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Wirehouse Brokers/Captive Agents Wake Up Call

Monday, April 25th, 2011

The ultimate defense against discount stockbrokers, on-line insurance and the Internet.

It’s time for a wake up call or your business will be swallowed by entities with more money than you who know how to use technology to take your business. If you manage money or sell investments, there are already many sophisticated tools on the Web that can replace your advice. If you sell insurance, anyone can get term insurance on the web in about 10 minutes and they do not need you.

Your hands are especially tied working for a large firm because you cannot use the Internet as a powerful tool to fuel your business. You cannot have a web site, you likely cannot have a blog, you cannot build a personal reputation. You are a sitting duck.

Sorry if you are affronted, but I want to help you protect your business and that means facing the truth.

If you think, “Well I’ll just offer term insurance on the web too,” realize that there are thousands of agents on the web who already do this. There’s no reason to come to your site as this product has been made into a commodity. If you think, “I will offer stock advice on my site,” join the other thousands of sites that can do this better than you. In the long run, the Internet is not your friend.

The solution to this is to make sure you are NOT doing the same thing as everyone else. You can differentiate any commodity and carve out a protected niche.

This may require that you learn something new. For example, I cannot find advice on the web about where to find high yielding, yet safe preferred stocks. That’s a specialty. To become such an expert, means you need an education in that arena. How many sites are called “Term Insurance for Physicians?” That can be made into a specialty and requires that you really understand the needs of physicians and how they differ form others.

The public is getting smarter all the time. Ten years ago you could exist as a financial planning generalist. As people get smarter they will realize they can fill out some forms on the web and get the same financial plan you handed them. As they get more sophisticated , so must you. Financial advisors must be one step ahead of the prospect, or you’ve got nothing of value to offer.

Please do not ignore the threat of commoditization of financial planning. It’s happening slowly. Schwab and Fidelity are offering your clients planning services. These efforts will expand. Insurance companies are turning their captive agents into financial planners. And as mentioned, web sites already provide financial planning to your clients.

The good news is that the process of the public learning how to be their own planner is a slow one. There’s also a segment of the public, the affluent, that has more complex problems that they will always need a professional (which requires that you understand and have solutions for those problems). Additionally, seniors have not adopted the web as quickly and remain a viable market for personal service and like the attention of a human. Last, there are certain personality types (a ripe area for you to study) that will always be more responsive to getting assistance than doing it themselves. Targeting these people is wise.

What should you do.

Pick a specialty. Some arena of your work that fascinates you or you see as a lucrative growing area. Become an expert. You do this by studying everything you can find and learning from any experts that already exist. You may need to subscribe to new publications and attend specific seminars or workshops. It’s an investment of your time and money. (The key to success in any business in this century is being a self-teacher). You will also need a marketing system to communicate your expertise to the target market that value’s it. The benefit to you will be a business that has staying power.

Some examples of specialization:

Specialist in preferred stock
Specialist in stocks of (name an industry)
Specialist in working with (name a profession or segment of the population)
Specialist in tax reduction
Stock options specialist
401k specialist
Specialist in insuring sub-standard cases

Pick a niche and protect yourself. Read more on niche marketing at Brokerville.

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Tags: brokerville, financial specialty, niche marketing, speciality, specialize
Posted in financial advisor | 15 Comments »

Insurance Marketing – Does Your Method Make Sense?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

financial advisor scratching head You don’t have to find a guru to get answers for increasing your insurance marketing results. You just need to concentrate on the three critical factors that determine sales prosperity:

1) The caliber of the prospects you speak to
2) The variety of prospects you talk with
3) How good of a sales presentation you provide

Let’s take these in order over three posts. Today, let’s cover your insurance prospecting method–how you locate quality insurance prospects.

Your way of prospecting will be the main determinant of the number of prospects who purchase.

Make certain that your insurance marketing process only produces appointments with interested and qualified insurance leads. Here’s the contrast of two prospecting approaches. The initial approach produces results while the next alternative saps your spirit.

