ing, “Here’s some money. Do what you do best with it.” More than ever, poten­tial clients will be going through a feeling-out process, grad­u­ally build­ing trust in you. “I think the process is tak­ing a bit longer and a few more steps than it used to,” Nolte observes.

He advises not ask­ing clients about their money right away. “I ask them about any­thing else but their money and just start talk­ing about [what’s going on with] them. If I have some advance infor­ma­tion about what the rela­tion­ship is like with the per­son who referred them, I’ll say, ‘So, how long have you been work­ing with so and so?’ Or I’ll ask, ‘How long have you been in Orlando?” Orlando is such a tran­sient town, and everybody’s from some­where else, so I might ask, “Where are you from originally?’”

What­ever casual ques­tions you lead with, the gen­uine focus is on get­ting to know these new peo­ple who are sit­ting in your office. “Put away the agenda of ‘I’ve got to sell some­thing, I have to make money today, I’ve got to develop this rela­tion­ship,’” says Nolte. “And just really look at them and start find­ing out about them. They’re much more likely to tell you what you want to hear.”

In fact, Nolte finds that since the finan­cial cri­sis, he is more likely to spend the first meet­ing just build­ing rap­port with new clients, wait­ing to dig into finan­cial doc­u­ments and more tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion in the sub­se­quent meetings.

1. Find out how they feel. Poten­tial clients want to know that you care about them as peo­ple. You will need to ask them how they feel, with an open­ing ques­tion such as, “What brings you here today?”

Nolte admits that sit­ting down and ask­ing new clients how they feel about their finan­cial lives may seem very Oprah–like, but he points out, “[Oprah’s] pretty suc­cess­ful. And since it has been very rough the last 12 months, peo­ple have a lot to get off their chests. It’s impor­tant to ask them how they’re feel­ing about their situation.”

1. Prac­tice reflec­tive lis­ten­ing. To be sure you’re lis­ten­ing well, reflect back to your prospects both the con­tent of what they’re say­ing and the feel­ings behind it. You want to find out whether what you heard was truly what they meant to con­vey. This prac­tice helps you develop deeper under­stand­ing and trust with prospects and clients.

For exam­ple, let’s say some­one intro­duces the sub­ject of long-term care this way: “My par­ents went into a nurs­ing home, and the rea­son I want to talk about long-term care insur­ance today is that I went through an awful lot with them and I saw what they went through, and I don’t want that to hap­pen to me.”

You can pick up on the feel­ings behind that and say, “That must’ve been awfully dif­fi­cult for you,” or “That sounds like it was emo­tion­ally drain­ing.” Nolte says the idea is to “let them know that you under­stand not only what it is that they’re telling you but what they’re feel­ing and why that’s impor­tant to them.”

1. Show empa­thy. Advi­sors often think they’re being sup­port­ive with reflec­tive lis­ten­ing, but they may come across as too flip­pant. For instance, if a prospec­tive client says, “I’m really con­cerned, I don’t want to lose any more money,” don’t reply, “Yeah, I under­stand you don’t like losses; nobody likes losses.”

Such a response, Nolte says, is sure to make prospec­tive clients feel a bit defen­sive. A more empa­thetic response would be “I under­stand that this has been a truly heart­break­ing, har­row­ing expe­ri­ence for you that you’ve prob­a­bly never expe­ri­enced before-that hardly any­body in our life­times have expe­ri­enced before-and you don’t want to see that repeated or you don’t want to go through that again.”

Nolte adds that you must “remem­ber to put your­self in their shoes and have empa­thy. That’s an impor­tant skill-to try to feel what they’re feel­ing and let them know you understand.”

1. Look for a heal­ing oppor­tu­nity. Instead of look­ing for a sell­ing oppor­tu­nity, Nolte sug­gests find­ing the heal­ing oppor­tu­nity, which usu­ally means telling poten­tial clients about your approach to finan­cial plan­ning and how it can help them.

