6 Steps for Utilizing Your Best "Resource" for 2012's Marketing Efforts

As we near the end of 2011, most of the advisors I work with are not only running annual client reviews, but also reviewing their business structure, revenue stream, and marketing plans to work on production goals for 2012. The best way to ensure you exceed your goals for 2012 is to proactively go into next year with a solid marketing plan based on results gathered from 2011, analysis of these results (good and bad), and implementation of the best results or opportunities for the new year. In summary, it comes down to running your business like a business.

Read on if you'd like to find out how one of my advisors did just this and

leveraged an investment of $2700 into a marketing strategy that generated an

additional $100k of commissionable sales in 2011...

Creating a successful business structure can be defined by allocating resources to the most profitable marketing channels according to your Return On Investment. Based on many of the conversations I've had recently, many of my top advisors' greatest marketing resource is actually their existing client base. However, many of their year-end reviews have revealed that the bulk of their marketing money was spent on seminars for new clients instead of creating a system that allows their “biggest fans” to introduce them to their friends, family, and colleagues.

The statistics below from a study of 750 high net-worth individuals with at least $500K of investable assets tell much of the story…

So the question is, how can I capitalize on this
as an advisor going into 2012???

It all starts with laying out 2012's calendar to include monthly social events for your clients...

One more time for effect - SOCIAL EVENTS, NOT SEMINARS OR EDUCATIONAL EVENTS! The whole idea is creating an atmosphere where your clients feel extremely comfortable bringing a friend or colleague along with them. This means no fear of them getting backed into a corner to listen to a "sales pitch".

One of my advisors tracked the results of his monthly events in 2011 very closely (his happened to be a monthly wine tasting, but others have included dessert tastings, cooking classes, and gardening events to name a few) and the results were UNBELIEVABLE!!!

• Total Budget of $2700 that Generated Revenue of Over $100,000 in additional commissions
  
  
• If you are open to this sort of ROI in your business (yes, that's sarcasm!), I've outlined the six implementation steps to make it happen below:
  
  1. PLAN - Setup & layout your calendar with a local venue creating something your clients can look forward to every month, have a 12 month calendar so your clients can plan ahead to attend.
  
  2. CREATE EXCITEMENT - Call out to “A+” and "Center of Influence" clients announcing your new plan for 2012 and how you want to use this as a great way to stay more closely connected with them and let them know they are encouraged (see offer below for scripted conversation) to bring their friends/colleagues along.
  
  3. MARKET THE EVENT - Send email invitations monthly through Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc. with information to RSVP clients/guests for the event. Mailing client invitations is an option as well, although more expensive. Another idea I love is creating a "Save the Date" refrigerator magnet with dates for the year's upcoming events.
  
  4. CAPTURE GUEST'S INFO - Turn prospects into appointments by holding a giveaway at the end of the event by gathering Feedback Cards (filled out with clients/referrals contact info) and holding a drawing. You'll find your clients do most of the "selling" for you as most of the referral process comes down to giving your clients a reason (and forum) to brag about you.
  
  5. TRACK YOUR RESULTS - Make sure you are following up on referrals from the events and tracking how many you are bringing on as clients allowing your office to refine the process as you go along.
  
  6. RECAP THE EVENT - Send out a follow up email after each event. It's a good idea to include pictures from the last event of all of the fun everyone had and an invitation to next month’s event. Repeat attendance is encouraged!

ADDED BONUS - IF YOU LIKE THIS IDEA, EMAIL MY TEAM AT INFO@BRADJOHNSON.BIZ TO REQUEST A GREAT SCRIPT WALKING THROUGH HOW TO POSITION THESE MONTHLY EVENTS FOR REFERRALS WHEN HOLDING ANNUAL REVIEWS WITH YOUR EXISTING CLIENTS!!!!

Thanks for reading.

America's Debt, Simplified

Here's a great example of how to "Simplify" the current US Debt situation for your clients and prospects, make it a real life scenario...

America's Debt, Simplified

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is, so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

• U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

• Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.

• Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700

• Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200

• Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500

• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

• Amount cut from the budget: $385

So in effect last month Congress, or in this example the Jones family, sat down at the kitchen table and agreed to cut $385 from its annual budget. What family would cut $385 of spending in order to solve $16,500 in deficit spending?

It is a start, although hardly a solution.

Now after years of this, the Jones family has $142,710 of debt on its credit card (which is the equivalent of the national debt).

You would think the Jones family would recognize and address this situation, but it does not. Neither does Congress. The root of the debt problem is that the voters typically do not send people to Congress to save money. They are sent there to bring home the bacon to their own home state.

To effect budget change, we need to change the job description and give Congress new marching orders. It is awfully hard (but not impossible) to reverse course and tell the government to stop borrowing money from our children and spending it now.

In effect, what we have is a reverse mortgage on the country. The problem is that the voters have become addicted to the money. Moreover, the American voters are still in the denial stage, and do not want to face the possibility of going into rehab.

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Constructing a "Fiscal House" to Help Your Prospects Understand Your Financial Plans

This week I want to share with you a simple example one of our advisors uses to walk through his income planning strategy with high net-worth clients. He shared that as his average client surpassed $1 Million in net-worth, he realized the simpler he kept his explanation, the more his prospects understood (and more importantly) implemented his planning philosophy. It's a very simple story where he compares his income plan to that of a house and how it's structurally built. He calls it his "Fiscal House"...

