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: In this week's podcast episode, I'm going to talk about one of the most effective marketing secrets I've ever uncovered. It's something hiding in plain sight that a lot of financial advisors have either completely ignored or missed entirely, and that is handling objections in advance.
If you've been a longtime listener of this podcast, you've heard in the mid-roll, the little ad that comes up in the middle of the episode, that I give people who subscribe to my Inner Circle a collection of objection-busting emails they can use right away. This was one of the most popular bonuses I ever gave away, and the whole “handle objections in advance” philosophy is something that I’ve pushed extremely hard for financial advisors. [01:11.5]
I actually just did an office hours session where I talked about this in more detail with Inner Circle members. We started brainstorming a lot of the objections that various markets have, and we started using and seeing a lot of words like “I'm afraid,” “I'm scared,” “I'm worried,” and so on. I wish financial advisors understood just how terrified people are to meet with them.
I think we as an industry treat financial advice as just like another thing, like something on a checklist or walking into a store and buying a couple of apples or electronics or shoes. It is not the same. It is scary. It is intimidating for people, and this bias that it's not scary or intimidating seems to impact all financial advisors. [01:56.0]
I used to believe that as financial advisors became more experienced, they would slowly lose touch with the average person, the average consumer of financial advice, and forget how intimidating the process is. They would forget about how scary it is for someone walking into the office for the first time. But I've discovered that both new and experienced financial advisors are guilty of this. Pretty much everyone is guilty of this at some level.
I've discovered that this is a huge source of financial advisors’ frustration because they get frustrated with the process, because they believe it should be so much easier. They believe marketing should not be this hard. They believe that sales and prospecting should not be this hard. This is especially true with financial advisors who read marketing books and prospecting books and sales books outside of financial advice or listen to marketing experts and gurus who work in other industries, because financial advisors will see a marketing funnel recommended by someone like Alex Hormozi or Russell Brunson or Gary Vaynerchuk—all fantastic people, fantastic, fantastic business people, fantastic marketers, some of the best in the entire world—but they don't understand financial advisor marketing at the level where they would need to in order to help financial advisors. [03:12.3]
Advisors go through these books and funnels, and courses and trainings, and they wonder why the strategies recommended there don't get the same results for them, and one of the main reasons why is because those other markets are not terrified to do whatever it is the marketer is trying to get them to do.
Selling books is not the same as getting people to start the financial planning process, I'm sorry. Selling clothes from an online store is not the same thing. People are not terrified to buy clothes from a website. People are not embarrassed to talk about the book-buying process, but that fear and embarrassment and shame is common in financial planning. [03:50.8]
I bring that up to tell you that no matter what objections your specific market may have, at least some of them are likely rooted in this fear and intimidation. That also means that the first step in identifying your market's biggest objections is to realize that many of the objections might not even be about you or your business, or your services or your offer. They're probably about your prospect’s inner world, their beliefs and their experiences and their fears, how they view the world. It is about them. So, a big sigh of relief. Okay, phew, it's not always about me. Yes, that feels good.
Too many financial advisors take objections far too personally. They hear stuff like, “I need to think about it,” and they immediately go into defensive mode. They try to prove their value and justify their fees and argue their case, but the reality is that sometimes when people say they need to think about it, they're really saying they're scared of making a mistake. Not always. Sometimes they're just trying to stall and delay, so not always, okay? There are exceptions to all of the stuff that I'm talking about in this episode, but generally speaking, many of the objections that every single market has in the financial planning process is rooted in fear, shame, embarrassment, intimidation and stuff like that. [05:06.3]
When people say they don't know if they can’t afford, quote-unquote, “afford” financial advice, they're often saying that they don't trust themselves to make the decision. That's why the most successful advisors aren't just technically skilled in financial planning. They're skilled at empathy. They're skilled at soft skills and people skills. They can step into their prospects’ shoes and see the real unspoken objections that are holding them back.
Now, here's the part most people miss. Your market will tell you what their biggest objections are if you know where to look. They won't tell you all of them, but they'll tell you some of them, and you can find them in places like the questions they ask in the first meetings, the comments they make in the discovery calls, the feedback you get when people don't move forward, if you ask for feedback at all—you should be, but that's a story for another podcast episode—the conversations happening in online communities and forums, and social media and Facebook groups and subreddits. You can get the information. [06:05.3]
Let me give you a quick example. If you're targeting engineers, you'll notice they almost always ask about fees, process and proof. That's not because they're cheap. A lot of financial advisors say that attorneys and engineers are notoriously cheap. Sometimes they are, but every single market has people who are cheap—10% of the market is always going to look for the lowest price, no matter what. There's nothing you can do to change these people's minds—but it's not because they're cheap, like I said. It's because their identity is wrapped up in being analytical and being precise. So, their objections, it's just them wanting to feel in control of the process. It's them expressing their identity.
