Getting New Clients from Internal Marketing
Being rich is having money, being wealthy is having time.
-Stephen Swid
STRATEGY 23
How to Double Your Business by Cloning Your Top Clients—The Secret Strategy of Getting Referrals
Concept:
Are you ready for the secret? There are two parts to it. First you have to ask. Second you have to ask often. That’s it, you have to ask and make it part of your vocabulary. Just like when you learned your ABCs and 123s, this teacher says learn to ask for referrals early and often.
Objective:
Finding the best concepts for your business in developing referrals. While there are several concepts of developing referrals, finding one that fits your style and your business is unique.
Strategy:
Here is a list of great referral marketing ideas:
• Referral research method.
• Getting-married philosophy.
• Nonverbal referral communication.
• Up-front referral business.
• Competition-target method.
• Clone-your-best-clients method.
• Centers of influence referrals.
The first idea is to do research on selected referral targets. Show your clients or centers of influence the ideal client profile you are seeking or targeting. Let them know you are constantly trying to improve your business to help people achieve their financial goals. While clients are happy with the services they receive, you would like to interview potential prospects to conduct research on the marketing, communication, and advice that you help people with and the perceived value. Ask them for names of people that match your unique profile purely to do market research.
You want to let them know that it will greatly help identify and target your ideal prospect. Then call these referrals and you will be amazed at the amount of information you can gather about your target market. How they network, the clubs or associations to which they belong, the type of advisors they workwith, and how they network. Along the way the people on whom you conduct research may provide referrals directly to you.
The next referral strategy is the getting-married philosophy. Think for a moment if you were to marry, who you would want to meet (who is associated with that person) to find out more about them. First you may meet their parents; you might want to meet their friends, colleagues at work, and possibly their neighbors.
We’ll ask the client, “Now that you have become a client of ours, have you talked with anyone in your family, at work, or your friends about us?” Chances are if they just moved a large investment account to you, they at least told their best friends. In their center of people close to them they have the ability to send friends and family your way as referrals. Talking about it up front may make it easier to refer these people to you. You can ask if any of these people, family, friends, or work colleagues might need your help and say you will be more than happy to accommodate their needs. While they might not fit your ideal profile, usually birds of a feather flock together and their friends’ profiles will be similar to theirs. Get married to your clients. At least help the people around them.
Nonverbal Messages:
• Newsletters. At the bottom of my newsletters, I write, “I would like to thank my clients for thinking of me and helping their families and friends by referring their names to me. Referrals are always welcome and greatly appreciated.” Another idea for your newsletter is have a draw for a dinner gift certificate for clients who referred business to you, announcing the winners there, too.
• Message visible on your desk or business cards. On my desk, my business card holder carries the message, “The best compliment you can give is a referral.”
• Letters to clients. Why not select a few clients to start with and send them a letter asking for referrals. Then follow up with a phone call, not to directly ask for referrals, but to see if they received the letter and ask if they would like join you for coffee so you can share an investment idea. You can ask for referrals once you see how they feel about referrals.
• Client surveys. Positive or negative, everyone needs feedback. Surveys are a great way to ask for referrals if your clients are happy with you. Only survey clients from whom you are comfortable soliciting referrals.
• Seminars and seminar invitations. You can see the strategy on seminars, but you don’t want to miss these ideas. First, in your invitations, always state that your clients are free to bring a friend or family member to your seminar. Second, on the bottom of all seminar feedback forms I always put, please add these people to your next seminar invitation. I have received valuable referrals from this form information.
• Worksheets or handouts.
Verbal Messages:
• Up-front business referral. When I first heard this idea being presented by a top performing financial advisor from Vancouver, I loved it. It is something that you cannot decide to do when it seems right, but it should become part of every new client interview. I am referring to establishing the terms of how you do business. You would state to a new client that part of doing business with you is generating referrals for you so you can spend more time on managing client goals and less time marketing to new people. Up front, you tell the new client the profile of people you work with and that he or she should help you identify prospects, and tell you about these people. If the client agrees, you have a solid basis to regularly ask for referrals, and both of you are comfortable with this type of business practice. Remember it must be done up front each time a new client decides to do business with you.
• Competition target method. This method of referrals can be fun, especially if your target market is a certain segment of business owners. For example, let’s say you do group benefits for engineering firms. After you deal with one firm, ask the representative about the competition. A firm will usually know its good competitors in town and may even know them well. Once you start asking about the competitors, ask if you can contact them giving the referring company’s name. If they don’t like their competitors, sometimes they will be reluctant to allow you to use their company name as a referral source, but the respect of competition usually makes it an interesting conversation. You can usually find a lot of information about a target group by asking for referrals to that group. The clients are usually more than willing to talk about their competition, positive or even sometimes negative.
• Clone your best clients. One of my best clients came to me as a result of asking a client to invite a friend to one of my meetings. My client tried to get his friends to come and see me for quite some time, although I didn’t know that. When I asked for a referral, he mentioned this person’s name and that he had tried to get them to come and talk to me. It was only when I asked for referrals that I found out that the client was trying to help me, but it wasn’t working. Have a referral talk as part of your vocabulary. This is uncomfortable; asking for more business after the client has already given you business. However, once you do it 30 times for 30 days, it becomes a habit. It will be the best habit you pick up and by using that talk every day, over and over, you will go farther and faster than you ever thought possible.
• Have a worksheet or handout for clients. To remind you of the referral talk, use a cheat sheet to help you make it a habit. Use the Guerrilla Marketing Action Planning Worksheet at the back of this book.
• Centers of influence referrals-as discussed in Strategy 13.
