Financial Advisor Blog on Marketing, Lead Generation, Prospecting and Sales

The advisor explained, “I don’t get it. I used to get 60 people to my seminar and I am doing the exact same thing and now I’m lucky to get 15 people. I guess seminars don’t work anymore.”

This type of lunacy is common. The old definition of lunacy is “doing the same thing and expecting to get a different result.” The new definition is “doing the same thing when the environment has changed and expecting to get the same marketing result.” You won’t get the same result when your prospects think differently, act differently and have their attention in new arenas. It’s a different world than 2000.

Before the bear market in 2001/2002, Bin Laden & Company visiting New York on 9/11 and large securities firms knowingly touting dot-com stocks on the verge of bankruptcy a screaming buy, your prospects lived in a different reality. My hat’s off to you that you found a way to successfully market and sell in that old environment. But to think that the same tactics will still work, well, that’s lunacy!

Let’s recreate your marketing results for current times. A great marketing and sales program is the result of accurately defining your prospects’ current concerns. Their current concerns are:

• I am afraid of losing money
• I am afraid I will die when fanatics gas my neighborhood mall
• I am afraid that the world will never be normal again
• I am afraid that I will never be able to retire
• I am afraid I will get laid off
• I am afraid I will have to support my kids/grandkids

Therefore, when you send the same old “Prepare for a Successful Retirement” seminar invitation and you get three calls, don’t be surprised. The invitation needs to read:

Title: “How to Protect What You’ve got and Still Retire Before Old Age”

--the new reality of the stock market
—who can you trust?
--mutual funds that have increased in value in the last 36
months
--troubled times
—is the rising price of gold an opportunity for you?
--how to re-inflate your dreams for a great college education for your
children
--three things to check again to make sure your family is protected against
the worst

You’ve got to address investor concerns and when you do, they respond.

Here’s how to keep the pulse of your prospect’s concerns so that you can keep your marketing current:

1. Listen to your clients—the questions they ask and concerns they have are the same as other like them (same age, situations, etc)
2. Watch the nightly news and read the daily newspaper. People are incredibly influenced by the press
3. Run your own focus group with your target market: put an ad in the paper “Free dinner at Fish House Restaurant to participate in a focus group—people age xx to xx, household income $xxx,xxx. Provide your opinions re current concerns and financial issues for local financial firm research.

You must focus on a moving target as the public is always influenced by the latest constantly-changing events, so you must know what they’re thinking. If you don’t listen to your marketplace, they won’t listen to you.

In selling yourself and your financial services, it’s critical to realize that we live in a culture where prejudging is epidemic. Investors love to form opinions with almost none of the facts. Just listen to any economic prognosticator on television or your clients’ opinions about the stock market to see what I mean.

This prejudging virus forces you to alter your financial services marketing to make your best impression in the first 2 seconds of contact because you won,t get a second chance. The prospect will form a positive or negative judgment almost immediately. Let me give you some specific examples.

When sending direct mail, do all of your envelopes get opened? I doubt it because you allow the recipient to prejudge the contents without opening the envelope. You have a return name of your company on the envelope and you may also have a printed message on the outside of the envelope. You have a meter stamp and maybe a bar code or carrier route sort indicator. All of these scream “JUNK MAIL.” You will never get to communicate your message because the envelope gets tossed in the trash, unopened. You have allowed people to prejudge you and assume the contents of the envelope. Tip: mail items to strangers in a plain business envelope with a first class stamp, no messages, no bar codes, no return company name (use your own name) and with the recipient’s address laser printed on the envelope or through a window envelope. It’s impossible to prejudge the contents of a blank envelope and the recipient must open it. This will be financial services marketing that gets results.

The item in the envelope must have a super-compelling headline and it must be the first thing the recipient sees when they pull the information from the envelope. If the first item the recipient sees does not grab their interest in 2 seconds, you’re finished. TIP: include a big compelling headline and fold the page so that the headline is the first item seen when opening the envelope flap.

When sending information requested by a prospect or to a referral, include a picture and biography. (Have your picture at the bottom of every letter you send to the right of your signature). Remember that you are a stranger to the prospect. People are scared of strangers. By including your picture and biography, they get to know you. When you call, they feel like they know you because they know how you look form your picture. Tip: find the best commercial photographer in town as a good picture can open the door to win new clients.

Brian Tracy, well known motivational educator says, “the reason image is so important is because people are primarily visual and they form their first impression of you by the way you look on the outside. If they do not like what they see on the outside, they very seldom take the time to probe any deeper. In any field of sales and marketing where the impression you make on others is important to your success, it is absolutely essential that you look the part that is consistent with the financial product or service you wish to sell.” Clearly, Mr. Tracy understands financial services marketing.

As to your biography, DO NOT write a “me” biography. A “me” biography is where you talk about yourself “I graduated from Stanford…”, “I am a Certified Fund Specialist,” etc. Write it in the third person and before mentioning your position or credentials, have three to four sentences about what you can do for the prospect:

“John Doe has assisted over 2000 Ohio families increase their income up to 30% and reduce taxes up to 50%. In some cases, investors have used John’s advise to eliminate taxes on social security income and eliminate estate taxes. You may have seen his informative articles on ways to reduce stock market risks in the Akron Journal.”

Only after you have established why you are valuable, do you mention where you went to school and your credentials. Investors are interested in “what can you do for me?” before they want to hear anything about you. And when you do talk about yourself, keep all sales language out of the biography. That means you do not say “John is a registered rep with ABC securities” (unless your broker dealer requires it). Not only do 90% of investors not know what a registered rep is, the other 10% of the people know that you just want to sell something. Sure, everyone knows you’re in business to make a living, but never push any sales language in their face in a biography.

And obey some common courtesies so that people do not prejudge you negatively:

1. On your first telephone contact, do not interrupt prospects. It’s a problem that some of my hard-driving East Coast friends have.
2. Do not close to an appointment without identifying their motivation so that you can offer a potential benefit. When you try to close for a meeting and the prospect’s desires have not been isolated, you will appear pushy.
3. When mailing, do not take a 4-panel letter-sized brochure and stuff it into a business envelope. Use a 9 x 12 envelope so that the brochure can lay flat and the mailing looks professional.

Focus your financial services marketing on those first 2 seconds to gain your opportunity to present who you are and what you can do.

Do you feel rejected when people don’t want what you are offering? Actually, when people do not want what you offer, they usually say “no” and you experience rejection. The sales process would be a lot more enjoyable and profitable if you never had to hear the word “no.” It is possible to avoid hearing the word “no,” if you follow these rules:

Never approach anyone that has not previously expressed interest, and ask them enough questions so that before you make a recommendation, you understand their concerns completely and know that they want what you offer. If you address their concerns completely, you should only hear “yes.”