“A lot of peo­ple need heal­ing,” Nolte says. “They’ve been burned, and it’s really painful. And just like a burn vic­tim, the first time they try to put water on it, they jump through the ceil­ing, because it’s just so sen­si­tive and every nerve end­ing is exposed. And that’s how many folks that I see, any­way, espe­cially com­ing in from a bad invest­ment expe­ri­ence, are feeling.”

Let poten­tial clients know you want to help them over­come their painful sit­u­a­tion. Describe the pos­si­bil­i­ties, and give them some time to choose to come to you.

1. Be sure to include all the play­ers. As you are get­ting to know poten­tial clients, it’s crit­i­cal to find out who ulti­mately makes the finan­cial deci­sions in the fam­ily. When you’re deal­ing with a cou­ple, it might not be the loud­est per­son in the room.

“You want every­body to buy in, and some­times those who are talk­ing the most have the least amount of power,” Nolte says. “If you’ve got a stereo­typ­i­cal hus­band who speaks loudly, and he’s got a nice, quiet, docile wife, she may throw a wrench into the process, because she doesn’t like you, or she doesn’t like that process, or she feels that you’re not pay­ing enough atten­tion to her. So you’ve got to make the less dom­i­nant spouse feel included.”

He sug­gests doing this by delib­er­ately mak­ing room in the con­ver­sa­tion for the other spouse. Nolte engages the qui­eter per­son with ques­tions like these:

1. • How did you feel about what he or she just said?
   • Is that right?
   • Would you describe it as such?
   • What’s your take on that?
   • Does that sound accu­rate to you?
   • What do you think?

End­ing the meeting

Nolte closes the first meet­ing by say­ing, “Let’s set up the next meet­ing, and here’s what we’re going to do in that next meet­ing. Here are the doc­u­ments I need you to bring, and here’s what we’re going to try to accomplish.”

Imme­di­ately after the meet­ing, he types up an e-mail or let­ter recap­ping the first meet­ing, sum­ma­riz­ing what they dis­cussed, high­light­ing the rel­e­vant facts, and restat­ing the direc­tion they’re headed. He includes the clients’ ages, their net worth, what was impor­tant to them, their stated goals and pos­si­ble imped­i­ments. “That seems to be real help­ful,” Nolte says. “Folks really seem to like that, that you’ve recapped the meet­ing while it’s fresh in your mind.”

Indeed, it’s an exten­sion of Nolte’s basic style, which is to demon­strate to clients that you are present with them every step of the way, lis­ten­ing care­fully, pro­cess­ing their needs, and think­ing about their best interests-just as a trusted advisor

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Overcoming the Biggest Barrier to Attracting New Clients

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

In a recent col­umn on US advi­sor web­site Hors­es­mouth, con­sul­tant Robert Mid­dle­ton talked about the gulf between get­ting inter­est from prospects and fol­low­ing up with them.
Many advi­sors are suc­cess­ful at doing things to get an ini­tial level of inter­est from prospec­tive clients – and then fall down on how they fol­low up on that inter­est.
He refers to effec­tive follow-up as the biggest gap most advi­sors encounter … and offers seven sug­ges­tions on clos­ing the fol­low up gap.

Fol­low up quickly
His first sug­ges­tion is to fol­low up imme­di­ately after a prospect expresses inter­est.
Mid­dle­ton points out that It’s easy to delay, but if you do, the impact of the follow-up fades dra­mat­i­cally.
If you meet some­one through net­work­ing and say you’ll fol­low up, do so the very next day.
If you give a talk and promise you’ll send some­thing to those who give you their card, fol­low up within two days—maximum. Make sure to set aside time for the follow-up activ­ity so you can eas­ily fit it into your sched­ule.

Build fol­low up into your rou­tine
Robert Mid­dle­ton sug­gests reward­ing your­self for mak­ing a cer­tain num­ber of follow-up calls.
The arti­cle rec­om­mends mak­ing fol­low­ing up with prospects a reg­u­lar part of your busi­ness and fol­low­ing a cer­tain rou­tine every time.
You could con­sider sched­ul­ing follow-up calls twice a week or mak­ing some follow-up calls every sin­gle day – sched­ul­ing it at a reg­u­lar time.

