Four Steps to Get in Front of Million-Dollar Prospects

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

For most advi­sors, once you’re face to face with a prospect, you have an excel­lent chance of sign­ing them up – not the slam dunk that it might have been fif­teen or twenty years ago, but good odds nevertheless.

The big chal­lenge is get­ting that face to face meet­ing. That’s why I was inter­ested in an email from an inde­pen­dent advi­sor in a mid-sized com­mu­nity in the U.S. mid­west, ask­ing for my advice on fol­low­ing up with a prospect who’d opened the door to sit­ting down.

The ben­e­fits of stay­ing top of mind

This advi­sor, let’s call him Andrew, has been send­ing his newslet­ter to a prospect named Phil for sev­eral years. Andrew knows that Phil has at least $2 mil­lion in invest­ments and from his ini­tial take would be a pleas­ant client to deal with.

In Decem­ber, Andrew sent Phil an email men­tion­ing that it had been some time since they had spo­ken. He sug­gested sched­ul­ing a meet­ing for some point in Jan­u­ary and also sug­gested that it would make the meet­ing more pro­duc­tive if Phil could email him his cur­rent state­ment beforehand.

Phil responded by email quickly, mak­ing four points:

1.     He’d be happy to sit down and has good avail­abil­ity to meet –he always finds that he learns from sit­ting down with pro­fes­sion­als such as Andrew.

2.     How­ever, he wants to make it clear that he’s not look­ing to make a change and is not sure it would be a good use of Andrew’s time.

3.     Email­ing the rel­e­vant com­po­nent of his invest­ment state­ment is prob­lem­atic, given that the last state­ment for his Mer­rill Lynch uni­fied account was over 120 pages.

4.     Finally, he thanked Andrew for his newslet­ter, which he reads and enjoys

So Andrew’s ques­tion to me: How would I respond in his sit­u­a­tion?  Before read­ing on, con­sider what you would tell Andrew and what this exchange tells us about attract­ing new clients today.

The value of get­ting face to face

This inter­ac­tion demon­strates four prin­ci­ples when it comes to get­ting in front of prospects:

1.     Widen your net

Suc­cess­ful advi­sors rec­og­nize that prospect­ing is a num­bers game. Cer­tainly you can do some things to increase the odds of suc­cess, but if you com­mu­ni­cate with 50 qual­i­fied prospects, your chances of land­ing new clients are always bet­ter than if you’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing with  5 or 10. Andrew’s focus on expand­ing the base of prospects with whom he’s com­mu­ni­cat­ing was the crit­i­cal first step.

2.     Pro­vide clear value

Once a prospect has agreed to receive infor­ma­tion, you have to have the right qual­ity at the right fre­quency. If Phil hadn’t been impressed by the con­tents of Andrew’s newslet­ter, chances are that he wouldn’t have been open to meet­ing. And odds are that if Andrew’s newslet­ter had been two or three times a year rather than monthly, it wouldn’t have made the same impact.

3.     Be patient

Note that Phil had heard from Andrew for a num­ber of years before being pre­sented with the chance to meet – for­tu­nately, email allows you to com­mu­ni­cate much more eas­ily with greater fre­quency at lower cost than would have been pos­si­ble even ten years ago.

4.     Take the initiative

Even if prospects are impressed by the infor­ma­tion they get from you, you can’t wait for them to call – you still have to take the ini­tia­tive to get in front of them. If Andrew hadn’t sent Phil that email, then the chance to meet wouldn’t have pre­sented itself.

Fol­low­ing up when the door is open

With regard to my advice to Andrew, in my view his para­mount goal should be to get face to face with Phil in a fash­ion that accom­plishes four things:

1.     It helps him gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of Phil’s situation

2.     It  rein­forces  Andrew’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the value that he pro­vides to clients

3.     It builds a deeper bond and increases Phil’s com­fort with him

4.     It con­veys Andrew’s con­fi­dence in the value of his time – if he appears too anx­ious to meet, then his chances of suc­cess in mov­ing for­ward go down dramatically.

Given that, in Andrew’s sit­u­a­tion I would call Phil and say:

1. I’m delighted that you find my newslet­ter helpful

2. I appre­ci­ate your being upfront about not mak­ing a change at this time, but am happy to invest the time to sit down and get to know you bet­ter with no expec­ta­tions of any­thing com­ing from that in the imme­di­ate period ahead

3.  With regard to your state­ment, I sug­gest that we sched­ule a con­ve­nient time for you to meet at my office and that you bring your state­ment along. While we’re meet­ing, I can have the rel­e­vant parts copied … depend­ing on how our con­ver­sa­tion goes, I would be happy to review it and get back to you with any thoughts and suggestions

This also has the advan­tage of putting the meet­ing on Andrew’s turf – some­times ask­ing prospects to come to you can be a test of seri­ous­ness on their part.

