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. [00:32]
James: Financial advisors, what is up? What is happening? Just want to let you know every so often gotta make a little announcement at the beginning of the show, could I get emails asking, how do I join your email list?
Jonathan: What?
James: You could join the email list by going to TheAdvisorCoach.com/57 57 just the numbers five and seven because when you join the email list, you get a it’s like an 83 I think it's 83 84 page PDF called ‘57 Marketing Tips for Financial Advisors.’ I've also got opt-ins at the bottom of every single blog post over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/blog. So if you want to join the email list, there you go, that's what you need to do — go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/57 the numbers five and seven and opt in and I send daily emails and you'll get something of value from the stuff or maybe not, I don't know. Value is in the eye of the beholder Jonathan.
Jonathan: Play at your own risk. [01:34.4]
James: Well I was thinking yesterday, I… I didn't feel so good and I laid down and just like turned on the TV and I didn't even change the channel. I just like whatever was on, was on, I don't care. And it was an Extreme Cheapskates on TLC and I don't know if you even know of this show.
Jonathan: Yeah
James: TLC is the one with all the weird ones, like my 600-lb Life and my 600 pound wedding and my 600 pound car wash. I don't know. There's just all these weird shows on TLC with this one was Extreme Cheapskates and apparently that's a reality show now. My day back when I was a kid, we called that being poor. I mean, what the…what the hell! Doing a fricking TV show for this now.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Jonathan: While on this episode, his wife was begging him to go on a date. She was like, “You promise me a date night? Can we go on a date night?” Apparently they do it once a month or whatever. This guy took her to the movies and she was like, “You know what I want, I want some candy, some popcorn and some drinks.” She’s like, “You’re so cheap.” That means Extreme Cheapskates like the guy is so cheap, he won't buy it. So what this guy did was he went out of the movie theater, went to a trashcan, took out a cup and took out the popcorn bag.
Jonathan: Ewwww. [02:56.0]
James: Yeah…and he went back to the concession stand because they offered refills on both.
Jonathan: Nice. Nice, good thinking.
James: I looked to my wife, I looked at my wife, I was like, you taking notes cause like this guy's next level. I mean, man, I was like, man, that's pretty smart. But yeah, no, we just call it that being poor. Don't, we didn't get any TV shows for that. I'm like, man, I was making jokes. These couples would, they would go dumpster diving. I'm never; I'm not going to do that. But it’s pretty sweet. This guy took, he had paper towels that he would squeeze out, he had like a little clothesline in his house where we would hang paper towels. He was like, ah, should we use them? I thought you'd better be taking notes.
Jonathan: Want that Costco bill to go down baby.
James: Hmm… Costco. God, their fricking hot dogs— a dollar 50, never changed the price. Costco never changed the price of their hot dogs like since they opened or something like that. I don't know…it's been forever since it has been in a Costco, but it makes me wonder like, are we getting a good deal now or where are we getting screwed 20 years ago. [04:04.2]
Were they like overcharging 20 years ago and we just gladly paid a dollar 50 for that hot dog. Are we really getting a good deal now? I can't tell. Oh, I literally have no idea how this show has lasted so long…like no clue whatsoever. All I do here is just yell at financial advisors, I tell unrelated stories. I told cheesy jokes and just so weird that this podcast does at least somewhat well, but unlike a lot of other podcasts out there. Or just hanging out, like sometimes it takes me 10 minutes to get to a point, sometimes I have monologue for the whole show. I've had a few guests on— a few, but I'm not a very good interviewer. I just say couldn't agree more. Thank you very much. This is awesome. If you're listening to this show. Thank you. I do appreciate you. Thank you very much. Please feel free to subscribe and leave a review if you haven't already. So let's get into this. I got a question from a financial advisor and I wanted to answer it on the show. Actually, I did get a question this morning. I'm going to break away from our outline here. [05:07.3]
I've got a question this morning cause a financial advisor watched one of my videos, he said, “Is that a portrait of your wife in the background, the redhead LOL? Didn't know you were into Ginger's.” No, no. That is not a portrait of my wife, as I as actually I have a gallery of professional wrestlers. I'm a professional wrestling fan and they're all 18 by 24 pieces of art that were signed by the individual wrestlers themselves. And the redhead that you see in the background, the woman is Lita. So if you just Google, Lita wrestler, WWE, whatever, you can see her, she is the one that is in the background. So there you go. That's my answer. Another question. Well, this is a little bit more relevant. “James, how do you personally invest your money? I'm always curious to see how those in financial services and others put their money to work.” Others.