If you're working with physicians—that's another popular niche for financial advisors—you might notice that physicians hesitate because they feel overwhelmed. They have time fatigue. They have decision fatigue. They're just overwhelmed. They've got a lot of stuff going on. Those particular objections aren't about you at all. They're not objecting to your process. They're not objecting to anything in your offer or about you, because those objections are about them, the physicians and their mental bandwidth. [07:15.5]
The beauty is, once you've identified the biggest objections, you can pre-handle them. You can do that in your marketing. You can talk about the objections in your emails, like I do with the objection-busting emails. You can talk about them in your webinars and your videos, and your meetings and your social media posts, and your direct mail and everywhere else. By the time people actually do business with you, it will feel like you already know them—and that is the point.
I'm recording this episode on September 10. Yesterday, on September 9, I had my monthly office hours session with my Inner Circle members, and we talked about this topic in a lot more detail. Specifically, we talked about how the newest perk available to them, Pollard AI, can help them figure out this stuff in mere seconds. [07:59.0]
Pollard AI is my brand new AI marketing coach trained on my entire body of work, including 300-plus podcast episodes, 2,700-plus emails, 100-plus blog posts, every product I've created, so that’s 24, 25, 26 right there, and 1,000-plus pages of my private marketing notes. That includes real analytics and split tests, and things I've never shared anywhere else, the campaigns that I've created, what worked, what didn't, what flopped, what was a monster winner. We spent about an hour and a half putting Pollard AI through the ringer. We were working live with no net. If it screwed up, financial advisors got to see it. It didn't, though, because why would it? Because I've been working on it and training it.
We got it to critique LinkedIn profiles. We got it to write an entire email marketing campaign from scratch. We got it to figure out a niche market’s deepest, darkest fears. We talked about pharmaceutical executives, and we went deep with that. That was really cool. We crafted an entire marketing plan from start to finish in about two minutes. [08:57.7]
We had one Inner Circle member ask about where to find millionaire IRA owners—I should have said that better. People who have at least a million dollars in their IRAs—and Pollard AI mapped out a plan of how to find those people, how to approach them, and how to get them to become clients. That was awesome.
We also used Pollard AI to identify the biggest pain points in the pre-retiree and retiree market. That was really cool. We got it to explain precisely where to find the highest-value prospects in a local area—Tampa, Florida, if you're wondering—including exact networking groups to join in Tampa, Florida, exact search terms to use on LinkedIn to find these people, exact search terms to use when booking speaking events with these people, and just so much more. My Inner Circle members got to see firsthand how Pollard AI is superior to every other artificial intelligence tool on the planet when it comes to financial advisor marketing. [09:55.7]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
The reason is that other tools are trained on the entire web. That includes everything from Reddit to random blog posts from people who don't even really know what they're talking about. [11:05.7]
It also, by definition, includes a lot of information that does not apply specifically to financial advisors. That's the problem with the prospecting and sales and marketing trainings that are outside of financial advice. It's not the same. Selling the books and the shoes, and cars on a used car lot, it's not the same.
Pollard AI solves that problem. It is custom-built from the ground up to serve only financial advisors—and the reason I'm bringing it up in this episode is I'm going to use it right now. I'm going to share some of the answers with you. I'm going to tell you the exact prompts I'm using and the exact answers it gives.
Let's start with a market we actually did yesterday, or talked about yesterday in the office hours, which is pharmaceutical representatives, and here's the exact prompt I gave it. I asked:
“What are some of the biggest objections that pharmaceutical representatives and employees have to hiring a financial advisor? Be very specific and give me the things they are thinking about that they would not tell anyone else, even their spouses.” [12:06.1]
Here's what it told me:
“My compensation is variable and political. I don't want to admit how fragile it is.”
That right there, if you got nothing else from that and you work with pharmaceutical representatives, that is gold, because it goes directly to the heart of the matter. It delivers one of the biggest objections that's deeply rooted in insecurity and ego protection. If you could just run with that in your marketing materials, you could go a long way. But let's keep going. Here are some of the other things it told me:
“I've got golden handcuffs. If I leave, I'll lose a lot. I'm trapped and embarrassed by it. I'm overexposed to my employer’s stock and I know it, but I'm scared to sell. Everyone thinks we're overpaid. I don't want to be judged for high spending or the perks. I still have student loans from a science degree or MBA, which feels dumb at my income.”
That's also really common. I've noticed that in a lot of different markets. The student loan thing is huge for financial advisors. [12:58.7]
“Travel and dinners wreck my budgeting. I'm embarrassed that my personal cash flow is messy. And, finally, I don't fully understand my equity and I fake it.”
Those are all objections that it gave me. Pollard AI talked about these. It actually gave me several more, but, honestly, I'm just going to tell you like it is, they're too valuable to share on a free podcast episode. But, like I said, these are the exact things that it gave me. These are all objections that you would not necessarily be able to uncover just by asking someone.
If you sat down and asked someone, “Hey, what are your concerns about working with a financial advisor?” that person's probably not going to say, “I'm really embarrassed that my cash flow is a mess because I spend too much on dinners.”