1. He starts with the below conversation with the client. (As he draws out a foundation on a white board)

"So, if you take $500,000 and went to a builder and told them you want to put 450,000 into the roof, what would they tell you? They would tell you you're crazy, right? So what we always do when building a financial plan is we start with the foundation. Have you watched the news lately? It seems like every day there is a new natural disaster, most recently the tornado in Joplin, MO or a little while back the earthquake and tsunami that followed in Japan. What is the one thing you notice in all of the before and after pictures??? The one thing that is still remaining after all of that massive destruction that you always saw stood up and withheld these violent storms and changes? It is always the foundation, right? That's how you can tell where the houses and buildings once stood. Well, that's the same way we build a financial plan. We start with the foundation, that way it can withstand anything like the market downturn we faced as recently as 2008 when the market dropped by almost 50%. I call this a "fiscal tsunami" and you want to make sure your financial plan is able to withstand anything the market might be able to do, like what we saw back in 2008. No matter what happens, you have a solid base. Before we do anything else, we start here. You have no reason to decorate the walls until you've started with the foundation, and there's a formula that tells us how much needs to go into this." (Rule of 100 Explanation)

2. Next we build the walls. (As he draws the walls out on the white board)

"They need to be strong and support the roof. You've all heard the stories of the houses built with Chinese drywall and all of the class action lawsuits that situation brought about. When constructing our walls, we want to make them out of sturdy material that won't crumble, so what I like to use here are nice, high-dividend paying stocks. Sturdy blue chips companies that have been around a long time, or perhaps REITs that produce a lot of income and pay nice, strong returns."

3. Lastly, we construct the roof. (As he draws a roof on the house on the white board)

"Now, if you think about the roof on your house, what happened the last time a hailstorm or big wind storm happened? What was the very first thing that was damaged? It's always going to be your roof, right? You're not going to be up on your roof shielding it with an umbrella are you? It's no different in our financial plan, one of the things we know going in is that the roof is subject to being the first thing that takes damage whenever there's a storm, there's nothing you can do to control it. So, this is where you're going to have your high-risk, high reward assets. They'll be the first to take a hit, but at the same time, they'll be the first to have bigger financial gains in an up market. These are the riskiest holdings you have, because it's exposed to things we can't control, and you need to be ok with that going in."

"Terrorist attacks. Nothing you can do."

"Nuclear meltdown in Japan, nothing you can do."

"Greedy bankers on Wall Street, nothing you can do."

That's it! Seems too simple to be true, I know. As an added bonus to those reading/watching, there is one other piece of the puzzle that I'll make available to you today. There is a brief conversation following this discussion that the advisor has to lead into the next appointment to prepare the client for the process of moving the funds away from the other advisor. He does this before presenting any illustrations or products to the prospect and essentially eliminates the shopping process that many advisors deal with when competing against that advisor "down the street".

Leave a comment below with your feedback/ideas/successes/struggles/questions and I'll be sure to get you over a copy for those that do. Thanks for reading!

Creating "Trust" with Prospective Clients by Utilizing the ACE Principle

Today I want to share with you a quick idea directly from the book "Creating Trust", co-authored by Matt Zagula & Dan Kennedy. It deals with the concept of the ACE Principle and how to create it with prospects:

• Authority
• Celebrity
• Exclusivity

So when you think about this concept, the example I love to use is Suze Orman. Love her or hate her, she has done a masterful job of creating Authority, Celebrity, and Exclusivity in her market.

Imagine for a second - what would happen if Suze Orman opened up a financial services firm a block down the street from you??? How would that affect your market???

The last time I listened to Dan Kennedy present, he made a VERY POWERFUL statement - "Consumers buy the WHO, not the WHAT."

So as a financial advisor, you can be the absolute best, most qualified estate planner, retirement income specialist, you name it (THE WHAT)... all of that is great. But unfortunately, to prospective clients you are just a face in the crowd of financial advisors they've talked to that are telling them the same thing. They are buying from the advisor that wrote the book, spoke on TV, they listened to on the radio (THE ADVISORS THAT CREATED THE WHO).

To master this concept, all of your marketing, everything you're doing needs to be centered around the idea of creating or manufacturing ACE, which more importantly leads to TRUST. Here's a quick example that will cost you NOTHING and will get you started down the path of manufacturing Exclusivity in your practice. It comes directly from my own experience of working with Greg, one of the advisors I consult, who was producing $3 Million of annuity business annually and has transformed himself into an advisor that has submitted $4.8 Million YTD!

He made 2 simple changes in his meeting process:

1. No meetings last longer than 1 hour (Not finished? You need to book a follow up with his assistant to get you in as soon as Greg's schedule allows. If a client can meet with you for 3 hours, how important can your time be, would Suze Orman meet for 3 hours?)
   
   
2. His assistant knocks on the door with a "10 Minute Warning", letting both Greg and the prospect know that his next appointment will be arriving shortly and they need to be wrapping things up (this happens regardless of whether another appointment is booked or not)

This has created a couple of positive changes in Greg's business, his clients and prospects maximize their use of his time and he has now positioned himself as EXTREMELY EXCLUSIVE. It's amazing the transformation you will see with clients opening up in the last 10 minutes of the appointment when they know that it is their last 10 minutes!

I'll leave you with this thought. If Suze Orman puts a sticky note on the front door of her new firm she just opened a block away that says, "Accepting New Clients," how long until she has captured $10 Million, $50 Million, or $100 Million in assets???

The answer: "Not Long"

This is the power of creating Authority, Celebrity, and Exclusivity in your business.

Please share your success stories or challenges below on implementing the ACE Principle in your practice. For those that comment, I'll be sure to get you out a free copy of the book "Creating Trust"!