Jonathan: Others. [05:57.5]
James: What do you mean by that? But that's fantastic question and I don't get asked this all the time. When I was putting this particular episode together, this was the first time I had ever been asked that question and since then I guess it's could. I've been thinking about it. I've gotten asked like two more times, but Sure, yeah. I’ll tell you how I invest my money. I know some people do real estate, some do index funds, others reinvest back into the businesses, but all that is child's play. This is what I do, this is what the big boys do. At the end of every year, right around Black Friday and the holidays, restaurants will typically offer some type of special, and it usually goes something like this… ‘If you buy $25 in gift cards, you get a $5 bonus or something very similar.’ So do the math, man! If I buy $25 in gift cards and I get $5 back, that’s a 20% return on my money right there.
Jonathan: Boom!
James: And I think Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, they've averaged something like 20% since their inception. So where the heck is my gold medal? Maybe I need to write an investing book. Now I'm getting 20% a year and like Warren buffet and I am in were just like besties now. Cause he's getting 20%. I'm getting 20%. So that's what I do. And needless to say, I am sitting on a Mother load of Buffalo wild wings gift cards right now. There you go. And we'll just say that I never have to pick up another Buffalo wild wings bill in my life. So that's how I invest my money. [07:30.6]
Jonathan: Love it.
James: What is this? Is this guy high right now? No, I am 100% sober and just that, I just, like I said, I wasn't feeling well yesterday is having fun with this podcast episode and saw a video online of this guy…the police officer was giving this guy a sobriety test and he was like, he put the thing in his mouth and he was like “Blow harder! Blow harder!” And it was his what the cops walkie talkie. And the guy was like, “I'm not drunk, I promise.” He just like blowing on the walkie talkie. He was like, “If you're not drunk, you would have realized that this was the walkie talkie two minutes ago.” Too bad.
Jonathan: Nice. [08:11.7]
James: Ah, all right, let's get down to business. Today we're talking about something all clients desperately want their financial advisors to do, and this comes from a Y-Chart study. It was put out a few months ago, several months ago by the time this was released, I think it was like November or December, 2019 and it was called, ‘How can advisors better communicate with their clients?’ So they surveyed more than 650 investors, which admittedly isn't that big of a sample size, but in the financial advisory space, it's difficult to get a large sample size, because a lot of them don't respond. You want to make sure that you have a nice mix in the people who do respond tend to be a certain caliber and you don't want to concentrate your results with that particular type a person. And the same is true with clients because you don't want to concentrate in in a certain type of client. But they ask these clients how they wanted their advisors to communicate with them. And if you're listening to this right now, I want you to guess how do you think clients want their advisors to communicate with them? [09:15.2]
So think about that. What financial advisors, I want you to just take a little time. Think about it. What do you think? So here's the official question. I'll give it to you just like they gave the clients. The question was, let me get it here. ‘Through which channels would you like your advisor to send you perspectives on the market and economy saving and planning tips or other financial how-to's?’ Email was number one. I'll just give you an answer.
Jonathan: Tadd…Daahhh!
