You're listening to Financial Adviser Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisers 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 TheAdviserCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisers grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:31.7]
James: Welcome to the show financial advisors. This week is going to be another LinkedIn episode because it's been a while since we talked about LinkedIn and it's inspired by a financial advisor who basically asked me if LinkedIn is still working for financial advisors, but first I want to address something. And I've been thinking about this recently, and I think it can help a lot of financial advisors. It's this idea of massive action. I was inspired by this because I re-read Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule. And I know he gets a lot of hate. Have you ever read that book by the way? [01:05.0]
Jonathan: I have not read any Cardone.
James: No. Okay. Well, financial advisors will either think you're a very, you're blessed or you're very unfortunate cause he's, he's polarizing as well. So he's a very polarizing figure.
Jonathan: I agree.
James: If you ever get on his mailing list or his email list, you will never leave, so.
Jonathan: Okay.
James: He will keep you on there and keep following up with you. But whatever, whether that's good or bad, it doesn't matter. I was inspired by re-reading 10X Rule. And I personally have talked about how my biggest limiting belief was this idea that you need to work hard to make money. And we've covered that on the show. I'm not going to get back into that now, but I will say that if you're trying to build something significant, it does require action. And you might as well get it done as fast as you can. So yes, massive action can make sense. However, it's only part of the equation because imagine that you're in New York and you want to get to Los Angeles. So, you start taking “massive action” in you start traveling South. You never get to Los Angeles. So massive action is only part of the equation. [02:14.0]
So unless you have a roadmap to follow, you traveling blind, you may get lucky. You may get to your destination, but too many people take massive action and they end up spinning their wheels because they're doing the wrong thing. For example, I once heard a story of a financial advisor who was sold the idea that making cold calls was the way to grow his business. And being a good little boy he started taking massive action and he made call after call after call. I mean, today, I have no idea where he is, but he's not a financial advisor anymore. So think about this. The issue wasn't the action, it was because his action was directed down the wrong path. I mean, you could believe that hitting your hand with a hammer will cause your bank balance to increase. But no matter how many times you hit your hand, it's not going to add another nickel. You won't be a nickel richer and you might laugh at that. But I see this type of stuff all the time. [03:15.9]
So think about this as you listen to the episode today. Don't try to figure out this stuff on your own necessarily. I mean, you can put the pieces together on your own, but to stop hitting your hand with a hammer and expecting yourself to get richer, don't tried to take massive action until you have a proven path to follow. Is that clear? Does that make sense or is that too much rambling? [03:37.4]
Jonathan: Dude, I, I I'm with you. All I can picture right now with you saying the hand and the hammer is like Steve-O and I'm thinking they're making money doing that.
James: Yeah, totally. I used to watch a TV show called Mad TV and they would parody the Jackass series and I thought it was the funniest thing. And he's like, I'm Kenny Rogers. And by the way, financial advisors, if you want to see that Google or go to YouTube type in Mad TV, Kenny Rogers, it's hilarious. But back to the episode. This episode is about whether or not LinkedIn is still working for financial advisors. If you ask me that question back in January of 2020, I would have told you that while it's definitely still working, it's not as effective as it used to be. So over the past few years, lots of advisors have discovered how powerful LinkedIn can be for getting new clients. And they jumped on the bandwagon to get through a piece of the action. And with any type of gold rush phenomenon, more people equals diminished results. And that has slowly but surely been happening with LinkedIn. [04:43.2]
But from what I can tell LinkedIn is actually working better now than ever before, as long as it's used correctly. And I imagine it's because of this huge wave of financial advisors trying to go virtual at once. So they've all hopped on the LinkedIn bandwagon. They've made a bunch of amateur mistakes like sending long messages, not researching the prospective clients and trying to hard sell everybody who connects with them. Now because of this, now the scientific term for this is called the contrast effect. This is not my theory. This is not my opinion. Whenever I bring this knowledge to you, financial advisors, I'm bringing it to you based in science based in actual empirical evidence. I'm not just pulling stuff out of my butt, right. So it's called the contrast effect. You can Google it. And because of this, any financial advisor who markets correctly is going to stand out like a diamond in the rough, because you will be different. [05:33.6]
If you act like an actual human being and you make a real connection to people instead of just sending these messages and just blasting them with automated software and all this other fancy stuff, you are going to stand out. It's kind of like sending a piece of direct mail in a world where nobody else is using direct mail. You're going to stand out. And in this case, the person who uses LinkedIn correctly will stand out. And by the way, Jonathan, I know that you're using a little bit more direct mail to The Podcast Factory family members. And so you're using something that is different from what everyone else is doing. I think that's
Jonathan: Am I standing out.
James: That's right. Yeah.
