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: Financial advisors, welcome to the Financial Advisor Marketing Podcast. I am so happy to have you here. I wish you nothing but the best in everything in life and I am here to be your partner in success. Financial advisor marketers you’re the fam you’re the family. This is for you. And because this is a marketing podcast, obviously, otherwise you're in the wrong place. I mean, this is the financial advisor marketing show. So I wouldn't be doing a good job as a marketer if I didn't study classic marketing text and I didn't study classic marketing sales letters and promos and offers and things to really know my stuff. So I just got done rereading what many people consider to be the greatest copywriting book of all time, which is Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. And by the way, if you want a copy for yourself, I mean, I don't know why financial advisors would want to read a copywriting book. I mean, that's what I do. I do this for you and I distilled the information and give it to you. But if you want to read it, it's like at the time of this recording, it's $330 on Amazon. I know Brian Kurtz, Brian K U R T Z used to sell them for like 300 bucks or something. I mean, that's where I got my copy. I don't know if he still does it or not. I believe he is the rights holder to the book and. [01:48.2]
Jonathan: Yes he is.
James: Do, you know, if he still is?
Jonathan: He yeah, he, he, he's got the bottom line publishing and he's got a bunch of those classic books tucked away.
James: Yeah. So financial advisors, if you are interested, that is where to go. But one of my favorite quotes from Eugene Schwartz is this one and it's one that Ben settle close a lot as well, but it comes directly from this book. ‘The ugly thing in a world full of beauty stands out.’ There is so much wisdom in that statement. It literally boggles my mind. Like I'm awe struck when I think about that, let me try to give you one specific example so you can visualize this. Most financial advisors try to make their websites pretty. They want it to “match” their brand. They include slide shows and videos, or having forbid, they take the advice of a designer who, whose only objective is to make the website look good. I'm sorry. I don't, I don't really care about looking good. I'd like to look good as long as it makes money as well and not to sidetrack. [02:55.9]
But I was reading an article about how I'm not really gonna mention any names, but a person essentially said that Tik TOK, and I'm not hitting on Tik TOK. I'm not hitting on any specific social media strategy, but it's just the idea behind this. So Tik TOK is the one is the strategy that financial advisors should be using because it's the easiest, it's the best everybody should be on there and you can reach millennials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then someone had asked this person, well, how many clients have you gotten from it? And the person essentially responded and said, well, there are more important ways to measure success on Tik TOK.
Jonathan: Like. [03:32.6]
James: I don't know. I don't know the clients, the money that's what, this is what you want. This is why you're building the business. It sounds can sound crast to some people, it’s like you're in business to make money, but the money comes from helping people and when you understand that we live in a world of monetary exchange and you get money by helping people and providing value to other people's lives. It's ultimately a measure of how much you've helped people. But I guess, I guess what this person is really saying is that his clients should just pay him an engagement and emojis rather than the money he is charging the people he serves, he should start charging and engagement since that's what really matters. I mean, there are more important things like, come on, give me a freaking break. Like I just, people kill me with this stuff. [04:21.9]
But back to the website thing, my personal philosophy is that your website should make you money. Your marketing should make you money. I could care less about looks and designs. I'm running a business, not a fashion show. In my opinion, the purpose of a website is to maximize the chances of turning a web visitor into a lead and then turn a lead into a client, nothing more, nothing less. You're entitled to whatever your opinion is, just know that it's probably wrong. Now with all that said, let's get into the day's topic, which is, ‘Should you stop answering your client's calls?’ So once upon a time a financial advisor wrote me and he said this, I went to the contact page on your website to get in touch with you, but I see that you only accept calls from people if they pay several thousand bucks in advance. I know this is unsolicited advice, but the best kind of advice by the way is unsolicited, of course. I know this is unsolicited advice, but have you ever considered putting a contact form on there instead? Because putting up that pay wall seems kind of off putting just my 2 cents. [05:33.0]
Jonathan: Hmm…Keep it.
James: Great question. Good, it is a good question. I like it. And I am glad that he asked. So there are several reasons I don't use a contact form and I may get in into that in a little bit, but recently, like less than a month ago, we actually switched back to a contact form. And I remember asking you about this and what to put on there. Terrible decision.
Jonathan: Hmm.
James: Horrible, the worst move I, the worst business move I've made so far this year is changing my contact page back to a contact form. HOLY CRAP, I will never do it again.
Jonathan: Wow.
