Turning Warm Leads into Meetings

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Most advi­sors tell me that once they meet with prospects, they have an excel­lent suc­cess rate con­vert­ing those prospects into clients. That’s why I got an excep­tional response to last Monday’s arti­cle on how approach­ing friends and casual acquain­tances about the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing together, using a low-key tech­nique called sig­nal­ing.

In my arti­cle, I wrote about an advi­sor who chat­ted with a lawyer he knew casu­ally at a client’s 50^th birth­day party and then sent him an email the next day offer­ing to put the lawyer on the dis­tri­b­u­tion list for his monthly client emails. The arti­cle also men­tioned that this advi­sor plans to give it a few months and then to make a follow-up call, sug­gest­ing they get together for a cof­fee to talk fur­ther about the prospect’s finan­cial situation.

Why you have to pick up the phone

I got an email from an advi­sor, thank­ing me for the arti­cle but with a ques­tion: “I hate being harassed by peo­ple try­ing sell me things and I hate harass­ing prospects”  he wrote. “Is it really nec­es­sary to pester prospects who are get­ting your material?”

I had a two-part response to his note.

First, while these follow-up calls can make prospects feel harassed and regret that they said yes to receiv­ing mate­r­ial, done right that doesn’t have to be the case. Pro­vided the calls don’t hap­pen too often, few prospects who’ve agreed to be put on your dis­tri­b­u­tion list and are see­ing value in the infor­ma­tion will object to a pro­fes­sional follow-up call, inquir­ing whether there’s inter­est in sit­ting down.

I told the advi­sor that part of the prob­lem might be that he sees these calls as harass­ing and pes­ter­ing prospects – and that the issue might be more in his mind than with prospects. The key to mak­ing this work is that you have no hid­den agenda. You’ve been clear from the out­set that you’re inter­ested in shar­ing the invest­ment related infor­ma­tion you pro­vide clients, which makes the tran­si­tion to talk­ing about the prospect’s own finan­cial sit­u­a­tion much easier.

On the ques­tion about whether this is really nec­es­sary, the unfor­tu­nate answer is yes. In the per­fect world, we wouldn’t have to be reach­ing out to prospects, we’d be doing a ter­rific job for our clients, prospects would see that and would call us as a result.

Regret­tably, in the real world that sel­dom hap­pens – if you want to max­i­mize meet­ings with prospects, no mat­ter how good a job you do of deliv­er­ing value and build­ing your cred­i­bil­ity through the infor­ma­tion you send, you ulti­mately have to give them a call or have some­one call them on your behalf.

As one exam­ple, I spoke to a finan­cial plan­ner who built a large pipeline of prospects through his exten­sive speak­ing engage­ments. At the end of his talk, he gave the audi­ence the chance to enter a draw for a book and to receive his free online newslet­ter. He got lots of peo­ple say­ing yes to this but few meet­ings – until he hired a sum­mer stu­dent to fol­low up and ask if there was inter­est in sit­ting down to meet.

With regard to fre­quency, peo­ple are get­ting monthly infor­ma­tion,  I’d say four to six months after they start receiv­ing infor­ma­tion is about right; if the email goes out quar­terly, I’d give it nine to twelve months. If some­one isn’t inter­ested in meet­ing, a sim­ple “I under­stand how busy we all are, could I check back with you in about nine months?”  will often clar­ify the prospect’s interest.

It’s never been more impor­tant to have a strong pipeline of prospects with whom you’re build­ing aware­ness, trust and cred­i­bil­ity. But to make that pipeline pay off, you need  to build reg­u­lar follow-up into your week – con­sider block­ing off 30 min­utes a week to fol­low up with prospects who you’ve spo­ken to in the past and who are receiv­ing your material.

