You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing. The best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal. James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now here is your host, James Pollard.
James: Welcome back to the show - another Monday, another episode uploaded to the magical cloud of iTunes, whatever these other podcasts applications are…, financial advisors.
Jonathan: Come on, James. No. It's uploaded right to your brain. We are in your brain, right now. This is inception.
James: I'm speaking directly to you. I'm in your ears right now. Hey, what's that thing over there? Don’t turn around. Watch it. Hopefully, nobody did that while driving or anything. So. Another episode. Another Monday. [0:01:03.8]
You're spending some time with me. Maybe you're listening to this on Monday. Maybe you're not. But today, we're going to talk about "What Struggling Advisors Need To Know Right Now." If you listened to the episode last week, I explained why I wanted to do this, and it was because it came to my attention that there are a lot of advisors who are listening to this show who are struggling and they're not doing as well as they want to do. That kind of makes sense if you're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing that you want to grow your business. I mean, you are in the right place. That I know. But they look like ducks, and I said this in the last episode and I'll say it again. If you look at a duck floating down the stream. It looks calm and cool and collected. It's just a sweet little duck, but then when you go under the water, you realize that its feet are paddling just paddling and paddling and paddling, just trying to stay afloat and sometimes, that happens to financial advisors. But I'm here for you. I want to help you. I want to help you grow. I want to help you get more clients and you are in the right place. But I want to start this episode off today with a little story, which will tie directly into the point I'm trying to get across today. [0:02:08.2]
So, I recently went to a Texas Roadhouse in New Jersey. Have you ever been to Texas Roadhouse, Jonathan?
Jonathan: Absolutely.
James: Do you like it?
Jonathan: We used to. They had a great meatloaf special that Cupcake and I used to like to split.
James: You like the rolls? The cinnamon rolls?
Jonathan: Ohhhhh with that butter?! Yeahhh.
James: Yeah. Well, they're not cinnamon rolls, but they're rolls and they have cinnamon butter, yeah.
Jonathan: Right.
James: So if you're listening and you've never been to a Texas Roadhouse, it's a steak restaurant, essentially, with a country western theme. I mean, they play country music and they've got pictures of country music artists on the wall like Willie Nelson and stuff and there's rolls with a cinnamon butter that we're talking about. They are really good and if you've been, you know what I'm talking about. If you've never been, just Google it or find the one nearest you and just go. Now, I was in New Jersey and the manager of this particular restaurant looked like he was straight off the cast of Jersey Shore, except for his outfit and I say that because he was wearing cowboy boots and a big belt buckle and now that I think about it, I'm not even sure if he was allowed to wear that stuff. I'm pretty sure they have a dress code about their shoes. They can't wear cowboy boots. So, if anybody out there knows the Texas Roadhouse dress code, let me know if you're even allowed to wear those cowboy boots. But he looked like a fish out of water and he sounded like one too because he would say like, "Howdy," but he'd say it in this thick Italian accent…[ 0:03:31.1]
Jonathan: Guido accent.
James: He was in the wrong place. He looked like he was in the wrong place. He sounded like he was in the wrong place and he was wearing … he's got to wear, like it was Calvin Klein intense Euphoria and he just doused himself in it. So he didn't smell like he belonged either. You'd expect him to smell like a barn or something, and I'm hating on Texas Roadhouse a little bit. It's not like, it's not a hick restaurant or anything like that. It's actually a nice place, but this guy looked like he didn't belong and that's how a lot of financial advisors operate when it comes to prospecting. [0:04:00.6]
They try to prospect using a strategy which doesn’t align with their personality. It just looks out of place. It feels out of place to the prospect and it doesn’t work. One example of this is that a lot of old school advisors, a lot of sales trainers and a lot of these slave driving managers they will have you believe that you're a lesser mortal if you can't make 5 billion cold calls a day, but the truth is some people are naturally better at cold calling than other people. Some people are naturally better at some prospecting methods than others. One of my Inner Circle members, he's a beast at cold calling. He loves talking with people and he used to work for a major bank call center, which basically had him sit on the phone and make anywhere from 50 to like 100 calls a day. He had this little machine, the auto dialer and it would just beep in his ear and someone would come on the line. They'd be like, hello, and he'd be like, hey, this is so and so from this bank and he loved it because he could talk to someone different every couple of minutes. [0:05:03.9]
