Scratch the Itch

Published on February 05, 2008 12:01 AM by Annexus Financial.

The easiest sales we ever closed were the clients who had problems that we could solve.

Check out these headlines from the last few weeks:

"U.S. stocks are off to the worst start to the year on record, according to key market measures"

"2007 may be a record year for capital gains distributions from mutual funds"

"The Fed is signaling that it will be lowering interest rates"

What do all these have in common? Your target audience has many reasons to be concerned about their investments. This month your ideal prospects are opening their year-end retirement account statements in shock. One of our friends said that after last fall he doesn't have a 401k, but instead a 201k, the account has fallen so far. This month your ideal prospects are getting the 1099s for mutual fund capital gains while the value of those funds continue to fall. This month your ideal prospects are searching for a safe harbor and they find falling interest rates on savings accounts. They need you now more than ever.

The opportunity can be captured easily. Right now you need to start communicating with your target audience and telling them that you can offer them solutions to these challenges. Tax deferred accounts, annuities, and managed accounts are solutions that you can offer them.

Let's call this your "Financial Rescue" campaign.

Step One: Target audience. If you are like most of us, you have a database of prospects that never became clients. If you collected financial information on them, then you will be able to create a group of prospects to whom you can market immediately. Next, you might broaden the campaign by adding a new list of targeted prospects. A little later we'll talk about an exciting new technology for creating a prospect list that 'clones your best clients'. You might want to add tax preparers, accountants, mortgage brokers or property & casualty agents to the campaign. They are likely to be having conversations with clients who want solutions to these problems and you might as well start build the strategic alliances with them.

Step Two: Define the message. The most common problem we see with marketing messages is that they tend to be more about the sender than the recipient. Your message needs to be about their problem and your offer to help them find a 'personal solution' to that problem. The power of this is that by offering a 'personal solution' you overcome an objection many consumers have with advisors who provide 'cookie cutter' solutions. You also communicate your understanding of their uniqueness and position yourself as a problem solver. All of these are as Martha Stewart says, "A good thing."

One of our pet peeves is with messages that position the advisor in a generic role - 'wealth manager', 'trusted advisor', 'retirement specialist' are all examples. You need to say how you are unique in terms of recognizing the specific circumstances faced by your target audience and your specialized, personalized solutions to those problems.

Step Three: Structure the delivery system. Okay, we know who to talk and what to say but how do we reach them? There is no one single right answer. You should be delivering the message with post cards, newsletters, web sites, emails, speaking engagement, personal meetings, and phone calls. The message is the same and you need to push it through many different channels.

Another thing advisors often overlook is that these campaigns take time and diligence. Only 25% of the people who are initially interested in your services will become clients in the first 6 months. Less than 1/3 of the interested prospects will become clients after just 5 contacts.

Some of you have dedicated staffs to help with these marketing campaigns but most financial advisors don't. That doesn't mean you can't get them implemented. It means that you need to take advantage of technology. There's no shortage of technology in the marketplace to help you automate this process and you should be taking advantage of it.

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