To read last Monday’s arti­cle about how approach­ing casual acquain­tances, click here:

http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​e​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​h​o​w​-​t​u​r​n​-​a​c​q​u​a​i​n​t​a​n​c​e​s​-​c​l​i​e​n​t​s​?​a​c​c​e​s​s​k​e​y​=​F​4​B​D​0​A​7​7​-​2​5​F​8​-​2​3​1​4​-​A​2​C​3​-​D​5​C​F​6​D​D​B​0​0B2

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Tags: Casual Acquaintances, Client Emails, Coffee, Distribution List, Email, Financial Situation, Hidden Agenda, Last Monday, Lawyer, Leads, Outset, Prospects, Success Rate, Th Birthday Party
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How to Follow up with Prospects Without Feeling Like a Pest

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

In last Monday’s arti­cle, I talked about how client devel­op­ment has changed from an event in the 1980s and 1990s to a process today, and the crit­i­cal impor­tance of hav­ing a healthy pipeline of prospec­tive clients as a result.

Back in the 1990s, a pipeline was much less impor­tant. When you met with a prospect back then the prospect might not sign on; but at least you typ­i­cally got a yes or a no. In essence, client devel­op­ment was an event.

In today’s world of longer deci­sion mak­ing cycles, it nor­mally takes prospec­tive clients much longer to decide. Busi­ness devel­op­ment has become a process, and with that shift comes some fun­da­men­tal impli­ca­tions for how you have to operate.

The new real­ity of busi­ness devel­op­ment:

I con­cluded Monday’s arti­cle by high­light­ing three impli­ca­tions for busi­ness devel­op­ment activity.

First, you are going to have to be more patient in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospec­tive clients than was the case historically.

Sec­ond, the num­ber of qual­i­fied prospects in your pipeline is a key mea­sure of your future suc­cess, and just like any other key vari­able you need to set goals for the num­ber of prospects in your pipeline. Put activ­ity in place to achieve those objec­tives and track your progress against those goals.

Finally, you need a way to build trust and to stay in front of prospec­tive clients. Call­ing to say “Just check­ing to see if you’re ready to buy yet,” may be bet­ter than no call at all but cer­tainly won’t max­i­mize the chances of those prospects becom­ing clients.

“Just check­ing to see if you’re ready to buy yet:”

I got an email in response to that last sen­tence in which an advi­sor with a bank-owned firm put his fin­ger on why the “just call­ing to check in approach” risks posi­tion­ing you as a pest, in your mind if not the prospect’s.

Here’s how he started his email

“I worked for Xerox many years ago where we made many, many calls on poten­tial customers.

I quickly real­ized that busy peo­ple run­ning suc­cess­ful busi­nesses… the ones we want to con­nect with… hate the calls that begin “…Just call­ing to touch base/see how you are doing/ask if you are ready to sign up the paper­work yet? If you are not bring­ing value to a prospect you are wast­ing his time. There­fore it was my goal to always have some­thing of value to share with them.

In the copier busi­ness it was some fea­ture he might have missed and a new way I had thought their firm could take advan­tage of the capa­bil­i­ties. As an advi­sor, it was some fact about a com­pany in his indus­try, or some­thing I knew they were fol­low­ing or maybe cur­rency changes if I knew he does cross bor­der business.”

Two kinds of follow-up:

This advi­sor focused in on direct follow-up with prospects. In fact, this is one of two dif­fer­ent kinds of follow-up.

Before direct follow-up with prospects comes unob­tru­sive, lower key follow-up that keeps you top of mind and demon­strates value. The best form of that follow-up is to share with prospects the com­mu­ni­ca­tion that goes to clients. Here’s what com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a prospect might look like:

“Given tur­bu­lent mar­kets of the past few years, once a quar­ter I invite clients who are inter­ested to a break­fast to dis­cuss recent events. As well, I send clients a twice monthly email where I select one or two arti­cles that I’ve found espe­cially rel­e­vant and insight­ful. I’ve had a great response to these break­fasts and the arti­cles. With your per­mis­sion, I’d like to add you to the dis­tri­b­u­tion list for the arti­cles and the invi­ta­tion list for the breakfasts.”

Most prospects will agree fairly read­ily. For some, it’s a low cost com­mit­ment on their part that holds the promise of value. For oth­ers, it’s sim­ply the route of least resis­tance to say yes.

You can’t expect prospects who receive this low key follow-up to act on it, and in fact any direct action aris­ing from this is a bonus. What this form of low key follow-up is designed to do is to prime the pump; to lay a foun­da­tion of aware­ness and cred­i­bil­ity for when you do call.