One final note: While I rec­og­nize that we’d all like to see state­ments of prospects’ invest­ment accounts in advance of our first meet­ing, it’s rarely a good idea to ask prospects to share their invest­ment details with you in advance of your ini­tial meet­ing (and cer­tainly before even agree­ing to a meet­ing, as Andrew did.)

Rec­og­niz­ing that it nor­mally takes at least a cou­ple of meet­ings to bring a prospect on board, ask for one com­mit­ment at a time. Focus first on get­ting the ini­tial meet­ing; once a meet­ing has been sched­uled you can ask prospects to bring their invest­ment state­ments with them, should they want to refer to them dur­ing the meet­ing.  If it feels right, towards the end of the meet­ing you can sug­gest sched­ul­ing a time to talk fur­ther, in advance of which you would review their invest­ment sit­u­a­tion in light of the con­ver­sa­tion you’ve just had.

As you think about your own prospect­ing plans for 2013, con­sider whether any of the lessons from Andrew’s suc­cess in get­ting in front of a two-million dol­lar prospect apply to your busi­ness. If the answer is yes, iden­tify when you’re going to dis­cuss this with your team with a view to build­ing this into your routine.

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Five Simple Steps To Convert Prospects to Clients

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

“The no-sell sale”:

5 sim­ple steps to help you con­vert more prospects into clients

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Katharine Vessenes, Vest­ment Advisors:

When I first start­ing work­ing with multi-million-dollar advi­sors, I was aston­ished to learn their clos­ing ratio was a whop­ping 80 per­cent to 95 per­cent. Then, to test out my the­o­ries, I started work­ing directly with investors myself; not that I wanted to work with investors. The rea­son? My clos­ing rate had been about one-in-three prior to this.

So, you can under­stand my sur­prise when I found that by using this sys­tem, my own clos­ing ratio was more than 90 per­cent. That’s why I call this pow­er­ful process the “No-Sell Sale”. I mean, if I, a pretty lousy sales­per­son, could do it, any­one can.

This sales process is not about sell­ing at all; it’s about iden­ti­fy­ing prospec­tive client’s areas of con­cern and then solv­ing their prob­lems. There is no hard sell­ing. It’s the process of fig­ur­ing out what your prospec­tive client really wants and needs — and then giv­ing it to them.

It’s incred­i­bly easy to close more busi­ness if you have the right domi­nos and they are prop­erly posi­tioned. Here are some of the domi­nos, which, when prop­erly aligned, can help you cre­ate your own No-Sell Sale:

1. Set every appoint­ment up for the wow experience.

Remem­ber that it’s impor­tant for every exist­ing and prospec­tive client to face your very best “Star­bucks” expe­ri­ence”; that is, an expe­ri­ence so warm and pow­er­ful, prospec­tive clients won’t be able to wait to come back and see you.

An exam­ple:

Have your recep­tion­ist mem­o­rize this script when­ever you have a new prospect: “You must be the Mar­tins. Kather­ine said to expect you. Also, Jim, her client ser­vice man­ager, said you liked diet gin­ger ale. If there’s any­thing else I can get for you, please let me know.”

Refresh­ments are then served on china, with crys­tal glasses — all of which are pre­sented on a nice tray.

This is a far cry from a finan­cial advisor’s office I worked with last year. All they offered me was water, and it was served in a Sty­ro­foam cup — more of a Lake Wobe­gone expe­ri­ence than a Star­bucks expe­ri­ence. It did not make me feel spe­cial — in fact, it had just the oppo­site effect — I felt like I was so unim­por­tant to them that it was not worth their time to wash out a glass for me.

Mak­ing prospects feel spe­cial is a key part of the expe­ri­ence. Every­one wants to feel like they are your most impor­tant client. Tak­ing a lit­tle extra time can pay big div­i­dends in your relationships.

2. Let the prospect talk. Your job is to listen.

Recently, I sat in on an inter­view with the number-two rep of a medium-size broker/dealer. He was mak­ing about $700,000 per year and could eas­ily dou­ble that by tight­en­ing up his sales process. His biggest prob­lem? He talked too much. I watched him burn a full 30 min­utes in chit-chat with his new prospect.

Multi-million-dollar advi­sors know their only inven­tory is time. It’s impor­tant to be effi­cient with that time. Although multi-million-dollar advi­sors are polite and do spend time get­ting to know their prospects, they don’t spend 30 min­utes talk­ing about them­selves, the weather or swap­ping sto­ries. The best way to use your time is to get prospec­tive clients talk­ing about them­selves. This not only lets them feel impor­tant, it helps you assess how you can best solve their problems.

