When I hear of advisors spending $80,000 on marketing and getting zero clients, as one advisor shared with me recently, I envision a revolving door.
Merely advertising your presence in the marketplace is too vague and unspecific. It fails to project authority and generate trust.
With online lead generation, it’s easy to haul in a large amount of leads in a short amount of time and think you’ve hit the jackpot.
You know you have a non-ideal client when…
With Denzel Washington, it’s not that no other actor can play the roles he plays – it’s that no other actor can play them quite like him.
Stop burning up fuel and generating heat in the lower gears, doing general marketing activities that only attract more non-ideal clients and overload your system.
Here’s a problem marketing experts can’t solve.
The decision to focus on a specific area allows the specialist to become a trusted authority, and this is what leads them to a more differentiated position than that of a general practitioner.
Can you see why your prospect’s hiring decision is not a rational assessment of what you actually do?
Waiting for your phone to ring for a referral is no longer the safe zone it once was, unless you are happy depending on an unpredictable and passive model to grow your business.
In 2023, trust is only half of the equation, The other half is authority.
Here are seven mindset shifts to stretch your thinking to generate only ideal clients this year.
Engage in activities that position you as a trusted authority.
Being good at what you do is no longer enough to differentiate yourself from other advisors.
Funnel marketing worked reasonably well until two to three years ago, but it’s been failing ever since. Here's why.
Stop being reactionary, waiting to get inbound opportunities, rather than systematically and proactively putting in place a system to target specific ideal clients (i.e., higher net worth) that you want to engage.
Even though you are an advisor, you’re not in the financial advice business. You’re in the problem-solving business.
Replace talking about your solution with talking about a roadmap.
When you build trust in your sales conversation, then ask this bridging question towards the end.
The first and most important thing you need to figure out is what a potential high-net worth client is looking for when they come to see you.
A funny thing can happen in the mind of a prospect during their initial consultation with you.
When a prospect shares their challenges and you show them your solution, it’s easy to assume they’ll become a paying client. That is the wrong assumption.
Being an expert comes with what I call “the curse of mastery” – when someone tells you about their problem, you immediately try to solve it – because you can.
It’s an awkward question, because the last thing you want to do is defend or sell yourself against another advisor.
Sales gurus have taught for decades that people buy from only those they know and like. That’s the wrong advice.
You shouldn’t be using email at all in your sales process.
How many times have you had an initial consultation with a newly qualified prospect, and no matter how well you explained your process, they just wouldn’t take the next step with you?
It’s easy to assume when you can pack a seminar room full of qualified prospects, you’ll expect a bunch of new paying clients.
What could be worse than having a qualified prospect slip through your fingers and vanish?
Advisors have been conditioned to believe that their prospects must like them before they’re willing to become a paying client.
The above phrase is a respectful way to uncover the truth of any resistance that they may be holding back from sharing with you.
The black hole is the empty space where they haven’t committed to move forward, and you’re forced to chase them to find out where they stand.
Free consulting is when you provide information and education to prove you know your stuff.
When a patient is told they have six months to live unless they get a safe, recommended treatment, they don’t tell their doctor, “Let me think about it.”
Many advisors have potential clients who slip through their fingers because they believe their goal is to build a relationship pre-sale. But that’s not your potential clients’ goal.
No one likes being sold and advisors don’t like selling.
How do you re-engage your un-engaged clients to see if you can offer them expanded advisory services?
Unless you create deep trust first, any qualification process will make your potential client feel you only want to know if they’ll buy your services.
When you say: “Hi, I’m just ‘following-up…” it sends the message that you care about making the sale more than solving their problem.
When a potential client says to you the dreaded phrase, “We’ll get back to you,” understand... it’s not about you, it’s about them.
When prospects don’t return your calls, you feel betrayed ….because you gave them everything they needed to convince them to choose you. Is there a way to prevent being “ghosted” like this?
