Whites Of Their Eyes

By the time someone has reached retirement they have made a million decisions.  They have a lot of experience.  Weirdly, this doesn’t make them better decision makers… it makes them worse.  Why?  Because they start making more decisions with their gut… than with their head.  Their emotions… instead of the facts.

So, you must make sure both your marketing and your sales process is leveraging emotions… far more than facts.  Emotions… far more than features, advantages, and benefits.

The process that my advisor coaching clients and I have used for the last 20 years to close 94% of tire kickers and plate lickers… for all of their money, utilizes this concept.

We all want to get in front of the mass affluent.  So, let’s talk about them.  Are they able to go out to eat whenever and wherever they want (pre and post COVID of course)?  Yes.  Go on vacation where they want?  Drive the car they want?  Yes!

So, how much of their pinky finger will they lift for a good idea?  NONE!  They already have everything they want… and the only thing that could screw that up is making a change of any type.  If you approach them with facts and figures they’ll say, “You are probably right, but I think I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.”

Has that ever happened to you?

So, the solution I use with my 5Q Group advisors is a process where we get the client to tell us, in their own words, that their current advisor is taking advantage of them… padding their own pockets at the client’s expense.  WE don’t tell them this.  THEY tell themselves. We do this with a series of 21 questions that gets them to say it.

But here’s the magic, when a client tells themselves 21 times that their guy is screwing them… sometimes in little ways… sometimes in big ways… their decision is made for a hugely EMOTIONAL reason… not because of facts and figures.  And the kicker is, when they loathe their current advisor… that advisor becomes helpless to retain the client.  You win every time.

Make your marketing and sales process about EMOTION… not facts.

We are in the communication business.  If we do not communicate well, our success will suffer, regardless of our skills and expertise in wealth management.

As advisors, we all must have one-on-one conversations with people.  Depending on your practice and how you market, you may also speak to larger groups.  You need to be fluent in the skills to speak in both situations, in order to present a message that persuades your audience.

Investing a total of 29 minutes in watching two Ted Talks will go a long way in improving your communications in both situations.

In Celeste Headlee, “10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation” (11 min) explores 10 strategies that make even the most difficult conversations better… even when talking to someone that believes the exact OPPOSITE of what you believe.

Nancy Duarte’s, “The Secret to Great Talks” (18 min) walks through what the great speeches in history do that make them “great”.  There IS a formula.  Using the formula will make your future talks both compelling and persuasive.

Enjoy!

As advisors, we sell the intangible.  Much of the sales training out there is for sales people that sell the tangible, and that training is not transferrable to the intangible sales process.

Mike Schultz and John Doerr have written a masterful 13-page guide that completely maps out the best way for consultants (advisors being one of them) to best create an environment where bringing on new clients becomes easy.

They say that when it comes to the intangible, you should use RAIN.

Rapport—You must develop strong rapport.  The entire selling process hinges on whether the client trusts and likes you.

Aspirations/Afflictions—Dig deep and ask the right questions to uncover BOTH the buyers afflictions AND their aspirations.

Impact—You must get the buyer to understand the impact of both their aspirations and afflictions if they do not follow your solution.

New Reality—Paint a compelling picture of what their lives will be like after they move forward with you and your solutions.

You can find the entire 13-page guide courtesy of Hubspot.  It is a must read in today’s advisory selling environment.

Merrill Lynch conducted a large study of Baby Boomers and found they consisted of five distinct segments:

Empowered Trailblazers—people that believe they have the world by the tail, and they have an almost god-like power to make things happen.

Wealth Builders—people that have done well and thus believe they are experts on investing because of the performance they have experienced in the last 10 years.

Leisure Lifers—people that live for leisure… six months at their summer place and 6 months at their winter place.

Idealists—people that want to make the world a better place before they leave this earth.

Stretched and Stressed—caregivers… people with little assets… grandparents who are parenting their grandchildren…

In, addition Boomers have been noted to have 6 distinctive traits:

1. Entitlement—the world owes me a great life
2. Personal gratification—I want it and I want it now
3. Work ethic—hard work got me here and I’m not stopping now
4. Control—I’m never giving up my independence
5. Optimism—why worry?  Everything always turns out ok
6. Won’t accept status quo—I don’t care if that’s the way it was always done, this is different

How do you use this information to bring on more clients? Leverage it. 

When it comes to Entitlement and Personal Gratification… what kind of experiences are you offering your clients and prospects?  Are you treating them like gold?  Are you creating an experience that makes them feel like they are the most important people in the world?  Or, are you treating them like just another client?

Are you offering them the chance to wield more Control over their future?  Do you give them the tools and education to make them feel like they have control over their financial future?  Do you offer them a plan to mitigate the ravages that unexpected healthcare costs can cause to their financial independence?

Are you Optimistic when you talk to them?  Or do you sell with doom and gloom?  Telling a Boomer that they have to save for a rainy day is wasted as they know the sun will come up tomorrow.

Do you push the Status Quo? Boomers don’t want to know how it has always been done… they want to know how it can be done better.  To heck with limitations… there are no limitations.  You and I know there are, but Boomers don’t want to believe it.  Our job is to help them educate themselves about why some limitations exist, but it has to be their conclusion, not ours.

