Most have the problem of having to sit back and wait for clients or centre’s of influence to refer, but you can generate the referrals you want when you want them.

I do it, and target the referrals I want.

The best way to explain it is with an example.

Let’s say I wanted to do business with one of the biggest firms on the local stock exchange…but had no relationship with anyone of consequence there.  The example I will use is Xero….a rising rock star of the stock market….

If I wanted to do business with them (and it IS just an example, as they are not my target market, but it is a big fish that would too big in many advisers minds), but have no relationships with anyone there of any consequence, I am just another cold caller potentially.  We all know the chances of the cold caller with a good value proposition landing that client….slim.

It is far better to create a referral to the key decision makers, and here is how to do it.

In our example, I googled to find out who the key people there are.  the Number 1 decision maker is the CEO.

I can find out about him now that I know who he is on LinkedIn easily enough…BUT…

…here’s the beautiful bit: I can also find all the people I am connected to who are connected to him.  AND Linkedin list them in order of “connection strength”, giving me an indication of who is most likely to have the strongest connections with him.

Instead of working out how to structure my cold call approach I am already thinking about who I know that knows Rod and who is able to give me the favourable introduction.  Or better yet, a number of “who we both know…”

Clicking on the little dropdown box next to the “connect” button (or rather, next to the “send Rod an inmail” button brings up the following:

This gives me further detail on our mutual connections and links.

At this point I would not use the LinkedIn “introduction” in mail feature.  I pick out the 2 or 3 people who are most likely to help position me favourably, and then I pick the phone up and talk to my existing friends who happen to be connected to the guy I want to talk to.  Explain to them what you want to do and ask if they are ok with introducing you….if you do this well and ensure that it does not reflect badly on your friends, they will nearly always be willing to do it.

Then send them an email after the phone call that outlines briefly what you are asking for, such as

“I really just want to spend 20 minutes having a coffee with Rod because I believe that some of the work I have done with accountants can create some mutual new business opportunities for his business and mine.  If you could just call him or drop him a line letting him know that I am not a time waster I’d appreciate it”

If you have picked the right connections to begin with they will do it every time, and if the person you want to work with gets contacted by 2 or 3 respected contacts, the opportunity door is wide open.

Then it is over to you to pick the phone up, call and chat and set up the time with the referral you generated.

http://financialadvisercoach.com/

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Keep it simple for presenting ideas

3 is the magic presentation number.

It is a well established principle that people absorb information best when it is presented in 3 points…and while listing your best 3 features or benefits is more effective than listing your top 10 to most consumers, applying a bit of structure to the 3 points is even more effective.

The structure – which will be very easy for financial advisers in particular to remember – is C.P.D.  (We are not talking bout “continuing professional development” of course.)

The structure for the most effective presentation to clients is:

1. Concept
2. Principle
3. Detail

The first point is the key concept you want the client to grasp. It is the “big idea” where you want the focus to be…the main argument or recommendation.

The principle is the supporting reason for the concept, or why it makes sense.

The detail is the element providing validation, or logic.

For Example:

• It is recommended you begin saving for retirement (concept)
• Saving now, and sacrificing a little lifestyle today, means that you don’t have to make a huge sacrifice and seriously step down in lifestyle when you do retire and your work income stops. (principle)
• We have worked out that if you do not save now then the drop in income at retirement will be 70% – that’s a huge paycut.  However, saving 8% of your income today means that you will only be looking at a 25% drop in income in todays terms – and we can fine tune that as we go to reduce the gap even further. (detail)

If you have a highly complex presentation or topic to speak to, then the same formula can be extended and still be highly effective.  The key concept is supported by 3 principles, and they in turn are supported by groups of 3 details, as follows:

C.P.D. Structure

Whether it is presenting at a seminar and using powerpoint, or presenting 3 options for a client to consider as potential solutions, or providing written recommendations on specific actions that you want a client to follow, you will find that presenting the information in series of “three’s” that are structured this way will be far more effective.

Clients will grasp each key reason or argument readily, understand the all important “why”, and have the key detail to support it.  If they “get it“, then they are likely to “do it“.  If they don’t “do it“…then you probably missed the mark and they didn’t “get it“.

So “3′s” are the keys to really effective client presentations, because it makes you focus on the critical elements, and helps the client to “get it”, and remember it.

www.financialadvisercoach.com

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Automation and your business.

In financial services we generally accept that it is a wise move to automate as much as possible in our processes.

