More Referrals From People You Like

One of the key ideas that will drive referral and revenue success for you in 2013 is:

- holding a centre of influence engagement session

In other words break bread with all of your referral sources.

Regardless of how successful the referral relationship has been over the history of the relationship you need to invite them.

Who do you invite:

- anyone who has the possibility of being able to refer to you clients who fit you ideal client profile in 2013

The format:

- this is a social engagement : think of it like the TV show "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette"

- here they all are in one place, all the referral sources you and your business have ever previous dealt with

- even better there are some new names and faces : people drawn from your client base : ie ask your clients who their accountant / solicitor is and invite them

Are you selling anything? No.

This is an event for like minded financial services professionals to get together over a drink and a few canapés for the reason of engagement, connection, collaboration, networking.

The pitch: "With the issues facing us this year FOFA, APES......we all face a busy year ahead....Stepping out from our own businesses to listen to how others are approaching their year in a social and relaxed setting provides a great opportunity to find that new idea or reinforce your thinking......"

Now, you might think "oh they won't go for that". But here's this thing. Wouldn't you like to work with referral sources who would unreservedly respond "Yes, I'll be there" to an opportunity to share a drink amongst peers?

So invite anyone who can refer in the perfect clients for you.

On the night you will not pitch who your ideal clients are, what you do, or anything about your business.

On the night you are the host so play the perfect host:

- introduce people (no name tags please)
- do your research and introduce people to others who may actually add value to their business eg the auditor to the SMSF accountant
- work the room
- but generally just ensure people are connecting

- you can formalise this by offering a set piece ie: OK people the next 15 minutes : talk to someone you don't know and find out about them : women leave men for dead here....women are more genuinely curious in situations like these.
- consider a speaker : travel, positive psychology, small business success story, sporting identity ......this may also be a draw card for your event.

The aim:


- watch people in the room
- who are the genuinely nice people?
- who is having a good time?
- who interacts well and seems to thrive in the situation?
- who did you get on well with?
- who would you have no hesitation in inviting them back?

And answering those questions will mean you have just found the referrals sources that you should be working with this year.....and most likely the ones that you will have most success at adding value to as well.

Plan for 2013 - taking time out, to move ahead - power of mental replenishment

It's been a busy period for PCE and the to do list is longer than ever as plans are put in place for 2013.

The plans are expansive, ambitious and on first glance the biggest concern is how will we get all of this done?

Clearly careful structuring and utilisation of time are required. But critically PCE just needs to get it done - to be aggressive with action and push through any inertia slowing momentum.

In the run up though as PCE reflected on each day one thing was apparent - a demeanour that was stressed - hardly a positive disposition - the impact on PCE was palpable but the message that sends to clients is equally as destructive.

For the first time in 5 months then, PCE took a time out. It was a client event, but it was designed to take time out. The format was a pleasure cruise, a swim, good food and great company.

We laughed, took of our serious hats, talked some business but with a light heartedness that not only carried through the day but was taken home by PCE. Later that evening PCE quipped "Look I've had a hard day - I spent all day on a boat - I'm really tired" - and that brought the roar of laughter it was intended to from children and adults and the mood was infectious.

The lightness of being continued and as "so you think you can dance" screened, PCE performed an impromptu contemporary routine to the opening credits - all captured on an I Phone for future blackmailing.

What's my point?

You can not run at full speed all the time and expect your internal engine both mental and physical to operate without damage.

As Coach Carter says " a little gas....a little brake".....you have to be ready but replenishment of mind, body and spirit, provides that clarity of thought that actually provides for progress.

The Energy Project and their work " The Way We're Working Isn't Working" is all about replenishment and maximising working with your rhythms.

There is no sustainable rhythm to working in a highly stressed physical and mental state.

So as you plan for 2013 - take a pause - surround yourself with those in your business world who can contribute and support and collaborate with you in 2013 - but take business of the agenda - talk, laugh, share - and watch your mood and positivity for the year ahead move to the achievement zone.