Let’s take a look at both issues.

Getting people interested

You get people to first express interest by:

• Responding to an ad,
• Responding to a seminar invitation,
• Responding to a direct mail offer, or
• Buying a list where people have responded to other offers that match your offer (find such lists at www.srds.com).
  

Since the prospects has made the first move, your follow up is a response to their interest. Notice that none of the above methods of contacting prospects involves cold calling. Cold calling is a very inefficient way to find good prospects and it involves lots of rejection. I never cold call.

Now you’re thinking “but running an ad or mail campaign costs money and cold calling does not.” This is true. But you’re running a business. Do you know any successful businessperson that does not invest in their business? I don’t. So either leave the business and get a job (working for someone else who investments in their business) or realize that in order to be a successful business owner, you will need to invest in yourself.

I truly apologize if no one told you that. When you first started in this business, the company recruiting you wasn’t concerned if you had to face constant rejection nor did they mind that you wasted your time cold calling. They only paid you a commission when you made a sale, so your inefficiency didn’t cost them anything.

Let me give you an example of how investing can eliminate rejection. I wanted to sell more annuities. So I developed a compelling ad that gets annuity owners to call me for a free booklet. I send the booklet and make the follow up call a few days later. When I call, after introducing myself I ask them, “what motivated you to call for the booklet?”

They usually launch into something about their curiosity, interest, or problem. If they said something like “I’m not interested.” I would then ask, “Why then did you call me and ask for the booklet?” No matter what direction the conversation takes, there cannot be any rejection. They can only say they don’t want to talk about it; they want to read the booklet or something similar. All of those things are their issue because they called from the ad and “solicited” me. I didn’t contact them unsolicited.

Is there a fit between your services and the prospect wants?

Let’s deal with the next issue. The prospect and I agree to a meeting. The objective of our first meeting is to determine whether or not there is a fit between their desires and my products and services. My objective is NOT to sell them something. Making a sale becomes my objective only after I determine there is a fit between their desires and my expertise and products. The first meeting is for me to determine if I should reject them. If you skip this and believe that your objective in meeting with people is to sell them something, you will get a lot of rejection.

During the conversation to qualify them, I need to ask very powerful questions designed to assist the prospect to see their desires for themselves. It goes something like this: (S=salesperson, C=potential client)

S: Do you feel you pay too much taxes?
C: Yes, they’re terrible.

S: What have you done about that?
C: Well nothing. I keep hoping my accountant will figure out something.

S: But your taxes have remained high anyway?
C: Yes, they’ve gone up.

S: How has your accountant helped you with this?
C: He hasn’t.

S: What solutions do you think there are?
C: That’s why I’m here, to learn about solutions.

S: What solutions have you heard about?
C: I know there are tax free bonds and annuities but don’t know much about them.

S: You’d like to learn more about these to see which might be best?
C: Absolutely. Can you explain them to me?

S: I’d be happy to. But let me ask you something. Why is reducing your taxes so important? What will you do with the extra money you keep?
C: I’d take another trip.

S: You enjoy travel?
C: I love it. I have waited my entire working career to retire and travel to the places I want.

S: How does that make you feel when you can go more places?
C: Like a success. Like working my entire life has been worthwhile.

S: So If I can show you a solution that will allow you to pay less tax and travel more, we will have accomplished something important for you today?
C: Absolutely.

S: I see from your tax return, you paid $30,000 in taxes last year. By how much do you think it’s reasonable to reduce that?
C: I guess by $10,000—that would give me more cash for travel.

S: I see from your statements that you have $200,000 in the bank. If you needed to move that money to an investment that would give you that $10,000 tax savings to be used for travel, would their be any problem with that?
C: No, not at all. That money is just sitting there as I don’t know what else to do with it.

Notice that in this conversation I have made no statements. I have only asked questions. If you want to know what your prospect wants, then ask questions. They will tell you. Then, when you do get to the recommendation, they will say “yes” because your recommendation will be 100% consistent with what they told you they wanted.

This is so ridiculously simple yet so many people in financial sales people guess at what the prospect desires. There is no need to guess, just ask. There is no need to go into the second meeting thinking “I hope they go for this set of recommendations…” Rather, you will go into the meeting knowing that they will say yes; there will be no rejection. It’s like someone telling you that if you could get them the model 5556 car in black with tan interior, they would take it. You then meet them again in a few days and say “here’s model 5556 in black with the tan interior. Is this what you want?”

If they do respond in some inconsistent way then get rid of this prospect rapidly as you cannot serve anyone who changes their desires within a short period. Most people will, of course, say they want the car.

This simple 2-step sales process will keep you from being rejected and make the sales process a lot more enjoyable.

Use the resources and ideas below and in a year’s time you can easily have a thousand
email addresses of investors in your area. Then, just use a dripping system like this client newsletter to email them each month and turn them into clients. You can stay in front of prospects for peanuts and have a continuous drip campaign. These contacts will not only lead to new clients but also:
• Invitations to speak at their clubs
• Invitations to write articles for their newsletter
• Referrals to others not even on your list

1) Get Email Lists from Your Existing Clients
In addition to asking your clients for their email address, ask your clients for list of
email addresses they may have. They may be willing to share them with you or make a
solicitation for you. For example, say you have a client that belongs to the local garden club with 250 members. Your client may be happy to give you a copy of that list or solicit the members on your behalf with something like the following email:

Dear Folks,
Bob Smith has been my financial advisor for the last three years. He has an excellent
newsletter for us seniors called “SeniorFinances” and you can get a free subscription.
Each issue contains articles on where to invest for more income, items on insurance like
long-term care, tips on reducing your income taxes and estate planning, etc. To get a
free email subscription, just click here.
Stu Svenson
President

2) Rent a an Email List
Just like you can rent mailing lists for sending mail, you can rent millions email
Addresses targeted to specific investors. Of course, you may only want those in your area and you can select those you desire by zip code.
At your library, you can find a copy of the “SRDS” Direct Marketing List Source (your
library may have this service on-line from a PC at the library).
If they have the physical books, find the section with the email lists and look down the
directory for lists that contain people with money, such as

• People who take cruises
• People who own luxury cars
• People who gave large political contributions

Most of these lists area available by zip code and by age of person.
In the details of the list, you want the lists that offer a zip code selection so you can email to only those prospects in your area.

Please note that unlike regular mailing lists, email list vendors usually will not give you the list. They will want to do the email for you. So you are not going to be emailing them the newsletter. Rather you are going to be emailing them a solicitation to subscribe to your newsletter. It is those people who respond that you will add to your email newsletter list. Once they respond you then "own" that email address.