He could learn about their problems and their challenges and he didn't feel this sting of rejection. He had no call reluctance. He had nothing like that. another Inner Circle member loves conducting seminars. He likes giving presentations. He likes speaking to an audience. He likes being the center of attention. His personality is geared towards that and he's been building his business that way. The reason these guys are crushing it is because they're amplifying their strengths. That's really important. Just because this is a podcast and just because you're getting this information for free and it's casual and we entertain you a little bit, it…don’t brush this off. Don’t think that you can just dismiss these ideas because they're extremely important and the idea that you can grow your business a lot faster, get more clients by amplifying your strengths, it's like a gem. It's a jewel in the rough. It is one of the core philosophies that I have that I encourage you to adopt as well. [0:06:00.4]
I want to preface this by reminding you that one is the most dangerous number in business. You never want to rely on one marketing method or one prospecting method. However, you don’t want to keep banging your head against the wall if something's obviously not working. This brings me to what I want all struggling advisors to know: You are unique and you should build your business around your unique situation because a lot of financial advisors get caught up in this game of copycat and a lot of times it happens when they get a mentor who shows them the way he or she got clients. This is all well intentioned, but you know what they say about that - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Just because it worked for them, it may not work for you. That's not because the marketing strategy itself is bad. It could be for a multitude of reasons. If the mentor had a lot of success with seminars, but you get a cold sweat every time you think of speaking in public and you can't stand to make presentations and give them, it's probably not going to work for you. [0:07:10.6]
This isn't rocket science here, but it's just common sense. You think about this stuff - if you're a financial advisor who doesn’t like public speaking, and you get a mentor, someone that you respect or maybe the mentor has a lot of success and you're just grateful that that person took you under his or her wing, and that person says well, I did two seminars a month and I have this presentation and it works wonders and I've refined it over 30 years and you can have it as my gift to you. Even though that strategy has been proven and the seminar has gotten clients for 30 years and it's been refined over 30 years, probably won't work for you because it doesn’t align with your personality. One of the examples I gave in a previous podcast episode involved marketing to farmers and there was an advisor who got a mailing list of people who subscribed to an agriculture magazine in his area and he sent out a piece of direct mail and he absolutely crushed it. [0:08:06.8]
I mean, this guy knew the agriculture market like the back of his hand and the letter that he sent out was one of the best ways for him to make contact and start building rapport. That was his strength.
Hey financial advisors, are you ready to take your business to the next level and get more clients with less stress? I invite you to join the James Pollard Inner Circle, a paper and ink newsletter that gets delivered directly to your door every month. When you join now you'll also get a 90-minute instant download called, "Five Keys to Success for Financial Advisors", a $97 value for absolutely free. All you have to do is head over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/newsletter and join today.
James: He knew the agriculture market. He knew that the farmers would read their mail, that they would read that particular piece of mail. Now if he told someone else who wasn’t as familiar with the agricultural market to use that same marketing method, it would probably fail. Why? [0:09:05.8]
Because his unique situation dictated his effectiveness with those farmers and this may - I know this is abstract and this may…this is a lot to get your head around, so I'll give you another example. Let's say you have one financial advisor who has built his business with farmers, with seminars I should say. This person might love to give presentations and speaking in front of people. If, again, you try to find someone who's terrified of public speaking, it won't work. There will be so much friction trying to get that person to give a seminar. If you have someone who is completely uncomfortable with social media and a complete technophobe and they can't stand it, they're probably not going to do well with my "How To Get Clients With LinkedIn" product, even though it has been proven to work with a bunch of other financial advisors. The fact that so many people are trying to prospect in ways that don’t align with their unique situation is why so many of them quit.
Now, let's turn the spot light over to producer Jonathan. Have you identified any marketing strategies or anything that you can do that align with your personality? [0:10:07.1]
Jonathan: Yeah. You know, I wanted to play devil's advocate, actually on this because you're saying if your consultant or your mentor says to do something maybe it isn't in alignment, but where do you draw the line being afraid versus diving into things that will help you grow?