Cold-calling, a conventional way of insurance marketing, produces insurance prospects that must be persuaded. You could be “twisting his arm” to some degree to get the appointment. Is it any surprise that 30% of the time, your insurance lead is not present when he had scheduled to meet or they are not interested?

What would occur if rather, you took out an advertisement offering a free pamphlet about a specific topic in which you had expertise, such as annuities as a source of retirement income? Those people that respond to the advertisement for that pamphlet would be self-motivated annuity leads and have an interest in your topic. And isn’t this the sort of prospect you want from your insurance prospecting, a prospect that takes action?

A young lady who a short time ago entered the occupations of real estate asked me about the best way to gain clients. I had her create a pamphlet, “Ten Mistakes to Avoid When you Sell Your Million Dollar Home.” We ran the ad within the food section of the Wednesday newspaper, the day that has all of the food discount promotions. The ad was $250. The agent received 62 orders for her pamphlet.

If she had cold called, how long would it have taken her to identify 62 qualified prospects? This prospecting system we have just described allows you to make much better use of your time because your initial call is a warm call to her receptive motivated prospect.

Now you can see the difference and how you’re insurance marketing method determines the caliber of prospects you attract. Therefore, to make your life easy, use the model of offering an item to your targeted prospect (e.g. by age, revenue, profession, zip code, phase of life,etc) and you ONLY contact those individuals who want your package. The supplied item can be:

a) a pamphlet or totally free report
2) an offer to attend a seminar presentation
3) a free quotation
4) a free analysis

Then, once you contact the insurance prospect, you get in touch with them simply because they requested something of you. You are not asking for their business and you are not making the initial approach. You are getting in touch with them to figure out how you can serve them. This places you in the position of a professional, the control position, and starts the relationship on the proper foot with an appropriate and valuable prospect.

Now that you have an insight into insurance prospecting that is effective, I’ll talk about how to acquire high numbers of inquiries from these high quality prospects in the next post.

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Posted in insurance prospecting | 3 Comments »

The Science of Appointment Setting

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

In the last post, I discussed the only three things that determine how much money you earn.

The quality of the prospects you speak to
The number of prospects you speak to
The quality of your presentation (to schedule an appointment)

This post is part three which focuses on setting appointments, filling your appointment calendar.

It’s likely that your first contact with the prospect is a phone call. In previous posts of this blog, I recommend you send something that impresses the prospect before you call—a booklet that you published, an article written about you or that you wrote, a recorded interview—anything that tells the prospect, “this is not an ordinary sales person, this is a professional!” By predetermining your credibility, you generate trust and your first call is a warm call. And a warm call leads to setting an appointment.

On that call, you DO NOT talk about your products, your services, you, you, you. You talk about THEM. Here is a sample dialogue:
Hi, Mr. Jones?
yes
This is Bob Richards and 2 days ago you called by office and ordered a copy of my booklet, “Six Ways to Reduce Taxes.” Did that get to you?
Yes it did
May I ask, what motivated you to order the booklet?
I pay too much taxes and I need a break
How much tax do you think you pay?
My quarterly estimates are $20,000.
That is a lot. Has your accountant been able to help you?
Not really.
Has your financial advisor been any help?
We purchased some tax-free bonds, but that did not make a big difference.
It sounds like you’re not getting the type of advice you want; is that true?
Yes.
What do you think some solutions are?
I don’t know, I’m looking for someone that thinks creatively.
So you are seeking new ideas?
Yes.
If you got advice on new ways to cut taxes, what would you do with those savings?
I’d probably take another vacation.
You like to travel?
Yes, it’s my favorite activity.
Where are you gong next?
China
That’s fabulous. Well let’s see if we can save enough taxes to get you another week in Beijing. Would you like to know what other people in your situation are doing to cut taxes?
Yes.
Great. Our financial services firm has community service appointments on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as a service to the community. At those meetings we show you what other people like yourself are doing to significantly cut their taxes. Would you like to see how your neighbors do it?