Grant’s Tip:
Try this exercise. Write down from memory the names of your top ten clients. Next to their names write the amount of assets or amount of insurance they bought, or both. Now write how they became clients-referral, seminar, etc. If it was a referral, write the name of the referrer beside the name. You should have 10 to 20 names down on paper. Now add up the total amount of assets that the referral sources have with you as well as your top 10 clients. From that list of 10 to 20 names, write down that total and multiply it by two. Would that make a difference in your business if you could do that? Would you have the best year ever? Now your task is to have coffee with these 10 to 20 people and ask for referrals, period. It’s not as important as what you say but in the next 30 days make those calls, have some coffee, iced tea, latte, etc., and generate at least one or two referrals from the list. Sounds simple. Guess what? It is, this is a strategy I used to clone my top clients and it works. The key is to look for additional top prospects who are bigger than your top clients. You are now prospecting up, up, and up!
Create a points system and make it a game. If you need eight referrals per month, think of the sources that will generate them and how. When you know you will generate, by habit, one or two referrals a day to add to your database, it’s exciting to know that you sometimes don’t have enough time to keep up with them. One person with whom I have worked with knows how many referrals are usually generated during the course of the year and from whom; so at the start of each year, he has an estimate of the amount of business he will automatically generate through his referral networks. See Strategy 24.
Jay’s Comments:
Guerrillas don’t try to grow only in linear fashion by adding new customers. They grow geometrically by mining current customers. There are three ways to make a business more profitable and two of those ways lack something in the way of marketing wisdom. The first way and least likely to generate substantial profits but most likely to generate substantial heartaches is by waiting for word-of-mouth marketing to bring those clients and customers to you. An astonishing number of businesses follow this course and eventually learn that it leads directly over a cliff and into despair. This is called no-growth and it is very inexpensive but no fun.
A second way to make a business flourish is to market the business to the world and to your prospects. You can never stop doing this because it’s a superb source of new customers, but if you follow this highway and no other, you’ll find that it leads to a dead end. But even before you hit it, you’ll run out of fuel or money because this method, known as linear growth, is very expensive, not to mention frustrating. Glamorous? Yes. High profile ? Yes again. Profitable? No. Not profitable. It costs the linear growth people six times more to market their products and services than it costs guerrillas with the identical offerings—because guerrillas know a third and better way to beautify their treasuries.
The third way to create profits is to fully comprehend the remarkable worth of existing customers, then lean upon them for repeat business and referral business. This is called geometric growth because it has more dimensions than linear growth and greater magnitudes than no growth. In the quest for profits, it’s the best way to fly. Guerrillas are sure to offer enough quality and service, enthusiasm and flexibility, to earn word of mouth recommendations hand over tongue. They are also assiduous about marketing their offers and benefits to attract prospects, even create prospects out of disinterested humanoids. And they are nothing short of awesome when it comes to converting those prospects into paying customers. But linear growth alone is not good enough for them.
Geometric growth is where it’s at and guerrillas do it by focusing big-time on follow-up, which leads to repeat sales, and on referrals, which lead to referral sales. By combining good word of mouth, consistent linear growth and abundant geometric growth, they soon learn that marketing is easy, business is fun and life can be a dream. Of the three ways to grow, no growth is the cheapest because it costs absolutely nothing but faith, and linear growth is the most expensive because it costs absolutely nothing but money. Geometric growth, as all good guerrilla marketing, asks you to make an investment of time, energy and imagination. Spend actual time developing a follow-up plan, one which lalls for you to stay in touch with existing customers about six times a year. Do it with snail-mail letters and postcards, email, faxes, phone calls, personal visits, gift packages, greeting cards and anything else your imagination can cook up. This is no time to be cool. This is when to be effusive. Grant talks about these ideas in Chapter 5 and 6.
After you’ve got a fully-loaded follow-up plan, ready to put into force within 48 hours of every sale you make—for that timing is part of superb follow-up—devote the time to create a referral plan. Many guerrilla financial advisors report that up to 70% of their business comes from referrals. And they don t just sit around and wait for those referrals, lighting candles and praying. They begin goingfor referral business right from the start. The guerrilla dentist receives a phone call to make an appointment and asks, “Is this appointment for you or for your entire family?” The guerrilla always asks new client “Who referred you to us?” and then mentions that referrals are a very important part of the business.
That same guerrilla probably brings up the gifts that he gives clients who refer new people. He writes to his clients at least twice a year askingfor the names of people who might benefitfrom getting adding to his mailing list—asking only for the name of five people and enclosing a postpaid reply envelope to make everything easy. That guerrilla realizes that there are about ten good referral systems and he’s using five of them. The more you market geometrically, the less you invest in marketing. Because it costs only one-sixth as much to sell something to an existing than a new client, follow-up is paramount. Referral clients bring down the cost of doing business as well because they come to you at no cost or very little cost.
You don’t need me to herald the benefits of growing geometrically. You only have to talk to a guerrilla. Better yet, try implementing aggressive follow-up and referral plans for yourself. Be your own guerrilla. Then you won’t need me to give you any geometry lessons.
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No_______
Additional information required: Yes_______ No_______
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years ‘ study of books.
-Chinese proverb
Character is made in the small moments of our lives.
-Phillips Brooks
STRATEGY 24
Creating a Referral System
Concept:
Question: Have you ever received a new piece of business and thought afterwards, “Oops, I forgot to thank the person who referred these people to me?” Then you think, you should do something special to thank the client for the referral. So you go out, spend an hour or so, and buy a gift. Then you mail the gift. Not a bad idea; however, it can be improved upon by creating a system to make it a habit. (Unless you don’t receive many referrals, in which case you might as well throw this book away now.)
Objective:
As discussed in the strategy on gaining referrals, the goal is to gain valuable ones that match your ideal client makeup. First of all, use the worksheet and define your ideal client makeup. For example if I am seeking clients ages 55+ and investable assets of $250,000 plus, how many referrals do I need each week or month to reach my goal? If my goal is $6 million new assets each year, I will need three or four referrals per month to develop strategies and two per month to sign on as clients. Create a system so the client, the referrer, and you are involved in the process.