Ask prospec­tive clients some key ques­tions about them­selves, such as:

* What brought you in today?

* How can I best help you?

* Tell me about how your par­ents treated money when you were grow­ing up. Did they have an abun­dance men­tal­ity or a poverty men­tal­ity? How did that change your phi­los­o­phy on money now?

* How did you get to where you are now?

* What is your invest­ment philosophy?

* What do you want your money to do for you?

* What is the best invest­ment you ever made and why?

* What about the worst?

* Have you ever had a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship with a finan­cial advi­sor? Tell me about it.

By the time you go through these ques­tions, you will not only know a lot about your prospec­tive client’s char­ac­ter, but you will also know their money per­son­al­ity. If the prospect is hung up on los­ing $500 in a bad stock choice 20 years ago, this tells you they’re very uptight, remem­ber every bad expe­ri­ence and are very risk adverse. Remem­ber: The prospect, not you, is the mar­ket­ing genius. Once they tell you what they want, all you have to do is give it to them to close the sale.

3. Use an agenda.

Some­times advi­sors will send out an agenda in advance of the meet­ing. This can be a good tech­nique. How­ever, to sim­plify my sales process, I usu­ally had an agenda pre­pared at the time of the meet­ing. The agenda makes you look like the pro­fes­sional you are. It also serves as crib notes, so you don’t for­get to cover all the key items.

The agenda, which I rec­om­mend you present using a flip chart or white­board, serves many func­tions. It helps prospects stay focused, as at any time dur­ing the meet­ing, they can look at the agenda, which is always posted, and see where we are at. It really helps reduce their fears and makes them feel more com­fort­able. Peo­ple don’t like sur­prises and one way to make the process less fear­ful for them is to let them know, in advance, what to expect.

Once I go over the agenda with prospects at the begin­ning of the meet­ing, I also ask these two questions:

a) What do you most want to hap­pen dur­ing our meet­ing today? This lets you know the upper­most thought on your prospect’s mind. If you can solve that prob­lem, you can cre­ate another client.

b) Is there any­thing else you want to add to this agenda? This entire process is all about the prospec­tive client. Ask­ing this ques­tion lets them know they are in charge. Peo­ple who feel they are in charge are more likely to agree to your recommendations.

4. Use the client’s learn­ing style.

One of the best invest­ments I ever made was to become Kolbe cer­ti­fied. Kathy Kolbe cre­ated a series of amaz­ing tools that can be used to assess how peo­ple solve prob­lems, approach work and make deci­sions. These same tools can be used to help assess how clients need infor­ma­tion pre­sented to them in a way that makes them feel com­fort­able and able to come to a deci­sion to imple­ment our recommendations.

Although this is a much longer dis­cus­sion than we have time for, to sum­ma­rize: I have learned to first approach all clients as if they are “Quick­Starts,” in Kolbe speak. That means they like exec­u­tive sum­maries and bul­let points. Give them too much infor­ma­tion and they check-out men­tally because Quick­Starts get bored eas­ily. The point here is to cut to the chase quickly for this group, which rep­re­sents about 20 per­cent of the population.

Next, I would add in the details for the “Fact find­ers.” This group, another 20 per­cent, loves back­ground infor­ma­tion and the depth of your research. They want to know that you have done your home­work and you aren’t shoot­ing from the hip. If you don’t give them the rea­sons for your rec­om­men­da­tions, they will think you are unpre­pared and won’t trust you.

Thirdly, I would tie our rec­om­men­da­tions into the client’s past, present and future. This addresses the needs of the “Fol­lowThrus,” who are very orga­nized by nature. I would give spe­cial atten­tion to our process for deter­min­ing what we rec­om­mend because process and pro­ce­dures are impor­tant to this 20 per­cent of the population.

Finally, I would make sure the rec­om­men­da­tions were put in a pretty binder with a nice cover, because this is impor­tant for the “Implementers.”

5. Involve both spouses in the conversation.

One big mis­take I have seen some advi­sors make is to talk just to the hus­band and ignore the wife. They must be under the mis­con­cep­tion that hus­bands make all the finan­cial decisions.

Some­times it’s done very sub­tly, like start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about the local sports team. Now, some women are big sports fans, but many are bored by this topic and will feel left out — make sure you talk about some­thing that is impor­tant to both spouses. Both spouses must feel val­ued, impor­tant and appreciated.