The clarity you will obtain will make those plans sharper, the solutions clearer and the road ahead will in your mind straighten, flatten and seem increasingly achievable.

14 Steps to Sales Success in Financial Planning

Want the keys to sales success and achieve results such as 68% referral rate from you existing client bases and over a 90% close rate?

Want to find out how to write 80% of your future new business from your existing client base?

Follow these steps practised by the leading financial advice firms.

1) BE FOUND

Stand out in any search a prospective client makes.

Yellow pages, local business directories, online or word of mouth in a social circle.  

2) CREATE CLIENT CENTRED COLLATERAL TO ENGAGE CLIENTS WITH PRE FIRST APPOINTMENT

3) HAVE A WEBSITE THAT IS ENGAGING OFFERS VALUE AND CONNECTION TO YOUR CORE PROPOSITION

4) HAVE AN OFFICE SET UP THAT TELLS A POSITIVE STORY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR NICHE CLIENTS

5) BE ABLE TO SAY WHAT IT IS THAT YOU DO AND WHY

6) BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN AND DEMONSTRATE VISUALLY YOUR PROCESS

7) EXPLAIN THE STEPS IN THE PROCESS AND WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

8) HAVE AN ENGAGING AND DEEP CLIENT INFORMATION COLLECTION METHOD THAT COLLECTS MORE THAN JUST FINANCIAL DATA BUT COLLECTS DATA ON VALUES AND MOTIVATION

9) CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING BEFORE MOVING FORWARD

10) FOLLOW UP POST MEETING WITH A REASSURANCE PIECE

11) BRIEF YOUR STAFF WEEKLY ON THE CLIENTS AND PROSPECTS THAT WILL VISIT YOUR OFFICE AND WHY THEY ARE COMMING IN SO THEY CAN MANAGE CLIENT PSYCHOLOGY WITH SIMPLY A WARM AND RELEVANT WELCOME

12) MAKES SURE YOUR STATEMENT OF ADVICE SPEAKS TO THE CLIENTS INDIVIDUAL NEEDS AND WANTS

13) ENHANCE THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE STATEMENT OF ADVICE BY USING VISUALS

14) CONNECT THE STRATEGY TO THE CLIENTS VALUES, BELIEFS, ATTITUDE AND MOTIVATIONS

5 Steps to Success

It's been a couple of weeks since PCEs last post. There's been a bit of travel that has been a pre-occupation, some daily life activities that have needed attending to, some personal development and well being that took priority but what has occupied PCE most,in these two weeks has been the opportunity to meet and sit down with some masters of client engagement and personal success.

What the clear message is from these meetings is that success comes from doing what you love.

Joseph Campbell offered us the phrase "follow your bliss". Or more exactly If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

These businesses that PCE have met in the last two weeks are deliberately and methodically following and leading their clients into following their own bliss.

They have a process. They believe in it. They have developed it and honed it and adapted it to their personalities and the personalities of their client base.

At its core the process is simple:

1) Know and define what you want

2) Create a plan

3) Enlist the services of an action coach

4) Take action

5) Review and adjust

This is about being crystal clear on what it is that you want and creating a sequence and set of objectives in the form of a plan to get you where you want to be.

Having accountability and a guide is crucial.

You can apply this process to anything you do in life - anything that is important enough to you to apply considered thought and process to.

But for financial advice, wealth creation and protection businesses - building this into a client engagement process is by no means an easy proposition. What it requires is you living and experiencing your client service encounter and reflecting on how engaged you would be with your current process. Then answering the question - how would I like to be engaged.

Then follow the 5 steps above and make it a reality.

When you get to step 3 - maybe give PCE a call.

Great Questions For Your Client Discovery Meeting

So recently we've written about initial client engagement and in particular how to engage clients with a difference even before you sit down with them.