Strategy:
The goal is to get the communication flowing between yourself, your new client, and the referrer. Once the new client signs on, I ask if they can call the referrer to thank them for introducing me. Then I send a thank-you card or letter and a gift. If this is a first-time referral from somebody, you should make it so that it appears as if this is the biggest thing he or she could ever have done for you. After they would have received the gift, make a phone call to touch base thank him (or her) again for the referral. At that time, if you are comfortable doing so, you might ask if there’s anyone else. The referrer received two phone calls and a gift, just for referring one person.
As always, the gift must be approved by your compliance department. One idea is to send a lunch gift certificate. A second idea to thank them both, your new client and the referrer, is to take both of them out for lunch. It’s important that both people understand the system of appreciation for referrals, and thatyou appreciate these referrals. I always tell my sister, who is an actress, “It’s not what they say about you that’s important, it’s important that they’re talking about you.”
Grant’s Tip:
The follow-up system or process is the key. For a first referral, make sure a gift is sent. You don’t have to send a gift every time, but for the first referral it’s crucial.
The follow-up to the referrer, letting him know whether the people he referred became clients, is also very important. If I sent you three referrals and none of them became your clients, I would start to wonder why. But if you called me and explained that these three people are in the process of becoming clients, I would feel more comfortable. Feedback and tracking is key to all referrals.
I use the referral worksheet (see Referral tracking Review Worksheet on page 46) in several ways. First, to record the referral, the referrer, and the type of referral. Second, to make sure that the referrer was sent a thank-you card and/or gift. Third, to track during the calendar year where and what type of business was generated. I can go back each year and look at the referral sheets to see how many referrals, what type, and from whom I am generating them. For example, I may be receiving a lot from accountants, but not from lawyers; and I may want to pay more attention to the lawyers.
If you receive several referrals from one individual or source, such as an accountant, track the referrals received as well as those sent. It is also very important to receive feedback from the person to whom you sent the referral, to make sure you are helping reach your clients goals in a satisfactory way. On the form you would keep track of this, and periodically check back if you have not heard what happened with your referral. With referrals, if you give them, then you get them. Make it a goal in your client review planning and interviews to try to generate at least one referral. Imagine if you sent out 200 referrals this year. Do you think you might get a few back in return?
Jay’s Comments:
Referral Program
An overwhelming majority of successful business owners will tell you flat out that obtaining referrals is the most powerful tactic for attracting new customers. They’ll add that your best source of new customers is old customers. And allyou’vegot to do is ask them. Simply review your customer list and your list of contacts, then ask these good people to recommend you to others. Testimonials are nearly as good as money in the bank, but referrals really are money in the bank.
162 Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Advisors
To get the most, make it easy for people to give you referrals. One technique is to send them an email asking for the names of three people who might benefit from hearing from you. By keeping the number down to three, it will not be a daunting task for them to furnish names and email addresses to you. By doing it by email, you’ll cut out the expense and time you need to devote to this.
Everyone who works for you should be trained in asking for referrals. They should say something like, “We ‘re able to keep our prices in line by getting customer referrals rather than relying on expensive advertising. We’d be deeply appreciative if you could give us the names of just three people who you feel should be added to our mailing list.” The leads that convert to sales at the highest percentage are referrals from current customers. As a guerrilla, you treat these people right, so they ll want to help you.
A referral program is a simply system that is set up for you to send letters askingfor referrals automatically and on a regular basis—about twice a year. Thank those people who supply them. No other gift is necessary. I once participated in a teleconference with 300 chiropractors. We asked how many of them got 50 percent of their business from referrals and 100 of them did. We asked how many got 80 percent or more from referrals and only three did. When we asked how they did it, they told us that all their employees asked for referrals. Even the telephone operator was involved. When a person called to make an appointment, she would ask, “Is this only for you or do you also want to make an appointment for some members of your family?” Such an easy question! So many referrals came from it!
By having a referral plan and sticking to it, you’ll begin to amass a list of new customers. And each one can give you another three referrals. Make it extra easy by having your referral email letters written and ready to send. Then get ready for a new influx of profits.
Examples:
Referral Tracking Review Worksheet on page 46
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No________
Additional information required: Yes_______ No________
Do what you do so well that your customers come back and bring their friends.
-Walt Disney
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Einstein
STRATEGY 25
Be a Life Planner—Build a Life-planning Referral Network
Concept:
Be a resource to your clients by focusing on their lives as well as on their finances. If you had resources in several areas, then you would be seen as more valuable.
Objective:
This strategy has one main objective but several variations to achieve the main objective, which is: To be seen as a trusted resource to clients in more areas than just financial goals.
Strategy:
When I first heard of financial planners becoming more holistic in their approach, it sounded kind of strange. After all, we are here to help people financially, not become life coaches. But when you look at different ways to take a holistic approach, several ideas come to mind. One idea came from Barry LaValley of LaValley Communications in Nanaimo, BC. His concepts are the next wave for financial advisors to embrace.
Life planning is the process of helping people focus on the true values and motivations of their lives. It is in using these values, motivations, goals, and objectives to guide the planning process.
It is providing a framework for making choices and decisions in life that have financial consequences or implications, according to Steven Shagrin, Past president, International Society for Retirement and Life Planning.
To discuss this concept in one chapter is impossible. However, here are some ideas to get you thinking about becoming more holistic in your approach.
Build Your Own Yellow Pages:
1. Develop a list of potential contacts in other areas of peoples’ lives.
2. Use the list to create a referral directory of services for your clients.
3. Circulate the list, with permission, to your clients once per year.
4. Eventually you will see the list expand because of your conscious effort to create your own yellow pages for clients—you will see that once people find that they are not on the list, they will want to be.
Build Your Own Holistic Planning Questions:
1. Start recording information about clients’ lives and goals. This can include spiritual, physical, social, recreational, family, educational, or other pursuits in life.
2. Use this information along with your yellow pages to help people in other areas of their lives. For example, let’s say you have a client who wishes someday to go on a cruise. You define her (or his) finances as how much she may plan to put aside on the cruise. Then ask her if she has a travel agent. You can then arrange a meeting with a travel agent you recommend to plan out cruise destinations and book the trip. The client takes a wonderful cruise holiday and returns thanking you for making things happen in her life. You get the satisfaction knowing that you were the catalyst in that person’s life and helping to achieve more than just asset allocation.