Another mis­con­cep­tion is that the hus­band is in charge of finan­cial deci­sions. In fact, I have seen numer­ous stud­ies that show women con­trol more than 50 per­cent of all of the wealth in the U.S. today. It’s always safe to assume that both par­ties will be talk­ing about you and your ser­vices on the way home from the office, so make sure you “love-up” both of them.

One way to involve the spouse is to repeat the ques­tions for each one or rotate who you want to answer first. Here is a script for that process:

* “So tell me, Jane, what do you most want to get out of our meet­ing today? Bill, what about you? What do you most want to get out of the meeting?”

* “Bill, what would you say are your top three finan­cial goals? Jane, if I asked you the same ques­tion, what would your answer be?”

So, empow­er­ing the prospect, using an agenda, lov­ing them up, giv­ing them a wow expe­ri­ence, using their learn­ing style and involv­ing both spouses are key domi­nos that need to be aligned for the No-Sell Sale. On the sur­face, each one of these may seem pretty incon­se­quen­tial. In fact, you may be say­ing, “Why should we go to the trou­ble of bak­ing cook­ies and serv­ing juice in a crys­tal glass? We could save our­selves some time and a lit­tle money by skip­ping this domino.”

Yes, you could save your­self some time and money, but you would also reduce your clos­ing ratio. Because it takes so much time, energy and expense to get a new prospect into your office, it is impor­tant to wow them the first time — you may not get a sec­ond chance.

Each of these domi­nos may not seem like much, but when you add them all up — you can get ter­rific results — and that means a lot more happy, sat­is­fied clients.

Next time we will dis­cuss five more domi­nos in your No-Sell Sale — how to con­vert more prospects into clients.

Kather­ine Vessenes, JD, CFP®, RFC, pres­i­dent of Vest­ment Advi­sors is the country’s lead­ing con­sul­tant on the prac­tice man­age­ment strate­gies need to build the mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar prac­tice (Kaplan). She is also America’s best-known author­ity on the legal, eth­i­cal and com­pli­ance issues fac­ing finan­cial advi­sors (Bloomberg). A pop­u­lar speaker and prac­tice man­age­ment con­sul­tant, she can be reached at: 952−401−1045, Katherine@vestmentadvisors.com or www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

©Kather­ine Vessenes 2010, all rights reserved.

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Tags: Appointment, Dominos, Face, Financial Advisors, Five Simple Steps, Investors, Katherine Vessenes, Lawyer, Management Resource, Newsletter, Practice Management, Prospective Client, Prospective Clients, Prospects, Receptionist, Salesperson, Starbucks, Surprise, Vestment
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Why Your Sales Process No Longer Works—And What to Do About It

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

by Katharine Vessenes, of Vest­ment Advi­sors, via Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Kather­ine Vessenes

As a stu­dent of great finan­cial advi­sors and their sales processes, I have been for­tu­nate to actu­ally sit in on client meet­ings with some of the top finan­cial advi­sors in the coun­try. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when an $8 mil­lion dol­lar advi­sor closes the sale? It has been my priv­i­lege, as a prac­tice man­age­ment coach, to not only watch the great finan­cial advi­sors in action, but to even offer a few sug­ges­tions on how they might close more business.

Here is what I have learned, just this last sum­mer, as we coached two of the top advi­sors in the coun­try on man­ag­ing their prac­tice and improv­ing their sales practice:

A short­ened, quick sales process that was very effec­tive 10 years ago, is much less effec­tive today.

In 2000, it was not unusual for our firm, Vest­ment Advi­sors, to con­sult with $3 mil­lion finan­cial advi­sors who worked with the mid­dle mar­ket. Our goal was to use our prac­tice man­age­ment process to increase these advi­sors’ sales and build the value of their busi­ness. Every one of them got their sales process down to two meet­ings of an hour and a half each; three meet­ings were needed only in the rare case for higher-end or more com­pli­cated clients.

That kind of com­pressed, quick sales process was very effec­tive 10 years ago, but it is much less effec­tive in today’s wary eco­nomic cli­mate. Ten years ago, it was com­mon prac­tice. Not so today.

Today, many clients are not pre­pared to make a deci­sion at the sec­ond meeting.

Most clients haven’t yet built up a trust fac­tor with their finan­cial advi­sor by the sec­ond meet­ing. They are still skep­ti­cal. The rea­son: clients are fear­ful about chang­ing money man­agers, invest­ment styles, and advi­sors, even though they are in a lot of emo­tional pain.

Fur­ther­more, clients don’t like sit­ting for long meet­ings. They are busy, much busier than 10 years ago. They don’t have the time, energy, or atten­tion span to meet for two hours. Today, the shorter the meet­ings, the bet­ter for most clients.