Notice that our professional in the above dialogue resists talking about himself and his firm and his services. He accomplishes his objective (appointment setting) by focusing on the prospect and offering something important to the prospect. Because if you offer something to prospects that they believe have value for them or have importance for them, they are happy to set an appointment.

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Posted in Uncategorized, appointment setting | 1 Comment »

How to Increase the Number of Prospect Inquires

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

In the last post, I discussed the only three things that determine how much money you earn.

The quality of the prospects you speak to
The number of prospects you speak to
The quality of your presentation

This post is part two which focuses on getting enough inquiries–getting more prospects to talk with.

For most people involved in sales, the solution to more prospects is one word: MORE. If you use direct mail to get responses of interested prospects, then instead of sending 500, send 5000. If you make money from 500, then you make 10x as much from 5000. I’ve heard all types of foolish responses to this suggestion to gain more prospects. Here’s two of the most foolish:

1. But I don’t have enough time to follow up on all of those responses! Well then send only as many as fits in the time you have or hire someone to help you and leverage their time to make more money
2. But I don’t have the money to send 5000. Well then borrow it! That’s what Intel and IBM and ATT do. They borrow money from people to build plants, hire people, etc. If you have a winning formula (i.e. you make money from 500 mail pieces), then it wont matter if you borrow money on your credit card at 21% because you will quickly pay it back from profit.

In other words, stop being a wimp and think BIG. If you want to have more prospects, to make more money, then once you have a marketing method that works, just expand it. Put your hand into your pocket, take out some money and INVEST in your business.

A more advanced problem is when you simply cannot increase your marketing because your cost per prospect will rise. Here’s an example. If you advertise on Google using pay per click marketing, you will get so many responses from an advertisement (keyword) for “annuities in Memphis” if you are willing to spend $4 per response. But if you want to triple your responses, you may need to bid more per prospect. You may need to spend an average of $7 per response to get more prospects because you are in competition with other advertisers for the same or similar keyword.

If your marketing model won’t handle a higher cost per prospect, then you need a second marketing method. You need to uncover a second way to generate more prospects at the $4 per lead or change your model (e.g. charge your prospects more) to justify the $7 per lead price.

Next post, we address the issue of a higher prospect conversion ratio.

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Posted in prospecting | 1 Comment »

Focus on Just Three things to Close More Sales

Friday, June 20th, 2008

You don’t need a global search to increase your business. There are just three things on which to focus:

The quality of the prospects you speak to
The number of prospects you speak to
The quality of your presentation

Let’s take these in order over three posts.

The quality of the prospects you speak to is a direct function of HOW you prospect.
Be sure that your prospecting system only generates appointments with interested and qualified people. Here’s the comparison of two prospecting systems. One produces good quality prospects, the other produces people who make you tired and hate your profession.

If you cold call for appointments, you generate low quality prospects because in many instances, you are convincing the prospect to see you. You may be “twisting his arm” to some degree to get the appointment. Is it any wonder that 30% of the time, the prospect is not home when they agreed or they are not interested?

What would happen if instead, you placed an advertisement offering a free booklet about a particular topic in which you had expertise. Those people that called from the advertisement for that booklet would be self-motivated. That’s the type of prospect you want–people who take initiative and take action.

A new real estate agent asked me how to market. I had her write a booklet “Ten Mistakes to Avoid When you Sell Your Million Dollar Home.” We ran the ad in the food section of the Wednesday paper, the day that has all of the food coupons. The ad was $250. The agent got 62 calls for her booklet.

How long would it have taken to locate 62 interested and motivated people by cold calling? What will be the quality of the conversation after the prospect gets the booklet and then gets called by the agent?