We have prepared the email text to send to a rented list below.

Don’t let the wrong financial advisor take advantage of you! Get your FREE subscription to SeniorFinances Newsletter, designed especially for people (describe your target prospect) Don’t be in the dark about your money!
Easy to read articles on:
Ways to reduce your taxes that you won’t hear from your accountantHow to steer clear of “sucker” mutual fundsSafe income investments that pay you 6% and MOREHow to slash taxes on your IRA withdrawals by 50%Understand long term care insurance before you buyHow different types of annuities work and which can help youHow to get cash for your old life insurance policy (more than your insurance company will pay)The big difference between bonds and bond funds that many retirees don’t realizeHow to identify hidden fees in your mutual fundsAnd much more on taxes, IRAs, annuities, long term care, investing for income,insurance and every phase of finances that affects people (description of your target market).

Receive SeniorFinances FREE every month:
Just hit reply to this email and then in your reply provide your information below to get your subscription:
Your Name:
Your zip code:>

3) Inexpensive Ads on Local Web Sites

There are dozens of web sites focused on specific groups in your area. Just for fun,
we did a search on “Columbus Ohio Senior.” Here’s what we got without looking any
further:
http://www.ohiosenior.com—a web site for Ohio retirees—$49 a month for a banner ad
http://www.columbuswired.net/SeniorLiving/default.htm—the senior page of Ohio’s web
magazine—$20 a month
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~seniors/—the Aging in Ohio web site
http://www.subasekb.navy.mil/retkbnews.htm—the site for local Navy retirees
http://www.oshpra.org/mends.htm—the Retiree Association of the Ohio State Patrol
The ads are very inexpensive ($20 -$50 per month) and thousands of seniors can see your
ad to subscribe to your free senior newsletter.

4) Subscribe to Our National Internet Marketing Service (if your target prospect is the 50+ crowd)

The SeniorLeads™ service advertise on all of the national senior web sites asking seniors if they want free financial information on retirement issues.
If you subscribe for that service, we provide you the leads for your area.

5) Have a Sign-Up Form on Your Own Website

If you have your own website, be sure to promote the newsletter on the site and have lots
of places where they can sign up for it. Promote your website using Google pay per click on a local basis.

I interviewed a sales candidate yesterday and he told me the two most important things about sales are listening and fulfilling your prospect's needs. Most people in sales would agree that these are important aspects about sales and this conclusion is unfortunately wrong.

First, people never, ever buy what they need. Needs are not relevant to any human action unless a matter of survival. (You will kill wild game with your bare hands if you are starving and need to eat to survive. In all other non-survival situations, you will not act based on your needs). Human action (unless for survival) is based solely on desire. The Centers for Disease Control report that 65% of Americans are obese and need to lose weight. But notice that most of those people are not on a diet. The only people that have called Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig or have placed themselves on the South Beach diet are those that want to lose weight. If you want to be a poor sales professional, keep focusing on prospect needs and you won't make any sales. Worse, take an a seemingly altruistic motivation to supply to people what they need (but they don't want).

This difference between needs and wants is not a semantic issue. I did some work for a VERY large insurance company. They have their agents complete a needs assessment for each new prospect. The entire indoctrination of their agents about prospect needs insures that their agents sales are significantly diminished. If the company simply changed the form name to "Desires Assessment" or "Wants Assessment", the conversation between the agent and the prospect would be altered, the prospects motivations for action would become more clear, more quickly, the prospect would be better served and the agent and the insurance company would make more sales.


The second issue of importance to this sales candidate was listening. But the important question is listening to what? Listening to what the prospect says? Sit down because this will shock you: what the prospect says is irrelevant. If you listen to what the prospect says and respond to that, you will likely have the typical sales conversation of trying to convince, persuade and overcome objections. This is because your prospect is programmed to say things to ruin your sale, to interrupt your scripted presentation and to make it hard for you to close. So don't listen to what they say.


Here's an example. A prospect may ask a sales professional at our company, Javelin Marketing, "where do you run your ads to attract prospects for my business?" In fact, the prospect could care less where we run the ads. The prospect is doing the best he can to use words to express his concern. His concern, if you really listen, is, "will you be able to get me quality prospects that will do business with me?" The sales professional who speaks to his concerns will avoid a needless conversation (about the various web sites where the ads run), better serve the prospect by addressing their actual concerns and close the sale is less time.

Everyone tells you to get client referrals, that it’s the easiest way to build your business. But how many financial advisors do you know who get an abundance of referrals? Not too many. And how many producers work hard at it, but end up with little results? They join the board of a non-profit, they contribute to the symphony and get season tickets, and they hobnob in the “right” places. That’s a lot of work for uncertain results. Successful referral gatherers simply have their clients bring them more people. Those few financial advisors who have a continuous stream of client referrals have discovered three things that you too can use to generate that continuous client referral flow.

1. When starting off a new client relationship, you must ask your new client, “What will I need to do so that you tell all of your friends about me?” WRITE DOWN THE ANSWER AND THEN DO IT! Most clients will not say, “I want a 25% annual return,” or some other request that is impossible to honor. They will say something like, “I just want you to stay in touch every couple months, help me not to lose money and call back the same day when I call you.” You can certainly promise this and deliver it.

2. After 60-90 days, you set up a meeting with your client. You explain that the meeting is to do a review and for their assistance in developing your business. Tell them to bring their phone/address book. At the meeting you read to them what they told you at the beginning of the relationship. You read them the requirement they stated in step #1 above. Then ask them if you have done what they required. They then see that you did what you promised and they will also. They will provide you client referrals.

3. Last, you need to get your client to introduce you to the referral. If you just get a referral name and phone number from a client, that’s pretty worthless. When you call the referral without an introduction don’t expect much because: They don’t know who you are. They don’t know what you do. They don’t know why you are calling. They don’t know how you got their name. They don’t know why somebody gave you their name and they are not expecting your call. Therefore, you need your client to call the referral, send a note or physically introduce you.

Getting your client to send a note is easiest because you can have your client sign a standard form letter saying how great you are. With your client’s permission, you then run it back through your printer adding your client’s return address. The note arrives at the referral’s home and appears to have been sent from your client’s home. Of course, not every client will provide referrals. However for those clients that provide none, you will have other clients that provide 25. The key is to treat this as a system rather than an ad hoc process of asking whenever you remember. This process is neither a lot of work nor very time consuming. Best of all, you can build these three simple steps into your normal client monitoring procedures. Three simple steps to generate new clients every month.

Learn how to get professional referrals from CPAs, attorneys and other business owners.

