50 Different Ways to Create New Clients Part 1

Lee Milteer (00:09):

Everybody, this is Lee Milteer, and I’d like to give you an introduction to one of my favorite people on Earth, Mr. Stephen Oliver, who is with the Advisor Marketing Podcast. Now, Stephen is a true maverick, and I mean that in every sense of the word, not only in our business, but I have to tell you, his clients universally love him and they grow at rates that they wouldn’t believe it’s possible.

Lee Milteer (00:36):

Now, on this podcast, in each episode, Stephen is joined by various members of his team or special guest who share insider secrets to rapid growth and high net profits in your financial advisory practice. So, I just want you to know you’re in for a wild ride, new information, and a lot of exiting new future because of Stephen Oliver.

STEPHEN OLIVER (01:01):

We are live. So, what we wanted to cover today is 50 ways, and of course, we never quite get around the … I think we said 10 last time and it ended up being two sessions with three or four or five each, but anyway, let’s start with the goal to create 50 ways to generate new lead for clients and we’ll get as far as we get and then go from there.

STEPHEN OLIVER (01:28):

I’m Stephen Oliver with Advisor Wealth Mastery, and we got Mindi Godfrey, Bob Dunne, Greg Moody, and we’ll be, in theory, at least joined by Jeff Smith here in a few minutes, but let me start. It seems like this is one of those industries … Not it seems like, it definitely is, financial advisors, wealth managers, life insurance, et cetera, one of those industries where it has just a herculean failure rate in the first three years.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:01):

Part of the reason it has herculean failure rate is an industry tendency to go do college recruiting, put somebody in, get them licensed and all of that crap, teach them enough about their technical proficiencies to hit the ground running and then say, “Go find a bunch of clients.” Most people have no idea where to start and they start with, it’s just like being a vacuum cleaner salesman, they would bring a bunch of people in the room and say, “Well, what you want to do is go pitch your mom, go pitch your grandmother, go pitch your uncle and go pitch your high school friends.” Then, once they run out of that immediate family circle of influence, if you will, they’re dead in the water, and that’s just the dumbest way to run a ship.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:52):

Even advisors who’ve got some momentum, it feels to me like they get fixated really on two things, they get fixated on referrals and then maybe to a lesser extent to get fixated on LinkedIn. Both are great sources, but we have the conversation all the time, and they say, “Well, where do most of your new clients come from?” “Oh, they come from referrals.” “Great.” “What referral systems do have in place to generate new clients by referrals?” and usually it’s a blank stare or dead air on the phone.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:22):

So, let’s start with 5, 10, 15 different referral systems and we’ll talk about LinkedIn a little bit, but then we’ll go into other mechanisms. We’re trying to do as rapid fire as we’re capable of which is a very … We shall see how it go here.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:37):

But with referral systems, I always start with, and I’d recommend everybody watches the video we did specifically on referral systems. But one is, anytime I’m working with a wealth manager or advisor, first thing I do is sit down and look at their client list, try to figure out who they have already. I was listening to somebody else, I’d give attribution if I remember the name, but they made a point that one, most of your clients don’t even know the full range of services you provide.

STEPHEN OLIVER (04:05):

One starting point is to have literature, have communication by email, by direct mail, give them a piece of paper when you’re meeting with them for a quarterly or annual reviews, but just spell out what all the range of things that you do are so that if they want to send you a friend, they know. So, if they’re having a conversation, somebody says, “Well, I’m worried about my son’s college education,” bingo, that’s one of the things on your list for instance.

STEPHEN OLIVER (04:34):

Another element of referrals is, and I tell the story, I don’t want to repeat myself forever, but the story of having a dentist and never going back to the dentist because I forgot his name and was in an area where there’s a lot of them, so I couldn’t even figure out which one it was and ended up jumping ship to somebody else. Somebody I liked, had good service with, they charged me reasonably, everything else that you would go through, but they weren’t top of mind.

STEPHEN OLIVER (05:02):

One of the things for referrals that we talk about is a constant drip, where they’re getting an email from you multiple times a week, they’re getting stuff physically in the mail from you, maybe a monthly you do a newsletter, do a Zoom meeting live with them or do a Zoom meeting by groups on different categories and so forth. But, guys quickly, a couple of other things too, as quick items for referrals as we move on through here.

Greg Moody (05:28):

Well, a couple of things. You said have the literature out, but that can turn into white papers, that can turn into a book, and having something like a book, it adds onto your authority that then you can repurpose in lots of different ways. Another thing that I, we’re probably kind of jumping around in order, was to make sure your website is setup right, so that among all the other investment advisors that are out there, when somebody might be cold and looking for investment advice, you’re going to show up properly. If you have, back to the book, enough content going on and we help people structure book and write a book, it’s not as daunting a task as most people think. It’s actually pretty straightforward to do.