Jonathan: Wait till you see what's next. [06:16.1]
James: So here are some of the mistakes that I see people making on LinkedIn. The first mistake, I, I don't know if I would say this is the biggest one. I don't know, these aren't necessarily in order of how severe they are, how big of a mistake they are. So just keep that in mind. But the first mistake I want to talk about is connecting with everyone. And you've probably seen these people. They categorize themselves as what's called LinkedIn open networkers. So L I LinkedIn open, O, networkers lions, right? They connect with anyone and everyone who sends them a request. This isn't a good idea because it waters down your network and it minimizes the network effect. You may think that it increases the network effect, which is where you, you get in front of more and more people when your network grows and grows, grows, and you have more second degree connections, that may be true. But would you rather have 50, 000 second degree connections with only a thousand prospective clients and people who could actually do business with you, or would you rather have 10,000 and have 9,000 of them, people in your target market, something to think about. [07:20.4]
So if you're a financial advisor, you probably have what you probably want to have the network with more perspective clients. It just makes sense. The second mistake that I see financial advisors making is automating their LinkedIn behaviors, their messages, their connection requests, their following. There are services out there that would just like literally view people's profiles on autopilot. Now sounds good on paper because you figure, well, it's a task I'm gonna do if I can automate it, I can take my time out of the equation. I can go do other things where my time is is better used. But the problem is it's literally against LinkedIn's terms of service. So again you can, if you don't believe me, that's fine. You can be skeptical. You're like, no I've used, there's been a bunch. There's like Linked Helper, there's Dux- Soup, Like I know these services are out there, they exist. But if you just Google automated services, LinkedIn terms of service or something like that, or automation, LinkedIn terms of service, you can see it for yourself. It's right there on LinkedIn's website. They say, Hey, it's not allowed. [08:21.7]
So if you're not careful, you can get yourself suspended from the platform or even outright banned. And I am your champion financial advisors. I am here for you, I’m here to help you succeed. I know there are charlatans out there who are like, we're going to automate your LinkedIn, we're going to do everything for you. What some of these people will do and what some of them, these companies do, they just take your money and they load up their little messages or whatever into this automated software and the service and they just send all the stuff out like. There, you might as well do that yourself if you're going to do it, but they're putting you at risk, you could get banned. [08:55.0]
So if you're even thinking about using any of these automation services, don't say, I didn't warn you. Now, it could work. It could work for a month, a couple of months, six months, whatever, you could see some success with it. But what is the point of building up your LinkedIn network? What is the point of building yourself up on the platform, engaging with people, getting thousands of prospective clients in your network, essentially. Only to have it go away when you get called with this stuff. If you play with fire, don't be surprised if you get burned. [09:27.1]
Hey, financial advisors – if you’d like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James’ monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, The James Pollard Inner Circle.
When you join today, you’ll get more than one thousand dollars’ worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren’t available anywhere else.
Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [09:49.7]
James: Now it's confession time. Jonathan, have you ever used any of these automated services?
Jonathan: Why, why must you do that? Yeah, I did. I took, I took one for, for test drive a little while back and I didn't, I didn't really care for it.
James: I did too. If it makes you feel better, so I used Linked Helper for a little bit and I used it and I was like, this is cool, but it's not worth the risk. And I didn't even use it on the profile than I have now. I had a profile back in the olden days and I had a custom or the URL back when you couldn't change it, I had it like James Pollard or whatever. And I wanted my profile to be linked like linkedin.com/theadvisorcoach. And for some reason back in those days, they wouldn't let you change it. So I had to create a brand new profile and delete the old one so. The profile that I have is too legit to quit and has never been tainted with the likes of those impurities. [10:44.4]
But no I've used them in the past. And it, like I said, it sounds good on paper, it looks good. Like, it seems like an attractive proposition, but to me. Now you can make your own decisions, financial advisors, you're an individual you can think for yourself, use your critical thinking skills. The risk isn't worth it for me personally so, take that for what you will. The third mistake that I see financial advisors making on LinkedIn is spending all day on there. And I sometimes see this with the financial advisors who use this system that I offer in how to get clients with LinkedIn. We are currently revamping that. And by the time this episode comes out, it may already be released. The old program is $97 and it's one video. The new one is going to be more expensive. I don't know how much it's going to be yet, but it'll be like four to five videos. And maybe we'll have a cool bonus in there. And it will be more in depth. The scripts are going to be changing. The approaches are going to be changing. There's there's actually levels to this now that didn't exist when the first program came out back when, when that initial program was released in 2017. [11:50.7]
LinkedIn was for lack of a better word, easy to use, meaning you didn't have to do that much to set appointments with prospects, to get people, to work, to work with you, to reach out to you. Now it's a little more difficult, and there are so many things that are being taught in other LinkedIn programs that are good for businesses like consultants and freelancers and even like accountants, I guess, the people who are helping other business owners or whatever with, with services and like logistic logistical things like deliverability getting stuff like on time. But when, when it comes to managing money and the touchy subject, the emotional subject of money and finances, it takes a little bit more finesse. And it requires you to do things that quite literally aren't taught anywhere else. And that's why I wanted to revamp it. I wanted to put that in the system and I wanted to create more videos explaining exactly what you need to do. [12:46.2]