Want marketing that works?  Put on your thinking cap and figure out unique ways to leverage these segments and traits.  If you do, you will be fabulously successful.  Why?  Because how many of your competitors have a game plan to leverage these things?  Virtually none.  Do the work… do the thinking… and you will own your marketplace.

Tie into the #1 concern of Affluent Boomers—their health.  Create marketing around the bundling of their physical and financial health.  For example, you could put together a health care kit that you give people when they allow you to check on the health of their finances.

A finger oxygen monitor, which many people have become familiar with during the Covid pandemic, only costs $11.99 at Walmart.  A digital blood pressure monitor costs as low as $16.65 at Walmart.  So, for around $30 you have created a great little health perk for anyone that wants you to give their finances a 2^nd opinion!

People love getting “things”.  Anyone that has had a booth at a Senior Expo, can attest to that. 

Why not leverage their love for things with their #1 concern, to create a novel marketing tool.

The average American is exposed to between 3,000 and 7,000 marketing messages a day.  But how many of these do they actually notice.  We have all gotten really good at almost instantaneously determining whether something deserves our attention.

We glance… our brain analyzes the message to determine if it is of interest… and if it’s NOT interesting… our brain flushes it immediately.  If it didn’t flush it immediately, our heads would explode by the end of the day.  That’s why even though we are exposed to thousands of marketing messages a day… we can’t remember any of them by the end of the day.

Unless… somebody gives us a message that interests us.  Something that pertains to us, something that will make our lives better or more interesting.  If you want your marketing to succeed, you MUST understand and leverage THAT fact. If you do, then people will see… read… understand… and act on your marketing.

So, how do we come up with something that can get your prospects to stop and take notice?  You must create solutions to problems that NONE of your competition is talking about.  If you want to stand out… you can’t sound like everybody else.

You can accomplish this by thinking about your target market AND your particular area of expertise.  What do you know that your competition does not… or if they do know… they don’t talk about?

Here’s some idea starters:

• Make an invisible service visible –What do you do behind the scenes that you could show people.  How many people love to see the pizza cooks throwing the dough to make the round pizza crust?  That’s making the invisible, visible.  Maybe instead of just doing your analysis, you ask if people want to participate in creating the analysis with you.
• Save your prospect an enormous amount of time or hassle –create a service where you’ll go into their home and help them go through their records to clean out those things that can be thrown away.  Bring a shredder with you and shred their things on site. You could even train a staff member to do this service as a representative of your office.  (send out a press release and your service might get picked up as a story on the local news!)
• Get onboard with a local charity or foundation –pledge to give a certain percentage of your profits each year to that cause.
• Disrupt an industry standard –Do something that your competitors do… but in a completely different way.  Maybe send your clients a video explaining their statements and results each quarter or twice a year.  It wouldn’t need to be more than 5 minutes.

Think outside the box and your messages will resonate and be heard.  Be different and be seen.

After a challenging 2020, it is essential that you come out of the gates in 2021 fast.  You have a month to get your business and marketing retooled to make that happen.  So, what adjustments are you making?

The most effective way to grow your business is to zero in on what your target market needs… and a “best in class” solution to those needs.

In her book, Turning Silver into Gold, Dr. Mary Furlong identifies the 8 key areas that affluent boomers spend their money on.  You should use these to put your mouth, where their money is.  Talk to them… market to them… create solutions for them around one or two of these areas.

Top 8 Things Affluent Boomers Spend Their Money On:

1. Health
2. Travel
3. Passions and leisure
4. Sexuality and Romance
5. Fashion and beauty
6. Housing
7. Family
8. Elder Care

Which of these things is your marketing leveraging?  What are you doing that focuses on client health? Are you putting an emphasis on the wrong place? 

We see that Family is #7.  So, should we be emphasizing estate planning or being able to afford the best health care to slow aging?  Get your thinking caps on and think about how you can leverage one of the top 3, then you’ll be well on your way to FINALLY getting your target markets’ attention.

Another type of list people love… and can even get you some free press… is statistics.  Create a short list of statistics… and more importantly, how the service you provide to your clients can help people capitalize on the information related in the statistics.

You can come up with your own list or simply type into Google:

• Interesting financial facts
• Fun stock market facts
• Unusual tax facts
• Facts about banks
• S&P 500 facts
• Etc.

One of the most effective ways to market is by creating lists. People love lists. That is why you see them promoted so often on Social Media. So, why not create your own top 10 list and…

• Promote it on your website
• Send it out to your local newspaper, tv and radio media outlets*
• Send it out to your clients via email and encourage them to forward it to friends and relatives

What kind of lists could you create? The sky’s the limit but here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• Top 10 mistakes stock brokers make with their clients
• 5 Things you should NEVER shred… and what to do with them instead
• Top 10 Things you should do with your portfolio before the end of the year
• 5 Things you should never do with your cash
• Etc.

*Not sure how to write a press release or how to get your information to local media outlets? Here’s a How to Guide courtesy of 5Q Group.

What is the best way to get your message out to prospects? You might be surprised by the #1 choice of consumers.  Take a look at the research illustrated in the graphic below.  This research was done by Marketing Sherpa, one of the most respected marketing research companies out there.

Now ask yourself, which of these am I using?  And which would be giving me a bigger bang for the buck?