So many financial advisers are sceptical about social marketing. It's a fear response. Like your clients who can't contemplate their own demise and so baulk at your wealth protection plans - YOU can't get your head around using a different set of tools to communicate.
Social marketing is just like a mail box drop or sending out random flyers and mail outs with a BIG difference - social marketing actually works and is targeted and demonstrates who you are and connects you directly with your end customer.
All you need to to ......is a little work.
Here's how in a few easy steps:
1) Do your research on your community. I love census data....I love census night ...what? Am I the only one? Here's why I love it you get gold quality information.
Here's one we prepared a little earlier:
Demographicss of a suburb in good old Melbourne.
According to the 2011 census:
- population 23,814
- 48.6 percent makes
- 51.4 percent females
- median age is 33 years
- 60 percent born in Australia
- 65 percent have english as their first language
- 30 percent married
- 55 percent not married
- 69 percent full time workers
- 21 percent part time
- 4.4 percent unemployed
- 39 percent are professionals
- 16 percent management
- 14 percent clerical / admin
- 8 percent sales people
- 12 percent manual workers
- median rent is $369 per week
- median mortgage repayment is $2383 per month
- 20 percent fully owned homes
- 24 percent mortgage
- 54 percent rented
- individual income $905 per week
- households $1697 per week
2) How to engage your community
- Check out the local council website and twitter account and see how many followers they have and what the topics are
- you will probably find mostly the tweets are about projects and what's on
- often the key issues seem to be transport
- nothing too exciting
- but the followers are quite engaged in the community and comprise journalists, politicians, councillors, and generally people who care about and are involved in the community
- when you look at facebook pages in the suburb of your interest- they are small businesses, community groups, clubs : and there are lots of them
The idea would be that:
- you create a twitter account and facebook page under your business name
- in the profile you describe what you do and who you are
- you follow the local council twitter account
- you follow some of their followers - look for the most active, better tweets, those who are promoting the community and engagement
- "like" local Facebook pages
- then respond with "likes" when they post stuff (twitter or Facebook)
- write comments when they post stuff (twitter or Facebook)
- when someone follows you on twitter - thank them
- your own content should be : information, education, comments on community issues, inspiration, humour, and lots of local photos (demonstrating you are involved in and observant of your community)
- this should take you no longer than 15 minutes a day : We can help you with content ideas
3) What's the vibe in the community?
Maybe:
- community
- sustainable
- diverse
- inclusive
- progressive
- dynamic
4) Pitch
Who you are:
Make sure your pitch is shaped to who you are and the vibe.
Critical in a clients trust of a brand is : what do they do and who are they : and situationally where are they. Remember what you are: a local business engaged with your community......you are aren't you?
For help on the specifics check out www.positiveclientengagement.com under the coaching page.
Showing posts with label Financial Planning Businesses for Sale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Financial Planning Businesses for Sale. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Techniques to get more information to win the sale
So the collected posts from PCE have at their core one objective and that is to have professional advisers in financial services engage more people with better skills and in doing so deliver solutions to more clients.
Those solutions take the form of insurance that provides peace of mind and money to families when it is needed most. Those solutions revolve around maximising the possibility that people live well and look after their families.
The key and the lessons of all of our posts is that in order to do this you need to gather more and better information about your prospects, your referral sources and your existing clients.
We at PCE have talked about and demonstrated how revisiting or discovering the theories of Maslow, Jung, Rogers, Nohria, Dilts, and building the learnings into your business in processes and engagement techniques can take you and your clients on the journey towards meeting the objective of positive client engagement and all the success and rewards that come with that.
How do you build it?
We have described in a lot of our posts methods of implementing techniques into your business and we have received feedback of how well it has worked for many businesses.
But to be truthful, these have just been snippets, ideas and conversations like proverbial paper napkin diagrams over coffee or better still a red or two.
The next step for PCE is packaging this for you. Making available the questions, the pro forma questionnaires that can take your business to another level and of course packaging all of the techniques into one cohesive flowing document.
That's exciting for PCE and we hope for you.
Till then as a teaser, how do you engage someone on their values and beliefs?
It's about great questions, centred around what Lawrence and Nohria’s theory focusses on that explains what humans want, as well as why they want those things.
We know from this that people love to:
Acquire
Bond
Learn
Defend
What questions can you design to find out what people want in these 4 areas and why?
2. If you want to succeed in business, it pays to understand what people want. Markets form around core human drives.
Those solutions take the form of insurance that provides peace of mind and money to families when it is needed most. Those solutions revolve around maximising the possibility that people live well and look after their families.
The key and the lessons of all of our posts is that in order to do this you need to gather more and better information about your prospects, your referral sources and your existing clients.
We at PCE have talked about and demonstrated how revisiting or discovering the theories of Maslow, Jung, Rogers, Nohria, Dilts, and building the learnings into your business in processes and engagement techniques can take you and your clients on the journey towards meeting the objective of positive client engagement and all the success and rewards that come with that.
How do you build it?
We have described in a lot of our posts methods of implementing techniques into your business and we have received feedback of how well it has worked for many businesses.