Script your  fol­low ups.
Another sug­ges­tion is to script your fol­low up con­ver­sa­tion, know­ing what you are going to say and where the con­ver­sa­tion will lead.
Not only will that make the fol­low up call more effec­tive, but if you’ve scripted it out you’re more likely to make that call.

Pick qual­ity over quan­tity
Next is to focus on qual­ity over quan­tity and do research before call­ing.
Imag­ine that some­one fol­lows up with you after a net­work­ing event and says, “Hi, I met you at the Cham­ber of Com­merce last night. You asked for some infor­ma­tion about our work. Can you tell me what it is that you do?“
Con­trast that with the alter­na­tive: “Hi, we chat­ted at the Cham­ber of Com­merce meet­ing last night and you asked for some infor­ma­tion about the work we do. I just spent some time on your web­site. Based on that, there are a cou­ple of spe­cific ques­tions I’d like to ask you.“
Mid­dle­ton com­ments that some advi­sors show remark­ably lit­tle inter­est in poten­tial clients. No won­der they fail to make a con­nec­tion that leads anywhere.

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Four Lessons from the Barron’s Winner’s Circle Conference

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

For the past two years, I have been a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Hors​es​mouth​.com, the lead­ing prac­tice man­age­ment web­site for U.S. finan­cial advisors.

In late March, I read a col­umn in Hors­es­mouth by Debra Tay­lor, a New Jer­sey finan­cial advi­sor who wrote about four lessons from a con­fer­ence in Palm Beach spon­sored by Barron’s that she had recently attended.

While writ­ten almost six months ago, these four lessons are just as rel­e­vant today and I reprinted them with her permission.

For sev­eral days, Barron’s Top 100 Women Finan­cial Advi­sors in Amer­ica (and another 400 women advi­sors who attended by invi­ta­tion only) dis­cussed their prac­tice man­age­ment ideas, invest­ment philoso­phies, and what has worked and not worked for them dur­ing the past year.

The Top 100 women all had min­i­mum assets of $250 mil­lion each (and most had much more), and many of them had over­come addi­tional road­blocks on their way to the top.

Les­son One: The need to val­i­date your process

The first les­son was that no sin­gle asset will save the day.

One of the com­mon themes of the con­fer­ence was that every asset class courts risk: oppor­tu­nity risk, credit risk, mar­ket risk, and so on. There­fore, although bonds may have saved 2009, when infla­tion kicks in, this approach will catch up with you.

Every invest­ment rec­om­men­da­tion should serve mul­ti­ple purposes-for exam­ple, dol­lar hedge and infla­tion pro­tec­tion. In addi­tion, advi­sors should always be con­cerned about down­side and stress-test everything.

Par­tic­i­pants were also urged to think care­fully about the sources of infor­ma­tion they relied on.

Some clients want to know that they can rely on your rec­om­men­da­tions, so they need to con­firm your research process.

Debra Tay­lor wrote that she is being asked this ques­tion more than ever before, and comes pre­pared to every meet­ing with her research binder and other exam­ples of her invest­ment process and performance.

Les­son Two: The need to tighten your ship

A sec­ond mes­sage from the con­fer­ence that Debra Tay­lor wrote about was that every­one on an advisor’s team needs to oper­ate as a unit and be orga­nized, just as they would be in the military.

Over and over, advi­sors heard from top pro­duc­ers that they should fire bor­der­line staff and keep only the A play­ers. As hard as this may be, it is a recur­ring theme of these top producers.

These top pro­duc­ers all shared sto­ries of revolving-door turnover, new hires that didn’t make it through the day, and so forth. Through­out the indus­try, advi­sors find it hard to hire qual­ity peo­ple who are truly pas­sion­ate about their jobs.

Of course, to main­tain and moti­vate the A play­ers, advi­sors should com­pen­sate well and con­tinue using incen­tive bonuses.

And top advi­sors often reit­er­ated the need for uni­form sys­tems and morn­ing meet­ings (or “huddles”.)