That's the power of identifying your market's deepest objections. You get to the real stuff, the stuff that they only admit to themselves late at night when it's quiet and no one else is looking or listening to them. They don't even want their spouses to know—and when you can talk about that in your marketing, when you can put words to the things they've never said and they've never expressed out loud, you instantly become more trustworthy, because they'll think, Wow, this person gets me. This person understands what I'm going through. That's how you cut through the noise. That's how you stop sounding like every other financial advisor with a generic value proposition. [14:16.2]
Let's do another one. Here's the exact prompt I gave Pollard AI:
“What are some of the biggest objections that small-business owners have to working with a financial advisor? I want you to give me their deepest, darkest fears and concerns they have trouble admitting even to themselves.”
This is what it told me.
“I'm afraid you'll tell me my business isn't as healthy as I pretend it is. My identity is tied to this business. If you say sell or slow down, who am I?”
Ooh, that's so good.
“I don't actually know my numbers as well as I claim.”
Yeah, that's pretty common.
“I feel behind on personal wealth because I've reinvested everything. I don't trust ‘advisors’”—(and “advisors” is in quotes)—“after getting sold products that didn't fit. I'm quietly supporting family or employees I can't afford to lose, and I'm ashamed of how much I've deferred personal finances.” [15:06.7]
Imagine going to Pollard AI and plugging in your market to get stuff like this. When you have insight into what they're actually thinking—the fears they don't say out loud—you're playing the game on a whole different level. This isn't surface-level stuff either. It gives you a lot more detail. Again, I want to stress that there's some stuff here that is just way too valuable to give on a free podcast episode, so I'm not going to do it.
Let's go back and think about that first objection. For small-business owners, the first objection was “I'm afraid you'll tell me my business isn't as healthy as I pretend it is.” If you know that's what they're afraid of, you can address it head on in your marketing, so you can say something like this: “Most business owners I talk with are worried that if they sit down with a financial advisor, they'll get judged or told they're doing everything wrong. I want to assure you that my role isn't to criticize your business. My role is to help you strengthen both your personal and business finances without adding stress to your plate.” Boom, you just handled that objection before it ever came up. [16:06.3]
Or take this one: “I feel behind on personal wealth because I've reinvested everything.” That is a huge source of shame for business owners. There's that word again, “shame,” “fear,” “anxiety,” and “embarrassment.” You can turn that into a powerful marketing message by just showing a little empathy and flipping that into a strength, so you could say, “Many of the entrepreneurs I serve have reinvested heavily in their businesses, so heavily that they feel behind on their personal wealth. The truth is, that's normal for you, and it's not too late to build a personal financial plan that reflects all the hard work you've put into your business so far.”
See how that works? By bringing those objections into the light, you take away their power. When you bring them up first, it defangs them. Instead of your prospects silently wrestling with these objections and feeling nervous and not working with you, you become the one who names them, who addresses them, and makes these people feel understood. That is how you win. [17:02.1]
The bigger point here is this—you don't have to guess which objections your market has or hope you stumble onto them in a sales conversation. You can proactively identify them, list them out, and start weaving them into your marketing assets. Again, this is not just with email. This is not just with your presentations or your in-person meetings. It's everything from LinkedIn posts to webinars to videos to everything you have. You can do it there.
Pollard AI is trained on this stuff because it has my private marketing notes and results, so it knows actual test results. It will steer you in the direction of things that actually work. It does not guess. It only pulls from things I have given it.
One of my biggest pet peeves with other artificial-intelligence tools is they just make stuff up. I remember one night, I was out to dinner at a sushi restaurant. I took a picture of the menu. I uploaded it to ChatGPT and told it to give me the sushi rolls that it thought had the highest protein content, and it just started making stuff up. It straight up lied to me. It was giving me names of sushi rolls and ingredients that weren't even on the menu. These weren't mistakes. They were just flat out lies, and that pissed me off. [18:09.2]
I'm so happy that Pollard AI doesn't do that, because I have trained it hard to only pull from the sources I've given it. If it doesn't know an answer, it will tell you, “I can't give you that information,” or “I'm not sure of that information,” or “I don't have that in my database.” It will tell you.
Plus, it gives you an absurd [amount of information], and, believe me, when I say absurd, I mean absurd. Financial advisors who have compared Pollard AI to other AI tools are blown away. In fact, one of the most common pieces of feedback I've received so far has been some variation of “Wow, I am blown away by how much information it gives.”
I'll say one more thing and then I'll wrap up this podcast episode. If you cannot recoup the mere $6.55 per day—that's about what the Inner Circle works out to be per day, because it's $199 per month—if you can't recoup that with this one tool alone, Pollard AI, then you are probably not running a real business. Or maybe you're just allergic to growth, I don't know. [19:06.5]
In that case, if you are allergic to growth or if you're not running a real business, I cannot help you. Nobody can. But if you have a shred of ambition and you have the ability to follow simple instructions, then Pollard AI inside the Inner Circle will change your business. You get immediate access to it after joining, which means you could be using it in as little as two minutes from now.
So, if you'd like to join, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, sign up today, start using Pollard AI in the next few minutes, and absolutely transform your business. Otherwise, I'll catch you next week. [19:43.2]
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