The arguments for doing so largely revolve around efficiency, reliability, and risk management.  That is, automating simply makes good business sense as it frees up time, it makes sure that the right things get done when they need to, and it minimises the possibility of mistakes.

Does the same rationale apply when considering automation of your marketing?

During the last 2 years I have used, observed and learned many things about social media use. What seems an overwhelming thing at first is in reality no more overwhelming than the internet itself.  Or email.

Email can be overwhelming if you allow it to be.  So too can social media channels.  So can pretty much everything else in the information or communications world.

Gradually I have learned some techniques and tools for managing my digital marketing, though not without a lot of mistakes and wasted hours along the way.

This line of thinking was triggered by an excellent article that caught my eye, and then generated some discussion with others, about “automation” of social media.  (Should you Tweet while you sleep?)   In the article Lilach Bullock made a superbly valid point in her article on the difference between scheduling and automation, and the two are often confused or used interchangeably.  I love one….and loathe the other when it comes to social media and digital marketing.

I love to schedule.  I loathe automation.

Scheduling allows me to be organised and reliably delivering the bulk of my social media posts.  It enables me to write three blog posts in a couple of hours when I have the time and creativity…but not have to post them immediately.  It enables me to scan Twitter feeds in 20 minutes to save a lot of useful material that is worth sharing, and then drip that out over the next 24 hours.  It enables me to maintain a continual presence on LinkedIn and Facebook without actually having to be there all the time.

Scheduling works for me as a one-man business. It provides an efficient use of my time, ensures reliable delivery and initial engagement points, and minimises the risk of me losing touch with my market place.  (By the way…free plug for Hootsuite and Bundlepost: check them out if you want some efficiency tools! By the way guys, you should now be paying ME, instead of me pay you!)

It is important for me to say that scheduling of content and shared stories is fabulous, but it does NOT replace the need to personally engage with folk who do repspond or interact.  Heck, I actually get a lot of that one-on-one interaction done on my mobile phone while waiting in traffic, or filling in the 3 minutes before a meeting starts – that is the easiest part of using social media.

Social media cannot be fully scheduled though.  To use social media well you must be interacting with your potential customers or fans, and that requires some one to one engagement with other human beings. That engagement just cannot be scheduled.

Automation on the other hand….well, that sucks.

Pet social media peeves for me include pretty much all the automated things…like getting impersonal direct messages beseeching me to follow someone everywhere just because I took an interest in something on one channel.    Or suddenly receiving a continuous daily (or worse, multiple times daily) email message referring to the same article ad nauseum.  That is just Groundhog Day,and it will drive most people suicidal if they are on the receiving end.  I really hate those  automated messages telling me I need to use something as ridiculous as TrueTwit in order to validate that I am a real human being before somebody else will follow me back.

Why would anyone put up a security screen and ask you to verify that you are not a Russian mobster before they will deign to follow you?  Here’s a thought: I don’t need Twitter followers enough that I’ll go jumping through silly hoops for you….that type of thing is just a barrier to engaging with your market place in my view.

Scheduling is about efficient delivery of content to your constituents.

Automation is just an impersonal method of trying to appear personal.

One is smart business.  The other is cynical engagement at best, or deceitful behavior at worst.

www.financialadvisercoach.com

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Why torture your clients?

Compliance has a lot to answer for.

One of the truly negative consequences of evolving best practice advice standards is the trend to torture clients.

Now torture is a rather harsh word, and I am sure that globally there is no particular agenda on the part of regulators or professional advisers or service providers to deliberately torture consumers.

We tell them “this won’t hurt – much“…and wonder why they approach the financial advice process with distinct trepidation?

I am referring especially to that part of the professional advice process that  is focused on uncovering the facts and dreams and ambitions and goals of clients.

It is called the Discovery Process.  Or Data Gathering. Or Fact-Finding.  We call it many things around the globe to make it sound nicer than it actually is.

The concept of determining what matters to the customer, and ensuring that you have all the appropriate information to be able to provide good objective and sound advice is totally valid.  It is a necessity if good advice is to be provided that can actually be valuable to a customer, and be valued by them.

The problem is how we, as an industry, approach the task.

An adviser and potential client are happily discussing the way ahead, and the client consents to engaging in the advice process.  Out comes the 30 page discovery document…with oodles of boxes to be filled in…many of them with dollar signs waiting with bated breath….and lots more boxes requiring precise data covering pretty much everything from knowing the zodiac planetary alignment for each dependent through to the complete medical history of your grandmother.