Greg Moody (06:11):

But then all that content can go in your website and then when people are looking for you or looking for whatever your niche is within the investment adviser community or whichever community you’re working with, they can find you. Once you have that content on your website, then that’s where Google can find you because that’s what Google wants is lots of content on your website. They want it to be recent. Most of the time when we talk to investment advisors, it’s just nothing. There’s good information on their website and it looks nice, but looking nice and the relationship between it looking nice and be attractive to Google or ranking well in Google is totally different.

Greg Moody (06:53):

Those two could be good-

STEPHEN OLIVER (06:55):

Let’s point that out as two different topics, although they’re intimately tied. One is writing a book and/or a series of books. I mean, it could be a 70-page, it could be a booklet. It could be a 20-page white paper, but having something physically to give to clients that then has pass on effect is a great referral tool. Having something physically to use as a lead magnet, to mail to people, et cetera, is a marvelous credibility building tool. Right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (07:25):

What happens in reality, I think it’s a million books are published a year, and people think of a book as I’m going to make it my life’s work and I’m going to go get a New York publisher. Well, that’s a waste of time in 99% of the cases and even a best-seller non-fiction book is maybe 5,000 copies. The time and effort that goes into it versus the money you’re going to make isn’t worthwhile.

STEPHEN OLIVER (07:51):

But what is worthwhile, is creating something as a credibility tool, creating something as a pass along. I know one advisor who is creating a new book quarterly now. And again, they’re like 70-page booklets, but it’s on unique select topics. Everything from retirement fund rollover to preparing for college education and preparing for retirement, take each and every topic that you would have an appropriate solution to, and that can become a booklet or it could become a larger book. Then each client could get five of them for pass along to their friends. That’s one aspect.

STEPHEN OLIVER (08:34):

Greg, let’s move to the other side on internet side here and we can kind of expand on that. You start talking about Google ranking and positioning and I think there’s a couple of things with that. I was, again, listening to somebody else, I’ve been listening to about a gillion podcasts recently. Listening to somebody else and they said, “It’s a sad generic industry when people think that it’s okay to go to the CFP website or Northwest Mutual’s website or whoever’s and enter your zip code and you’re going to get an advisor based upon what zip code they’re in” as if that’s the primary criteria.

STEPHEN OLIVER (09:13):

What I find is endemic in this industry is everybody looking, feeling, acting, and appearing to the general public as interchangeable. The last thing you want to do in marketing is become generic. And frankly, if you become generic, I mean, they can go replace you with software. I mean, the robo-advisor stuff nowadays is pretty sophisticated. What you want to do is you want to be a character. You want to be idiosyncratic. You want to stand out from the crowd and be different from the crowd, which brings us into the idea of niches, but we’ll go to that too.

STEPHEN OLIVER (09:52):

But let’s talk about online marketing is, you were talking about what can be categorized basically, maybe in three or four different pieces, blogging, which is creating content on your website as a net for Google and other aspects of creating videos, creating other content marketing pieces that then become a way of attracting traffic, right? One, I think, is getting out of that serving a zip code, into serving somebody with a particular need, whether it’s statewide, regionally or nationally is a better way to think about it.

STEPHEN OLIVER (10:35):

But then building the online presence. Greg, talk a little bit more about that is what the elements are to get Google to find you and then we can shift into pay-per-click and we can shift into social media and go from there.

Greg Moody (10:48):

Well, yeah. What Google really wants is they want a lot of content. They want the content to be relevant. So they want the content to be about the topic that you’re going to search on. You probably shouldn’t be posting on fishing unless there was a certain reason for that. Unless you’re-

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:03):

Well, unless you’re the guy for the professional fishermen.

Greg Moody (11:07):

Exactly. You must-

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:08):

That should be good.

Greg Moody (11:10):

And then they want it to be recent or they need it to be recent and changing. Sometimes we’ve talked with people who’ve been in the business 20 years and their website hasn’t changed. Well, it wouldn’t have been 20 years ago because that wouldn’t have been existing, but it hasn’t changed for two or three years. There hasn’t been any new content. And so, what that’s going to do is it’s going to get you pushed down and down and down in the rankings, even if some of the other characteristics are fine. That’s one aspect of it is in terms of having enough content on the website.

Greg Moody (11:44):

The other thing is a lot of times that just the tactical characteristics, they build a website on Wix or Squarespace or one of the do-it-yourself sites, and those are fine if you’re not really trying to be found from a general search, those aren’t really good-

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:04):

Organically.