Every financial advisor has had the experience of losing a sale. You're left scratching your head knowing that your proposal was right on, and the prospect should now be a client. What went wrong? Although there can be many reasons that the sale did not close, in today's post, I will talk about one element in particular--your lack of credibility.

Don't be insulted, I'm not addressing you personally. But please realize that in many cases, you simply are not a credible financial advisor in the eyes of the prospect. They have no prior knowledge of you, they were not referred to you by a trusted friend, and given the financial horror stories they read about in the newspaper, they are leery of you.

From the prospect's point of view, are you any different than any other financial advisor in town? Is there any reason they should trust you? Often, we expect people to trust us just because we know we are nice people. If you want to capture more sales, you will need to prove yourself.

Can you overcome this prospect skepticism, even though they just met you?

The most powerful way in our society to overcome skepticism and to establish yourself as a trustworthy expert is to get published or have others write about you. Before you decide that this solution won't work for you, I'll show you that you do not need to write a word.

Think about it. Don't people believe what they read in the newspaper? Don't they automatically trust news reporters, columnists and authors? You can join these trusted ranks.

First, you can get interviewed repeatedly by your local press. Many times, our staff has been interviewed as the "expert" in local newspapers, national journals and on the web. I really don't know any more about financial planning, insurance and investments than you do. I do however know how to get the press to pay attention to me. There is a simple process of sending press releases that gets the press to pay attention to me. Although describing this process and showing you a sample press release would be too lengthy for this article, just do a Google search on "press release writing" and you will find plenty of samples.

Secondly, you can write your own booklets. We ghost write financial booklets on several financial topics used by financial advisors all across the country. These financial advisors booklets give producers instant credibility and their closing ratio soars. I just got this email from a user this week, "Your annuity marketing system works beautifully!! My annuity sales are skyrocketing." I did not teach this producer one thing about sales or annuities. I merely gave him a tool that positioned him as an expert in his local market. He now has credibility and he closes more sales.

Third, you can write a book. Actually, you do not need to write one word. I have seen estimates that up to 20% of books published are not written by the author whose name is on the book. These books are ghost written. You can do the same. You can hire a ghost writer to write what you want. You do not need to start from scratch and the work is already done, as there are some books on the market, already written, that can be printed with your name and picture.
Please be aware of FINRA rules about ghostwritten materials and make the proper disclosures. These disclosures are made in the booklets produced by Javelin Marketing.

Use these three recommendations to get credibility, establish yourself as an expert, and close more sales.

Many financial advisors would like more and better clients. But their effort to obtain new clients is often wasted and misplaced. Here are three concepts that can help you attract more and better clients:

Make yourself scarce. We live in a culture where people want what they cannot have. In order for people to want you, you must make yourself scarce. That means you only deal with people who fit your profile (yes, turn away business). In all marketing you do, communicate that you only deal with a certain segment of people Here’s an example. A financial advisor only deals with people age 60 and over. His firm is called Senior Resources. His business card says “Retiree Investment Management.” He does not deal with people under 60. If his client says, “Can you help my son—he’s 48 and he has some money,” he declines and refers the son to a colleague. By being so picky, his clients refer him to others as “He’s a specialist in dealing with people like us.” No client wants to go to a generalist. They want a financial specialist. What do you specialize in?

Another example is the financial advisor who specializes in an industry, For example, an ex-engineer who only prospects chemical engineers. He becomes known in that circle, writes a columns for the engineers’ magazine and becomes an invited speaker at conventions. I know a guy who sold hundreds of life insurance polices to United Airlines pilots by visiting their layover facility at major airports. He gave talks to a group of pilots as they were waiting for their next flight. Be different. Every time you open an account, it’s because you offer something different than the client’s current advisor. Yet most brokers look alike—many do the same activities, offer the same products and services and are indistinguishable from the next broker. Why should the prospect deal with you? You distinguish yourself from others by crafting your business differently.

One way to be a unique financial advisor is by focusing on a certain niche as described above and making yourself scarce. Another way is to run your business differently. For example, if most financial advisors are recommending mutual funds, then you recommend stocks (and have a well researched argument with evidence as to why stocks would be better). If other advisors offer bond funds for fixed income, you offer individual bonds (and have a good presentation as to why individual bonds would be better). If other financial advisors have no system for selecting stocks, then you specialize in quantitative systems like the Dow Dividend Strategy, Value Line or CANSLIM (as documented by William O’Neill in How to Make Money in Stocks). Show people why “guessing” about stocks is no way to invest and why a structured system brings all-important discipline to the process. If other financial advisors are raising money for third party money managers, you be the money manager (if you use a structured system, the time it takes to manage portfolios is negligible as the system does the work).

If every one in your office is selling growth stocks, then specialize in precious metals or whatever interests you. Team up with the other financial advisors in your office and split commissions. They are not talking to their clients about metals and this business will be lost. It would be smart for both of you to split commissions and have him introduce you to his clients (other brokers will bring you business if they you are not competing with them, that you specialize in an area they don’t know about—metals, options, 401k, etc).

Write. In our culture, financial advisors who write are considered financial experts. If your name is in the newspaper or on the spine of a book, you will stand out from other brokers. You do not need to write a word. There are firms that offer ghost writing services to make you an author overnight. Think of the difference when you can give a prospect a copy of your book. Do you think he is more inclined to open an account with you? What about sending information to a referral and you include in the envelope two articles from the daily newspaper in which you are interviewed and one article you authored. Have you increased the probability of that prospect becoming a client? As you implement your marketing, ask yourself each week how you are being different and distinguishing yourself from every other broker in town. Why will prospects leave their current financial advisor to join you?

Do you ever get off the phone or leave an appointment thinking, “that prospect seemed really interested. He could become a really good client.” You feel good about the outlook with this client. Every time you do this, you train yourself for sales failure.

In fact, you have ended the visit or phone call with the prospect and you have failed to make a sale, you have failed to get any type of commitment whatsoever and now “reward” yourself with some “good feeling” because the conversation went well. Most prospects are pleasant. They won’t say “no” to your face. They will simply string you along. This is likely another pleasant prospect stringing you along and the sad thing is that you feel good about it. You reward yourself for sales failure.