We've also posted on YouTube at http://m.youtube.com/user/positiveclientengage

- a couple of videos about using mind maps with clients in the discovery process.

The key outcomes of course that we are looking for are:

- depth of knowledge of the clients circumstances that transcends pure numbers and data of the clients financial situation but leads you to truly understand the clients world

- which then allows you to become involved in that world and play your part

- that part is to assist the client live out what is important to them

If you can do that then that is true client engagement and service delivery. Clients will utilise your solutions and advice and pay for it and proudly refer you to their social circle because simply you have delivered with difference.

But to properly engage even using a mind map technique you need to be asking great questions.

Many people do this naturally - there is an innate and genuine curiosity that demonstrates respect and the understanding of another's point of view.

It's basic conversation. It's about the way you were brought up. It's about how you engaged your family around the dinner table. (do people do that anymore as a family??).

And therein lies the problem. Since 1992 as the internet began, we have started communicating differently.

There are some advice professionals who no nothing other than communicating via a portal rather than face to face.

So great conversations are not so natural today.

So what are the great questions?

It depends on you and if you have some of the ingredients of the above great listeners and communicators.

But essentially you need to be asking:

- what's the clients thought process around planning for their future
- what has that thought process brought up
- how do they feel about it
- how do they feel about areas of their life such as family, health, interests, hobbies, relationships, philanthropy, community, education, living circumstances, travel, over all well being, social circle, work,
- what's a life that is full look like to them
- what dreams are they missing out on
- what dreams are they living
- what dreams are they fearful of chasing
- what would they have missed out on if they don't take action
- how would they live if money was plentiful
- what would they change
- what if circumstances meant they needed to fast track plans for providing for their family
- have they done enough
- what does success look, feel, sound like
- how do you know when you're there


Great questions can not be forced or read out like a script. They need to evolve. It's a journey. Great questions are a great conversation. Great conversations start with a willingness to share and a great listener.

The Five Step Client Interview Process for Insurance and Financial Planning

So you have dazzled your prospective client with the customer experience they have just encountered when first entering your business. Now they are sitting across from you and the fun begins. What do the best businesses do to ensure what happens next: is fun, is differentiated, is highly engaging (for the client and the adviser) leads to 100% conversion from prospect to client and leads to obtaining client referrals at a rate of above 70%?

Essentially there are 5 things that these businesses do. They do them in sequence and as a part of a deliberate well thought out process. Further they advise their prospective clients sometimes well before the meeting itself that there is a defined process that they are going to take them through. Further these businesses have developed collateral be it corporate brochures or web site applications or information that defines what this process is.

The brilliance in what they are doing is first and foremost is that it is simple, second by doing this they tap into a vast array of positive client psychology techniques, third, because it is a defined process it can be taught to emerging advisers and front of house staff, fourth it can be articulated clearly and succinctly and best of all despite the simplicity the fifth point to note is that it is rare that a business works through all 5 elements and consequently it is highly differentiated.

The 5 step client interview process:

1) Engage your clients in the data collection process

This does not mean running laboriously through the fact find or similar data collection forms. This means a highly engaged genuinely curious inquisition into the clients world. This is best done using a formulaic method. Ideally visual, participative and a means to get the client talking about themselves. It's "going deep" with a client.

Best techniques and practitioners utilise mind map diagrams that go further than just assets and liabilities but cover much broader areas of a clients world.

How do you get clients to share that much information? Show them your mind map or family tree but the best practitioners start by outlining what it is that they have incorporated for themselves and then ask the prospect to reciprocate.

2) Ask great questions and set a benchmark for where the client is now and what the possibilities may be.

These are questions about lifestyle and other aspects that are non financial. It's about where else they have obtained advice and what was their experience. It's about hard questions about how they would live their life if time was limited or if money was no object.

Great questions take practice and take time to construct. PCE has created 4 questionnaires available via PCE for those interested. (yes website still under construction)

Further PCE have a benchmark tool to assess where a client sits now and where they will be after your advice.