James: Yeah. And it wasn't even close….. it wasn't even close, Jonathan! And they broke it down between people who responded who were over 50 years old and people who were under 50 years old. [09:50.6]
Hey, financial advisors, if you're looking for a way to set more appointments with qualified prospects, I invite you to sign up for James' brand new webinar about how financial advisors can get more clients with email marketing. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar to register today. On this webinar, you'll discover why email marketing is able to generate upwards of 4400% ROI for smart financial advisors, three fatal mistakes nearly all financial advisors make with their emails, and the proven three-step process for converting prospects into booked appointments using email. All you have to do is head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar and register today. [10:30.5]
And for people who were under 50 years old, the breakdown was this - Email was number one at 62%... 62% of people under 50 years old said they wanted their financial advisor to communicate with them with email. Phone call was number two 41% and if you've got a big business, it's a little difficult to make phone calls. I know some advisors who have big businesses who have their CRM literally set up and time blocks every single day to just remind them, ‘Call this person’ and ‘Call this person,’ ‘Have a check in with this person’, ‘Have an annual review with this person.’ Just again and again and again. And if you want to grow, phone call can be a little difficult if you're doing it with every single one of your clients, at least on a quarterly basis. You can do an annual like in person or zoom or phone, like that's easy. [11:16.2]
But doing regular check-ins and communicating like the question was asked, doing that through phone calls is really difficult. The same is true for face to face, which was number three 39% said face to face and 38% said text message. So that was under 50 years old. For respondents over 50 years old, the breakdown was this - Email, 71%. So for everyone who's like, “Oh my older clients, they don't care about email, they're not checking their email, they don't want to do all that.” B S! Bull Poop! 71% of them said they prefer email over everything else. Number two was phone call at 47%; it was the exact same breakdown by the way. Like in order it was email, phone call, face to face and text message. And for over 50 it was 71% 47% face to face was 39% and text message was 22%. [12:09.8]
So there you go, this is not just me saying email is good, email is wonderful. You should use it and buy my crap, I'm not doing that. Like I'm just telling you, this is what it is, like numbers don't lie, but this is amazing news. This is incredible, incredible news for financial advisors because it means your clients prefer you contact them through email, which just so happens to be out of the four things there the most scalable medium available to you, because it literally takes 15 minutes or so to write an email loaded into your software and hit send. It is much faster than phone calls and much, much faster than face to face. You should be grateful for this having this information in front of you with them wanting to communicate in email format. It's great stuff. Now, of course you should always ask what they prefer because if one client prefers a phone call and another prefers email, then you want to tailor your communication to suit your clients. [13:12.5]
At the end of the day, you want to do what's right for them, what's best for them, what they prefer, you want to make them happy. But my point is, that clients overwhelmingly want you to email them. Now I saw this study and it was shared online and someone was like, “Oh, so I can text my clients now”, and I'm thinking, why is that your first thought? Because text messaging only got 38% for under 50 and 22% for over 50 while email got 62% and 71%. That's kind of like saying, yeah, I know bench press is better at building my chest and anything else, and I do want a big chest, but I'm just going to do pushups and hope for the best. Like, yeah, pushups can get you a better chest, but bench press is better. It’s like..it's so dumb. You're like, Oh, I could text my clients now. Yippee Ka Yay Yo Yo, like… No. [14:10.3]
And this one made me feel good when you read the study, you'll see the Twitter was dead last.
Jonathan: Twitter is a thing.
James: Twitter , Twitter was dead last. Clients do not want you to communicate on Twitter. Like, and I've known this for years now and there are some people who are like, Oh yeah, Twitter works. Where you u going to tweet? Tweet, tweet. And like, it's just, hmmm… I would just, I, I knew I had anecdotal evidence and I saw it from clients. I saw it from financial advisors and financial advisors… like, dude, it doesn't work! And even if it worked a little bit, it's like cutting your lawn with scissors. I know I've said that a couple of times, but that's a perfect analogy because technically you can't work, you can't get it done. But I would rather have a lawn mowed [14:51.0]
I would rather use email, it's way more effective. But you've got some people where like I, “I got one client two years ago from Twitter, so it must work… huh….huh…huh. It's so funny to me, now I've got the actual data. You can't hate on the data, the numbers, like I said, DO NOT LIE and its so, so crazy because there are companies out there who make a fortune selling financial advisors on this idea that they should be sending out some stupid newsletter tweeting their little thumbs away down to the bone. I have been telling advisors that clients don't want this stuff for years… years and now I finally have a study coming out to proving that proved that had been right this whole time. A lot of people hate on me for bashing Twitter and bashing blogging for blogging sake. It's important to have content, but you don't want to blog for blogging sake. [15:41.5]
Well, guess what? Your clients don't want it. They do not want it. Now, does that mean you should abandon these strategies completely? Probably not because you can still use them for marketing. I mean, think about it. One of the best ways for a prospect to get on your email list is by going to your blog. I see your opt in on there. They'll opt in. So you don't want to ditch your blog entirely if you're trying to grow your business. But I've also found that the overwhelming majority of prospects, this study is about clients. But I've found that the overwhelming majority of prospects also want to have advisors reach out to them through email. That's the preferred way above anything else, but advisors still ignore it or they send two or three emails and then they stop and they are the crappiest, saddest looking emails you'll ever see. [16:31.3]