“Call­ing as we agreed:”

It’s that direct follow-up when you pick up the phone and place the call that many advi­sors shy away from because it’s here that it can feel like you’re both­er­ing prospects.

There are two ways to deal with this: first by get­ting per­mis­sion to call, and sec­ond by ensur­ing that you’re call­ing on some­thing that’s directly relevant.

Here’s how the first part of the con­ver­sa­tion might go:

“I hear loud and clear your con­cerns about (fill in the blanks: ways to increase income with­out incur­ring addi­tional risk; strate­gies to reduce your over­all tax bill; meth­ods to achieve some of your goals in help­ing your chil­dren and grand­chil­dren.) I’ll think about this fur­ther and stay alert for oppor­tu­ni­ties that could meet your needs and with your per­mis­sion check back in about 90 days.”

Note that you’re not ask­ing a ques­tion, you’re mak­ing a state­ment to which you’re ask­ing the prospec­tive client to respond. Depend­ing on the tone of the con­ver­sa­tion and any urgency on the prospect’s part to take action, 90 days might be too soon or too long. What’s impor­tant is not the dura­tion until the call, but that you get the client’s agree­ment that you can call.

When you do call (and likely leave a voice-mail), your follow-up should relate back to your last conversation:

“It’s Dan Richards. When we last spoke, we agreed that I’d be fol­low­ing up about now. I have a cou­ple of spe­cific ideas that I’d like to dis­cuss with regard to the con­cern you expressed about increas­ing income with­out incur­ring addi­tional risk.”

There is one down­side to this approach. It’s much more work to use this strat­egy than to say: “Just call­ing to fol­low up to see if you have any ques­tions on the last arti­cle that I sent you,” (which in truth is a more pro­fes­sional way of say­ing “check­ing to see if you’re ready to buy yet.”)

But by fol­low­ing this three step process, get­ting prospec­tive clients to buy in to receiv­ing ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, obtain­ing agree­ment to a fol­low up call, and ensur­ing that the call relates to their spe­cific sit­u­a­tion your chances of suc­cess go up dra­mat­i­cally. And in the process, your risk of being seen as a pest and feel­ing like a pest drop dra­mat­i­cally as well.

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Tags: 1980s, 1990s, Bank Owned, Business Development, Critical Importance, Email Response, Essence, Fundamental Implications, Last Monday, Met, New Reality, Pipeline, Positioning, Prospective Clients, Qualified Prospects, Success, Xerox
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The Information Sources That Persuade Clients

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

The infor­ma­tion sources that per­suade clients

In last Monday’s arti­cle, I made the case that today’s investors want more fre­quent, shorter con­tact. That means advi­sors should sched­ule reg­u­lar short tele­phone meet­ings with their most impor­tant clients — say once a quar­ter for top clients.

But for many investors that’s still not enough — some are look­ing to have that con­tact sup­ple­mented on a reg­u­lar basis with a rel­e­vant arti­cle speak­ing to impor­tant mar­ket developments

Notice that we’re talk­ing arti­cle, not arti­cles — in a less is more world, many clients are look­ing for advi­sors to screen down the con­tent they receive.

And we’re talk­ing about rel­e­vant — some­thing that speaks to what’s hap­pen­ing today, not generic con­tent that could be sent anytime.

We’re also talk­ing reg­u­lar fre­quency — many investors are look­ing for monthly updates between per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their advisor.

Even if you deliver on all that — one rel­e­vant arti­cle each month, there’s one final fac­tor for your com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be well received — and that’s for it to come from a cred­i­ble source.

The role of third party sources

We all rec­og­nize that we live in an age of scep­ti­cism — when it comes to advice from cen­tral bankers, doc­tors or finan­cial advi­sors, to name just three exam­ples, com­pared to past peri­ods con­sumers are much less prone to accept what they’re told with­out question.

That means that we need to bor­row cred­i­bil­ity wher­ever we can. Every advi­sor rec­og­nizes that the right arti­cle can be a pow­er­ful force in rein­forc­ing your advice — that’s why arti­cles fea­tur­ing bull­ish pro­nounce­ments from War­ren Buf­fett ric­o­chet around the inter­net at warp speed.