Grant’s Tip:
Have you ever been asked by a client “Who is a good doctor, dentist, mechanic, travel agent? If your clients come to you for recommendations, can you imagine the referral possibilities you are creating? Imagine your auto dealer sending you someone who just received a large windfall, bought a new car, and asked the auto dealer to recommended an advisor.
Can you imagine sending a retiree to a personal trainer and that person telling their friends about their financial advisor who helped them find a personal trainer? Will their friends not ask who is their financial advisor? The possibilities are endless when you start to take a holistic approach to your business.
A second way to becoming a life planner is to hire your own success coach. The growth of coaching is huge in North America, and for professionals what better way than to hire a coach or take a coaching program or certification.
All top actresses and actors, athletes, and top business people have coaches. Consider hiring a coach to help you in certain areas of your business such as marketing, business planning, or overall success coaching. Financial advisors who want the fast track often overlook the value of feedback. It’s like Steven Covey says, “The law of the harvest—you must plant in the spring and harvest in the fall.”
Many top advisors find themselves burning out amid all success. It is natural to want more and more success, but at what price. A coach can help you manage your growth while maintaining the lifestyle that you work so hard to enjoy.
If you want to become a guerrilla marketing coach, check out the programat www.gmarketingcoach.com.
Barry LaValley’s work is revolutionary in helping advisors transition to becoming life planners to their clients. For more information, check out his web site at www.lavalleycommunications.com.
Jay’s Comments:
The Amazing Growth Of Coaching
Every world champion has had a coach. Here’s why the coaching industry growing so fast and how it can make you a champion, too.
I make a presentation and watch as the audience takes careful notes, nods in agreement with what I say, then rises to its feet with applause. But deep in my heart, I know that only 5 percent of the people in the audience will actually take action based upon what they have learned.
These are bright people, motivated people, but the vast majority of them are just too busy or too overwhelmed by day-to-day business matters to implement the changes they know they must make. They have everything it takes to succeed except for one thing-follow-up.
It’s that lack of follow-up that has led to the explosive growth of the coaching industry. And “explosive” might be an understatement. Fortune magazine agrees: “The hottest thing in management today is the executive coach.” Newsweek magazine chimes in with their take on coaching: “They’re part therapist, part consultant-and they sure know how to succeed in business.” The Harvard Business Review tells us, “The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organization’s valuable resources.” And The New York Times expands on this by saying, “…other companies offer coaching as a prerequisite…in the understanding that everyone has blind spots and can benefit from a detached observer.” Industry Week obviously goes along: “The benefits of coaching appear to win over even the most cynical clients within just a few weeks.” Executive Female is even more specific: “Coaching is having a dedicated mentor; it’s getting knowledgeable support and encouragement and a new way of looking at things when you need it.”
Imagine closing the door to your office for 30 minutes and having your own private success coach right there. Or perhaps the perfect time is on your cellular phone during that tedious commute to and from work. In fact you can call from any state in the country.
It is clear that these days business coaching has been booming. It succeeds because it works. Consider this quote from D.A. Benton in “Secrets of A CEO Coach” :
“If high achievers like Tiger Woods and Donald Trump have one (or more) for their jobs, why shouldn’t you have one for yours?…In today’s competitive business market, having a personal coach is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
To put my time and money where my mouth is, we’re now offering coaching through Guerrilla Marketing. Your guerrilla marketing coach will help you create better, more-effective goals and then support you to reach those goals in a timely manner. He will encourage and help you to stay on track by helping you understand roadblocks to change and creating a solid support structure for you to stay motivated and proactive.
He will help you maintain a sharp focus, by focusing upon your goals and helping you overcome your problems. He will provide you with research-based tools including strategic exercises based on years of work with thousands of clients. His goals are the results you want. And he’ll help you achieve them with one-on-one coaching.
The line at the bottom has “follow-up” written all over it. We’ve learned that guerrillas need follow-up and now we ‘re offering it.
Success at marketing means you’re part of a process and not merely engaging in an event. Have you ever attended an excellent training program, perhaps a full day or weekend seminar? The speaker is great, the information is valuable and you take eight pads full of notes. You come back to your business and you’re lucky if you implement even one idea. Why?
Consider this analogy from the world of sports. Let’s say you decide you want to become a tennis player. You take a tennis lesson. No matter how great that tennis lesson is, you do not become an overnight tennis champion. It takes a process to create a tennis champion, and it takes a process to create a profitable company. Coaching is a process training experience designed to have a dramatic impact on your business.
The entire design of a coaching program is to get you to take action and then to stay with you to assure the proper follow-up. If a coach is nothing else, he’s a master of implementation, and if he’s a winning coach, he’ll impart that mastery to you.
When I write a book, I know it has only two parts: starting it and completing it. When you opened your business, you had the same two parts. Coaching exists to help you with that second part. Coaching exists to provide the objectively and extra energy that champions possess.
If you’re interested in learning more, just check out the explosive growth of the coaching industry as a whole, and if you’re interested in participating, now you can do it as a guerrilla and gear up to be a champion yourself.
Examples:
• Life Planning Resource Worksheet.
• See Strategy 31.
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No________
Additional information required: Yes_______ No________
A mind, once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Life Planning Resource Worksheet
|
Specialty |
|
Name |
|
Phone |
|
Fax |
|
|
|
Auto Mechanic |
|
Bereavement Counselor |
|
Bookkeeper |
|
Building Supplies |
|
Business Coach |
|
Career Counselor |
|
Caterer |
|
Chiropractor |
|
Communications Coach |
|
Computer Consultant |
|
Corporate Coach |
|
Corporate Trainer |
|
Dentist |
|
Dog Walker |
|
Education Tutor |
|
Elder Care Specialist |
|
Electrician |
|
Event Planner |
|
Florist |
|
Gardening Expert |
|
Golf Professional |
|
Handyman |
|
Health Food Entrepreneur |
|
House Builder |
|
House Painter |
|
Housekeeper |
|
Interior Decorator |
|
Internet Consultant |
|
Jeweler |
|
Nutritionist |
|
Pharmacist |
|
Photographer |
|
Property manager |
|
Travel Agent |
|
Veterinarian |
|
Other |
Our attitude towards life determines life’s attitude towards us.