One ongo­ing theme of top advi­sors with large teams was to have a chief of staff or chief oper­at­ing offi­cer on your team to man­age the troops and keep the team on tar­get and account­able. More and more, Debra Tay­lor talked about see­ing that higher-producing advi­sors have a COO so that the advi­sor can focus on client rela­tion­ships and sales.

Les­son Three: Focus on the client experience

Char­lie John­ston, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Mor­gan Stan­ley Smith Bar­ney, dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of the finan­cial advi­sory busi­ness and high­lighted the need to strive for invest­ment excel­lence, which he believes is becom­ing crit­i­cal again.

He also dis­cussed the impor­tance of the client expe­ri­ence, and focused on the client dis­cov­ery process, list­ing sev­eral key ques­tions as critical:

1. What does money mean to you?
2. What do you try to teach your chil­dren (or grand­chil­dren) about money?
3. If you could give just one thing to your chil­dren, what would it be?
4. What are the val­ues you hold most dear?
5. If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?
6. Of all the gifts of your time and money that you have given to char­ity in the past years, which was the most mean­ing­ful to you?
7. If your doc­tor gave you 24 hours to live, what would be your biggest regret?

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Overcoming the biggest barrier to attracting new clients

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

In a recent col­umn on US advi­sor web­site Hors­es­mouth, con­sul­tant Robert Mid­dle­ton talked about the gulf between get­ting inter­est from prospects and fol­low­ing up with them.
Many advi­sors are suc­cess­ful at doing things to get an ini­tial level of inter­est from prospec­tive clients – and then fall down on how they fol­low up on that inter­est.
He refers to effec­tive follow-up as the biggest gap most advi­sors encounter … and offers seven sug­ges­tions on clos­ing the fol­low up gap.

Fol­low up quickly
His first sug­ges­tion is to fol­low up imme­di­ately after a prospect expresses inter­est.
Mid­dle­ton points out that It’s easy to delay, but if you do, the impact of the follow-up fades dra­mat­i­cally.
If you meet some­one through net­work­ing and say you’ll fol­low up, do so the very next day.
If you give a talk and promise you’ll send some­thing to those who give you their card, fol­low up within two days—maximum. Make sure to set aside time for the follow-up activ­ity so you can eas­ily fit it into your sched­ule.

Build fol­low up into your rou­tine
Robert Mid­dle­ton sug­gests reward­ing your­self for mak­ing a cer­tain num­ber of follow-up calls.
The arti­cle rec­om­mends mak­ing fol­low­ing up with prospects a reg­u­lar part of your busi­ness and fol­low­ing a cer­tain rou­tine every time.
You could con­sider sched­ul­ing follow-up calls twice a week or mak­ing some follow-up calls every sin­gle day – sched­ul­ing it at a reg­u­lar time.

Script your  fol­low ups.
Another sug­ges­tion is to script your fol­low up con­ver­sa­tion, know­ing what you are going to say and where the con­ver­sa­tion will lead.
Not only will that make the fol­low up call more effec­tive, but if you’ve scripted it out you’re more likely to make that call.

Pick qual­ity over quan­tity
Next is to focus on qual­ity over quan­tity and do research before call­ing.
Imag­ine that some­one fol­lows up with you after a net­work­ing event and says, “Hi, I met you at the Cham­ber of Com­merce last night. You asked for some infor­ma­tion about our work. Can you tell me what it is that you do?“
Con­trast that with the alter­na­tive: “Hi, we chat­ted at the                                                             Cham­ber of Com­merce meet­ing last night and you asked for some infor­ma­tion about the work we do. I just spent some time on your web­site. Based on that, there are a cou­ple of spe­cific ques­tions I’d like to ask you.“
Mid­dle­ton com­ments that some advi­sors show remark­ably lit­tle inter­est in poten­tial clients. No won­der they fail to make a con­nec­tion that leads anywhere.