The rea­son for this isn’t the con­tent of the arti­cles, but rather the source — it’s because of the cred­i­bil­ity of any­thing that Buf­fett says. In fact, a strong case can be made that War­ren Buf­fett has assumed the role that news anchor Wal­ter Cronkite occu­pied in the 1960s as “the most trusted man in America.”

The cred­i­bil­ity hier­ar­chy for infor­ma­tion sources

Accept­ing that the sources of infor­ma­tion that we send clients can be as impor­tant as the con­tent has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions. In fact research with investors demon­strates a clear hier­ar­chy in terms of the cred­i­bil­ity that clients ascribe to dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion sources, with four tiers of credibility.

Tier One cred­i­bil­ity sources are the lead­ing finan­cial and busi­ness pub­li­ca­tions — exam­ples would be the Wall Street Jour­nal, the Econ­o­mist, Finan­cial Times, Forbes, For­tune and Bloomberg Busi­ness Week. Even though it’s not a finan­cial pub­li­ca­tion for many investors the New York Times would be in this category.

Tier Two cred­i­bil­ity sources are gen­eral news pub­li­ca­tions — Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report. Even though not spe­cial­ized on finan­cial issues, espe­cially for older investors, these bring con­sid­er­able name recog­ni­tion and credibility.

The third tier are local news­pa­pers; this would also include Cana­dian news pub­li­ca­tions such as Macleans. Fairly or not, many investors take the view that they look to their advi­sors for con­tent that they would have dif­fi­culty access­ing on their own.

The bot­tom tier of cred­i­bil­ity are pub­li­ca­tions from prod­uct sup­pli­ers and inter­nal firm pub­li­ca­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, today’s investors are quick to see ulte­rior motives — many are scep­ti­cal about any­thing that comes from prod­uct sup­pli­ers or the firms their advi­sors work for. The sole excep­tion would be those cases where firms employ an econ­o­mist or mar­ket strate­gist who has built vis­i­bil­ity and expert cre­den­tials in the broad media.

The bot­tom line is crys­tal clear — the same arti­cle will have a dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent impact depend­ing on its source. An email link to an arti­cle in For­tune or Forbes will res­onate in a fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent way than if that link is to the same arti­cle in the local paper.

As you think about how you com­mu­ni­cate going for­ward, keep those four ele­ments in mind — in future, suc­cess­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be defined by more fre­quent, shorter, rel­e­vant and cred­i­ble contact.

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Tags: 1960s, Cred, Credibility, Credible Source, Financial Advisors, Generic Content, Information Sources, Last Monday, Market Developments, News Anchor, Party Sources, Periods, Personal Communication, Pronouncements, Relevant Article, Ricochet, Scepticism, Walter Cronkite, Warp Speed, Warren Buffett
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More Reasons You Don’t Get Referrals

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

[Last] Monday’s arti­cle talked about three flaws in advi­sor think­ing about refer­rals — here are four more mis­con­cep­tions that stand in the way of referrals.

Mis­con­cep­tion 4: It’s all about satisfaction

Your goal should be to have clients who are satisfied

In fact:

Research com­mis­sioned in 2009 by Van­guard and con­ducted by research firm Advi­sor Impact demon­strated that for clients to ini­ti­ate refer­rals, they have to be more than sat­is­fied — they have to be engaged.

Among the keys to engaged clients are a dis­cus­sion of clients’ full finan­cial needs, a writ­ten plan and strong, ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion — as well as a con­nec­tion between advi­sors and clients that goes beyond a mere busi­ness relationship.

At one time, sat­is­fac­tion with an advi­sor was good enough … but not today.

Mis­con­cep­tion 5: Keep client rela­tion­ships purely professional

You should oper­ate on a purely pro­fes­sional basis, no dif­fer­ently than an accoun­tant or lawyer  … get­ting into “soft” issues under­mines your image of professionalism

In fact:

There’s an old expres­sion that “clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Unques­tion­ably, there are some clients who have a “just busi­ness” mind­set … some time-pressed CEO’s and entre­pre­neurs or super ana­lyt­i­cal engi­neers and accoun­tants, for whom it’s all about the numbers.