Two of the advi­sors we coached this sum­mer had both length­ened their sales process to four shorter meet­ings. It was work­ing so well for them that their clos­ing ratios were far higher than we cur­rently are see­ing with other firms. In fact, they were prob­a­bly clos­ing 80% to 95%. These ratios are quite high, given the cur­rent market.

Here’s what’s cov­ered in each of the four meetings:

First meet­ing: Ori­en­ta­tion or “getting-to-know-you”

Time: 45 min­utes to an hour

The whole pur­pose in this meet­ing is to get a bet­ter feel for prospects, how they tick, and what they are look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship. As New Jer­sey advi­sor Paul Hart­line (not his real name) said to me, “When you have been in the busi­ness for 30 years, you can tell in that ini­tial meet­ing if you want them for a client or not.”

Most advi­sors who use a “get-to-know-you” meet­ing ask the client not to bring in any per­sonal finan­cial data. They feel it helps build trust and makes the client feel more comfortable.

Hart­line does this meet­ing in his office because he also wants new clients to get a feel for him. Hart­line is in a class-A space, and his office and staff show very well. The whole setup makes a great first impres­sion on prospects.

On the other hand, George Jack­son (also not his real name), from Seat­tle, does a first meet­ing that is all about the new client. Jack­son usu­ally con­ducts this meet­ing at a prospect’s office or even at his or her home. This lets them feel com­fort­able, lets him get to know them bet­ter, and he says the client then feels oblig­ated to come to George’s office for the next meet­ing as a social courtesy.

Sec­ond meet­ing: Data gathering

Time: 1 to 1½ hours

Dur­ing this meet­ing, the advi­sor gath­ers the data nec­es­sary to com­plete a finan­cial plan. Advi­sors are review­ing all the invest­ments, insur­ance, and other data that will be needed to make recommendations.

Paul does this meet­ing in the client’s home. He says he likes to see how the clients live. It lets him know if they are big spenders or savers, and he gets a bet­ter feel for them as peo­ple. It also makes it eas­ier to gather the infor­ma­tion Paul needs for the planning.

George does just the oppo­site. Since he has already met with the prospects in their home or office, they come to George’s office for the data gathering.

Third meet­ing: Plan pre­sen­ta­tion and gap analysis

Time: Up to 2 hours

We have seen advi­sors call this meet­ing many things. Most of them are pre­sent­ing what we call the “plan,” but it’s really a sit­u­a­tional analy­sis of the new client’s num­bers, where that per­son stands, and the like­li­hood he or she will run out of money in retirement.

Advi­sors also look at the gaps between the clients’ goals and where they are likely to end up.

Uni­ver­sally, these meet­ings are held in the advisor’s office.

Typ­i­cally, the client leaves the third meet­ing with answers to these questions:

• Will I run out of money in retirement?
• How much do I need to save to reach my goals?
• What can I do to save taxes now and in the future?

Some advi­sors may present a few prod­ucts here. Many will talk about the prod­ucts only gener­i­cally. They might dis­cuss REITs in gen­eral, and why it would be a good choice, but stop short of nam­ing a spe­cific one.

Fourth meet­ing: Implementation

Time: 1½ to 2 hours.

At this meet­ing, the advi­sor is talk­ing about spe­cific prod­ucts, money man­agers, sign­ing paper­work, and mov­ing the invest­ments over to the new firm.

For par­tic­u­larly fear­ful clients, or for those with com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tions, this meet­ing could stretch into two meetings.

Key take­aways

Prac­tice man­age­ment lessons and adap­tive strate­gies learned from flexible—and there­fore successful—advisors and planners:

• What worked really well 10 years ago may not work so well now. We all have to change with the times and be sen­si­tive to where clients are emo­tion­ally these days.
• The over­all amount of time you spend with clients is likely to be more than it was 10 years ago. Even though each meet­ing is shorter, chances are you will be hold­ing more meet­ings, and there­fore spend­ing more time, with poten­tial clients before they are ready to commit.
• Just as I like to remind advi­sors that all mar­ket­ing is trial and error, the same is true with your sales process. Test out dif­fer­ent strate­gies and orders to see what works for you and what doesn’t.
• Noth­ing, no mat­ter how great the sys­tem, works 100% of the time.
• Prospects and clients sim­ply are more fear­ful now, so it will take longer to build up sub­stan­tial trust with new people.

Kather­ine Vessenes, JD, CFP, a nation­ally known author and speaker, has the best job in the world.