Deliv­er­ing value laden mes­sages
When fol­low­ing up with prospects Mid­dle­ton sug­gests using some­thing called value laden mes­sages.
Don’t say this:
“Hi, this is Jan Brown from ABC Invest­ments; we met at the Cham­ber last night. We offer a com­plete range of invest­ing ser­vices designed to meet your needs. I’d like to get together with you to explain our ser­vices and how we can help you.“
Instead, lead with a rea­son for the prospect to want to speak with you:
“Hi, this is Jan Brown from ABC Invest­ments. After we spoke at the Cham­ber yes­ter­day, I thought about your com­ment that at some point you’ll be look­ing for a poten­tial buyer for your busi­ness.
I’d like to share some ideas about how we’ve helped some of our clients cre­ate suc­ces­sion plans to make sure the tran­si­tion goes smoothly and ben­e­fits every­one involved.”

Use friendly per­sis­tence
Some advi­sors are wor­ried about being seen as a pest when they fol­low up.
On this, you have to use friendly per­sis­tence.
If you meet some­one that you sin­cerely think you could pro­vide value for, don’t give up after one follow-up call.
It can take many con­tacts before some­thing hap­pens. That mes­sage above might be fol­lowed up with an e-mail and a link to an arti­cle online.
This might be fol­lowed up by another mes­sage. If some­one doesn’t get back to you right away, it means either your mes­sage did not con­tain enough value or they’re just busy.
You can con­trol the first and apply friendly per­sis­tence to the second.

Give prospects an out
After a few mes­sages and e-mails with­out response, Mid­dle­ton sug­gests leav­ing a final mes­sage:
“Hi, it’s Jan, from ABC Invest­ments. Sorry we haven’t been able to con­nect. I’d sure like to talk to you about the things we’ve learned from suc­cess­ful busi­ness own­ers about what it takes to put an effec­tive  suc­ces­sion plan in place.
In fact, I’m just work­ing with a client now who told me that he no longer wor­ries about the well-being of his busi­ness when he retires.
But I don’t want to keep bug­ging you. If you’d like to speak, here’s my phone and e-mail.”
Now you’ve left it with the prospect to fol­low up  … or not.

Remem­ber that fol­low up doesn’t mean has­sling a prospect.
One of the big rea­sons for not fol­low­ing up is that we believe we are has­sling peo­ple. We think we’re a nui­sance and we’ll be rejected.
Robert Mid­dle­ton ends his arti­cle by say­ing that if you fol­low up incor­rectly, you can be! But if you make sure you add value to every call and you are firm in your con­vic­tion that your ser­vice is valu­able, you are doing peo­ple a great ser­vice by fol­low­ing up.

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The ultimate motivator to take action

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

This arti­cle is by Robert Mid­dle­ton of Action Plan Mar­ket­ing. Orig­i­nally pub­lished in Hors­es­mouth, it is repro­duced with his permission.

Inten­tions are not actions. If you are for­ever mak­ing plans to upgrade your mar­ket­ing but never doing it, you need to up the stakes. Play­ing it safe will only get you what you’ve been getting.

If you’ve pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, here’s how to get out of your rut.

When it comes to pro­mot­ing their busi­ness, a large num­ber of advi­sors are look­ing for what I call “silver-bullet marketing”.

A sil­ver bul­let is that mag­i­cal, all-in-one solu­tion that will cure all your mar­ket­ing or business-development ills in one shot. It’s what we all want and hope we’ll find one lucky day.

Well, sorry to dis­ap­point you, but there ain’t no sil­ver bullet.

Stop play­ing it safe

How­ever, there is a mar­ket­ing approach that is more pow­er­ful, more cer­tain and more reli­able than any sliver bul­let. It’s some­thing that we all have the power to imple­ment imme­di­ately and it almost always pro­duces favourable results.

I call it “bet-your-car marketing.”

Most human activites are based on try­ing. That is, we try to pro­duce results. We make an effort. We strug­gle. We give it our best shot. You know the drill:

“I tried to get that arti­cle writ­ten, but I’m just not a very good writer.” Or “I tried to do speak­ing engage­ments but nobody returned my call” or ” I tried to get my newslet­ter started but the tech­ni­cal part is just too complicated.”

(Note from Dan Richards - To this list could be added ”I meant to get around to call­ing that dif­fi­cult client I’m over­due to get in touch with or to fol­low up with that prospect I met at the lunch I attended, but I got dis­tracted by other things that came up.”)