Research shows that these clients are in the small minor­ity. Even if you’ve suc­ceeded in “engag­ing” clients, most peo­ple want to feel good about their advi­sor, to have the sense that you’re moti­vated by more than the rev­enue they generate.

Of course, activ­ity to show you care is only effec­tive if it’s deliv­ered on a foun­da­tion of strong value and solid service.

But once you’re deliv­er­ing that value and ser­vice, to max­i­mize the rela­tion­ship with many clients, you have to do more — and take the rela­tion­ship to a per­sonal level.

One of my recent columns talked about an advi­sor whose clients rave about her because she reg­u­larly sends them funny, upbeat books about key events in their lives. And it’s not about the cost — she’s in the bot­tom 10% of top pro­duc­ers in her firm on the amount spent on client recog­ni­tion, but in the top 10% on client loy­alty and share of assets. The rea­son these books work is because they’re per­sonal, unex­pected and tap into pos­i­tive moments in clients’ lives.

In gen­eral, the feed­back on this idea from advi­sors was very pos­i­tive … although I did hear from one dis­sent­ing advi­sor, who wrote “I have a CFA and came into this busi­ness to be a pro­fes­sional, not a concierge at the Four Seasons.”

Life is all about choices — and if stay­ing detached from per­sonal aspects of client lives is your choice, that’s a legit­i­mate deci­sion. But remem­ber that if you ignore the emo­tional aspect of rela­tion­ships, for many clients you are putting an upper limit on their level of attach­ment and you’re kid­ding your­self if you don’t think that has an impact on their ten­dency to pro­vide referrals.

Mis­con­cep­tion 6: Clients pro­vide refer­rals to help you

If you’ve done a good job, clients want to help you out and in fact will feel an oblig­a­tion to rec­i­p­ro­cate with referrals.

In fact:

Today, most clients take the view that the reward for your doing a good job is that they’ll stay a client — and feel no oblig­a­tion what­so­ever to refer peo­ple they know to you. Yes, they’ll pass your name along to friends who ask, but they’re unlikely to take the ini­tia­tive on this.

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Tags: Accountant, Accountants, Business Mindset, Business Relationship, Ceo, Client Relationships, Course Activity, Expression, Last Monday, Lawyer, Misconception, Misconceptions, Personal Level, Professional Basis, Professionalism, Referrals, Satisfaction, Small Minority, Solid Service, Vanguard
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Two Compelling Articles to Send Clients

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

“I’m a huge bull on this coun­try … we won’t have a dou­ble dip reces­sion. I see our busi­nesses com­ing back almost across the board.”  .…War­ren Buf­fett, Berk­shire Hathaway

“GE is now find­ing it prof­itable to build man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice cen­ters in the United States rather than over­seas, because it is more com­pet­i­tive to do so.”   … Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE

“I am very enthu­si­as­tic about what the future holds” .… Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

One of the most impor­tant roles for advi­sors is to be an emo­tional anchor for clients … pre­vent­ing the highs from being too high and the lows from being too low.

Today, many Cana­di­ans are pes­simistic about the U.S. and global economies … dri­ven in large mea­sure by daunt­ing head­lines about slow growth, weak hous­ing prices, high unem­ploy­ment and deficit prob­lems in much of the devel­oped world, as well as polit­i­cal dis­cord in Washington.

This pes­simism is ampli­fied by the media cov­er­age given to voices of gloom such as Nouriel Roubini and David Rosenberg.

Pre­sent­ing an upbeat outlook

That’s why a con­fer­ence that took place just last Mon­day gives advi­sors the chance to pro­vide clients with some off­set­ting per­spec­tive on the mid and long term pos­i­tives for the United States.

Speak­ing on Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 13 to 2000 busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers in Mon­tana, War­ren Buf­fett, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and GE’s Jeff Immelt talked about good news at their com­pa­nies and a pos­i­tive out­look for the future.

