You're listening to Financial Advisor 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 TheAdvisorCoach.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 another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. This week, we're going to talk about How to Get Prospective Clients Off the Fence. This is a relatively common issue, and this podcast episode was requested by an inner circle member. He said he would rather see me answer this question and, or hear me answer the question I should say, in an audio format instead of written out in the newsletter. So, I'm going to do just that. But I want to talk about something that happened on LinkedIn, that's going to be related to the inner circle newsletter because I'm going to write about it in a future issue. So, the past four of my LinkedIn posts Jonathan combined have. So yesterday, the day before, the day before and the day before it, so there's four posts have gotten more than 75,000 views so far. [01:19.5]
Jonathan: Wow.
James: Yeah.
Jonathan: You must be doing something right.
James: That, that's what I have written down here in my notes, I must be doing something right. I am not a hundred percent sure what caused this, but I have a good idea. And there were, there actually are a few things. One of them, so I'm going to give people a little taste. Let me give people a little value here because I know people will get pissed off and they whine and they cry. If I don't give them “value”, got to give them nuggets,
Jonathan, got to give them nuggets of value.
Jonathan: Get it.
James: Here's a nugget. I am fairly certain that one of the reasons one of the posts did extremely well is because I mentioned a current event and I gave some commentary on that current event. And because it was fresh in people's minds, they were thinking about it, they liked, they commented, they engaged and because some heavy hitters engaged, some heavy hitters commented. And that's not like the only reason, cause you just don't get 75,000 total with these four from just a couple of people and their network wasn't even 75,000 to begin with. But it got some attention of a lot of people and blew up. So current events, if you're not commenting on current events, if there's something big in your niche that is happening, if you serving dentists and there's a big dental lawsuit or something like that, or regulations changing for dentists, you go ahead and comment on it. [02:44.3]
And I'm telling you this, how do I say it without confusing people? I'm telling you this, not necessarily to say that you should post about current events in order to get 75,000 plus views. Because the views don't really matter, it is a cool vanity metric. I have had some financial advisors message me. They have seen me now that they've never heard of me before. So that is nice. It's a nice by-product. But when it comes to LinkedIn, there are two different types of posts. You got the first type of post, which is generic and applies to a lot of people. And those are the ones that tend to go viral. If I say something like, let me just give you the status update. This is a popular one that a lot of people copy and paste and they twist it because it gets a lot of engagement almost every time. [03:31.7]
People would say something like this five years ago, I was living in my mom's basement and I only had $4.69 in my bank account. Now I have my own house, six Lamborghinis and a multi-million-dollar business. Does that sound too good to be true? It is. I made it up. Don't believe everything you read on social media. So they'll put that as their status update. And everybody was like, oh my God. Yeah, totally LOL. Wow. And it can go viral because it's something a lot of people can relate to. It's very general. It it's a generalist financial advisor, generalist business owner sort of thing. But if there is something specific to a niche where if I put something about financial advisors and I say, here's a trend coming down the pike for financial advisors. The only people who are going to engage are well financial advisors. So, the potential reach for that update, it's capped a lot sooner. It's limited a lot sooner. The reach is going to be a lot less because only financial advisors aren't going are going to engage with it. So, it doesn't have as much potential to go viral. I hope that makes sense. [04:41.1]
But you want to have both because if you're just talking to everyone and you're not calling out your niche, you're not calling out a specific audience. You're not going to get the best results by the same token. If you're always calling out a specific audience and you're not really giving your posts the chance to reach more people and just give it that push that it needs, you're not going to have as much success either. So, it's incredible to see how the multiple marketing strategies, philosophy really embeds itself in almost every aspect of business. And this is just another example. So, you've got type one posts, which are general to everyone. They have a lot more potential to go viral. Then you've got type two posts, which are more about your niche, more about the people who you want to attract. And those are the both of them work well, both of them have their time and the place. I like type two, a little bit better where you're talking to people in your niche, because that lends itself to people, messaging you and actually starting a conversation with you once they know that you serve people in that niche. And the money's in the mailbox, so you want to get people in the mailbox. [05:50.0]
But I'm going to discuss this more in depth in a future inner circle newsletter. So, if you haven't subscribed, you know, the URL, TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. Now let's get into the content of the show, be all about getting prospective clients off the vents. And that means getting that person to finally say yes to working with you. And it comes down to creating a sense or fostering a sense of urgency within people. Urgency has been used as a marketing strategy for a long time. If you've read Robert Cialdini's Influence book, congratulations, that does not make you an expert marketer, by the way, if you've read that. But if you've read that, let me give you a golf clap. Wonderful. He talks about urgency. That’s amazing, right. So, urgency has been used for however long before Cialdini. And I'm sure you've been to websites that had those countdown timers. I use them not all the time, but frequently where offers are only good for a period of time, that is a form of urgency. However, the form of urgency you're going to want to use as a financial advisor is the one that your prospective clients have for themselves. You can kinda sorta create urgency, but it's much better if you leverage the urgency, that's already there. Let me give you an example outside of financial advising. In 2020, and still here in 2021, people are buying guns and ammo like crazy. Down there in Florida, I know everybody's packing heat. [07:21.6]
Jonathan: You bet.