Try­ing includes a degree of effort accom­pa­nied by an excuse.

Imag­ine this sce­nario instead: You are talk­ing to friend or per­haps your busi­ness coach. (Feel free to sub­sti­tute any project you are pro­cras­ti­nat­ing about.)

“I’m going to try to get that arti­cle writ­ten this week.”

“Will you bet your car?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been futz­ing over that arti­cle arti­cle for weeks. Will you bet your car that you’ll com­plete it?”

“Well, like I said, I’ll try my very best. It isn’t easy, you know, and besides, I have of other pri­or­i­ties I’m juggling.”

“Fine, but either you do it or you don’t do it. If you’re going to com­mit to writ­ing it, I sug­gest you make it real and bet your car.”

“What exactly does that mean?!”

“It means that you com­mit to com­plet­ing the arti­cle and if you don’t com­plete it, you for­feit your car. You can give it to a local charity.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m not crazy. At a cer­tain point it takes putting some­thing at stake to get some­thing done. You could ago­nize over that arti­cle for another sev­eral weeks or you could just write it. And if you don’t, you lose your car. Let me tell you, if you put your car at stake, don’t you think the arti­cle would get done?”

“I guess it would. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“No, because you’re rea­son­able. And when you’re rea­son­able, you always have an excuse that under­mines your goals. Every­one buys into those excuses. But can you hon­estly say that the excuses are as ful­fill­ing as actu­ally com­plet­ing the article?”

“No, I guess not. But what if I make the bet and I don’t suc­ceed? What if I lose the car?”

“Well, that’s the game you’ve been play­ing for years. You always hedge your bets; you never com­mit. You play it safe. And look at your results. It’s time to change the game. Will you bet your car or keep mak­ing excuses?”

“OK, I’ll do it.”

Mak­ing this work for you

I’ve actu­ally had sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions with clients. A cou­ple of weeks ago, I put pres­sure on a group I’m work­ing with. In that case, they didn’t bet their cars, but they agreed to write checks to cer­tain unsa­vory polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions if they didn’t com­plete the projects they were pro­cras­ti­nat­ing about.

Guess what? Every­one got their projects done.

Want to pro­duce break­through results in your mar­ket­ing? Want to accom­plish things you thought were impos­si­ble? Want to step out­side your com­fort zone and make some­thing happen?

Don’t wait for a sil­ver bul­let. Bet your car instead.

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Your Best Use of Marketing Dollars in 2010

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

As you think about mar­ket­ing in 2010, one under-utilized strat­egy to con­sider is run­ning a series of small, unique and focused client-oriented events.

Recently, the lead­ing online US resource for advi­sors, Hors​es​mouth​.com, fea­tured an excel­lent arti­cle on this sub­ject. This arti­cle is reprinted with per­mis­sion (I’ve added a few com­ments of my own in italics.)

Note that for a trial sub­scrip­tion, go to www​.hors​es​mouth​.com

Guest arti­cle from Hors​es​mouth​.com

The think­ing behind event-driven mar­ket­ing

With a client event mar­ket­ing strat­egy, you com­mit to a series of reg­u­lar get-togethers with your best clients out­side of the nor­mal meet­ings to talk about their finances.

The goal is to meet top clients in groups of var­i­ous sizes, from very inti­mate to poten­tially quite large, not just once but reg­u­larly over the course of the year in a range of inter­est­ing venues.  As a result, you get to know clients bet­ter and build deeper relationships.

The key to suc­cess

The idea with client-event mar­ket­ing is to host events that are easy, fun, and low-key.

While some advi­sors do annual big bud­get large-scale events, most are bet­ter off host­ing smaller ini­tia­tives that are afford­able and sus­tain­able in terms of time and money – and most impor­tant that stand out and appeal to your top clients.   Top clients often aren’t inter­ested in mass events – and espe­cially in big urban cen­ters, peo­ple are pressed for time and it’s often hard to get busy clients out unless an event is unique and quite tailored.