She turns aver­age pro­duc­ers into stars by focus­ing on sales, mar­ket­ing, com­pli­ance, and prac­tice man­age­ment issues for broker-dealers and advi­sors. You can con­tact Kather­ine at (952) 401‑1045 or at katherine@vestmentadvisors.com. Or visit her web­site: www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

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Why Your Sales Process No Longer Works—And What to Do About It

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Kather­ine Vessenes:

As a stu­dent of great finan­cial advi­sors and their sales processes, I have been for­tu­nate to actu­ally sit in on client meet­ings with some of the top finan­cial advi­sors in the coun­try. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when an $8 mil­lion dol­lar advi­sor closes the sale? It has been my priv­i­lege, as a prac­tice man­age­ment coach, to not only watch the great finan­cial advi­sors in action, but to even offer a few sug­ges­tions on how they might close more business.

Here is what I have learned, just this last sum­mer, as we coached two of the top advi­sors in the coun­try on man­ag­ing their prac­tice and improv­ing their sales practice:

A short­ened, quick sales process that was very effec­tive 10 years ago, is much less effec­tive today.

In 2000, it was not unusual for our firm, Vest­ment Advi­sors, to con­sult with $3 mil­lion finan­cial advi­sors who worked with the mid­dle mar­ket. Our goal was to use our prac­tice man­age­ment process to increase these advi­sors’ sales and build the value of their busi­ness. Every one of them got their sales process down to two meet­ings of an hour and a half each; three meet­ings were needed only in the rare case for higher-end or more com­pli­cated clients.

That kind of com­pressed, quick sales process was very effec­tive 10 years ago, but it is much less effec­tive in today’s wary eco­nomic cli­mate. Ten years ago, it was com­mon prac­tice. Not so today. Today, many clients are not pre­pared to make a deci­sion at the sec­ond meet­ing. Most clients haven’t yet built up a trust fac­tor with their finan­cial advi­sor by the sec­ond meet­ing. They are still skep­ti­cal. The rea­son: clients are fear­ful about chang­ing money man­agers, invest­ment styles, and advi­sors, even though they are in a lot of emo­tional pain.

Fur­ther­more, clients don’t like sit­ting for long meet­ings. They are busy, much busier than 10 years ago. They don’t have the time, energy, or atten­tion span to meet for two hours. Today, the shorter the meet­ings, the bet­ter for most clients. Two of the advi­sors we coached this sum­mer had both length­ened their sales process to four shorter meet­ings. It was work­ing so well for them that their clos­ing ratios were far higher than we cur­rently are see­ing with other firms. In fact, they were prob­a­bly clos­ing 80% to 95%. These ratios are quite high, given the cur­rent market.

Here’s what’s cov­ered in each of the four meetings:

First meet­ing: Ori­en­ta­tion or “getting-to-know-you”

Time: 45 min­utes to an hour

The whole pur­pose in this meet­ing is to get a bet­ter feel for prospects, how they tick, and what they are look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship. As New Jer­sey advi­sor Paul Hart­line (not his real name) said to me, “When you have been in the busi­ness for 30 years, you can tell in that ini­tial meet­ing if you want them for a client or not.”

Most advi­sors who use a “get-to-know-you” meet­ing ask the client not to bring in any per­sonal finan­cial data. They feel it helps build trust and makes the client feel more comfortable.

Hart­line does this meet­ing in his office because he also wants new clients to get a feel for him. Hart­line is in a class-A space, and his office and staff show very well. The whole setup makes a great first impres­sion on prospects.

On the other hand, George Jack­son (also not his real name), from Seat­tle, does a first meet­ing that is all about the new client. Jack­son usu­ally con­ducts this meet­ing at a prospect’s office or even at his or her home. This lets them feel com­fort­able, lets him get to know them bet­ter, and he says the client then feels oblig­ated to come to George’s office for the next meet­ing as a social courtesy.

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Five Simple Steps to Convert Prospects to Clients

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

“The no-sell sale”:

5 sim­ple steps to help you con­vert more prospects into clients

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for U.S. finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Katharine Vessenes:

When I first start­ing work­ing with multi-million-dollar advi­sors, I was aston­ished to learn their clos­ing ratio was a whop­ping 80 per­cent to 95 per­cent. Then, to test out my the­o­ries, I started work­ing directly with investors myself; not that I wanted to work with investors. The rea­son? My clos­ing rate had been about one-in-three prior to this.

So, you can under­stand my sur­prise when I found that by using this sys­tem, my own clos­ing ratio was more than 90 per­cent. That’s why I call this pow­er­ful process the “No-Sell Sale”.  I mean, if I, a pretty lousy sales­per­son, could do it, any­one can.