-Earl Nightingale
STRATEGY 26
The Ultimate Feedback and Idea Forum
Concept:
If I were asked to give only one idea upon which to build a dynamic financial planning practice, it would be this: Create a board of directors with your top clients and centers of influence. Ask them for feedback and ideas on every aspect of your business, from advice to marketing and client communications. Invite six to ten of your top clients, centers of influence, or referral sources. Hold these meetings three to four times a year and buy them lunch for giving you valuable feedback on all areas of your business (see agenda). Each year change the board to new clients or centers of influence to build relationships and gain insight, as well as referrals from influential individuals. Just like coaching and mentoring, it is invaluable feedback from the people that use your services—feedback you and your success coach, manager, or mentor may not see and understand. If I have not experienced being one of your clients for a period of time, how can I give you long-term valuable feedback on how your business is doing?
Objective:
Feedback from your top clients and centers of influence. A secondary objective is developing referrals and cloning your best clients by discussing the fact that you are looking for more clients like them to build your business. Make it clear though that this is not a referral session, but a genuine feedback session for your business.
Strategy:
Some advisors have used this as a referral meeting by bringing in their top referring clients, discussing their business plans, and asking who or what target market they should tackle next. The clients will tell them the clubs they’re associated with, hobbies and activities, and where they might meet their friends in a casual setting to introduce their advisor. Advisors may have several types of focus groups they’re working on. For example if you are looking to attract dentists, have a dentists’ focus group or board of directors’ luncheon. If you have more than one market, cluster together different types of groups and/or have several referral/focus group meetings.
Costs: Breakfast or lunch for six to ten participants: $60 to $150.
Time: One to four hours of preparing materials; one hour of confirmation phone calls; one to two hours for the meeting—total seven hours.
Potential results: Referrals, marketing ideas, clues to targeting your market, invaluable feedback—just like the MasterCard commercial—priceless.
Grant’s Tip:
Make sure you discuss the ideal client you are seeking. Have an agenda for the meeting and be prepared to discuss and disclose your business ideas and plans. Depending on the group, you may also hand out a client communications plan, business plan, or your marketing plans for the coming year. Have at least one advisor with whom you are mentoring or working (and who earns more than you) at this meeting to give you feedback; he or she may be an excellent judge of your business plans. Don’t reveal income numbers or sales targets to clients (you will come across as salesperson); rather, you are looking for constructive ways to help your clients and be the best in your field.
One example of a question and feedback received is, “How can I build better relationships and show appreciation for my top clients? I’m thinking of throwing a fancy client appreciation event.” The feedback was that this was not the way to achieve that objective. One board member suggested calling these top clients this coming spring and dropping by with hanging baskets of flowers for their homes. The advisor thus had the opportunity to personally build the relationships, when he delivered the baskets, as well as to thank them with gifts. The spin-off was when family and friends asked the clients where they got the lovely hanging basket. Instant referrals through a strengthened relationship and a gift. The advisor’s idea of client appreciation was dramatically different than the top client’s idea.
Sample Agenda, Board Of Directors Meeting:
• Client statements format/recommended changes/timeliness of information/ do you want them hole-punched/suggestions for improvement.
• Client education/seminars format/topics of interest/speakers/suggestions for improvement.
• Web site—Format/content/additional stuff/future use/frequency of use/ suggestions for improvement.
• Client appreciation—Plans/lunches, golf days, books, gifts, spring promo (seeds and garden book?)/how to WOW clients/suggestions for improvement.
• Client service—Assistants/office/telephone/greeting/appearance/ perception/suggestions for improvement.
• Client communications—Email communication (Is it effective, interesting, or a waste of time; what do you think of the personalized emails?)/seminar invitations/special bulletins/news articles/quarterly newsletters (quality, useful information, topics and ideas to discuss)/suggestions for improvement.
• Client tax planning focus—Tax efficient and planning focus/team of experts/ resources/request for feedback/client perception.
• Client building—Typical sought client/working with other professionals/ suggestions for additional team members/mailer ideas/database building/referral-generation ideas/performance feedback/suggestions for improvement.
• Target marketing—For example sponsorships such as lawn bowling, community events, other ideas/brochure or client intro kit.
• Advertising—Newspaper articles (Do you read them: Do they appeal to you?)/weekly ads in newspaper (Continue or change?)/suggestions for improvement.
• Professionalism—Interviews/feedback/knowledge, skills, commitment, etc./ suggestions for improvement.
• Feedback and comments.
Jay’s Comments:
Sometimes the student becomes the teacher. That’s exactly what happened to me when Seth Godin, coauthor of three books with me, authored his own-Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers. It changed my entire outlook about marketing and can dramatically change the beauty of your bottom line.
Seth has enlightened me to the presence of two kinds of marketing in the world today. The first, most common, most expensive, most ineffective, and most old-fashioned, is interruption marketing. That’s when marketing such as a TV commercial, radio spot, magazine or newspaper ad, telemarketing call, or direct mail letter interrupts whatever you’re doing to state its message. Most people pay very little attention to it, now more than ever because there is so much of it and because many minds now unconsciously filter it out.
The opposite of interruption marketing is the newest, least expensive, and most effective kind. It’s called permission marketing—because prospects give you their permission to market to them.
It works like this. You offer your prospects an enticement to volunteer to pay attention to your marketing. The enticement may be a prize for playing a game. It could be information that prospects consider to be valuable. It might be a discount coupon. Perhaps it’s membership to a privileged group such as a frequent buyer club or a birthday club. Maybe it’s entry into a sweepstakes. And it might even take the form of an actual free gift. All you ask in return is permission to market to these people. Nothing else.