See the difference in how your prospecting system determines the type of prospects you develop and how easy they will be to close? So your prospecting MUST be based on the following model—you offer an item to people who meet your criteria (e.g. by age, income, profession, zip code, etc) and you ONLY contact those people who want your item. That item can be

a booklet or free report
a seminar presentation
a free quotation
a free analysis

Then, when you contact the prospect, you contact them because they requested something of you. You are not asking for their business, you are contacting them to determine how you can serve them. This places you in the power position and starts the relationship on the right foot with the right prospect.

Next post, I’ll discuss how to gain high numbers of inquiries from these quality prospects.

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Attract the Right Prospects and Make More Sales

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Some financial professionals use prospecting methods that produce the wrong prospects (i.e.; bad sales leads). I define a wrong prospect as someone who is not really interested, not qualified or hard to deal with. In essence, someone who wastes your precious time and, if they do become a client, they consume so much of your time that you wish they weren’t a client.

You generate these prospects by using unfocused mass marketing models. For example, if you call a list of people over age 65 attempting to obtain long-term care appointments, you are generating the wrong prospects. You have no idea if these people are interested or qualified. So you waste a lot of time cold calling and then meeting people who are not qualified or interested. I call this being a “sales laborer.” You waste large amounts of time on non-revenue-generating activities.

With such prospecting, you begin the relationship by giving the power and control to the prospect. You asked them for an appointment. They can accept or decline and they have the control. You come after them. Wouldn’t you rather they come after you?

Wouldn’t it be smarter if you only met with the interested qualified prospects and spent more of your time in a sales presentation? Wouldn’t it be better if you attracted these interested people to you and practiced as a “sales professional.” Here’s the secret to attracting qualified prospects and interested prospects: set up your marketing so that prospects must indicate their interest before you ever make personal contact. Let them ask for your contact!

Rather than cold call your list, send a well-written, direct response mailer. Even if you get a 1% response to 1,000 items mailed, that’s 10 interested people who took action. They contacted you and requested something of you. You start off in control of the relationship.

When you call them, you qualify them and eliminate half. You get 5 appointments. These are the same 5 appointments you would have gotten with the cold calling, but look how much easier this was. Instead of talking with 1000 people, you talked to 10 people. Instead of meeting with 10 people, you met with 5. You saved maybe 25 hours of your time and spent $500 on postage and mailing. (In other words, had you cold called, you valued your time at $20 an hour for the mailing cost you saved. Is that all you’re worth–$20 an hour)?

Because you now know that you can get more appointments by sending more mailers, you will not be so desperate for every appointment. You can qualify people well and weed out those that have a low probability of becoming a client. You spend your time meeting with the most promising prospects and your close ratio rises because you meet with more qualified prospects.

Or what if you ran an advertisement in the local senior magazine or on the Internet, “Avoid Mistakes in Buying Long-Term Care–Get the Free Guide for Seniors.” You then have a few prospects to call who are interested and motivated. You have saved your time and limited the prospects you deal with to those who take initiative. These are the types of people you want as clients. You do not want people who must always be convinced, which is the type of prospect that is generated with unfocused, mass marketing. Sales laborers spend time with prospects that need convincing. Sales professionals spend time in sales presentations with interested, motivated prospects who take the first step.

Or what about inserting a flyer in the daily newspaper for your next LTC seminar “90% of Seniors Have Inadequate Health Protection.” In our tests, 10,000 inserted flyers (for about $500) generates 25 people to a seminar. You give a presentation to 25 motivated people at one time and then have individual appointments. Seminars make super-efficient use of your time (you give the same presentation at once to 25 or more people) and super effective use of your time (you are speaking to motivated prospects). People who attend seminars are very motivated as they need to place the activity on their schedule, get ready and drive to your location.

If cost is the hang-up to pursuing smart marketing as illustrated above, consider that you almost insure that your income will not increase because you waste your selling time on prospecting. Even if you have no money available for marketing, take a $500 loan from your credit card. Not only can you make a many-times return on your investment, but you’ll be motivated to earn and pay off this advance before your credit card statement arrives.