This scenario happens again and again because you are training yourself with positive thoughts every time it occurs. Rather, you should be saying to yourself, “I screwed up if I did not get the sale. Period.” That way, you can take action not to have a failed sale again. Not every successful sales conversation ends in a check. The sale in large cases, may take several steps so each communication needs to have a “sale” defined as a satisfactory conclusion telling you that the prospect has bought the next step. If the conclusion to the meeting would not have been a check, then other acceptable conclusion in a multi-step sales can be:

• Agreement to meet (or call) again on a specific date and time at a specific location
• Agreement to sample the item or get started with a toe in the water
• Agreement to check to another important party and get back to you by a specific time

If you didn’t make the sale, don’t feel good about it. Feel lousy and take corrective action so it does not happen again.

do not deal with Emailappenders--this company will not give you accurate lists and will then keep your money.

read more | digg story

Buyers are not only focused on their own best interest, they want it now. Yet, you spend most of your working hours offering future payoffs to prospects. Yet future payoffs are hazy and often hard to conceive. Let’s take an example.

The Center for Disease control reports that 61% of Americans are overweight. I postulate that most of those people know that being overweight:

• Takes years off their life


• Results in increased risk of heart disease—the #1 killer of Americans


• INCREASES the risk of numerous other diseases such as diabetes, gout, hardening of the arteries—which not only produce a shorter life expectancy but creates fewer desirable days while alive


• Can significantly reduce the enjoyment of old age, possibly restricting travel or resulting in the need for a walker rather than being fit and playing golf three times a week


• May result in a condition where the last weeks or months or life are spent writhing in an uncomfortable hospital bed or nursing home, ill, rather than at their comfortable home

Americans also know that high fat/high carbohydrate foods contribute to being overweight. So why is it, in light of the dismal outcome of being overweight, Americans consume an estimated 100,000 pounds of cheesecake a month, a food saturated with fat and carbohydrates?

Because it tastes good right now. Your prospects are far more interested in an immediate payoff than what you’ve been offering for your entire career. You’ve offered products and services that pay off 5, 10 maybe even 30 years in the future. But your prospects want the cheesecake now, more than they want good health in 30 years.

Is it any wonder that the baby boomer generation has a savings rate for retirement less than 2% of income, yet the sales of BMWs (fun to drive right now) continue to soar? Retirement is years away but that road hugging, corner grabbing, quick acceleration offered by precision German engineering is instant gratification!

Those mutual funds you offer, those annuities, that LTC policy, the life policy—all produce benefits far into the future—a place that has little allure for Americans who relish today’s good time.

You can sell twice as many products and services (and help a lot more people) when you show your prospect the payoff is right now.

The cliché question the old-time life insurance salesman used to ask is a great example. He asks the husband in front of the wife, “Do you love your family?” That salesman understood that people buy because there is a payoff right now. The payoff to the husband is his demonstration of love for his family (as well as the added incentive of not having his wife brow beat him. He trades off saving the premium for showing love of his family).

When you sell an LTC policy, don’t focus on some payoff 20 years from now and your bevy of statistics about people entering nursing homes. Rather, offer current payoffs:

“Mrs. Smith, do you like to keep your options open?” (A loaded question as this is an American addiction). Then, would it be better to have this protection now and be able to cancel it at any time OR, wake up tomorrow with an illness, never able to get this protection no matter how much you want it? Which of these scenarios would give you better options?

In the above situation, the payoff you offer (keeping options open) is in the present, not 20 years away.

When you speak to the engineer about investing in the mutual fund portfolio, is there a current payoff you can offer? Every engineer I have met wants to be smart and be right. So you might ask, “Steve, do you know these names: Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Richard Branson, Sam Walton, and Rupert Murdoch? Do you know in which single asset they all focus their money during their careers?” They invested their money in businesses, just like you have the chance to do by owning these funds. So do you want to take the risk of investing your way or do what these brilliant, super wealthy, super successful and super smart people have done? Do you want to join them?”

No one has ever made a decision that did not have a current payoff (even if that payoff was to feel good now about organizing their future). Your job is to help uncover (for yourself and the prospect) what that current payoff is for them and have them make the decision for that benefit.
America is a wonderful country and Americans are wonderful clients. To have them take action, just answer their perpetual question, “What’s in it for me right now?”

The perpetual question in every American mind is “what’s in it for me right now?” The more frequently you answer that question, the more contribution you make to others, the more they are attracted to, the more referrals they give you and the richer you get. Let’s explore examples of our failure to answer that question and why so many financial advisors and other professionals don’t earn what they would like to earn.

I meet advisors who do seminars about the “stretch” IRA. This proper IRA structure simply insures that the IRA beneficiary will be able to defer the IRA distributions over their life expectancy. My question is, “what’s in it for the prospect, the parent?” Sure, if their child’s financial wealth is the parent's priority, then the seminar attendee, the parent, will have an interest in the stretch IRA. But if their own financial well being is paramount, do they care about helping their kids stretch out the kid’s tax bill?

When you discuss estate planning, isn’t it really about buying a life insurance policy to pay estate taxes? Since the people who receive your proposal will be dead when the estate taxes are due, what’s in it for them to buy life insurance? What’s in it for them to give you $30,000 a year now so their kids can easily pay a million dollar estate tax bill later?

When you call a local CPA to explain how you help people secure their future using long-term care insurance, is your offer to meet and explain this further so that he can pass this message on to his clients--and then refer them to you? What’s in it for the CPA?

People act in their own best interest and if your proposals continue to focus on any other objective, you will serve fewer people, get fewer referrals and you will earn far less than you should. Remember—you don’t serve what people need, you serve what they want.

If you want to have more clients with large IRAs, then why not talk about how to pay less tax on the IRA (by timing distributions to take advantage of lower tax brackets or by rolling assets to a qualified plan where a life insurance policy can be purchased on a pre-tax basis). The income tax savings accrue to your prospect directly and it’s clear what’s in it for them.

If you discuss estate planning, discussions of CRTs, gift annuities, advance directives, and power of attorney designations are all issues that provide a direct benefit to your prospect in the form of income tax savings or being cared for in the event of their illness or disability. The personal payoff is clear.

When you call another professional for the possibility of cultivating a referral source, how about starting the conversation as follows: “Stu, my name is Bob Richards and I have a large financial planning practice here in town. Many of my clients ask me to recommend an accountant and I am seeking to meet accountants that I can refer them to. Can I take you to lunch next week and find out about your business and if these clients would be suitable for you?” The accountant’s payoff for lunching with you is clear as day.

So how much time do you devote to conversations where:

There is no direct, certain and obvious payoff for the prospect
The payoff is for someone other than the prospect
The payoff is for you

You’ll be even more successful when you answer the more refined question, “what’s in it for me right now?” Let’s address this immediacy issue in the post of July 11.

Professionals new to marketing make the mistake of taking their cues from big business. Don’t market or advertise your services as big businesses do as your context is not the same. The main issues hinge on the difference between “push and pull” and “branding.”