Greg Moody (12:05):

Yeah. Organically. If you’re a soccer mom and you want to have somebody give some information out to somebody, that would be fine, but that’s not going to be good if somebody’s going to be searching for a replacement investment advisor. At our last meeting, it was a really telling stat that you gave that only 40% of people are happy with the investment advisor that they’re with.

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:26):

Clients.

Greg Moody (12:27):

Or clients. And 60% are unhappy and many of them are looking for another investment advisor. Well, we want them to find you. That search should be something that then is going to work when somebody looks for your website. That’s not something you can ignore anymore. It’s not something that you’re going to get overcome. And by the way, even if you do, do a good job with referrals and we can talk about referral systems coming up, people will still likely look you up. We want to make sure that all that content that’s online, and this is just one component of online marketing, kind of the most fundamental part though, because then if you layer Facebook Marketing or you layer Google AdWords, or you layer some other pieces onto it, it’ll function a lot better if you have a more robust website.

STEPHEN OLIVER (13:19):

Yeah. Yeah. And going back to the, I went and got a referral. I held a client appreciation event that a bunch of friends came to or whatnot, or the CFO suggested to the chief marketing officers talk to you, whatever it might be. But as you said, and this is more a female centric thing than a male centric over generalized, but a huge number are going to go Google you to see what’s out there. I know that some of you have restrictions with your your company, what you can do and so forth.

STEPHEN OLIVER (13:56):

The other problem is of course, is that, advisors really by law, can’t do testimonials, can’t use testimonials in your marketing and so forth, but that doesn’t stop somebody who’s mad at you from going and posting negative comments about you. There’s a balance, but you’ve got to make sure that there’s a presence online, that when somebody goes and Googles you, they find you, and what they find is credible. That can be a YouTube channel with lots of content on it. It could be a podcast. It can be lots and lots of blogs on your site, et cetera.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:36):

One thing that you didn’t mention, Greg, is it has to be unique content, right? So if I work for Fisher Investments, with Northwest Mutual or Raymond, James, or whatever, and they’re putting out content that you can give to clients constantly, you can’t just take that and put it up on your individual blog.

Greg Moody (14:56):

Well, you can. You can, but it won’t serve this purpose.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:00):

Right. Right, right. Right.

Greg Moody (15:02):

Yeah. And that’s what’s important about it. Sorry to interrupt where your flow was there, but you mentioned podcasts and that’s what is such a huge opportunity, especially you mentioned before of doing videos with your clients or doing a webinar with your clients about some topics. When you’re talking about podcasts, that’s a whole nother avenue that now in 2020, late 2019, 2020 is a huge thing that Google looks at it if you have a podcast tied into your website, not the podcast platforms, but then it pushes from your website out to podcasting, Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify. You can push your podcasts out to all of these platforms. That’s really big within this part of our topic today, too.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:45):

Yeah. Yeah. Something to consider on that is that then becomes a subject of how to stay front and center with your clients, as well as how to attract new clients. Right? If you’re meeting with somebody once a quarter or once a year, or heck, if you sold them an insurance policy and haven’t met with them face to face in three years, what you want is you want a whole bunch of different vehicles in order for them to be aware of paying attention, following you, learning, continue to stay in contact. Podcasts, blog content, having them subscribed to that information is a great way to keep clients engaged as well as to attract new clients through organic search. Anyway, Greg, Mindy, Bob, anything to add to that?

Mindi Godfrey (16:40):

The one thing I think I would throw out there is we always talked about some websites and you skirted this, but being a little unique, I have looked at hundreds and hundreds of advisor sites across the web, and they’re completely interchangeable. It goes back to what you were saying about finding someone by zip code. To build that personal relationship, be personal on your website, make it reflect who you are and who your team is and your local area … What’s what’s your passion? If your passion is, we talked about fishing earlier, if you want to be the financial advisor to professional fishermen, well, those are the images you should have on your site and you should talk about your love of fishing and make sure that when you’re doing your seminar, your webinars, that in your background, you’ve got that fish trophy, but be personable. That will help right off the bat with that interchangeability.

Bob Dunne (17:45):

Oh, absolutely. If I can expand on it, you touched on it a little bit ago about how often a lot of advisors reach out to their clients, but get to know your clients, get to know who they are, what their family members are doing, and try to communicate and contact them. That’s another opportunity and realize that you have to go out and get new clients. It’s not selling, it’s informing. They don’t know what your certifications mean. So every time you reach out, try to inform them and how you can help, because that’ll be a big benefit to you.