Alas, you ll have to use interruption marketing in order to secure that important permission. And you’ll have to track your costs like crazy, figuring how much it costs you to gain each permission—easily figured by analyzing your media costs divided by number of permissions granted.
Once you’ve embarked upon a permission marketing campaign, you can spend less time marketing to strangers and more time marketing to friends. You can move your marketing from beyond mere reach and frequency and into the realm of trust.
Once you’ve obtained permission from your prospects, your marketing will take on three exciting characteristics. It will be anticipated, meaning people will actually look forward to hearing from you. It will be personal, meaning the messages are directly related to the prospect. And it will be relevant, meaning you know for sure that the marketing is about something in which the prospect is interested.
Permission marketing is not about share of market, not even about share of mind. Instead, it’s about share of wallet. You find as many new actual customers as you can, then extract the maximum value from each customer. You convert the largest number of prospects into customers, using the invaluable permission to accomplish this. You focus your marketing only on prospects and not on the world at large.
Let’s use an existing coed summer camp as an example of permission marketing in action. The camp uses interruption marketing to run ads at camp fairs and in magazines that feature other ads from summer camps. But the ads do not attempt to sell the summer camp. Instead, they focus solely upon motivating prospects to send for a video and a brochure, thereby securing their permission to accept your marketing with an open mind.
Once the prospects receive the video, they soon see that it, too, does not try to sell the camp. It is geared only to get permission to set up a meeting. But having seen a video of the camp facilities, activities, happy campers, and attentive staff, the prospect is all set to say yes to a personal meeting. At the in-person meeting, the sale is closed. And once a camper attends the camp for one summer, chances are pretty darned good he or she will not only stay for several more summers, but also will bring along a brother, a sister, a cousin, a schoolmate or a friend—or all of these.
Notice that the only goal of each step is to expand permission for you to take another step rather than making the ultimate sale. Who uses permission marketing these days? Record clubs. Book clubs. Marketers who offer a free brochure. Even my own web site offers a daily marketing message for only $3 per year—in effect, gaining permission to market to all those who sign up.
The biggest boon to permission marketing is the Internet—but only by those who treat it as an interactive medium and not like TV. As clutter becomes worse, permission become more valuable. The moral: Since only a limited number of companies within a market niche can secure permission, get moving on your own permission marketing program pronto.
Additional Information:
• Web: www.financialadvisormarketing.com under client appreciation.
• Ask your top clients and centers of influence whether they are interested in being on your board of directors
• Ask your mentors or peer group about the Mastermind concept (see Strategy 6).
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No_______
Additional information required: Yes_______ No_______
I failed my way to success.
-Thomas Edison
The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.
-Bobby Knight
STRATEGY 27
Gathering Millions of Assets by Tracking Them
Concept:
If you track your client’s information (but may not manage his funds), you know ahead of time how to help him make investment decisions when opportunities or maturities arise. Have a software system that will allow you to track and consolidate assets and accounts for clients. Check with your compliance office and your company’s technology department about tracking and reporting this information to your clients. At the very least, you should be tracking this information (also known as nonmanaged assets).
Objective:
There are four main objectives of the software.
• First, when nonmanaged assets are maturing, you have the opportunity to discuss investment options with clients; hence more assets under administration.
• Second, you are providing the client with a valuable service by tracking investments and seeing how they work with all of the client’s financial plans and asset allocation.
• Third, if you were to sell your practice or retire, and you track millions of dollars in nonmanaged assets, your business would have added value in the form of future potential or, as I call it, inventory.
• Fourth, if you sell fixed-income investments and your firm doesn’t have a system for tracking deposits and maturities, your solution is a complete fixed income tracking software program for managed and nonmanaged assets. As always, conform to your firm’s compliance rules on software and its use.
Strategy:
How do you track nonmanaged assets now? Have you ever had a client say to you “Call me when this matures?” How do you record or track this information? Most advisors do not have any formal system of tracking maturities or nonmanaged assets. They just take over the assets they can and leave the rest up to their clients. There is a better way and it takes a systematic approach.
If your firm allows you to track nonmanaged assets with its software, do it now! If you do not have access to this software, find a solution. Some software allows you to track fixed-income investments and maturities and print maturity notices, statements, and consolidated reports. Just think, who will get the business next time your client has a maturity if you are the one who calls him or her to discuss options? This is a very powerful tool to help clients track all of their fixed income and maturities, since the average investor over age 50 has a good percentage of their assets in fixed income vehicles. Most retirees will love to have one person tracking their investments and helping them to consolidate holdings, thereby simplifying their lives. Usually most investors deal with three or more financial institutions, so if you can make their lives simpler, they will be happier clients. The other advantage of the software is for existing advisors using fixed-income options with their clients.
Grant’s Tip:
As you gather information on clients, make sure you ask for copies of all of their investment holdings and offer to track any maturities on your system. As maturities come up, you can call or send letters outlining the maturity and offering options—a perfect asset-gathering opportunity. Depending on your compliance department (always check with it first), you may also be able to send out consolidated statements. You can also send out consolidated statements on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis to stay in front of your clients and service all of their financial needs.
Wouldn’t you like to know you have access to information for all assets for all clients? That way, all information, advice, and questions will automatically lead to your office. How many of your clients would enjoy this service?
Here is an opportunity to rise above your competition. A guerrilla marketer knows the competition. Find out how many of your competitors offer this type of service. Then find out all of the services your top three competitors offer and explore the possibility of enhancing your services and offering more. I know most people have a difficult time keeping track of their investments, especially if they deal with more than two financial institutions or advisors.
Jay’s Comments:
Guerrillas know that it’s easier to sell the solution to a problem than to sell a positive benefit. That’s why they position themselves as problem-solvers.