Push and Pull

Large companies use the “pull” method of marketing. General Motors runs ads to make their cars look enticing to pull you into the dealership to take a test drive. Intel advertises “Intel inside” in order to have you come to the computer dealer and ask for an Intel machine. This type of advertising to be effective takes A LOT of money. You don’t have that much. You cannot run full page ads in your daily newspaper day after day to generate sufficient business. Even if you did, it would be a very inefficient use of your money.

For your context, you want to “push” people to you. “Push” technologies include:

• Cold calls
• Seminars
• Direct Mail
• Use of telemarketers
• Networking
  

Notice that pull marketing is passive: the advertiser runs the ad and hopes for something to happen. Push marketing does not leave things to chance. You make direct contact with the prospect and push them into action. The cost of this marketing is lower than pull marketing and more cost effective.

Direct Response vs. Branding

There has been much written and talked about in the last 15 years about “branding yourself.” Frankly, this is promoted by people who make money by selling you branding items: brochures, radio ads, newspaper ads, etc. Do not waste money on branding activities. It will cost you a lot and produce very low results. You want to focus your marketing on direct response activities. Direct Response means that:

1. You always ask the prospect to respond to your marketing
2. You can always measure the result and profitability of a campaign

When you are sold a branding ad in the newspaper, the seller will always tell you that you cannot measure it directly because you don’t know how many people saw your ad and the “cumulative build up” of name recognition. This is simply an argument to keep you advertising and the seller making commission. If instead, you run a direct response ad, an ad offering a free booklet “Six Strategies to Cut Taxes Your CPA Never Mentioned,” you can count the number of calls you get. You can now calculate your cost per prospect, factor in your conversion rate to clients and then calculate your cost and profit per new client to determine the profitability of this ad campaign.

Use push not pull. Forget about branding and make direct response your mantra.

Buyers procrastinate. They are programmed to do so. Many sales professionals will try and overcome this with urgency by giving the prospect three reasons why they must buy now. This tactic will not work until you understand why prospects procrastinate and then you can deal with it effectively and make a sale.

Many things we do as humans we inherit—our genetics. One of the genes we inherit is the “caveman gene.” As cavemen, we learned to stay in the cave as much as possible because if we ventured out of the cave, the danger was great, as we could get eaten by lions or tigers or bears (oh my).

So we developed a strategy for survival. We stayed in the cave until it was absolutely essential, a matter of survival, to leave the cave. We left the cave only to make a kill for food. Our simple strategy became, “If I am comfortable or in minor discomfort, I will stay in the cave where I am safe. I will venture out of the cave only if I am about to die of starvation.” The modern mans’ version of this strategy is, “I will maintain the status quo as long as I am not too uncomfortable. I will change the status quo only if I am very uncomfortable.”

So you make a presentation to your buyer. He is genetically programmed by the caveman gene not to buy, to procrastinate, because to buy would be a change in his status quo. He is fearful on buying (i.e. leaving the cave) because such an action is dangerous while the status quo is not too uncomfortable. So you try and turn up the heat as your prospect procrastinates, making him even more uncomfortable. This insures he won’t buy.

Just the opposite tactic is what you want to employ. Your buyer procrastinates out of fear of making a mistake (getting killed in caveman days). In order to get him to leave the cave (buy), you want to show your prospect how safe it is to proceed. You want to calm your prospect and give him assurance, through evidence, testimonials or emotional appeal. The last thing you want to do is make your prospect more anxious and increase his emotional stress.

So the conversation may sound like this (S=seller, P=prospect):

S: Bob, it sounds like you have some uncertainly. I don’t want you to do anything that does not feel right. What is your concern?
P: The state of the markets are really treacherous with inflation, the credit crunch, the sup-prime crisis. I am just very nervous about buying in such an uncertain period.
S: That makes sense to me that the current environment makes you nervous. How do you think investors felt during the depression or in the middle of World War II or when we had the lines at the gas pumps in 1974?
P: I’ll bet they were freaked.
S: And in each case, the people that did invest when the markets were down because of this worry, how did they do with their investments when they looked back 10 years later?
P: I think they probably did pretty well. I know that the markets did really well the 10 years following World War II.
S: So what lesson can you glean about investing and the best time to invest?
P: I guess its best to invest when the markets are down. I’m just so nervous about doing so.
S: Understandably. But do you think that people who make money with their investments make money by using their head or allowing their emotions to hijack their actions?
P: I should likely use my head.
S: So what should we do next?

As we see from the above dialog, the seller allows the prospect to gain some calm by gaining some perspective on his decision. Additionally, as explained in a previous post, the seller does not tell the prospect anything. The seller asks questions and allows the prospect to see the right course of action.

Our procrastinator is now sufficiently calm to proceed.

People buy your product when the perceived value is greater than the cost. They won’t buy when the value is equal to or slightly greater than the cost. The difference between value and cost needs to be LARGE. That perceived difference typically has little to do with the product and more to do with your presentation. That’s why the best copywriters get paid more than $1 million a year for creating killer ads and that’s why million dollar producers earn millions a year for making killer sales presentations. How do you create maximum value and make a killer sales presentation?

You create value by having the prospect see that your product matches with their important goals.

You won’t do that by explaining or telling the features and benefits of your product. You do that my first asking questions and determining what’s really important to your prospect. The “really important” stuff does not sound like “making more money” or “savings taxes” or “lowering costs.” The really important stuff sounds like “taking care of my family” and “taking my grandchildren to Hawaii” and “being a responsible father.” If you don’t find out what’s really important to prospects, then don’t plan on being a million dollar producer.

Here’s what an insurance sales conversation sounds like by a million dollar producer (P=prospect, A=Agent).

P: I don’t really know why we agreed to meet with you. We really can’t afford any insurance.
A: I do help people get enough insurance but that’s not really what I wanted to talk with you about. Before I explain that, let me ask you a question. Since we are not going to talk about insurance, why did you set this time to meet?
P: I’m not sure; I guess you might have something useful to tell us.
A: About what?
P: About how to handle our money better.
A: Why, do you feel it’s not handled well now?
P: Well, I make a good living but it always seems we are behind, never able to do the things we want to do or are important, like get enough insurance.
A: Do you think that everyone has priorities?
P: Yes.
A: What are yours?
P: That confuses me sometimes.
A: Really? Is that your new BMW in the driveway?
P: Yes.
A: Do you have a loan on it?
P: Yes
A: Well, then I guess your priorities are clear. You have decided to put your family in debt and use your limited cash in order to drive a new German automobile instead of those things you previously alluded to as being important. Would you agree that people set their priorities with their checkbook?
P: Yes. And I don’t really feel good about it.
A: I think you do or you wouldn’t have bought the car. Do you notice that people do what makes them feel good today?
P: Sure
A: do you think this leads to the best decisions?
P: No, not at all, I think it’s a little immature.
A: What do you think is mature?
P: Making decisions based on the long run and those things that are really important
A: What’s really important to you?
P: The health of my family, being able to send my kids to good schools, making sure they are happy and protecting them
A: Do you feel you have made those things a priority—is the BMW consistent with that?
P: No.
A: Would you like to get on track and start living consistent with your priorities and making financial decisions consistent with them?
P: Yes.
A: Where do you think you should start?
P: Well, I know I need to start placing money in a college fund and I know I don’t have enough insurance should anything happen to me.
A: And god forbid you become disabled; are those you love protected?
P: I’m not sure if I have enough of that protection through work.
A: You tell me. If I could help you with the items you just mentioned so that you start making financial decisions consistent with your visions for your family, those things that are priorities and living the vision of being a responsible father that you have for yourself, would that be valuable for you?
P: Yes, that would be unbelievable.