James: Because I got so many requests from so, so many stupid questions and so many things that are irrelevant and will help you rank on SEO. Can you help me promote this book? Can, are you accepting guests posts like Holy moly? No, no, no. We didn't have that thing up there from less than 24 hours and we took it back down. So no, no way. So there are several reasons why I personally don't use the contact form. First of all, my website gets between a 1,000, 2,000 visits per day, sometimes a lot more. I mean, I've had days where like 10,000 plus. So if I had a contact form on there, like I did, and I tried, you know, I would get so many different inquiries. It would be so difficult to catch up and I know people like, Oh, we'll just hire somebody. But like, you don't understand every day it would be 20 people from India trying to help me with my SEO. [07:07.4]
Jonathan: Hmm.
James: It's like, okay, cool. If you wanna help me with my SEO, send me your site. Let me see what you rank for. We get requests for guest posts and can we be a guest on your podcast? I'd be like, Oh, you want to be a guest on the podcast, send me three shows where you've, you've been a guest or send me three videos. So I know that you don't have crappy video or audio quality. And they're like, Oh, well we'd never been on a podcast before. Okay, well, you're not, it won't, your first time won't be here. You're not losing your podcast virginity on the Financial Advisor Marketing show. Sorry. So no contact form. So, I mean, I have the assistant managing most of the general increase and I don't want to throw more work on her because it's just it, she would just be deleting everything, right? It makes no sense. And plus most of the questions in the contact form are questions that I've already answered on my blog or in my podcast. [07:59.9]
So if, if people don't know how to Google content marketing the advisor coach, or Facebook marketing, the advisor coach or whatever, I'm really, really, I'm going to struggle with giving them what they're looking for and next, and when it comes to having a contact form, not having a contact form, I have to relentlessly qualify my time. Now, pay attention here, because if you're a financial advisor, your only goal should be to get to this point with your clients. Once you max out your time invested, you cannot invest anymore. No human being has more than 24 hours in a day. You have to make the most of what you have. So let's say that I only got 10 of these requests to hop on a call, to set up a quick chat, to pick my brain. Let's say I only got 10 of those a day. That's it. [08:58.4]
If I said yes and I gave all of them 30 minutes, that's literally what's that five hours of my time, every single day. I can't do that. I it's not that I want to be mean, or I want to be a jerk or anything, it's just not possible. It is not physically possible with all the other work I had to do in the emails, in the inner circle, newsletter members who I love and I'm going to get back to, and they're going to get a 100% of me every single day. I just can't. I can't give away five hours a day. I just cannot. So that's why I have a link where people can pay for a 30 minute consultation. And I've found that charging money does two things. Number one, it drastically decreases the number of tire kickers and the non-serious financial advisors who want to reach out and waste my time. And two, it drastically increases my productivity and my ability to help financial advisors who are serious about themselves and their businesses. So it's a win-win. [09:54.8]
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. [10:17.5]
James: Now my point with all this, you may think, well, why in the heck is he rambling about this on the Financial Advisor Marketing Podcast? Here's the point, you should be relentlessly qualifying your time as well. This is one of the biggest regrets or the biggest, well, the regrets I've had, the biggest regret I've had is not qualifying my time as ruthlessly as I should have been. It's one of the biggest regrets that I've had. And one of the biggest insights I've had over the past few years is how easy it is to make yourself a little less accessible, to become a little bit more productive, to say no more often. That's one of the biggest insights. So you can learn from my biggest regret, but one of my biggest regrets is not qualifying. [10:58.3]
And one of my biggest insights, there are so many books out there. So many courses, so many motivational speakers who can talk about productivity and time management. But I mean, even though that's the popular term, you can't really manage time. It just is. You can, however, direct your focus. You can decide what you're going to focus on. And as a financial advisor, it is mission critical that you direct your focus towards the things that can grow your business. Because if you grow your business, you can help more people which helps you, which allows you to help more people, which helps you, which allows you to help more people, which helps you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a never ending positive cycle. You want to get to that point. And in order to get to that point, you must decide what needs focus. So if your clients are calling you need to make the decision to take your focus from one activity and put it towards something else. [12:00.7]
Now, remember, there's no such thing as time management. I know that we use that, it is a popular term. You say, Oh, we're going to take a time management course or whatever I get it. But there is no real thing as time management. Time just is. It exists, it takes away whether you like it or not, your kids are getting older. Your family's getting older, you're getting older. You've got to make the most of what you have. You can only control your focus in any given moment. And I'm not telling you, Yes. And I'm not telling you, No. I'm just saying that you have to make a decision as to what you're going to do when these things happen. Speaking, personally, this is what I would do. But before I answer that, let's get some insight from the podcast host here. What are some of the best things that you personally found that increase your productivity that make you direct your time in a more focused way? [12:50.7]
Jonathan: Man, you're hitting me right where I'm at right now, James, cause I'm actually doing this right now. And so the way I went about it, this this time was I write time sheets out on my, on my iPad. And I went through, reviewed all my activities and started either delegating or deleting the things that weren't in my unique ability last quarter. And I'm still working on that. As we speak this morning, I was working on it. [13:15.4]
James: And you do that every single quarter.