James: So, you got go guns to your left guns, to your right down there in the south. Well, people are buying and buying, buying, buying, buying. There's an unprecedented shortage of ammo. Even basic nine-millimeter rounds are going for like 80 cents to a dollar per round, which is insane. I've seen pictures online of gun shops, charging even more than that. So, people saying they're screaming out price gouging, but like in a free market society, if someone is willing to pay a dollar, people are going to sell for a dollar. Now because it comes down to supply and demand. The demand is going through the roof, which drives prices up. But why is demand up so much? That's what you really have to think about. It's because people have a sense of urgency. That's why it is. People are feeling like now is the time, time to pack that heat, to stock up on ammo. Let me give you some numbers. So, you have an idea of what's going on. [08:16.9]
And by the way, if you haven't already given me the one-star review, if we're talking about guns and you think I'm a gun toting idiot or whatever, go ahead and write that one-star review. I want you to, I'm not pushing guns or anything on people, but it's just, it is an example that is relevant. It is a current event; I am describing it. We have an ammo shortage here. In the past few years, the number federal background checks has hovered in the mid 20 million range. This is information from the FBI, by the way. In 2020, there were 39.7 million firearm background checks. What do you think of that Jonathan? You go from mid-20 million to nearly 40-million background checks in one year. [08:57.7]
Jonathan: People are afraid that they are going to lose their guns.
James: People, they got freaked out because of the pandemic. Then you throw in the election cycle where even more people freak out and they feel like they have to go out and buy these things. And when that happens, you have a recipe for some of the, well, not even some of the biggest demand. It is the biggest demand in that industry that our country has ever seen from private from people like civilians, consumers, the biggest demand ever. And the reason I'm using this example is because it's not like gun shops were using countdown timers. They weren't using fancy marketing campaigns. None of that happened. They were trying to instill the urgency. They weren't the ones that created it. They were the receptacle. People came to them because they had urgency because they felt the need for guns and ammo. They went to the gun shops and the gun shops were the beneficiaries. Get the lesson here. [09:58.2]
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.
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Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [10:20.6]
James: Gun buyers ramped up that urgency themselves. At some point, they crossed the threshold where they were ready to take action. So, I want you to imagine this pandemic happens. Someone who didn't have a gun in February 2020 is now thinking, wow, people are really acting crazy and breaking in stores for toilet paper and all this other stuff. Maybe I should get a gun. Ahhh, no, that's okay. Then the election happens and people start getting crazy and you've got the riots and all this other stuff. They crossed that threshold at some point. So, the urgency wasn't enough with one event, but the urgency is ramped up with a second event. You need to be conscious of this. It exists in every business and every marketplace in every industry you can think of, especially financial services. I'm using this because whenever I use an example outside of financial services, people tend to get it a little bit better. It's so similar to what happens when someone hires a financial advisor. [11:14.3]
The first thing you need to understand, as a financial advisor who wants to get prospects off the fence is that you want to create marketing assets that can capture people when they decide to get off the fence themselves. Inside of the gun shop, there could have been a sign on the counter that says special sale today only, this particular model, right? That would be the marketing campaign it's ready when people cross that threshold, when they enter the store, when their urgency has been enough to get them to take action. In past episodes, we've talked about how investors begin searching for financial advisors. When they begin looking where the gun example, when they walk into the shop, when they walk in through the door, they're already off the fence. They know, oh for sure, they want to hire a financial advisor with a tight financial advisor near me into Google. They know they want to hire a finance. The only question is, are you ready to talk with them? [12:10.8]
That's why I stress, make sure you have your contact information, clear all your website, that you have a way for them to send an appointment and so on. Make it clear to your clients that you're accepting referrals. That way, whenever their friends are ready to come out, the fence, you will be there. That is much more effective than pushing and prodding people to eventually say, yes. You cannot for the most part, create the urgency. You can only leverage the urgency that is already there. I know that's probably not the magic answer that financial advisors want to hear. It would be much better if there, if there was some magic script or something, but it doesn't exist. The majority of people out there are not ready to do business with you. However, a small percentage of people are ready and you want to be prepared when that, what happens. [12:56.5]
Now, if you have a prospective client who has been talking with you and that person is obviously interested at some level in hiring a financial advisor, that's great. But he or she might not be ready to say yes at that exact moment. If that's the case, I will share some ways that you can try to ramp up the urgency. This will not work in all situations. This is not a cure all. This is just, these are suggestions. They can help a little bit more, but they will not work until the person crosses that threshold in themselves, where they are ready finally, to take action. You can just, you do your best. One way is to clearly explain the value you provide as a financial advisor and how not using your services adds up to real costs with the passage of time. [13:52.5]