So let's get back to this study, the actual study, real tangible data, you can Google it, you can verify it yourself. Why charts? How clients prefer to communicate? Whatever the heck it was called, you can Google it and see exactly what I'm talking about. That study also asks about respondents most important factors when selecting a financial advisor. This is gold! If you're listening to the financial advisor marketing podcast, you are probably a financial advisor and you probably want to market your business. So you probably want to have, you probably value a piece of information that will tell you exactly how clients wants you to reach out and exactly what they look for when choosing someone like you. So here we go in order - Number one, 60% of people said that this was really important— A deep understanding of me and my goals. You've got to understand your, your prospects. You got to listen to them first. I know that you may think that their situation is the same and you've seen it a hundred different times, but to them they are unique. They are special, precious little snowflakes, and they're different from anything else you've ever seen. You have to respect that. [17:41.3]
Number two, customer service and communication, that was 59% of people. They said that that was important to them, that's one of the most important thing they look for when choosing a financial advisor, was customer service and communication. So if you're already feeling overwhelmed with communicating with your current clients, but you're trying to prospect and grow your business at the same time, you absolutely for sure need to have a way to communicate that’s easier for you that's scalable for you, that can be leveraged by you. This is not like a nice to have, this is a must have. You cannot ignore this. And number three was portfolio performance. 47% of people said portfolio performance was the most important factor when selecting a financial advisor. That is neither right nor wrong, it's, it is pretty… a lot of the data says that it's not a good idea to chase performance. The financial advisors and over the long-term money managers can't outperform index funds, but that's a job for you to educate them and, and work with them. [18:39.1]
But it means that the top two things people consider most important when selecting financial advisors can both be demonstrated through email marketing and overall niche marketing. Because if you're sending out high quality emails, you're demonstrating that you provide a quality service, that you are staying on top of your communications. I think it's mind blowing to me that more people don't wake up and take advantage of this. But if you are taking advantage of it, it's a good thing because you're in a marketplace where most people are not. Email knocks both of these out. You can demonstrate that you have a deep understanding of your prospects and you're communicating with them. If you have a niche, it's a lot easier for you to demonstrate that you have a deep understanding of your prospects. Ah, this is like old news to me because I see it all the time with email. The reason email works so well as a prospecting tool for financial advisors is because it is literally the number one communication tool the prospects and clients prefer and it literally addresses the top two things people want most from financial advisors. Is this like, am I speaking in like brain surgery? Rocket science producer Jonathan? [19:45.2]
Jonathan: It's..its magic.
James: It, it seems like it and it seems like so many people are just throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks when there's proof already out there. The stuff has already been figured out for you, you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Now, here's the last thing I want to point out from this study and it's something that can help a lot of advisers. One of the biggest findings from this study was that clients do not feel engaged. And if you look at this study, if you actually Google it and read it, you'll see that they say the same thing in big bold letters, big bold letters right there on the study. CLIENTS DO NOT FEEL ENGAGED. That means meeting once per year, sending out quarterly reports, It's not enough anymore. You've got to step up to the plate. You've got to be more proactive with your clients because when asked about how often their advisor contacts them, 28% of the people said very infrequently. That's scary! 36% of the people said infrequently, so you've got 28% dairy infrequently, 36% infrequently. [20:50.4]
That's crazy! Absolutely insane! These clients are not engaged. The financial advisors as a whole are not doing a good job with communicating with the prospects, communicating with the clients, making sure that they are on top of things or at least sending the prospective that they're on the ball, email solves that problem. This is all good news because it's stuff that can be fixed. All you have to do is become more proactive with your clients and that's it for this week. I'm not going to rant on, I'm not going to have a ranty episode, so I'm just going to end it now because I feel myself getting worked up and I'm not going to do it.
Jonathan: How about next time?
James: Next time. Oh God. I don't know. I'm just gonna answer questions. I'm just going to go through a list of questions I've gotten over the past few months or the past year. I mean we have an email folder, whenever we get questions in email, we just send them to that folder and I've got so many now. I was going to do like a product with them or whatever, but they're just so varied. And they asked, some of them asked the same question again and again in different ways. I'm just going to answer them on the podcast next week. So that's what I’ll do. [21:50.2]
Jonathan: There you have it free consulting next week. So that is a wrap for financial advisor marketing this week, thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next time [21:58.0]
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