If you, in fact want to be a big producer, a fast method is to invest money into your business, not your time. Your time must be devoted to sales activities and nothing else. It’s the model used by the most successful companies in existence today—invest money up front and grow large and profitable quickly. Invest the money so that your time can be used for appointments with qualified prospects. As a great teacher once said, “You need to put wood in the fireplace first before it gives off any heat.”

If you’ve been tired of prospecting, got burnt out and feel that good prospects are scarce, see how the following principals can be easily applied at annuity sales.

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Posted in Uncategorized, sales leads | 1 Comment »

Lead Generation

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

How to Work Your Leads for Super Profits

Sales Lead Generation
Make an offer to your prospect that matches their agenda. Whether you use email, direct mail, newspaper advertising, it doesn’t matter. The goal is to put something in front of our prospect that matches their concern and not your concern. Here’s an example. If you want to have a prospect respond for your offer for mutual fund selection, you don’t send a mailing “Get my mutual fund selection system for only $99.” Such an offer is about YOUR agenda. Here’s the offer that matches their agenda, “Six Tactics that Financial Institutions Don’t Want You to Know About Selecting the Right Mutual Funds on Your Own—Get your free copy now.”

Sales Lead Generation Follow Up
Once your prospect responds (requests the free booklet or report), you send it. DO NOT contact the prospect until you have delivered the promised item. Print your photo, your name, credentials on the front cover and have your biography (well written to illustrate your expertise) in the back. Make sure you have plenty of unbiased non-sales content in the report. If you send an item that is effectively a sales pitch, the prospect won’t want to talk with you. People don’t want to talk with sales people. That’s why the item must be 100% informative, educational and add value to the prospect’s agenda.

After you send the item, you contact the prospect (whether it be by phone or a follow up mail piece). Let’s say it’s by phone and your objective is to sell something on the phone or sell an appointment. For example, you sell mutual funds and you want to meet this prospect. Your call is about their concerns and the only way you will know their concerns is to ask. So the goal of this call is not to state how brilliant you are or how great your mutual fund choices are. The goal is to find the prospect’s hot button that will motivate them to action.

Once you’ve identified the prospect’s hot button, you ask them how important it would be to solve this issue—what’s the payoff. When they tell you, ask them to explain further. In other words, get them to “taste” the payoff. Now here’s where mediocre sellers screw this up. They blurt out “well I can help you with that!!!” Now, you’re just another sales person, drooling at the thought that you have a motivated prospect. But the master does not volunteer a solution. The master asks “would you like to see how other people like yourself solve this problem?” Because people are addicted voyeurs, they will absolutely want to find out how others solve their financial dilemmas. You can then volunteer to meet and show them examples of other person’s solutions.
You have now maintained your position as a consultant and not a sales person. You have controlled your urge to talk about what you want to sell and you have remained focused on the prospect’s objective. You now have a lead that’s a real prospect. You can now see why most lead systems don’t work Let’s explore what you’re probably doing now to generate and follow up on leads.

Sales Lead Generation and Followup Failures to Avoid
First, the lead probably did not respond to anything. They are merely a name that supposedly meets some criteria. This is not a sales lead, it’s a suspect. REAL leads are people that respond to some marketing effort. They raise their hand (i.e. respond) and indicate interest. So if you don’t have a strong marketing message up front to get prospects to indicate interest, you’re already sunk

Next, you probably call that prospect to solicit an appointment. But you’ve got no credibility with them. You have failed to establish your expertise. You must first show the prospect why you’re credible. And there is no better credibility than to be an author (or to have printed materials personalized with your name and photo and the prospect assumes you’re the author).

Last, you probably contact prospects and tell them about your “stuff.” You don’t ask them enough questions or even seem to care about them. Since they responded to your marketing, you assume they are a buyer so you jump into your pitch. You immediately establish yourself as another hack they don’t want to talk to.

Is it now clear why it takes 200 leads to make one or two sales?