James: You try them and when you try the thing and it absolutely doesn’t work and doesn’t come close to working for you after trying it and after giving it your best effort, then you try multiple things. That's why I have multiple products with different marketing strategies. Financial Advisor Marketing Mastery has like 10 different ways financial advisors can build their businesses. I talk about a wide variety of stuff in my Inner Circle newsletter and I do it on purpose because I want people to pick out the stuff that jives with them and have them use it to get more clients. I don’t expect them to use every last piece of information. That would be foolish of me. Just like it's foolish when financial advisors try to copycat a strategy without fully understanding if it makes sense to do so. [0:11:07.5]
So you draw the line at the effectiveness. So let's say that I gave someone 10 different prospecting strategies and the person picks out five of them and let's just say two of them are just horrible and they don’t like it at all, but three of them work. Well you're just going to keep doing those three things and you're going to rinse and repeat and refine and make it better and it's going to compound. It's going to work better and better over time. I'll give you another example, this time from my own life. Door to door prospecting is very difficult for me. I'm just going to be transparent, just open with you guys. I can't really explain why. There's just something about it that doesn’t sit right with me, and I applaud the people who do door to door prospecting. I know how tough it is, but there are some people out there who genuinely enjoy it. They genuinely enjoy walking around the neighborhood, meeting people, seeing everyone, different types of people from different walks of life. They love it and if that's the case, they should keep door knocking because it aligns with their strengths. [0:12:07.9]
And yeah, it may be tough at first and it may take some getting used to, but I tried it. I tried door knocking for different things and I just could never get used to it. It was always the same level of difficult for me. It never got easier. I never got better at it, even after I kept trying and trying and trying. I was fighting my personality. Now I can't explain it. That's why I don’t really do anything with door knocking. If you go through Financial Advisor Marketing Mastery, there's nothing about door knocking. I've got email. I've got LinkedIn. I've got… I've got some seminar stuff, cold calling. I can do cold calling all day long, but when it comes to door knocking, there's just something about it and I'm not going to fight that. I'm going to go to a marketing strategy that aligns with my strengths and I'm .. I'm going to give the people some free advice, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Uh-oh, here with go. Charity.
James: Charity work. Yeah, so, let me… let me call my accountant and be like, "Does this count? Can I deduct this?" [0:13:03.0]
If you're a financial advisor out there and you're getting what I'm saying right now, and this makes sense to you, I want you to go take a personality test. There's a bunch of them out there. My favorite is 16Personalities.com. You can also take the Strengths Finder Test. That's a really popular one. It's one of the best seller on Amazon called Strenghts Finder or something like that. So just Google 16 Personalities or Strengths Finder and it should pop up. I want you to take one of those tests because taking one of those tests will allow you to see what you're naturally good at, what you naturally do best and it will help you discover how to develop your natural strengths. It's like this - if you were a bird, you'd want to get better at flying. If you were a fish, you'd want to get better at swimming. You wouldn’t try to teach the bird how to swim and the fish how to fly, but that's what's going on with the industry. Advisors see a successful person do a lot of a particular strategy and then they copy it because they think, oh, it must work for anybody. This financial advisor is doing it. I've got to do it too. And it's dead wrong. [0:14:06.9]
Also, take advantage of the assets you have right now. I'm talking about leveraging your personality, you're amplifying what you're already good at it. If you're a bird, you want to get better at flying, but if you already have assets that are performing for you, leverage those. Don’t focus on what the next man has got. Focus on you. One of the reasons my "How To Get Clients With LinkedIn" training has helped so many financial advisor is because anybody can set up a LinkedIn account. All you have to do is sign up and start reaching out to prospects. That's one asset that they can leverage. But if you have a website, leverage that. If you have experience in a certain niche, leverage that. If you have people in your network who can give you referrals to other people, go ahead - you already know - leverage that stuff. So, so many advisors get caught up in what the next person is doing and they watch all of these people online and it's like…it's like Instagram envy. Like you go through Instagram. You see somebody who's got this nice car or this nice watch and you start thinking about how you need to have a nice care - you need to have a nice watch. Don’t worry about all that stuff. Like I said before in the last episode, the only competition you have looks at you in the mirror every morning. You just have to get out of your own way and do what works for you regardless of what everyone else is doing. [0:15:19.0]
So, there you have it. That's what I think all struggling financial advisors need to hear. Stay in your own lane and focus on your own business. Don’t try to copycat anyone or look over your shoulder and see what someone else is doing and get excited and copy that because that advisor may have a background you don’t have. They may have assets you can't leverage. You don’t know that person's situation, but you do know your situation. So focus on that and work hard to make it better. Mic drop.
Jonathan: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, pick up the mic and tell us what's coming up next time.
James: Let me get the mic back up. So, next week is going to be very interesting because the episode title I have planned is called "Three Things All Financial Advisors Should Teach Their Children."
Jonathan: Ohhhh.
James: So that's coming up.
Jonathan: Yeah - that's interesting. I can't wait. Alright - another Financial Advisor Marketing is in the can. Thank you for tuning in. We will be back in your ear buds next time.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