At this point, the sale is made. The conversations that occur hereafter are mechanical. The prospect now desires to make a change. The product features are close to irrelevant because the prospect has made an emotional commitment. And the sale is not about insurance or anything about the product. The sale, when concluded by a master, is always about something important to the prospect because the prospect will ALWAYS buy that.

It’s amazing that every new recruit is told that “people buy emotionally” and then is immediately taught to sell logically using features and benefits. The dialog above is the true definition of selling that makes a difference:

• Selling is the asking of appropriate questions so that prospect sees the correct course of action for himself
• Selling is enrolling the prospect in their own vision
  
  

During the last several years, financial firms and professionals have become enamored with generating fees as opposed to commissions. The thinking goes something like this: let's gather assets and then charge an annual management fee. This will insulate our revenue stream from down markets because we will have this continuous revenue. We have seen our commission revenues drop during past bear markets and this must be the answer.

But the distinction that by changing the way we charge clients will alter the revenue stream is false. This is not widely recognized yet, because we have not experienced a bear market since this mania to fee-based accounts has gained momentum. Do you think that clients will willingly pay your fee each quarter when their account value keeps declining? For this reason, a fee revenue stream is even riskier than a revenue stream based on commissions. Clients will in fact be as fast to close their accounts whether they are paying for a fee-based account or by commissions.

Let's take an example. The last real bear market in the fall of 1987. I was working on a commission basis in a securities firm. I opened more new accounts during that quarter and gathered many new clients. This success is counter to the traditional wisdom that commissions business dries up during a bear market, as it does for most advisors. Why?

Because the average commission-based advisor is selling a product that depends on its public attractiveness. In other words, if you are a stock pusher, during a bear market, your sales dry up. How do your avoid this? You cease your product orientation, i.e. selling stocks and employ a client orientation, i.e. sell what people want.

In the last quarter of 1987, equity buyers were shell-shocked. It was obvious to me that they were not going to want stocks, but the conservative nature of bonds (many of which paid 10-12% then) would be very attractive. So I eliminated the word stock from my vocabulary and became a bond salesman. I sold millions and millions of Safeway bonds at 11.75%. The beauty of being in retail financial sales is that you have a product readily available for any market. You always have a product that the public wants. If inflation rears its head again, you can make a fortune selling gold stocks and gold mutual funds. If deflation occurs, long term, high quality fixed income instruments will rule.

The challenge is to realize that your job is NOT to sell product. It's to determine what the public wants and help them have it. When you do that successfully, fees vs. commissions becomes an irrelevant issue. The public does not buy from you based on how you charge. They buy from you when they see more value in doing business with you than not doing business with you.

Therefore, the idea that fees or commissions are a determinant of your personal business success or your firm's success is false. This will become obvious during the next bear market when everyone has jumped on the fee-based wagon thinking it's the panacea to the ups and downs of the markets. Clients will become dissatisfied with their returns and close their accounts. Then you'll be stuck in your fee-based/equity-based mind set with no way to generate new revenues.

Let's look at the evidence. Mutual funds are fee-based accounts. How long does the average client own them? Here's a quote from Dalbar's study of fund investor behavior:
"Despite the proliferation of educational materials and media coverage regarding the benefits of holding mutual funds for the long term, the average investor still holds their funds only 3 years, the same as in 1984."

I might add that since 1984, we have seen an explosion of no-load fund offerings--pure fee-based opportunities. Yet, investor behavior has remained the same: they are fickle and impatient and run their portfolios by emotion.

Once we all realize that, the distinction of how we charge the client will fall from the limelight. We will turn our attention to the messy psychological core of this business: how to master client-focused, emotionally-centered marketing.

[1] http://www.dalbar.com/quantitative_analysis.shtml

If you don't have an aggressive financial advisor marketing plan to keep clients, you will lose them.

In the past, marketing plans were all about how to get clients. But now, there are several factors which force you to focus on client retention or else they will say "bye bye." The factors are:

1. The level of trust in financial professionals has eroded due to questionable ethics on Wall Street (e.g. the ten largest brokerage firms admitting they peddled crap stocks during the dot come era and paid $1.4 billion in fines, the mutual fund scandal where institutional interests were placed above the individual shareholder interests, company CEOs treating corporate assets as their own financial play ground--e.g. Dennis Koslowski, Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay).
2. Failure of investors to make money. The Dow was about the same level as it is today in March of 2001. So many people had big losses from the dot com bust and have never earned it back.
3. Failure by you to add value. If all you provide is information (i.e., you explain to people how products work--a features and benefits conversation) and do not provide insight (the act of creatively matching clients personal desires with financial solutions), clients will perceive no value so why should they remain loyal?
4. And the most persistent and easily remedied reason of all, as Spectrem Group has reiterated in a recent survey (Financial Planning May 2008): the most common reason that clients leave their advisor is lack of contact.

Therefore, you need a marketing plan for client retention. That marketing plan could look like the following:

1. make sure every client call is returned within 12 hours
2. make personal contact with every client every 90 days by phone or in person
3. make contact every 30 days via newsletter or postcard or letter
4. have 2 client events per year--barbeque in July and holiday party in December
5. create a webinar every 3 months and post on your web site explaining what is happening in the economy and how it impacts your clients.

There are services that can make implementation of such a marketing plan for client retention easier. But the best part is, you may be able to tear up your financial advisor marketing plan to gain clients when you start getting a continuous flow of referrals by treating clients appropriately.

Many financial advisors have a knee-jerk negative reaction to a bear market. Securities firms commissions drop, brokers paychecks fall and the layoff of back office staff begins. This insanity repeats itself because brokers have failed to look at the underlying opportunities created by bear markets. In this article we will cover four of those opportunities.