A well-known axiom of marketing has always been that it is much simpler to sell the solution to a problem than it is to sell a positive benefit. For this reason, guerrillas position their companies to be ace problem-solvers. They home in on the problems confronting their prospects, then offer their products or services as solutions to the problems. In this case the problem is for clients to track all of their assets and keep it organized. How many of your clients have their assets organized and consolidated in one report? You job, as a right-thinking guerrilla, is to spot those problems. Ask questions, listen carefully to the answers, and keep your marketing radar attuned to the presence of problems. After learning them, you can contact the prospect and talk about the prospect’s problems and your solutions to those nasty dilemmas.
As you already know, people do not buy shampoo; they buy clean, great-looking hair. That means selling a benefit. A way that some shampoos have achieved profits is by reassuring people that the shampoo cleans hair, then stressing that it solves the problem of unmanageable hair—a benefit and a solution to a problem.
Right now, products and services that are enjoying success are those that help people quit smoking, lose weight, earn more money, improve health, grow hair, eliminate wrinkles, and save time. These are problem-solving products and services.
Your biggest job is to be sure your products and services do the same. Perhaps you’ll have to undergo a major repositioning. That’s not bad if it improves your profits. Far more doors will be open to you if you can achieve it.
Maybe you know right off what are the major problems facing your prospects. Your marketing should highlight these problems. Then, it should offer your product or service as the ideal solution. If you don’t know the problems, knock yourself out learning them. Regardless of the benefits you offer, realize that their importance is generally overshadowed by the problems confronting a prospect.
It’s really not that difficult to position your offering as a problem-solver. But once you do, you’ll find that the task of marketing and selling becomes a whole lot easier in a hurry. You’ll have to examine your offerings in the light of how they affect your prospects. So what if they are state-of-the-art? That pales in comparison with their ability to reduce your prospect’s problem of tracking and organizing their financial affairs and keep track of what’s going on. Prospects don’t really care about your company; they care about their problems. If you can solve them, then prospects will care a great deal about your company, and they’ll want to buy what you are selling.
Guerrillas lean upon case histories to prove their problem-solving acumen. They make certain to include in their marketing plans both the problem and the solution—to guide those who create marketing materials from wandering off in the wrong direction.
Sales training in guerrilla companies involves a discussion of problems, problem-spotting, problem discussing, and problem-solving. Sales reps learn the nature of prospect problems from one another. Sharing their insights helps the entire company.
Amazingly, even though this all makes sense, many companies are unaware of the importance of problem-solving. They’re so wrapped up in the glories of their product orservice that they are oblivious to how well it solves problems. So they sell features and neglect benefits. They sell the obtaining of positives instead of the eliminating of negatives.
Keep the concept of problem-solving alive in your mind, your marketing materials, your sales presentations, and your company mission. Be sure your employees are tuned into the same wave length. Once this happens, I have a feeling that you’re going to be one happy guerrilla.
Examples:
• See the Record-keeping Worksheet on the following page.
• Check out www.financialadvisormarketing.com and click on software for information on our software program developed for Canadian Financial Advisors who wish to track all of their clients assets.
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No_________
Additional information required: Yes_______ No_________
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
-Albert Einstein
Record-keeping Worksheet
Consolidate your investments on one easy-to-read statement.
If you have any additional items to be added to your statement, fill out the form below and send it to our office and/or enclose copies of your latest statements.
Name: Phone:
Guaranteed investments (Please use mm/dd/yy for dates):
Institution:
Account number:
Deposit: $
% Rate:
Issue date:
Maturity date:
Mutual funds (Please use mm/dd/yy for dates):
Fund company:
Account number:
Number of shares:
Approx. market value:
Registered accounts/Annuities (Please use mm/dd/yy for dates):
Institution:
Account number:
Deposit: $
Issue date:
Maturity date:
High expectations are the key to everything.
-Sam Walton
STRATEGY 28
Great Ideas to Educate Your Clients and Prospects
Concept:
To help educate your clients and prospects and empower them together to make better financial decisions.
Objective:
The more a client understands what I do, the more trust I have with that client.
Strategy:
In your office, start to collect the best books on personal finance, tax investments, insurance, and estate planning. Then offer to loan them to clients. Have a bookshelf available for your clients to access anytime. Don’t expect all of the books to be returned, as you can also suggest that if a client finds the book helpful to pass it on with your compliments. Make sure you put your name and business card in the front of every book.
Grant’s Tip:
Call each one of your product suppliers and ask for recommended readings and ask if they have any books to offer to your client library. Also ask these companies for their very best brochures on selected financial topics. Some companies have great marketing departments that produce excellent client educational pieces that are never used by advisors. Make it a habit each quarter to talk to the head of marketing of the companies with which you deal. Ask what is new and request to be kept abreast of new marketing or educational material that would be useful to your clients. Each company has a large budget for this, so you might as well tap into it and make the best use of it. Your regional wholesaler can also be a valuable resource for helping you to build your library. One company I know has excellent tax bulletins that I share with accountants, and one has fantastic estate planning ideas that I share with my team of legal professionals.
One idea for generating new business is educating all of your clients on all of the services you provide, including referrals to other professionals. How many times have you heard a client say, “I just bought life insurance, I didn’t knowyou did that?” Make sure you include, in your regular newsletters, a section called “New Ideas and Services.” Although it may not be new, it generates excitement to announce it as such. Call your centers of influence and ask whether they provide a courtesy discount for referrals made through your office. For example: “NEW, Services to help you prepare taxes and wills. This new system of referral services will help you find professionals to help you prepare taxes and wills, and these professionals will provide a discount if you mention us.”
Always make your marketing exciting and new. Always make your marketing stimulating enough to rouse people to pass it on. Interesting facts and stories are always shared. Financial magazines and subscriptions can also be effective for client and prospect education, but only if you are also reading them.
Costs: Go to your favorite bookstore and spend a few bucks. It will be worth it. Imagine if your accountant educated you on tax-planning ideas and books. How much more valuable would you see your accountant as a resource? How about buying the latest and hottest tax book and giving it to your favorite accountant? You can do the same with legal books for your centers of influence.