You can start with some­thing as sim­ple as invit­ing a small group of clients to an inti­mate din­ner. Let them know there’s no rea­son behind get­ting together other than to relax, enjoy a good meal and wine, and maybe hear your brief mar­ket update for everyone’s benefit.

Sched­ule sev­eral of these din­ners through­out the year, and your strat­egy is under way. Remem­ber, one din­ner in itself is not a strat­egy; for this to reach its full poten­tial, you must hold these regularly.

Note from Dan: Mak­ing events com­pelling

For this to be really suc­cess­ful, you need to think about how to make the din­ner com­pelling. Can you get the owner to stop by and talk briefly about the back­ground of the restau­rant and maybe dis­cuss the wines? Can you get the chef to pop in to say hello and talk about the menu?

One advi­sor had a client who owns a small restau­rant. On a Tues­day night that was nor­mally quiet, he was able to per­suade the owner to close the restau­rant and host eight cou­ples plus the advi­sor and his wife to a pri­vate din­ner, includ­ing a cook­ing les­son in the kitchen fea­tur­ing a spe­cial dessert.

It was the cook­ing les­son that made the din­ner stand out – and got some top clients out who might oth­er­wise have taken a pass.

Turn­ing client events into refer­rals

Another ben­e­fit of this kind of event is that you poten­tially lay the ground­work for referrals.

When you asso­ciate with clients in a friendly way out­side your nor­mal office set­ting, you are cre­at­ing good­will and becom­ing more like­able as a result.

This has always been the phi­los­o­phy behind the clas­sic client appre­ci­a­tion event. You’re let­ting your clients know how much you appre­ci­ate their trust and con­fi­dence in you. When you hold a reg­u­lar cam­paign of client appre­ci­a­tion events, you’re nat­u­rally prim­ing the pump for clients to give you referrals—without even asking.

First, you are going to be more top of mind with your clients.

And sec­ond, you learn more about them than you could in a for­mal office meet­ing and increase your trust level as a result.

After all, refer­rals are all about trust — and trust evolves from a deeper con­nec­tion and rela­tion­ship. You can tell you have a good rela­tion­ship with a client if you know the impor­tant peo­ple in her life and can carry on a con­ver­sa­tion about things other than her money. Client events are a great way to deepen this bond.

Tap­ping into clients’ net­works

A final ben­e­fit is that the right event can be a venue for exist­ing clients to invite along friends who get to know you as a result. No mat­ter how many clients you have, a client event pro­vides a relaxed envi­ron­ment that allows you to be casu­ally intro­duced to your clients’ friends and associates.

Friends, fam­ily, and col­leagues can meet you with­out feel­ing any kind of sales pres­sure. With­out ever broach­ing the sub­ject of busi­ness, your thought­ful and unique event will pre­view the kind of advi­sor you are and the kind of ser­vice they can expect when they do busi­ness with you.

An advi­sor in Hous­ton hosted a fly-fishing and finance event at a high-end sport­ing goods busi­ness in his town. Sev­eral months later, he received a seven-figure cor­po­rate retire­ment plan because one of his clients had invited a friend to the fun event. With­out ever talk­ing busi­ness, the event served as a giant adver­tise­ment for this new client, who appre­ci­ated attend­ing and got a favor­able impres­sion of the advisor.

Note from Dan: A unique birth­day event

I co host a one day event each spring called the Top Advi­sor Summit.

Last year, one speaker talked about how he hosts birth­day lunches for top clients.

Let’s say he decides to host a birth­day party for one of his top clients, some­one who he gen­uinely enjoys work­ing with.

He might tell the client that   this is to cel­e­brate the sec­ond, fifth or tenth anniver­sary of their work­ing together, just so he doesn’t expect this again next year. He asks this client for a con­ve­nient date, as well as a list of half a dozen or so friends he’d like to invite.

There’s no dis­cus­sion of busi­ness what­so­ever at this lunch, the advi­sor is just show­ing appre­ci­a­tion to a client he truly likes.

As a result of that birth­day lunch, two things hap­pen. First, he builds good will with his client. And sec­ond, those half dozen guests now see the advi­sor in an entirely dif­fer­ent light.