3) Describe your methodology, for insurance sales, for choosing the right levels of cover. There are plenty of applications that work through clients scenarios, even i pad applications provided by life risk houses, and worksheets that PCE have developed. What's important is to highlight that there is a method and that all your clients go through this process and have positive results as a consequence : this is where the power of story telling about your clients comes into its own. And story telling is a critical element of step 3.

4) Use visuals to explain your suggested course of action. Be it words on a slide. A diagram about how it all fits together, what you need to do here is imprint in a clients mind the solidity of your solution. Flow charts work very well and if you can for example explain how packing insurance options works and will work for the client sitting in front of you by a visual method what stays with the client is not so much the product names and intracacies but rather that you have constructed (or will construct) something cohesive, relevant and understandable for them.

5) Describe the next steps : what is the application process / when will your recommendations be ready / what is the underwriting process and in doing so define the outcome that they will have which should be in the clients words and aligned to the objective that they want to achieve or that you have identified is a necessary component of their well being. Further provide them with an engagement pack that reassures them that they have made the right decision in choosing you. This will certainly have relevance when natural buyers remorse sets in. By having managed the psychology of the sale process during the appointment you have mitigated the natural thought process of the client and reassured them that what they experienced in your waiting room was genuine and that in a very short space of time the feeling that you understand them and are genuinely concerned about their well being. The WHY you are in business is powerful here. Make sure you tell them at this point why it is you do what you do.

Five Ways to Engage Clients Before They Sit Down In The Office

What do great businesses do to engage and educate clients before they have actually started the client discovery meeting?

They have at their disposal waiting room excellence.

In other words the client experience begins as the client enters the business premises. And by design rather than default these great businesses tap into client behaviour and emotion to educate and inform before the formal interview has even commenced.

How?

Follow these five steps and start your transformation.

Create a welcoming environment.

Like the PCE Assurance Letters, the waiting room environment is all about confirming to the client that they have made the right choice. This means that it needs to speak to the client needs that are in play. If you are pitching to senior executive clients a waiting room needs to evoke the environment they are accustomed to. The details right down to the magazine selection needs to be appropriate. If pitching to families a waiting room that is child friendly is a winner.

Your pitch to your prospective client that you understand them, starts in the waiting room. Create an environment that loud and clear announces that you know your market.

Have great front of house staff that can engage your clients.

This works because you can find out vital information about a clients decision making internal influences such as ...attitude, motivation, how they learn (do they watch the video screens, read the magazine, look at pictures in a brochure, read your business collateral?). Recently PCE were strongly engaged in two adviser waiting rooms. Once by a dynamic receptionist who was also studying law. PCE were quite put on their heels and certainly discovered there were some issues over and above what PCE were there to discuss that it was suddenly illuminated that this particular business could assist with. The second occasion PCE was struck by the smiles, the welcome, the conversation of two front of house staff.


Start educating and leading your clients.

Create and use focused and targeted collateral be it brochures, case studies, video that provides information about your business and what it is you do and why.

Importantly what is your process and what sort of clients have been through your process and succeeded. There are many ways to do this. Video, flow charts, client storyboards. What you are doing here is creating credibility that positive results happen for people who work with you.

Demonstrate the value you provide.

With the pressure you face from an ever increasing Competitive environment, differentiating your offer has never been as vital as it is now. To win you need to demonstrate that your offer transcends what else in out there. Easily done. Simply create a map/ a process/ a visual of all the things you do for clients and how broad your network is, in a way that clearly identifies that you can provide and facilitate a multi faceted solution for your clients and that you are the vital hub of their world.


Let them bond with you before they meet you.