This sales process is not about sell­ing at all; it’s about iden­ti­fy­ing prospec­tive client’s areas of con­cern and then solv­ing their prob­lems.  There is no hard sell­ing. It’s the process of fig­ur­ing out what your prospec­tive client really wants and needs — and then giv­ing it to them.

It’s incred­i­bly easy to close more busi­ness if you have the right domi­nos and they are prop­erly posi­tioned. Here are some of the domi­nos, which, when prop­erly aligned, can help you cre­ate your own No-Sell Sale:

1. Set every appoint­ment up for the wow experience.

Remem­ber that it’s impor­tant for every exist­ing and prospec­tive client to face your very best “Star­bucks”  expe­ri­ence”; that is, an expe­ri­ence so warm and pow­er­ful, prospec­tive clients won’t be able to wait to come back and see you.

An exam­ple:

Have your recep­tion­ist mem­o­rize this script when­ever you have a new prospect: “You must be the Mar­tins. Kather­ine said to expect you. Also, Jim, her client ser­vice man­ager, said you liked diet gin­ger ale. If there’s any­thing else I can get for you, please let me know.”

Refresh­ments are then served on china, with crys­tal glasses — all of which are pre­sented on a nice tray.

This is a far cry from a finan­cial advisor’s office I worked with last year. All they offered me was water, and it was served in a Sty­ro­foam cup — more of a Lake Wobe­gone expe­ri­ence than a Star­bucks expe­ri­ence. It did not make me feel spe­cial — in fact, it had just the oppo­site effect — I felt like I was so unim­por­tant to  them that it was not worth their time to wash out a glass for me.

Mak­ing prospects feel spe­cial is a key part of the expe­ri­ence. Every­one wants to feel like they are your most impor­tant client. Tak­ing a lit­tle extra time can pay big div­i­dends in your relationships.

2. Let the prospect talk. Your job is to listen.

Recently, I sat in on an inter­view with the number-two rep of a medium-size broker/dealer. He was mak­ing about $700,000 per year and could eas­ily dou­ble that by tight­en­ing up his sales process. His biggest prob­lem? He talked too much. I watched him burn a full 30 min­utes in chit-chat with his new prospect.

Multi-million-dollar advi­sors know their only inven­tory is time. It’s impor­tant to be effi­cient with that time. Although multi-million-dollar advi­sors are polite and do spend time get­ting to know their prospects, they don’t spend 30 min­utes talk­ing about them­selves, the weather or swap­ping sto­ries. The best way to use your time is to get prospec­tive clients talk­ing about them­selves. This not only lets them feel impor­tant, it helps you assess how you can best solve their problems.

Ask prospec­tive clients some key ques­tions about them­selves, such as:

* What brought you in today?

* How can I best help you?

* Tell me about how your par­ents treated money when you were grow­ing up. Did they have an abun­dance men­tal­ity or a poverty men­tal­ity? How did that change your phi­los­o­phy on money now?

* How did you get to where you are now?

* What is your invest­ment philosophy?

* What do you want your money to do for you?

* What is the best invest­ment you ever made and why?

* What about the worst?

* Have you ever had a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship with a finan­cial advi­sor? Tell me about it.

By the time you go through these ques­tions, you will not only know a lot about your prospec­tive client’s char­ac­ter, but you will also know their money per­son­al­ity. If the prospect is hung up on los­ing $500 in a bad stock choice 20 years ago, this tells you they’re very uptight, remem­ber every bad expe­ri­ence and are very risk adverse. Remem­ber: The prospect, not you, is the mar­ket­ing genius. Once they tell you what they want, all you have to do is give it to them to close the sale.

3. Use an agenda.

Some­times advi­sors will send out an agenda in advance of the meet­ing. This can be a good tech­nique. How­ever, to sim­plify my sales process, I usu­ally had an agenda pre­pared at the time of the meet­ing. The agenda makes you look like the pro­fes­sional you are. It also serves as crib notes, so you don’t for­get to cover all the key items.

The agenda, which I rec­om­mend you present using a flip chart or white­board, serves many func­tions. It helps prospects stay focused, as at any time dur­ing the meet­ing, they can look at the agenda, which is always posted, and see where we are at. It really helps reduce their fears and makes them feel more com­fort­able. Peo­ple don’t like sur­prises and one way to make the process less fear­ful for them is to let them know, in advance, what to expect.

Once I go over the agenda with prospects at the begin­ning of the meet­ing, I also ask these two questions:

a) What do you most want to hap­pen dur­ing our meet­ing today? This lets you know the upper­most thought on your prospect’s mind. If you can solve that prob­lem, you can cre­ate another client.

b) Is there any­thing else you want to add to this agenda? This entire process is all about the prospec­tive client. Ask­ing this ques­tion lets them know they are in charge. Peo­ple who feel they are in charge are more likely to agree to your recommendations.