Jay’s Comments:
Marketing is part art, part science and part business. Because it’s such a subjective thing, there are few hard and fast rules. But here are five new ones to guide you in your quest to boost your profits with a minimum investment and avoid nasty surprises along the way.
1. The 10/30/60 Rule-All guerrillas know they have three markets. The largest of those markets and the one that represents the least profits to you is called your universe—everybody within your marketing area regardless of whether they match your customer profile. Guerrillas invest 10 percent of their marketing budget talking to their universe, attempting to move them into their second largest market, one that ranks in the middle for generating profits.
That market is called your prospects, those members of the universe who do fit your customer profile. Your job: invest 30 percent of your budget in an effort to nudge these people into your third market-your clients, easily your most lucrative source of profits.
Guerrillas invest 60 percent of their budgets marketing to their clients, knowing it costs them one-sixth as much to make a sale to an existing customer compared with marketing to a non-client. By investing the most in the market that produces the most profits,yet costs the least to reach, guerrillas maximize their total marketing investment.
2. The 1/10/100 Rule—Now that you know the value of clients, don’t overestimate their importance even though it ranks very high. Other marketing investments are even more worthwhile. When guerrillas think of marketing, they know where the real power resides and invest accordingly.
A rule guides them to where they should be putting their time and money. It dictates to guerrillas that $1 spent communicating with their own staff is equivalent to $10 spent communicating with the trade and $100 spent talking to their clients. Clients are glorious and the trade very helpful, but never overlook the marketing power of your own people.
3. The Rule of Thirds—Almost every sane small business owner is now marketing on line. Guerrillas have learned how to budget their on-line investments. They invest one-third of it in designing and posting their web site, making it look attractive and be very simple to find.
They invest another third of that on line budget to attract people to that site, knowing that marketing that site offline is a key to succeeding with it. on line. The final third of their on line budget is used to improve and maintain their site, keeping it fresh and fascinating. By allocating their on line budgets realistically, guerrillas make the most of the Internet.
4. The Rule of Twice—I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but even though the price of technology is dropping and will continue to drop, you’ve still got to face up to the reality that it will end up costing you twice what you think it will cost to remain truly competitive on line as technologies advance and evolve. And you’ve got to know that you’re kidding yourself if you ‘re not staying competitive in that arena.
5. The Rule of The Ruler—You may consider yourself just too busy to attend to run the marketing show. You may have followed in the footsteps of other guerrillas and delegated the marketing function to a designated guerrilla. Still, I think you should know that the very best CEOs in America are deeply involved in marketing and take full responsibility for it.
While you can delegate the function, you can’t really delegate the passion and the vision, making it necessary for you, as the ruler, to take command of the process and keep your eyes on it all along. Follow that rule and you’ll never be lead down a garden path by well-meaning but misguided marketing types whose goals may not be quite the same as yours.
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes_______ No_________
Additional information required: Yes_______ No_________
It’s amazing how much people can get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit.-Sandra Swinney (This quote is said to have been framed on the desk of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.)
I had no ambition to make afortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal, I had an ambition to build.
-John D. Rockefeller
STRATEGY 29
Orphan Accounts—How to Find Them and How to Help Them
Concept:
Successful financial advisors have for years been able to get a pipeline of qualified accounts from several sources. How would you like to have new accounts on your doorstep every month? How do you find such a pipeline? Besides your marketing bringing in new accounts, having a regular flow of new accounts to service and cross-sell—the potential can be unlimited.
Objective:
Finding sources of orphan accounts. If you work for a career agency, brokerage, or independent firm, there are always sources of orphan accounts. Be advised, though, not all firms have orphan accounts, and if you decide to accept these accounts, you must service them appropriately. Since it may be difficult to pick and choose the orphan accounts you receive, you may not always get your ideal clientele.
Strategy:
Have a qualified lead list with which to make appointments to offer help with their financial goals. Sometimes a small lead can develop into a large client. The client may not have had a financial advisor contact them for years and may have all his or her accounts with one financial institution, which may not be giving the best possible service and advice. Here is a door-opening opportunity to turn an existing client into a top client.
Grant’s Tip:
I know of top agents across the country receiving highly qualified leads from their companies because they are top producers. Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a pipeline of leads? Most agents think of orphans as clients requiring lots of service and producing little money. Many millionaires have old life policies they have kept and need an agent to service. These accounts only cost you your time at this point, so they are cost-efficient. If you are building your book of business, try these sources for orphan accounts:
• Management within a company—branch manager, division managers, etc.
• Brokerage firms or insurance companies with which you do business.
• Investment companies that have retiring agents in their systems.
• Agents who are retiring or selling their practices.
• Company benefits departments who help executives retire.
• Companies who are laying off staff—look into helping them with severance packages.
Start making your own list here…
Jay’s Comments:
Guerrillas are well aware that the highest form of public relations is human relations. They are able to blend warm relationships with sizzling profits.
No matter how good your marketing is, building referrals from orphan accounts can rarely bring customers back for more if they were disappointed with their first go-round with you. It cannot generate profits for you if your word-of-mouth marketing works against it. It can only get prospects to buy from you once. The rest is up to you—and up to your sense of humanity in marketing. One guerrilla truism is that people like to buy from friends. Another is that it is crucial to make the human bond before you can make a lasting business bond. To avoid the depersonalization that has been an unpleasant side effect of the digital age and endemic within the business community, several guerrilla marketing weapons may be employed to add more humanity to your marketing and more profits to your tiller.
Most of the marketing weapons I’ve mentioned cost very little money. They are attitudes that serve to warm up your overall marketing. They make doing business with you more of a pleasure than a chore. When your clients feel your caring, feel a sense of well-being because they’re your customers, you have succeeded at one-on-one public relations. Who would ever think that a hallmark of the guerrilla is love? I hope you think it now.
Action Summary:
To add to my marketing plans: Yes________ No_________
Additional information required: Yes________ No_________
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-Albert Einstein