Here are two arti­cles on this con­fer­ence that you can send clients, one from Bloomberg and other from Yahoo News:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–09-13/buffett-rules-out-double-dip-u-s-recession-says-berkshire-units-growing.html

http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​s​/​a​p​/​2​0​1​0​0​9​1​3​/​a​p​_​o​n​_​b​i​_​g​e​/​u​s​_​e​c​o​n​o​m​y​_​l​e​a​d​ers

And here are some of their comments:

War­ren Buf­fett, Berk­shire Hathaway:

“I’m a huge bull on this coun­try … we won’t have a dou­ble dip reces­sion. I see our busi­nesses com­ing back almost across the board … … it’s night and day from a year ago.”

“I’ve seen sen­ti­ment turn sour in the last three months or so, gen­er­ally in the media. I don’t see that in our busi­nesses … we’re employ­ing more peo­ple than a month ago, two months ago.”

“The things that worked for the coun­try through a cen­tury of two world wars, a depres­sion and more — all while increas­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing — will work again.”

“Banks are lend­ing money again, busi­nesses are hir­ing employ­ees and I expect the econ­omy to come back stronger than ever.”

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft:

“There soon will be more tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment and inven­tion than there was dur­ing the Inter­net era and that will help drive busi­ness growth.”

“I am very enthu­si­as­tic about what the future holds for our indus­try and what our indus­try will mean for growth in other industries.”

“We will see new tech­nolo­gies that move beyond the Inter­net to tie together com­put­ers, phones, tele­vi­sions and data cen­ters to cre­ate amaz­ing new prod­ucts. And the pace of inno­va­tion will increase as tech­nol­ogy makes work­ers more productive.”

“All areas of sci­ence today are mov­ing for­ward more quickly. The speed of sci­en­tific break­through is accelerating.”

Jeff Immelt, GE:

“Angry polit­i­cal rhetoric is not help­ful and head­lines are too focused on find­ing neg­a­tive indicators.”

“Busi­ness at GE is improv­ing. Signs across the world show growth improv­ing as evi­denced by a rise in GE’s orders.”

“GE is now find­ing it prof­itable to build man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice cen­ters in the United States rather than over­seas, because it is more com­pet­i­tive to do so.”

“The U.S.‘s cen­tral chal­lenge will be to speed growth. We need an increase in exports of man­u­fac­tured goods to help com­pete glob­ally. Expan­sion will be fur­ther bol­stered when smaller busi­nesses and con­sumers regain con­fi­dence in banks and are able to bor­row more.”

“We need peo­ple to be able to feel like they’re going to get loans, the process is going to work and that they under­stand the rules.”

“The U.S. is going to need to adjust, though. The econ­omy since the 1970s has been dri­ven by con­sumer credit and a mis­guided notion in build­ing a “lazy” ser­vice econ­omy. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, with an aim to reduce the trade deficit, is the key.”

“The push for an exclu­sively  service-based econ­omy was just wrong. It was stu­pid. It was insane .The future of the econ­omy has to be as an exporter.”

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Tags: Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett Rules, Ceo Microsoft, David Rosenberg, Discord, Double Dip Recession, Economy Leaders, Emotional Anchor, Global Economies, Jeff Immelt, Last Monday, Lows, News Yahoo, Nouriel Roubini, Pessimism, Political Leaders, Positive Outlook, Steve Ballmer, Upbeat Outlook, Warren Buffett
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Business planning for 2009: More lessons from a trek up Kilimanjaro

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Many advi­sors are using the hol­i­day break to reflect on their busi​ness​.In two columns last fall, I detailed ten lessons from a 2004 trek up Mount Kil­i­man­jaro that might be help­ful as advi­sors think about plans for the year ahead.

Last Mon­day, I high­lighted the first four lessons. Today, I sum­ma­rize six more take­aways from a trek up Kil­i­man­jaro and com­plete my “top ten” list.

Last week’s busi­ness plan­ning lessons were:

1. Set stretch goals

2. Invest the time to pick the right strategy

3. Put a plan in place that tilts the odds in your favour

4. Pick your part­ners carefully

This week’s lessons from Kilimanjaro:

5. Ensure you have the right team behind you.

Kil­i­man­jaro: While climbers get the glory, the real heroes are the porters who haul the gear, unac­knowl­edged but instru­men­tal to suc­cess.