Tap­ping into a pas­sion for cars and golf

One advi­sor hosted a recep­tion at the show­room of a local BMW dealer who hap­pened to be a client.   The dealer talked about trends in new cars, then atten­dees got to test drive some of the BMWs. And they fin­ished off with wine and cheese – note that they had the wine after the test drives.

Another advi­sor had a sim­i­lar event at a local Audi show­room, also with wine, cheese and hors d’oeuvres – and for $500 got the auto colum­nist for the local paper to come out and chat about new cars he’d test drove (with a focus on new addi­tions to the Audi lineup.) In this case, the Audi dealer and the advi­sor each invited 20 of their best clients and split the cost.

The fact that the auto colum­nist was speak­ing made this a draw that got clients out who oth­er­wise might not have attended.

For under $1000, he deep­ened bonds with some of his best clients. In addi­tion, he got intro­duced to a num­ber of prospec­tive clients – both friends that his clients brought along as well as the Audi dealer’s guests.

Still another advi­sor invited 20 clients to a local golf club and got the pro to talk about new equip­ment. The pro also arranged for his Nike rep to bring out some clubs that the peo­ple who were there got to test out on the dri­ving range and the pro walked around and gave a few tips.

Note that none of these events were large and none were costly – they worked because they were unique, because they were fairly inti­mate and because they were targeted.

Focus­ing your mar­ket­ing dol­lars on exist­ing clients

An advi­sor in Dal­las stated that he’d rather spend $1,000 on events four times a year with his best clients than spend $10,000 on a din­ner sem­i­nar where he might not see a return on his investment.

Why? Because he knows the dol­lars and effort spent on inti­mate client events are def­i­nitely going to have a pos­i­tive impact on his busi­ness. Mar­ket­ing to clients always pro­duces stronger relationships—and you can mea­sure that by the num­ber and qual­ity of the refer­rals you receive.

All advi­sors know that seek­ing prospects with whom you have no con­nec­tion is a lot tougher. When we hear about mar­ket­ing dis­as­ters, they almost always arise from mar­ket­ing to strangers.

Note that client events don’t have to be high cost. One advi­sor in New Jer­sey, reg­u­larly rents out a room in a museum for $300 and holds events there. Some of his suc­cess­ful events have included host­ing an Antiques Road­show –style event, wine tast­ings, and an edu­ca­tional evening with a nutritionist.

He con­sid­ers it a good return on invest­ment if he gets one or two new con­tacts per event, because he knows they’re going to bring one or two peo­ple to the next event, and his con­tacts will con­tinue to grow exponentially.

Note from Dan: Get­ting top clients out to your events

One of the chal­lenges with any event is get­ting top clients out – they are often the most time pressed and also the hard­est to moti­vate to attend an event.

Here’s a sim­ple strat­egy to get your best clients out to your events.

Put together a list of six or eight dif­fer­ent ideas. Here’s a sam­ple list of six top­ics you could use:

Din­ner and a cook­ing class at a local restaurant

A ses­sion focused on gar­den­ing advice at a local nursery

An evening on health, fit­ness and nutri­tion at a high end fit­ness club

A wine tast­ing focus­ing on Ital­ian reds

The out­ing at a high end car dealer I described above

An early sea­son Sat­ur­day morn­ing golf ses­sion at a local coun­try club

When you meet with top clients, tell them you’re think­ing about host­ing one or two events for top clients, show them the list and ask which they’d be inter­ested in.

Then when you run one of the events they’ve cho­sen, call them well in advance and say that you’ve acted on their input and that of other clients and are hold­ing one of the events they’ve picked.

Your chances of that client show­ing up go up dra­mat­i­cally – both because the event hits a hot but­ton and also because given that you’ve acted on their sug­ges­tion, they now feel an oblig­a­tion to show up.

As you think about next year’s mar­ket­ing activ­ity, give some hard thought to whether two, three or four small, tar­geted events directed at your best clients should be part of your 2010 strat­egy. The invest­ment of time and money on these may be the best mar­ket­ing invest­ment you make the entire year.

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