If you sell a financial product or service, you can see how these lead generation principals are applied in a simple system by Brokerville

annuity sales

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How to turn leads into sales

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Some people in sales think a sales lead is a name from a list. That’s not correct. A name from a list is not a sales lead–it’s a suspect, a total stranger and it does not matter if they meet some criteria (e.g. age, occupation, net worth). A true sales lead meets your criteria AND has expressed interest in what you offer. Specifically, the lead has responded to an email, a print ad, a piece of direct mail, etc. A true marketer and sales professional only contacts prospects that have first expressed interest.

Now that you have a qualified lead, how do you turn it into a sale? Here’s what we teach the financial advisor clients of Brokerville.

You don’t call the lead and say, “I’m following up…..” EVERY sales person says this and the phrase has now become synonymous with “get ready for my sales pitch.” Your prospect automatically gets defensive (no one likes to be sold) and your chance of a sale is close to zero. Rather, call the lead and say “Bob, you returned a card expressing your interest in having more…..better…(fill in the blank), what motivated you to do that?” The only words that should come out of your mouth are the benefits your lead desires. Your first task is to engage your lead, not to talk about your product.

Next, you don’t say “we have” or “my company offers” as these phrases are synonymous with “get ready for my pitch.” Again, these will make your lead defensive. You do say, “I don’t know if I can help you…may I ask you a few questions about your (business/heath/investments, fill in the blank)?” You disarm the defensiveness of the prospect by stating you don’t know if you can help.

Next, you ask intelligent questions about what’s important to HIM. The best thing you can do here is forget about the features and benefits of your product because your lead does not care. He cares only about what’s important to him. So to really listen, you need to forget your spiel. As your prospect reveals answers to your questions, you ask deeper questions to reveal their emotional desires. Questions like:

Why is that important to you?
If you could have that, how would it impact you?
If you don’t solve that, what’s the long term cost to you?
How does that make you feel?
Are you satisfied with that?

Since people buy emotionally, you must get them to reveal what motivates them emotionally. Until you do, do not proceed to your next step (to set an appointment, ask for the credit card, close the deal) as you will fail. Too many sellers ask the prospect for the order too early and they get objections. First, get your prospect to reveal what motivates him emotionally and then you ask if he would be interested in a solution to that problem/opportunity. Only when he says yes, do you proceed to the next step.

“Bob, if there were a solution to that problem, what would that be worth to you? So if you could have the solution for only 10% of that amount, you would want to know about it? Great, then (set an appointment, ask for the credit card, close the deal).”

Sellers tell me they are client focused or customer focused but it’s not true. They are product focused and my-agenda focused. If your personal mission or company mission is to really help someone, then it becomes easy to turn leads into sales. Because your objective changes from “getting” prospects to buy your product to “finding” prospects who want what your product offers. You can only determine that by asking questions. And when you encounter someone that does not have an interest in your product, you move on.

The key to turning a lead into a sale is to leave your agenda to the end of the conversation and get your lead to reveal his emotional agenda first. Then you have the relatively simple process of showing your prospect how your product fits his agenda (rather than convincing the prospect why they should have interest in your agenda).

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To Gain Clients, Differentiate Yourself

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

There is no reason for a prospect to choose you. No reason that is unless you look better or superior than their other choices. You can easily differentiate yourself with info-documents. Steve Van Yoder, author of “Get Slightly Famous” says:

“Free info-documents that address your target market are effective marketing tools when they offer quick, concise solutions to common problems, challenges and concerns.”

That’s the method we use at Javelin Marketing to have the financial advisor stand out. We have them send the prospect a well-written booklet on a topic that the prospect has requested. The booklet is prepared with the financial advisor’s name, photo and credentials on the front cover. When the prospect receives the booklet, the advisor gains instant credibility and stature in the prospect’s eyes (note that the booklet clearly discloses that the booklet was written by Javelin Marketing and is thereby compliant with FINRA rules on published materials).

The advisor using credibility-gaining tools before ever speaking to the prospect has a significant differentiation advantage and is far more likely to have a new client.