Whites Of Their Eyes

Getting “quoted” in a well-known magazine costs you virtually nothing… and is free publicity. This idea got me quoted in several magazines including Kiplinger’s, Wealth, Financial Planning, New York Times, Star Tribune, Your Money and more.

I’ve given you the formula to follow below to get your letter in… but don’t worry if your first letter isn’t accepted. The best you can hope for is a 1 in 2 chance all the way down to a 1 in 10 chance (for highly prominent publications).

But think about what you get when it is finally published:
Credibility
Allows you to say you were quoted in Famous Magazine in your biography
Fame
National exposure
Free press
Reporters begin to call you

ALL FOR FREE!

Here’s how you do it:

Read the publication in which you wish to have your letter published.
Find an article that you think you have something to add to or disagree with.

Write your letter in the following format:

Begin with one of the following:
Compliment them on the quality of their magazine
Tell them you’ve been a reader for a certain number of years
Tell them how important their stories are to their readers
Tell them how their magazine has changed your life
In a word, COMPLIMENT them

Identify the article to which you will be commenting (e.g. Your article titled, “ABC Retirement”in your April issue…)
Tell them why you are qualified to comment on the article (e.g. I’ve worked with retirees for 10 years…I’m a CFP…I’ve been a financial advisor for…)

Make your comment about either:
Why you agree and what they missed
Why you don’t agree

It’s really as simple as that.

Go to a funeral home to make sure your business never needs one!

Schedule a day to approach local funeral homes. Show them that you have expertise in helping people settle their life insurance policies and annuities. And then stay in contact with the funeral home directors and sooner rather than later, they will begin referring clients that need your help to access their money… leaving you in the perfect position to pick up a new client that needs your help finding the appropriate home for their inheritance.

How are you approaching small businesses?

Small businesses (firms with less than 100 employees) make up over 95% of all employers in the U.S. and employ almost half theof all employees in the nation. What are you doing to connect with these great prospective clients?

There are many reasons to approach a small business person but the reason and time I want to approach them is the day they sell their business. If you think about it, while they were successfully running their business, all their time… money… and risk was tied up in their business. They had very little need for a financial advisor.
BUT, the day they sell their business, they instantly need one. Getting a check for $3 million… $5 million… or even ten million is uncomfortable to them and they want help immediately. All of my biggest cases and the biggest cases of my friends in the industry, all came from small business people that had just sold their business.
But how do you know when a business person is selling their business? They generally try to keep that kind of information under wraps.

What I do is to send a brief, two-paragraph letter to family owned businesses once a month. I keep it brief, so they can read it quickly and get on with their day. My topics are always about how to make their lives as business owners easier or more profitable. Here are some ideas of the topics I have included over the last few months:

• How credit card companies are preying on small business owners by skirting the new credit card laws
• Three new tax breaks for small business owners in 2011!
• The Gallup small business index poll—How does your business stack up?

I provide this letter each month to all the 2Objects members so they can use it to be the go-to-guy for small business people in their towns. Please get hold of us if you are interested in receiving the letter as well!

We’ve all seen, and probably used, a quote like, “Compounding is this century’s greatest invention!”

Well, are you compounding your marketing? Once you’ve spent your hard earned money on marketing to get people in the door… what do you do with those people? (Especially those people that raise their hands to show interest, but do not become clients.)

If you’re smart, you continually follow-up with them, thus compounding the marketing dollar you’ve already spent on them. It’s a simple fact that the more you follow up… the more likely they are to buy (see below).

I’m not sure if most advisors get this fact. Based on these numbers, they must not.

-58% of all advisors quit completely after just one sales contact
-20% give up after just 2 contacts
-7% make it up to 3 contacts
-15% make 5 contacts or more

Here’s the telltale statistic. The 15% that make 5 contacts or more with prospects… produce 75% of all business. Did you get that? 15% produce 75% of all business.
So what is the best way to follow up? Here’s what I would recommend:

1. Have a system – In order to make follow-up as painless as possible, have a system that happens automatically… without you having to even think about it.
2. Communicate with several different media—Mix it up. Use newsletters, email, the phone (phone broadcasting has worked wonders for me! And virtually no other advisor uses it.), handwritten notes, postcards… keep reaching out.
3. Be a valued resource—Give them information they can use, right now, for free. It shouldn’t be just about money… there is tons of info that people want that would make you a needed resource in a very short time.
4. Let them know you’re famous—If you have been quoted or have a letter to the editor printed, let them know about it.

I, and the advisors I coach, use ALL of the above techniques. We send out a monthly newsletter, a monthly referral email (an email that has great info that our clients love to forward to their friends and neighbors, broadcast phone messages (that our clients love!), regular handwritten notes and postcards… and it’s always with information that the clients can use right away… but never about the money.

As an aside, I always get the question, “Why don’t you send out information about money?”It’s simple. They don’t care how much you know… until they know how much you care.

If all I talk about is money, they assume that the only thing I care about is getting my hands on their money. Providing great, helpful information identifies me as a guy who actually cares, not just another advisor after their money!

Does this approach work? All I can say is that over 15 advisors that I coached make over $1 million a year, and all of them use ALL of these techniques. Are these techniques solely responsible for their success? Absolutely not. Are they partially responsible for their success? They will all tell you… Absolutely.

It’s developing a killer, unique marketing message that will put any and all of your marketing…and referrals on steroids using the 5Q Process. Join Mike as he walks you through the 5 steps to create a USP that will bring you at least three new referrals, per client, each year:

1. Something that only you can claim
2. Something that addresses something that keeps your target market up at night (greed, fear or frustration)
3. Something very specific
4. Something very brief and memorable
5. Something that gets them to say, “Tell me more…how do you do that?

In this pre-recorded webinar, Mike walks a group of financial advisors through the process, helping them create their own killer elevator speech. You can access at no cost, my treat. Email me at mike@5Qgroup.com