For example, if you help clients save money on their taxes, you can use this strategy pretty easily. This is like a home run for you. If your confident, you can save someone $5,000 on that person's tax bill this year, then the consequences of putting off the decision and not hiring you for a year cost $5,000. That's an easy one. There are other studies out there like Vanguard's Advisor alpha. These studies talk about how financial advisors can add around 3% of alpha to client's portfolio per year. If you charge 1%, that's a 2% spread. If someone has a $1 million portfolio that is equal to $20,000, which means if someone waits another year to hire you, that decision will on average cost him $20,000. It is your moral obligation to explain this to people. If you actually provide real value to people, to make sure they know for sure, 100% what they're missing if they refuse to work with you. [14:50.5]
I used a strategy in my own marketing. Yet, let's use my inner circle newsletter as an example. I have given the guns and ammo, the supply and demand people crossing the threshold of urgency with that. I've given that outside example. Let me give you another outside example. Let's say that by using the strategies in that newsletter advisers boost their income on average 10% per year. So, if you're a financial advisor and you're making a $100,000 per year, you are missing out on over $800 on average, every single month, you are not subscribed to the newsletter. That is real money, the real dollars and cents dollar bills, Franklins, blue faces, whatever you want to call it, that could have been in your pocket. Had you taken action sooner? It's sad. Most people don't think this way. They don't view opportunity cost is real. But if I siphoned $800 out of their bank account, every month they will go ballistic, they will lose their minds, yet not making more money is totally okay. I've never understood that people a weird man. [15:50.3]
If you're working with someone who's on the fence, you need to make sure that person understands what he or she is giving up by not working with you or by waiting that will do the trick. Sometimes you can just push a list a little bit more, they have to want it in the beginning though. Another thing you can do is tell a story about yourself. Talk about a time when you wanted to wait to do something and how it bit you in the butt. Maybe, you wish you got married sooner. Maybe you wish you had kids sooner, bought your dream house sooner, got your dream cars, whatever it is, share that story. Let them know that you empathize with them because you've been in the position where you wanted to wait too. This works even better, if you make it a story about hiring someone, maybe you put all hiring a personal trainer because you weren't completely convinced that that trainer could help you. Then when you finally said, yes, you wish you hired that trainer years earlier, this draws a parallel to the skepticism your prospective client has toward hiring you. You had the same skepticism when hiring someone else, you empathize with them. They have skepticism towards hiring you. You are drawing a parallel here. [17:01.6]
I've also heard of financial advisors using analogies to help make the point that the earlier you begin investing the better. The road trip analogy, that's a popular one. Let's say if you've never heard of this one, here's how it goes. We'll say you need to go somewhere 50 miles away and you have to be there in two hours. If you leave right now, you can get to your destination with an average speed of 25 miles per hour. But if you leave in an hour, you've got to maintain an average speed of 50 miles per hour. Now both of those are manageable, assuming you're going to be on the highway, but let's say you wait until the last 30 minutes. Then you'll only reach your destination on time if you have an average speed of a hundred miles per hour and that's highly illegal, so, and even if it was legal, it was probably not a good idea. It's not very smart. So, when people put off investing or saving for the future, they're putting themselves in a situation where they have to go faster. They have to save more. They have to take on more risk to reach their goals. The best time to start investing was yesterday. The second-best time is today that should help ramp up the urgency. [18:08.7]
And those are a few ways financial advisors can get prospective clients off the fence. I hope this helps you. And since this show has been about getting people off the vents, I want to specifically address the listeners who have been listening to this show for several episodes, maybe even dozens of episodes and haven't subscribed to the inner circle newsletter. If that's you and you're hearing my voice right now, seriously, who are you kidding in terms of real dollars and cents value? I've given you more than enough in this one episode alone to pay for your subscription, take that money and flip it into the newsletter. Think like an investor, think like a hustler, think like a business person, take that money, flip it. And then everything you make from that information over there in the newsletter is going to be straight profit start thinking like that. That's how you have to think as a business person. So, head over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. And that's it. [19:09.9]
Jonathan: All right, brother, what do have for us next time?
James: We're going to get back to the fundamentals because I feel like I've gotten a little abstract. I've gotten off on a limb with some of these podcast episodes. So, I'm going to go back to the fundamentals of prospecting. And I'm going to talk about some of the basic rules day one classroom One-On-One stuff about prospecting rules for success.
Jonathan: Oh, looking forward to that. All right that is a wrap for another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next time. [19:41.0]
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