You’ve Got More Prospects than Clients in a Bear Market
The negative reaction to bear markets is created by the broker's concern of his existing clients losing money. Let's assume you have 300 clients. You probably have a 10,000 prospects. By prospects, I mean all the people in your local area that meet your criteria for a new client and could potentially do business with you. Therefore, you have many more prospects than clients. In other words, your future is potentially brighter than your present.

Those10,000 prospects are now the clients of another financial advisor. These clients are getting less happy as a bear market progresses and are more inclined to make a change of advisers (you’re the broker in the “white hat” because you haven’t done anything wrong yet). That's very good for you. So while a bear market robs net worth from your existing clients, it creates a lot more motivated prospects that you can gain as new clients. Bear markets are an opportunity to open more new accounts than ever. In the three months following the 1987 market crash, I opened up 100 new accounts. What I did was simple.

The word “stock” became a dirty word during the bear market. So I had the good sense not to prospect with stocks but rather used bonds. At that time, Safeway had bonds yielding 11.75%. I called people age 60 and over and said “Mrs. Jones, the reason I'm calling is because Safeway is offering bonds that pay 11.75%. Do you ever shop there? They would of course answer “Yes.” “Well,” I said, “you've probably given them plenty of your money over the years, how would you like to have some of theirs?” I opened 100 new accounts.

The Fallacy of Perceiving Bear Markets as Bad
Your aversion to bear markets may stem from the fact that you view gaining new clients more difficult than keeping your existing clients. That's simply a function of your false scarcity mentality. There is, in reality, no scarcity of qualified prospects. As an analogy, ask any investment banker if there was any of scarcity of money for investment in companies with no revenues and no earnings. The banker knows that money is abundant and all that’s required is a good story. Similarly, prospects and new clients are abundant and any other perception is simply inaccurate.

Because you view clients as scarce, you can create more damage to your existing book during a bear market than is necessary. All along, you’ve been telling your clients to take the long term view. If you now react to the short term fluctuations, you appear to be talking out of both sides of your mouth, you appear to have no conviction and you appear far less trustworthy in the eyes of your clients. Now more than ever you must reiterate your long term philosophy. If you don't, you are guilty of the same criticism you have about most investors and their short-term orientation.

The Opportunity to Become a Better Money Manager
Bear markets are an opportunity for self education. If you've been a momentum investor, you now get to fully understand the ramifications of that methodology. These declines give you an opportunity to see if your strategies and philosophies are appropriate in all types of markets and whether you've selected the right types of clients.

My revenue never declined from existing clients during bear periods. I had each client on a system. They either paid an annual fee or they were on a system which required annual re-balancing and the constant flow of commissions each year. Brokers whose earnings decline in bear markets have their clients on a trading system (often called the shoot-from-the hip-system) which is bad for the client and bad for the broker. Time to clean up your act.


Your Clients Are Finally Ready to Listen
If you find that your clients are oriented toward the short-term no matter what you say, try this analogy with a client: “Joe, you have grandchildren don't you?” “Have you ever babysat for them when their mother went on an errand? The child asks when will mommy be back.” You say, “in about an hour.” Then five minutes later your grandchild says, “has it been an hour yet?” That's the same way adults act with the stock market. Rather than looking at the performance of their portfolio over years, which is the appropriate time frame for stock investing, they keep looking at their portfolio day to day and even minute to minute. “Has it been an hour yet?”

If you have younger clients you simply need to teach them as follows. Ask any client that’s 40-years-old if they will be investing more money during the rest of their life than they have already invested. If they say of course, then point out that bear markets are a huge buying opportunity with stocks on sale. Therefore, market declines help them more than hurt them because the bulk of their money is yet to be invested, at bargain prices. If you have clients dollar cost averaging, show them the example below which illustrates that dollar cost averaging benefits by higher volatility (over time, dollar cost averaging accumulates more shares from a volatile market than a stable market).

Dollar Cost Averaging—Volatile Market

Investment	Month	Price (changes 10% from start each month)	Shares Purchased
$100	January	$10	10
$100	February	$11	9.09
$100	March	$9	11.11
$100	April	$11	9.09
$100	May	$9	11.11
$500 (total investment)		$10 (average price for period)	50.4 (total shares accumulated)

Dollar Cost Averaging—Stable Market

Investment	Month	Price	Shares Purchased
$100	January	$10	10
$100	February	$10	10
$100	March	$10	10
$100	April	$10	10
$100	May	$10	10
$500 (total investment)		$10 (average price for period)	50 (total shares accumulated)

Bear markets are a great opportunity to take in new clients, orient your accounts to more stable investment methodologies and focus your business to capture the greatest profits yet to come.

Professionals don;t need to grovel for business and spend 50% of their time prospecting but I see many financial professionals groveling for business. They call the same prospect back a number of times, they study sales techniques and closing techniques, attend motivational seminars and buy motivational tapes. They attend seminars to learn how to get more referrals from their clients. All this activity to get more clients. Does your doctor do this? Does your CPA do this to get more clients?

So why don't the other professionals work so hard to get more clients? Here's the Zen paradox--they get more clients because they are less covetous of clients. Let me explain.

It's my experience that the average retail financial professional tries to hold onto every piece of business. Instead of introducing their client to a long term care expert, they attempt to learn what they can about long term care, make a half-baked presentation, and don't get the sale. Or they have a client that says, "My company needs a 401k plan--can you help me?" "No problem," says the advisor, thinking they will need to read a book on 401k plans that night.

Notice that doctors and attorneys do not practice the same behavior. They refer business like crazy to each other. They realize that some people specialize in particular areas and they send the business to their peers. For example, when you have a serious ear infection, your general practitioner will send you to an ear, nose and throat specialist. Fortunately, your doctor draws the line on his knowledge and does not attempt to exceed his expertise. Similarly, a business attorney will refer you to an estate planning attorney to have a trust prepared.

Financial professionals however, are often short-sighted, want to keep all the business for themselves and rarely refer business to a peer. In other words, people in financial services are plagued with a scarcity mentality.

The scarcity mentality makes them afraid that they do not know where the next client will come from so they need to do all the business with a prospect in hand. So financial producers subscribe to edicts such as

· Don't leave until you are told "no" six times
· Be persistent
· Try the alternate choice close

Until we cease the scarcity mentality and stop these sales tactics, the public will not consider stockbrokers and insurance agents professionals. Financial producers do NOT share the same public stature as doctors and attorneys and will not until they start treating their peers as colleagues rather than competitors.

So what can you do? Get into relationships with other professionals whose expertise complements your own. Make sure they also share the mentality that "we can all make more by making the pie bigger" rather than worrying how to carve up a pie of fixed size.