Most of us aren’t even entirely sure what our grandmother’s maiden name was…so guess what the client is thinking when they see this process coming at them?
Generally they don’t feel any better about it if we pull out an Ipad instead….they can still see the boxes on the screen…they know what’s coming….

…and so begins the process of disengagement by the consumer.  So why do we torture them?

The problem is not the data-gathering process as such. Nor is the problem that we do actually require quite a lot of information to do the job well.  The problem – the torture – is how advisers generally tend to approach it.

It really is rather like the surgeon calling you into theatre and showing you all the tools she has and may call upon to make holes in you, and then patting you nicely and saying “don’t worry about it, you won’t feel a thing”.  At best you feel trepidation – at worst; blind panic.

Clients don’t need to see the tools before the operation – it is not helpful for most of them.

The solution is incredibly simple.  Instead of showing them all the amazingly painful tools, get out a blank sheet of paper.

You did read that right.…I love gadgets, technology, and cool apps as much as the next person…and agree that we need to get a lot of information to be able to do the job professionally and completely.  So I suggest a blank piece of paper is the way to go.

You see, when you sit in front of a client with a blank sheet of paper you are subliminally suggesting a number of positive things to them:

1. this process is about them, not you.

2. there are no preconceived or preset paths to be taken.

3.  you are entirely focused on them, and paying attention to what they are saying.

4.  you know your stuff – you know what you need to do; you know what you have to get; you know where you are going with this process.

5.  you are actually really listening to them.

If you want to break down the barriers in your business and get higher levels of engagement and participation by clients consider going old school for some parts of your process.  A blank sheet of paper is still compliant – if you have done your work properly and gathered the required information.  It isn’t the tool that does the job, it is you.  A tool is just a tool – an inanimate object that does nothing valuable until it is used properly by an artisan.

Remember that the ultimate sophistication is simplicity.

Some simple things have stood the test of time because they were the best ways of doing things.  And the least painful ways.

To read more, go to http://financialadvisercoach.com

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There are 5 key things that the adviser must do – and be able to evidence afterwards – to show that they have worked for the benefit of the client, and not acted out of self-interest. 

It comes down to being able to show that you “know your client”.

Knowing your client (as a principle of regulatory testing) is about understanding the clients situation and needs in order to provide suitable advice that is most likely to help them achieve their objectives.

The 5 things an adviser must do in order to play it safe, and be able to show they have been working in the clients interests, consist of 3 process steps and 2 ethical considerations.  They are:

1. Identify the objectives and needs of the client, together with showing they know the clients financial situation.
2. There must be clear instructions regarding what advice is being sought, or offered.
3. The relevant client circumstances need to be understood and documented. Gathering the right information and having clear understanding with the client, as outlined in these three steps, will go a long way towards satisfying future critics.  However, to ensure that you are REALLY working in the client’s best interest, two further tests can be applied.
4. Did the adviser to attempt to find out more information regarding the client’s circumstances if it could be considered “reasonably apparent” that the information provided by the client was inaccurate or incomplete?
5. Does  the adviser have the competency and expertise to provide the advice required?  This is effectively a self-assessment on the advisers’ part – but hey, we know whether we know enough to do the job properly really don’t we?

In reality, the ethical tests are never applied – unless the regulator comes knocking for an audit, or a customer expresses dissatisfaction.  Both of those circumstances can happen at any time, so you do have to apply these tests.  If you find yourself as an adviser thinking “I don’t think I have the knowledge to do that really well”….then you really should decline to try and provide the advice.  Otherwise you are inviting future dissatisfaction and problems.

One of the key things that is often misunderstood by financial advisers is that you will rarely be playing in terribly unsafe territory because of product non-performance (e.g. problem insurance claims, investment market losses) – IF your process is sound.  The adviser will be judged primarily on the basis of the processes they can prove to have used, and the extent to which they have demonstrated the principle of “the clients interest first”.

To play it safe as an adviser therefore there are 2 big things to do:

1. Have a process showing you understand your client, their circumstances, and objectives.
2. Conduct yourself honestly – especially in assessing your own competency.

All blogs are the personal views and opinions of Tony Vidler, Strictly Business Ltd, only. They should not be attributed or linked to any other organisation or business that Tony or Strictly Business Ltd may work with at any time. For more great ideas on how Strictly Business can help your professional advice business perform better and grow, visit www.financialadvisercoach.com

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