Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
I associate one word with the holidays – warmth. While I do love sipping wine by a warm fire during the cold months, I’m referring to the good cheer between strangers, time with family, and especially the warm feelings you get when you give the perfect gift and the recipient is elated. It feels good, right? To give and make others happy?
Let this “season of giving” inspire your financial advisor marketing strategy in 2020. Being generous to your prospects is an extremely effective way to turn them into clients. It may seem counterintuitive to freely share your knowledge and shower your prospects with valuable information. But being helpful, while not directly asking for anything in return, creates warm feelings, builds a trusting relationship and establishes credibility. These are powerful motivators for prospects to become your clients.
What happens when you stop being a Scrooge and act like Santa
Before working with a client, my firm performs an in-depth roadmapping session. The first step is to look at what they’re already doing to see if we can improve those results before trying new strategies and adding cost.
For example, one client came to us because she wanted to generate more leads. During our roadmapping session, we discovered that her lead-generation strategy was very effective, and she had built an email list of over 500 qualified leads. However, even after multiple follow-up emails, her conversion-to-appointment rate was only 2%. She reasoned that since such a small amount were taking action, she needed more leads to get more clients.
“Linda,” I said, “you don’t need more leads, you just need a higher conversion rate.” Instead of developing additional strategies to get leads, we needed to make what she was already doing more effective by improving her follow-up.
Like many other financial advisors, Linda was behaving like Scrooge in her email follow-up. She was focused on sales and getting leads to make an appointment. Therefore, her emails provided little to no value. She inadvertently trained her subscribers to ignore them. People love to buy, but no one likes to be sold.
Taking a note from Jolly Old St. Nick, one of the best ways to build a trusting relationship with leads, establish yourself as a valuable resource and convert them into clients, is to freely send gifts of helpful information without aggressively asking for anything in return.
To become Santa, Linda started with a simple five-email sequence that focused on "giving" instead of "asking." Almost immediately, she saw a boost in results. Her conversion rate jumped from a puny 2% to a whopping 25%!
To see for yourself what putting on the “big red suit” can do to convert leads into clients, here is a five-email outline to help you get started:
Email 1
- Introduce yourself and establish credibility. Why should they listen to you?
- Tell them what to expect. Let them know that they’re going to receive some more emails about [topic]. E.g. “The next few weeks are going to feel like Christmas! I’m going to send you some valuable tips and a free guide that will help you prepare for the biggest issues that most retirees face.”
- List the benefits of reading your emails. How will it improve their life?
- Get them excited for your next email by promising a gift or sparking curiosity. E.g. “P.S. Did you know there are five things you absolutely must do before you can retire? I bet it’s not what you think. Be sure to check your email tomorrow and I’ll give you the answer.”
Emails 2-4
- Send helpful information or gifts like a retirement guide or a risk calculator.
- Encourage engagement by posing a question and asking them to reply with the answer. Leads are more likely to convert when you start with low-risk engagements like this and then later escalate your “ask” to a phone call/appointment.
- Seamlessly tie your call-to-action into the topic. E.g. “If you’d like to talk more about retirement planning, schedule a free consultation.”
- Get them excited for your next email by promising a gift or sparking curiosity.
Email 5
Your last three emails sent helpful information and established yourself as a valuable and trusted source. Now you are in the perfect position to ask them to take action. Remind them of their troubles and explain why/how you can solve that problem. Call on them to take action and schedule an appointment.
Get on the fast track
Automate your emails using a tool like Drip. It not only saves you the time and headache of doing it yourself, but it allows for consistent and long-term engagement, which is the most effective way to nurture leads into making an appointment.
To help you get on the fast track to more leads and clients, schedule a free consultation with me. Let’s come up with a plan together to make the New Year a game-changing one.
To your continuous success…
Hendrik de Vries is a former financial advisor that now works with independent advisors to quickly and efficiently accelerate business growth. After over a decade of experience guiding independent advisors, he has become known as the ”advisors’ advisor.” At MM RIA Marketing, come with a goal, leave with a plan.
Read more articles by Hendrik de Vries
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