4. Use the client’s learn­ing style.

One of the best invest­ments I ever made was to become Kolbe cer­ti­fied. Kathy Kolbe cre­ated a series of amaz­ing tools that can be used to assess how peo­ple solve prob­lems, approach work and make deci­sions. These same tools can be used to help assess how clients need infor­ma­tion pre­sented to them in a way that makes them feel com­fort­able and able to come to a deci­sion to imple­ment our recommendations.

Although this is a much longer dis­cus­sion than we have time for, to sum­ma­rize: I have learned to first approach all clients as if they are “Quick­Starts,” in Kolbe speak. That means they like exec­u­tive sum­maries and bul­let points. Give them too much infor­ma­tion and they check-out men­tally because Quick­Starts get bored eas­ily. The point here is to cut to the chase quickly for this group, which rep­re­sents about 20 per­cent of the population.

Next, I would add in the details for the “Fact find­ers.” This group, another 20 per­cent, loves back­ground infor­ma­tion and the depth of your research. They want to know that you have done your home­work and you aren’t shoot­ing from the hip. If you don’t give them the rea­sons for your rec­om­men­da­tions, they will think you are unpre­pared and won’t trust you.

Thirdly, I would tie our rec­om­men­da­tions into the client’s past, present and future. This addresses the needs of the “Fol­lowThrus,” who are very orga­nized by nature. I would give spe­cial atten­tion to our process for deter­min­ing what we rec­om­mend because process and pro­ce­dures are impor­tant to this 20 per­cent of the population.

Finally, I would make sure the rec­om­men­da­tions were put in a pretty binder with a nice cover, because this is impor­tant for the “Implementers.”

5. Involve both spouses in the conversation.

One big mis­take I have seen some advi­sors make is to talk just to the hus­band and ignore the wife. They must be under the mis­con­cep­tion that hus­bands make all the finan­cial decisions.

Some­times it’s done very sub­tly, like start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about the local sports team. Now, some women are big sports fans, but many are bored by this topic and will feel left out — make sure you talk about some­thing that is impor­tant to both spouses. Both spouses must feel val­ued, impor­tant and appreciated.

Another mis­con­cep­tion is that the hus­band is in charge of finan­cial deci­sions. In fact, I have seen numer­ous stud­ies that show women con­trol more than 50 per­cent of all of the wealth in the U.S. today. It’s always safe to assume that both par­ties will be talk­ing about you and your ser­vices on the way home from the office, so make sure you “love-up” both of them.

One way to involve the spouse is to repeat the ques­tions for each one or rotate who you want to answer first. Here is a script for that process:

* “So tell me, Jane, what do you most want to get out of our meet­ing today? Bill, what about you? What do you most want to get out of the meeting?”

* “Bill, what would you say are your top three finan­cial goals? Jane, if I asked you the same ques­tion, what would your answer be?”

So, empow­er­ing the prospect, using an agenda, lov­ing them up, giv­ing them a wow expe­ri­ence, using their learn­ing style and involv­ing both spouses are key domi­nos that need to be aligned for the No-Sell Sale. On the sur­face, each one of these may seem pretty incon­se­quen­tial. In fact, you may be say­ing, “Why should we go to the trou­ble of bak­ing cook­ies and serv­ing juice in a crys­tal glass? We could save our­selves some time and a lit­tle money by skip­ping this domino.”

Yes, you could save your­self some time and money, but you would also reduce your clos­ing ratio. Because it takes so much time, energy and expense to get a new prospect into your office, it is impor­tant to wow them the first time — you may not get a sec­ond chance.

Each of these domi­nos may not seem like much, but when you add them all up — you can get ter­rific results — and that means a lot more happy, sat­is­fied clients.

Next time we will dis­cuss five more domi­nos in your No-Sell Sale — how to con­vert more prospects into clients.
Kather­ine Vessenes, JD, CFP®, RFC, pres­i­dent of Vest­ment Advi­sors is the country’s lead­ing con­sul­tant on the prac­tice man­age­ment strate­gies need to build the mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar prac­tice (Kaplan). She is also America’s best-known author­ity on the legal, eth­i­cal and com­pli­ance issues fac­ing finan­cial advi­sors (Bloomberg). A pop­u­lar speaker and prac­tice man­age­ment con­sul­tant, she can be reached at: 952−401−1045, Katherine@vestmentadvisors.com or www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

©Kather­ine Vessenes 2010, all rights reserved.

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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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