Advi­sors: Suc­cess­ful advi­sors are almost always sup­ported by capa­ble, moti­vated staff — and invest­ing the time, energy and money to put strong sup­port staff in place is essential.

6. Focus on the imme­di­ate step ahead.

Kil­i­man­jaro: When tired, dis­cour­aged and faced with tough con­di­tions, climbers need to con­cen­trate on tak­ing the very next step, not the entire jour­ney ahead of them.

Advi­sors: When daunted by the mag­ni­tude of the chal­lenges fac­ing them, advi­sors need to focus on mak­ing the very next meet­ing or the very next call successful.

7. Focus on the big picture.

Kil­i­man­jaro: If all they do is look at the rocky ground where they’re putting their feet next, climbers miss spec­ta­colour views behind and ahead of them and the moti­va­tion this brings. Climbers need to bal­ance focus on the next step with an occa­sional glance at what’s behind them and ahead of them.

Advi­sors: To stay moti­vated, advi­sors need to take time for an occa­sional pause to reflect on where you’ve been and the big­ger pic­ture — and to reflect on where all the indi­vid­ual steps are tak­ing you.

8. Suck it up when the going gets tough.

Kil­i­man­jaro: Get­ting to the top of Kil­i­man­jaro inevitably means work­ing through some pain and dis­com­fort along the way — when encoun­ter­ing this, com­plain­ing isn’t pro­duc­tive, all you can do is sum­mon up the dis­ci­pline to stay focused on your goal.

Advi­sors: Every suc­cess­ful advi­sor has encoun­tered set­backs, dis­ap­point­ments, frus­tra­tion and dis­com­fort along the way. To achieve true suc­cess, you need the deter­mi­na­tion and com­mit­ment to work through these.

9. Enjoy the moment.

Kil­i­man­jaro: While nat­ural to cel­e­brate when reach­ing the top of Kil­i­man­jaro, it’s also impor­tant to rec­og­nize mile­stones along the way — a tough hill climbed, a hard day behind you. It’s those cel­e­bra­tions that help pro­vide the moti­va­tion to work through adversity.

Advi­sors: Build time into your quar­terly, monthly, weekly and daily rou­tine to reflect on and acknowl­edge the small suc­cesses — tak­ing the time to enjoy what you’ve achieved will help pro­vide energy for the path ahead.

10. Begin by beginning.

Kil­i­man­jaro: There are lots of deci­sions entailed in climb­ing Kil­i­man­jaro — and it’s easy to get over­whelmed by these. Ulti­mately, the most impor­tant part of the jour­ney is the com­mit­ment to start it, to begin by beginning.

Advi­sors: Some advi­sors are par­a­lyzed by the many deci­sions in their busi­ness — here too the key is to focus on one deci­sion at a time, make that deci­sion and then move on to the next.

As you reflect on your plans for 2009, con­sider what lessons from past expe­ri­ences can guide your busi­ness for­ward and help you reach your full potential.

For those inter­ested in read­ing the com­plete arti­cles about lessons from a trek up Kilimanjaro:

Part One:  http://​www​.invest​mentex​ec​u​tive​.com/​c​l​i​e​n​t​/​e​n​/​N​e​w​s​/​D​e​t​a​i​l​N​e​w​s​.​a​s​p​?​I​d​=​4​6​2​2​7​&​a​m​p​;​c​a​t​=​3​0​&​a​m​p​;​I​d​S​e​c​t​i​o​n​=​3​0​&​a​m​p​;​P​a​g​e​M​e​m​=​&​a​m​p​;​n​b​N​e​w​s​=​&​a​m​p​;​I​d​P​u​b​=​168

Part Two: http://​www​.invest​mentex​ec​u​tive​.com/​c​l​i​e​n​t​/​e​n​/​N​e​w​s​/​D​e​t​a​i​l​N​e​w​s​.​a​s​p​?​I​d​=​4​6​6​5​6​&​a​m​p​;​c​a​t​=​3​0​&​a​m​p​;​I​d​S​e​c​t​i​o​n​=​3​0​&​a​m​p​;​P​a​g​e​M​e​m​=​&​a​m​p​;​n​b​N​e​w​s​=​&​a​m​p​;​I​d​P​u​b​=​170

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: Big Picture, Business Planning, Challenges, Climbers, Favour, Journey, Last Monday, Magnitude, Motivation, Mount Kilimanjaro, Occasional Glance, Odds, Porters, Real Heroes, Stretch Goals, Support Staff, Takeaways, Time Energy, Top Ten List, Trek
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Talking to Prospects — Making Your Message Memorable

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Last Monday’s email focused on craft­ing a 10 sec­ond ele­va­tor speech to sum­ma­rize how investors ben­e­fit from work­ing with you.

