Whites Of Their Eyes

I’m betting a boatload. Well, now you can do just that… read your prospect’s mind, in a recent in depth study on how clients buy called, “How Clients Buy: Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Clients perspective”.

The marketing portion of the study looked at the methods clients use to find their advisor. It looked at 27 different marketing methods. What they found may both surprise you AND save you a ton of money!

Here are the top 4, most effective methods clients use most often to find you (ask yourself how you are capitalizing on each):

1. Referrals from colleagues, family and friends—No surprise there
2. Referrals from other service professionals—No surprise there either
3. Personal awareness—Wow! I didn’t expect that!
4. Seminars—Many advisors will argue with this one… of course, all the advisors I know making $1 million or more a year (15 and counting) know this… because they all do seminars!

There are some cheap and easy ways to capitalize on these top 4 methods that I will talk about in a second, but first let’s look at the info that may save you some big bucks.

How did some of the methods being pushed by marketing companies as, the miracle marketing cure, fare in this study?

-Online prospecting webinars—came in at #17 out of the 27 methods
-Postcards–#19 of 27
-Being an author–#22 out of27
-Social Media–#25 out of 27
-Radio–#26 out of 27 methods (only a blog was worse)

So how do you capitalize on the top 4 most effective methods of marketing?

Referrals from colleagues, family and friends—Your clients love you and would love to refer to you but here’s what happens… they tell their friend they should use you because you are a great retirement expert! Guess what their friend says? So’s my guy. Guess when your client is going to bring you up again? Never.

But what if you capitalize on people’s human nature to be smarter than the next guy. People love to demonstrate that they have something that nobody else has. That’s exactly what I do, and the advisors I coach do, by using the 5Q process. It works like a charm. (Last month’s newsletter gave you a link to learn exactly how to do this. If you missed it or need the link, just contact my office and we’ll get it to you.)

Referrals from other service professionals—The holy grail of referrals are from attorneys and CPAs. It, as far as I know, remains the holy grail because I have yet to find a way to get them to refer. However, do not give up! I’ve found 3 service professionals that are extremely eager to refer to me… and the guys I’ve coached have had the same success finding eager professionals, using my approach in their territory. So don’t give up! Keep at it and you’ll find professionals that are not only willing, but eager to refer to you.

Personal Awareness—Being known. It is a lot easier and cheaper becoming famous in your territory than you may think. I use letters-to the editor (free), press releases (free), ” breakfast clubs” ($15), Epidemic marketing (less than $1 dollar a month)… all to create a huge brand and a steady flow of new clients. The guys I coach LOVE becoming famous on the cheap!

Seminars—We all hate the idea of spending thousands of dollars to mail out invitations, only to have nobody show up. That’s why I highly recommend the “Whites of their Eyes” method of seminar marketing. Do NOT pay for the mailing! Only pay for the people that actually show up. That’s the way my advisors market. It takes all of the stress out of it, and instead leaves just the many clients they bring in from it.

I’ve also had some advisors have great success using focus groups. They are getting in front of highly qualified prospects that don’t respond to any other type of marketing. These are great prospects because they haven’t been in front of other advisors before. Your ideas are new and exciting to them!

So the lesson you should take from this enlightening study is don’t waste time on the new fangled marketing miracles like radio or being an author… instead just be really good at the 4 top methods clients use to find you. For the most part they are nothing new—but we probably all know advisors making a lot of money excelling at them.

I don’t know about you, but the biggest clients myself or my buddies have brought in, have been small business people that just sold their businesses. I brought in a $3 million and a $5 million account this way. My buddy brought in a $10 million account when the local garbage man sold to Waste Management.

Think about it… where does a business owner have all of their risk when they are running their business? In their business. Where do they have all their money? In their business. Where do they spend all their time and energy? In their business. They have no interest in financial advisors while they are in business…

BUT when they sell their business… they immediately know they are in over their head and seek an advisor immediately to find a home for that huge check.
The problem? They don’t advertise that they are selling their business, so how do you make sure they come to you?

You do what I do:
Put together a list of family owned businesses in your area
You send them a brief (one or two paragraph letter on your letterhead) each month

This letter is NOT about financial products!
It is SHORT
It is about ideas that will help them as business owners

Small business tax savings ideas
How to reduce the credit card transaction fees that are eating them alive
A marketing idea about how to bring in more customers
Small business software or phone app that will make their lives easier
ANYTHING that lets them know I understand their needs as a small business owner

I DO NOT send them my regular client newsletter because their whole focus is on their business… not personal finances. I want to help them with their immediate needs, which is to run their business. By doing that, I’m the first person they think about when they sell their business. And oh, they refer too.

You only get a call or two a year doing this… but these calls are always from the best clients. These people are nice, they understand and respect your expertise, and they have large checks they need to find a home for… don’t miss out on these opportunities!

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!