How? Let them know you and who you are and who are the clients you've helped. You, your staff, your clients should be on display. This means visuals, photos, a library and other items that can make an emotional connection with your clients. What community contribution do you make? What about charity? What do you stand for and what is valued in your world that you are willing to share? By opening yourself up and displaying your values you will have as a result like attracting like and people bonding with you or at the worst people understanding and respecting your values and giving you the opportunity to reciprocate.

Waiting rooms.......not just for waiting.

Why marketing campaigns don't work and what to do about it

What response rate are you getting from your financial services / life insurance mail out campaigns?

Be it letters, perhaps flyers, brochures, snazzy postcards with eye catching imagery - what is the success rate you get from either your existing client base or from leads from your centre of influence or even better your centre of influences client base that you are strategically attempting to tap into?

30% success?!!! 20%!? Not less than 15%? Less than 10? Don't tell me less than 5?

In PCEs experience businesses who use generic marketing material, perhaps sourced of he shelf from their product providers, experience a response rate of less than 5%. And this response rate is only the response of calls into the business or requests for more information. The actual real response rate and that is the conversion amounts to less than 2.5% of the original marketing sample.

At this response rate is it little wonder that most small business and even large financial planning firm baulk at the offer from product providers to run a marketing campaign. And the BDM with little else in their kit bag finds it difficult to continue the conversation.

What's wrong here is the misalignment of the marketing material and the client base. The generic messages in the content do not match the need of the prospects.

The analysis of the client base has just simply not been done.

The problem with this equation is the lack of knowledge about what to do about it.

The key is in the message and whether the message is framed to connect with the prospect in a certain way. Advocates of 4 drive theory understand that the curiosity of human beings is heightened enough to cause investigation of a new concept when the gap between the current understanding of an issue and the new information is of a medium variance.

That causes the prospect to drive towards finding more.

In other words we are talking about upwards of 30% response rates.

But most marketing material utilised either does one of two things : one : it does not identify the gap to be large enough and consequently there is no impetus for change OR two: the statement of the issue to be considered is so different to the prospects current situation or made to be so complex that it causes a fear reaction or a complete rejection on either theses grounds or on complexity.

What then is the answer?

It's all about:

- better data mining of the client bases
- smaller subsets
- tailored messages
- better information about the clients that enable the messages to be shaped accordingly
- more creativity with then message
- ultimately closing the gap between the clients current situation and the proposed solution to a point where it is large enough to drive curiosity and small enough for it to appear achievable

For now, think about the messages and material you send to your clients and prospects in your marketing campaigns.

Is it generic of the shelf material that you have sent to a broad set of clients and prospects?

If so .......don't expect a return on your postage spend.

If you want great results....contact PCE.

Minister Shorten Extends FOFA Implementation - Don't Wait - Get the Competitive Edge!

Time to wake up people and set yourself for unprecedented success!

If Minister Shortens announcement of the delayed mandatory implementation to 2013 brings you - Sighs of relief - A jump of the wagon on the way to the gallows - The breathing space you required........then you need to get a move on and embrace this as the best opportunity you have to take a giant leap ahead of your competitors.

Now is the time like never before in your financial planning/financial services business to take this advantage - this gift and run hard with it.

You NEED TO:

1) Build you vision of your ideal business model
2) Share that with your staff and stakeholders (key referrers and your "A" clients)
3) Build your capabilities to deliver
4) Craft your story - your pitch
5) Develop the core engagement questions that will reveal hidden opportunities with clients and prospects
6) Positively engage clients with a visual process in your first two interviews
7) Develop the mechanism to deliver your clients options via education
8) Build the components within your business to deliver on 4 drive theory - acquire, learn, bond and defend
9) Communicate this with your clients in a launch
10) Through these launches - recruit their family and social circle to your offer and importantly your articulation of what it is that you do - it needs to be memorable and repeatable
11) Use the PCE family tree discussion


If you do all of this, your competitors will not catch you in 2013 - it's likely you will have bought their business or their clients would have already found you.

Get set for the PCE book - the step by step guide on implementing your post FOFA vision.