But I used to see these financials advisors spent all day on LinkedIn. The reason is because LinkedIn works so well that the financial advisors are tempted to stop doing all their other marketing, to focus exclusively on LinkedIn. And even though I'm happy to see them getting results, foking focusing exclusively on one marketing strategy goes against my marketing philosophy and my business philosophy. Because if you ask me the whole Holy Grail of all financial advisor marketing is to have multiple marketing strategies. It is the most important thing you can do to get more clients and grow your business. So if you're going to use LinkedIn to get more clients, make sure it's one of many tools in your toolbox. [13:26.6]
Number four fourth mistake is having a boring profile. And this is a big one because as there are so many people who treat their profile like a static resume, and that might have been acceptable back in 2015, 2016, 17, but it's just corny now. Just being straight, meet up with you guys, like it's just corny. So one of the secrets to making LinkedIn work for you is to have your profile appeal to a specific type of person you'd like to attract. Now, I can't cover the details of all this in a single podcast episode. So I'm going to save for the future, but here's how to make LinkedIn work for you. And what I'm about to say, you say, it may seem painfully obvious to some people, but I'm consistently amazed by how advisors still don't get it, or how many advisors still don't get it, but marketing is all about math. [14:20.0]
And so I guess this is the fifth mistake, is that not realizing that it's a math equation. The name of the game on LinkedIn is to put it in one unit of time, money, energy, et cetera, one unit of your resources and get more than one unit back. And you do that by knowing your numbers. So just like you would never create a budget or you never create a savings plan without knowing certain numbers, you should never approach any marketing strategy without some sense of how the numbers are going to work in your favor. So let's use LinkedIn as an example, here are some important numbers you want to know. This is like the value of the podcast. You want to know your connection, acceptance rate. So if you send 100 connection requests to people in your niche, how many of those accept? There's a very simple number, you can find it out easily. If you send like a thousand, you'll figure it out, right? [15:12.1]
Your appointment setting rate. So if you engage 100 people in your niche through direct message outreach, et cetera, how many of them set appointments with you? So you got your connection, acceptance rate, you've got your appointment setting rate, very important numbers to know and then finally your client conversion rate. Now that has more to do with you than any LinkedIn system can help you, anything that I can do for you, because I'm not the one sitting there in front of your clients converting them, essentially. So if you set appointments with 100 people, how many of them end up becoming clients? So let's recap your connection, acceptance rate. Now there's a lot of stuff that goes in between this, like you're engaging and you're messaging people on your website is there and using multiple marketing strategies. But the three numbers you really, really, really want to dial in on is, like I said, your connection acceptance rate, your appointment setting rate, where the people you're connected with and your client conversion rate. And once you know the answers to those questions, LinkedIn becomes a numbers game and a fun game at that. It's really fun. It's a game where you can practically get clients on command. [16:15.8]
There are lots of people who say, Oh, well, you just get these leads and you do all this hard work and you just jump over a million hoops and you just engage with people and leave 72 comments. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Simple is almost always better. Now, I said, simple, not easy. There are certain things you have to know and you have to do it the right way. But here's the important part. The key to making LinkedIn work is to tilt the odds in your favor. And I don't want to spend too much time talking about it, but if you are interested, I have something called, ‘How to get clients with LinkedIn.’ And by the way, everybody who has the old version of the program, if you purchased it for $97 in the past, you are going to be grandfathered into the new one. I mean, I would just be a jerk if I didn't grandfather people in, right. I mean, they pay for the thing and I'm the one who makes changes, not them. So yeah, everybody who purchases or has purchased, I guess at this point in time, the $97 version of the product is going to be grandfathered in all we're doing is changing the link. [17:08.8]
So if, if you go to the website and you see, Oh my goodness, it's $195 now or $295 now. And you're like, Oh my, I want this, but how do I access it? At the bottom of any invoice you've ever received from us, there's a button that says access your purchase or access your purchases, one of those. You click that, it'll take you directly there. Like I said, we're just swapping out the links. You're still going to get access to everything. So that is what is going to happen, but be warned with LinkedIn. It's a long-term play to succeed on there. If you're not willing to put in the work and you're not willing to play the long game, don't even bother, like go back to your cold calls, go back to whatever the heck you were doing to build your business before. Otherwise, if you understand this and you're willing to acknowledge everything, I just laid out to you it could be one of the best moves you ever make. And that is it for this week's episode. [18:00.9]
Jonathan: Oohh. Just drop in crazy value. What do you have coming up for next time, James?
James: I think I want to tease on this one. So the title is going to be, Should You Stop Answering Your Clients’ Calls?
Jonathan: All right. That is a wrap. Thank you for tuning in fam another Financial Advisor Marketing is in the can. We'll be back in your ear buds next time. [18:24.7]
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