Jonathan: Every quarter.
James: So it's not like a one-time thing.
Jonathan: Nah, dude, like even right now, here's how drastic it gets, so you can understand what my team is dealing with. I have to make, I'm doing interviews and I have to name the documents like RLP - James Pollard would be the name of the document. And I'm telling my team, you need to make those documents for me because naming a document is going to take me time, you guys have to do that. That's how drastic I am. [13:43.6]
James: You just break it down. Like you understand everything that gets in there. So that's really important, that's one of the reasons why when it comes to my virtual assistants and with freelancers and contractors, whenever I give them instructions, I record it on video because I have found, I used to try and write everything out and say, do this and do this and this step one and step two, I try to write out like written instructions, but I would always miss stuff. I wouldn't be super, super granular like you're talking about. But when I record a video to do something, I can’t I, I literally can't miss a step because I'm doing the thing. So watching a video for them was a lot easier, they could just copy the video and they get every little step. If they miss something, they can go back and they can pause the video that has helped a lot. [14:30.4]
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah.
James: So financial advisors, this is what I personally would do about the situation. I, and here we go. I know that I said this in last episode and every so often I've been saying like, this is the value of the podcast.
Jonathan: Pay attention.
James: I, I say that because there's a segment of the audience that likes to take notes. I used to take notes when listening to podcasts. And, but then I realized that I wanted them more for entertainment than anything else. And I realized that podcasts were more for my subconscious programming than like just consciously trying to take an info, an information, but for the people out there taking notes, here are you go. [15:07.9]
I would have a set time each day where I either accept or return client phone calls. For example, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM every day could be my client time. That's where I handle all the client inquiries, all the phone calls, deal with their stuff. That means if somebody calls me at 10:00 AM, either my assistant will answer or it will go to voicemail. Then I'll return the call later in the day, she'll basically be like Bill Jones called at 10:15, and he wanted to know X, Y, Z. Can you call him back? He'll be my first call at two O'clock sharp. Now all clients will know that I have a set time, that way it doesn't look like I'm blowing them off. It doesn't look like I'm being a jerk. Like why is he not returning my calls? They know I've got like office hours, right? Like a college professor. I just make it known that I return calls this way. They should expect to hear back between two and four. So if they're busy or they don't pick up the phone, I'll send them an email. [16:10.8]
Or if it's something sensitive, I'll try again the next day. It just, it will not be haphazard, that's my point with all this. It won't be sloppily put together. It won't be reactive. It'll all be proactive and it’ll all be intentional. So I hope this episode got your wheels turning a little bit about how you can qualify your time. Like you should be qualifying everything else in your business because you can't get more time. So you have to use it wisely. And in my opinion, the most valuable things you can focus on are business building like that's marketing and that's sales. Let's get more clients and client service, which is client retention and making them happy and making sure they stay another year or another month. You want to get clients and you want to make sure they're served well. It's really that simple and I think that's one of my strong suits is just keeping it simple. I don't have to make things super complicated. I don't have to give them sexy names or anything. I can just tell you like it is, I can call things. Like I see them because if people can't explain stuff to you simply, they don't know what they're talking about. And that is it for episode. What is this 102? [17:20.4]
Jonathan: 102.
James: 102.
Jonathan: Yes, sir. James, what do you have coming up for us next time?
James: Next week, we're going to talk about how financial advisors can eliminate rejection from their business. I know many advisors struggle with rejection. It's completely natural to do so. Don't feel bad if you feel rejected, when someone well rejects you. We're all human. So we're wired to feel pain from this, but it turns out that there's a specific way to eliminate the pain of, well, not eliminate, but lessen the pain of rejection from your business. So stay tuned for that next week.
Jonathan: All right, can't wait. So another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing is in the can. Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back in your ear buds next time. [18:05.6]
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