But to be truthful, these have just been snippets, ideas and conversations like proverbial paper napkin diagrams over coffee or better still a red or two.
The next step for PCE is packaging this for you. Making available the questions, the pro forma questionnaires that can take your business to another level and of course packaging all of the techniques into one cohesive flowing document.
That's exciting for PCE and we hope for you.
Till then as a teaser, how do you engage someone on their values and beliefs?
It's about great questions, centred around what Lawrence and Nohria’s theory focusses on that explains what humans want, as well as why they want those things.
We know from this that people love to:
Acquire
Bond
Learn
Defend
What questions can you design to find out what people want in these 4 areas and why?
2. If you want to succeed in business, it pays to understand what people want. Markets form around core human drives.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Pay $0 for your next financial planning client lead and pay 1x$1 for your next financial planning client base
How'd you like to pay $0 in marketing costs for your next financial planning or insurance lead? That's right, no telemarketing costs incurred marketing to your existing client base or leads that you've paid for or clients that you've purchased.
Speaking of books of clients that you've purchased, just how much did you pay? A multiple of 2 times? 3 times? Surely not 3.5 times? In this market?
How'd you like to pay a multiple of 1 times for your next client base if not less?
This is the reality that financial planning and insurance professionals are creating for themselves by asking the right questions.
It is the people that they are posing these questions to that delivers this reality.
They are conversing with and engaging their existing client base.
Pay $0 for your next financial planning or insurance lead
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they work for?
2) What community or social groups do they belong to?
3) Who do they employ?
4) Who are the related to?
Let's start with who do they work for or who do they employ.
If they are employers themselves - what about that pay packet they pay staff - (that their staff rely upon) - it can be taken away from that staff member in an instant should that person be unable to work due to illness or an accident away from the workplace. Is that something they as an employer thinks is in the interest of the well being of their staff and is a positive outcome? Of course not.
If they are employed. Contact that employer. Offer that employer a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their staff has experienced. And upon experiencing the positive outcomes and process - should that not be something of value they could expose the remainder of their staff to?
Pay a multiple of $1 times for your next client base
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they obtain accounting and business advice services from?
Contact the accountant and yes offer that accountant a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their clients has experienced.
Maybe they won't buy in to that process that easily. No problem. Send them a sample statement of advice. Make sure it's one that aligns with the accountants niche (if they have one). Highlight in a cover letter / presentation the cross referral opportunities.
If you have constructed your statement of advice in the way we here at PCE have talked about (in our previous posts) then it's most probable they have not seen a document like it in the way it speaks and communicates to the client.
One business we know did just this.
A request came back from the accountant to takeup the free statement of advice. But it was not for the accountant. It was for the accountants mother.
Following the perparation of the statement of advice the recommendations were accepted and implemented. Within a short period of time (6 months) the accountant referred with such regularity that the main adviser based themselves out of the accountants office 2 days a week (7.30am until 5am) engaging with staff and clients.
That adviser now owns 50% of the accountancy practice (bought at 0.90 times).
All that by asking their top clients who did their tax.
Speaking of books of clients that you've purchased, just how much did you pay? A multiple of 2 times? 3 times? Surely not 3.5 times? In this market?
How'd you like to pay a multiple of 1 times for your next client base if not less?
This is the reality that financial planning and insurance professionals are creating for themselves by asking the right questions.
It is the people that they are posing these questions to that delivers this reality.
They are conversing with and engaging their existing client base.
Pay $0 for your next financial planning or insurance lead
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they work for?
2) What community or social groups do they belong to?
3) Who do they employ?
4) Who are the related to?
Let's start with who do they work for or who do they employ.
If they are employers themselves - what about that pay packet they pay staff - (that their staff rely upon) - it can be taken away from that staff member in an instant should that person be unable to work due to illness or an accident away from the workplace. Is that something they as an employer thinks is in the interest of the well being of their staff and is a positive outcome? Of course not.
If they are employed. Contact that employer. Offer that employer a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their staff has experienced. And upon experiencing the positive outcomes and process - should that not be something of value they could expose the remainder of their staff to?
Pay a multiple of $1 times for your next client base
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they obtain accounting and business advice services from?
Contact the accountant and yes offer that accountant a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their clients has experienced.
Maybe they won't buy in to that process that easily. No problem. Send them a sample statement of advice. Make sure it's one that aligns with the accountants niche (if they have one). Highlight in a cover letter / presentation the cross referral opportunities.
If you have constructed your statement of advice in the way we here at PCE have talked about (in our previous posts) then it's most probable they have not seen a document like it in the way it speaks and communicates to the client.
One business we know did just this.
A request came back from the accountant to takeup the free statement of advice. But it was not for the accountant. It was for the accountants mother.
Following the perparation of the statement of advice the recommendations were accepted and implemented. Within a short period of time (6 months) the accountant referred with such regularity that the main adviser based themselves out of the accountants office 2 days a week (7.30am until 5am) engaging with staff and clients.
That adviser now owns 50% of the accountancy practice (bought at 0.90 times).
All that by asking their top clients who did their tax.
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