Today’s arti­cle moves to the next step.

Sup­pose a prospect agrees to meet with you. Now you need to explain what you do and how clients ben­e­fit from your work in a way that’s engag­ing, inter­est­ing and compelling

In an inter­view on today’s site, I talk to Dave Paradi, author of two books on effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing one picked by the Globe and Mail as a top ten busi­ness book for 2008.

Dave made two crit­i­cal points in our presentation.

Less is more

First, too many advi­sors over­whelm prospec­tive clients with way too much infor­ma­tion. 

We need to be dis­cern­ing about pro­vid­ing enough infor­ma­tion to give prospects a good sense of how we work and a feel­ing that we offer sub­stance, with­out hav­ing them feel swamped.

One approach is to pro­vide an overview of your process with a few key points under each step– but with­out all the detail.

Then you could say to a prospect:

“I have more infor­ma­tion on each of these steps.

Which one or two would you like to focus on?” or “Which of these would you like more infor­ma­tion on?”

Pic­tures ver­sus words

The sec­ond trap is how you present the infor­ma­tion.

The approach that most advi­sors use is to pro­vide prospects with a piece of paper with a bunch of words on it, orga­nized in lists, para­graphs and bul­let points.

Again, this risks over­whelm­ing peo­ple. Quite sim­ply, it’s not orga­nized in a way that lets prospects absorb the infor­ma­tion, relate to it and remem­ber it.

Instead, Dave Paradi sug­gests that advi­sors remem­ber that most peo­ple are visu­ally ori­ented and relate to visual images.

So if you’re talk­ing about a roadmap to suc­cess, he sug­gests using a visual aidof a roadmap with stops along the way to mark the key steps you use in help­ing clients meet their goals.

A prospect may not remem­ber the indi­vid­ual steps but they will remem­ber the roadmap.

Depict­ing your process

Another com­mon dis­cus­sion point when meet­ing with prospects is how you go about build­ing port­fo­lios and select­ing invest­ments.

Some advi­sors will talk about using screens and fil­ters to iden­tify the funds or stocks that best meet a clients needs.

Again, fine in con­cept, but hard to relate to and remem­ber for many prospects if you’re just talk­ing about this.

Instead, he again sug­gests employ­ing a visual aid.

You may show the uni­verse of poten­tial invest­ments in a col­umn on the left, then a depic­tion of a fil­ter to block out those that aren’t rel­e­vant, with a shorter list of invest­ments in the mid­dle.

And then another fil­ter to select the ones that are most appro­pri­ate, end­ing up with the rec­om­mended invest­ments in the right hand col­umn.

So you go from a long list to a shorter list to a short list, with a two step fil­ter­ing process.

Explained that way, a prospect is much more likely to under­stand your process, to relate to it and to remem­ber it.

For most advi­sors, get­ting in front of qual­i­fied prospects is hard work. You can’t waste those oppor­tu­ni­ties — con­sider tak­ing the time to rethink how you tell your story to prospects, so that you’re get­ting max­i­mum mileage from every meet­ing.

To sign up for Dave Paradi’s free com­mu­ni­ca­tions newslet­ter and view free resources to make your pre­sen­ta­tions per­sua­sive, go to www​.Think​Out​side​TheS​lide​.com

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Tags: Bullet Points, Business Book, Critical Points, Effective Communication, Elevator Speech, Focus, Globe And Mail, Good Sense, Investors, Last Monday, Paradi, Paragraphs, Piece Of Paper, Prospective Clients, Prospects, Roadmap, Success, Two Books, Visual Images
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