It's Monday morning and you're looking at another busy week. The week is full of client service activities and client service meetings. There is so much follow-up that you don't even have time to think about your business or even have time to grow it. Sound familiar? But you know you have to do something to grow the business. Here are some ideas that are working right now for financial advisors.
Ideal client and prospect conversations of value
As a former financial advisor, one of the satisfactions I got was delivering a world-class service process with an amazing team. Delivering deeper value to our best clients by having deep meaningful conversations. The more value you deliver, the easier it is to get referrals and introductions. Instead of having review meetings, schedule conversations of value. Here are some of the conversations to consider delivering more value.
The clarity conversation. Helping people get a deeper sense of clarity is the number one thing they are looking for. Tell your best clients about your clarity conversation and then go and have one.
The goals conversation. People who value time more than money are usually the wealthy. They have enough money So what else can they do? Help them accomplish more than they ever thought possible by having a comprehensive goals conversation.
The Fee audit conversation for ideal prospects. It helps your ideal prospects understand the value you deliver and what they are currently paying in dollars from their financial advisor and what they're getting and not getting, it's just a conversation.
There are so many other types of conversations of value you can have with your ideal clients and prospects. Remember to call them not to set up meetings but to schedule conversations.
Podcasts
I see so many financial advisors starting and developing podcasts. Starting a podcast is the hard part. Reach out to fellow financial advisors add ask them how they got started. I can give you lots of stories and insight on how financial advisors do podcasts successfully in a future blog but for now, ask or research other financial advisors who are using their podcasts successfully. check out my latest podcast with Jason Pereira on mastermind groups here.
Events
Your job is to find meet and acquire new ideal people as clients. You cannot do that sitting behind your desk. Sure a lot of advisors are doing webinars successfully, but those financial advisors are now combining the power of webinars and events together, to speed up the prospects' journey and take them from, I don't know what I don't know, to now I know what I don't know and scheduling a conversation. What events are you currently doing on a monthly basis? Here are some ideas to consider.
Your passions
If you love golf, then consider doing a golf event. One example is hiring a golf pro ( who is also an influencer of wealthy people at a Golf Club) And every two weeks inviting clients prospects and centers of influence to work on their golf game for one hour and have drinks. The first event could be practicing putting the second short game third irons etc. If you're planning to go golfing anyways why not turn it into an event that you love to do? What are your passions and what do you love to do? Could this be your next event?
Passions can also be volunteering or community service. While the goal is to give back people can't help but have a great conversation with you to learn about you and what you do. They get to see you in action and see what makes you tick and this is a sure path for people who want to do business with people they know and trust.
COI event
Plan a luncheon and bring together your centers of influence and introduce them to each other as part of your network. They get to network and meet other professionals and see how you coordinate with other professionals for your ideal clients. Tell them about the coordination conversation you have with clients that tells them about your network. This is an example of a conversation you should have with every ideal client. I have facilitated several sea lion luncheon meetings for financial advisors And watched the results come in over the next few months which amazed the financial adviser on spending a couple of hours to get ideal client introductions from COIs.
Ideal client feedback forum
If you are like me and want to create an ideal client experience start with your ideal clients. Bring 5 to 10 of your best clients into a luncheon and ask them for feedback on what you're currently doing but more importantly feedback on how you're going to expand your ideal client experience. Let them help you build it and give you tremendous feedback. Tell them you're trying to acquire a few more ideal clients. The results for me happened when I followed up after the meeting with each person and I got an introduction to the exact ideal prospects I was looking for. My clients knew I was working hard on delivering more value so they were comfortable referring friends and family who were going to get an ideal client experience they've never seen before. Again another two hours to clone your best clients.
The prospects journey
I see tons of articles daily in financial advisor publications on how to market, how to grow, How to build a niche, inbound marketing, social media marketing, and the list goes on. To simplify it you need a prospect's journey. Become a prospect of your firm and see how they learn about you and your firm. See how they connect digitally to your firm through different social media channels. See how they might sign up for one of your offers and what is their experience once they sign up. Understanding your best prospects and their journey to becoming a client is your marketing process. How do they find, meet and engage with your firm? Do you find them or do they find you? Do you meet them or do they meet you? What are your offers to engage them? The financial advisors who are the most successful at marketing have a deeper process than the average advisor. How can you build a deeper marketing process to become more successful? Start with the prospects' journey. For example. You just finished reading this blog and below yet are some links to some offers to engage you. Some people click on the link go to a landing page & up and get next week's blog. Some people are invited to a webinar, and some to a live event. Along the way, the law of familiarity says that you need at least five to seven touches for people to understand who you are what you do what you offer before they will engage. That you can acquire more ideal clients and deliver more value to people you've never met before. As the co-author of "Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Advisors Series 1 and Series 2, this is what gets me really excited. Go for it and good luck.
Related: Are You Adding More Value Every Year to Your Ideal Clients?