Greg Moody (18:20):

Sorry. That’s where the content is that we’re talking about is making sure you’re constantly doing that. Hopefully, people, when you’re listening to this, it might seem like, “Oh, well, yeah. What do I have to do? Sit down for 12 hours and write a bunch of stuff?” It’s pretty easy. It’s pretty easy to do, especially if you start from the idea of you’re giving some content out to your clients, or you’re talking to them, and then you can have it transcribed it. You guys probably already know what you would want to say, and also maybe what makes you unique.

STEPHEN OLIVER (18:53):

Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Dunne (18:54):

And just because they built it, doesn’t mean they will come, you’re more certification. They don’t know what your certifications are, whether it’s an FRM, CLU, CMFC, RIA, they don’t know. So it’s up to you to really educate and how you can help them.

STEPHEN OLIVER (19:10):

Well, and more important is to tell them what needs you can solve, what problems you can solve, what different things are going to come up because again, I’d give attribution if I remembered, but this recording I was listening to, he made a great point, which is your clients peg you as whatever you did for them. Advisors we talk to all the time, once they have that first discovery meeting, beyond that, they don’t do a good job of continuing to go back and find additional needs, additional things to do.

STEPHEN OLIVER (19:50):

Ogilvy was the one that talked about it’s a moving parade of humanity. What he meant by that was that people’s lives are changing all the time. They have an inheritance coming in, they have a kid going off to college. Somebody in the family dies, they get married, they get divorced, whatever it might be, change careers, have a negative financial experience, have a windfall, whatever it might be, but you’ve got to be constantly staying in front of them, having them be aware of all the needs and the problems and the different aspects that you can solve.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:27):

That’s not about giving them lists of products that you can sell. That’s about describing for them a life event and that that’s something that you can be able to facilitate and help on all the financial aspects. So, anyway, as usual, we haven’t gotten very far. Let’s keep rolling here.

Mindi Godfrey (20:52):

Real quickly, we’re coming up on January, the end of the year, beginning of a new year. That’s a great time to set a discovery meeting. Even though you’ve already met with a client, set a new discovery meeting, because that’s a great time to have that conversation of what’s going to be up for them this year, what does their year look like? Helping them plan ahead for that year, but also going that opportunity to find out who they met in the last year and who they might be able to think of that’s getting ready for a big year and needing some help in the financial area.

Greg Moody (21:23):

There’s two things you said there, Mindy, that are important. One is you could do that and get referrals. One is you could do that and ask for them to use additional products or getting an additional products. The third thing is one thing that I think a lot of people that we may want to-

Lee Milteer (21:39):

It’s Lee Milteer and I’m delighted to interrupt you today and let you know that I’ve working with Steven Oliver for 10 or 15 years now. He’s a great guy. I love all the research that he does. I just wanted to let you know that if you’re enjoying the content on this podcast, then you really want to make time to visit advisorwealthmastery.com. Why should you do that? Well, because you’re going to receive two of his great books and actually one of mine called Success Is an Inside Job. You’ll also get a lot of absolutely free material on growing your practice through effective marketing. So again, take the time to go to advisorwealthmastery.com

Greg Moody (22:27):

… that a lot of advisors are not doing is once they’ve met with somebody and they haven’t gotten them to work with them, they’re not offering to meet with them again and being direct about that. First thing I thought about when you said that is maybe do a discovery meeting or another meeting with your list of people that you’ve met with, but they said no.

Greg Moody (22:49):

What we hear a lot of is, “Well, they already said no” and they tossed them off out of their list again. Those are the most valuable people on your potential list. They are 10 to a hundred times more likely to do something with you later, as you said, that moving line of humanity, that wasn’t right for them now, those are the people that I’d put on the list. So there’s three things that your current clients can be very productive to talk to because they might get more involved at the beginning of the year is a great time for them to do that.

Bob Dunne (23:25):

There’s no sense to not do an ongoing appointment, right? So when you do make contact and have the appointment, why not go ahead and set out a tentative appointment, maybe three months, six months out? That way it’s already done and you’re not starting anew again.

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:39):

Yeah, yeah. What we’re addressing here, I guess, is two things. One is, there’s always more money in your current list of clients than you’re currently bringing in because it’s so rare that anybody has really done a good job servicing that list, figuring out the opportunities, figuring out centers of influence, et cetera. Number two is, and this is the first two things I do when I work with somebody individually is let’s go through your client list in part to figure out who they are professionally. You’re already attracting a certain subset that we could go after more thoroughly. Who have you not talked to? How have we done on generating referrals? I mean, we should be able to generate one referral per client per year and most companies are at like one or 2%. There’s this huge gap.

STEPHEN OLIVER (24:33):

But then the second is, as you were just saying, Greg, is there’s this list of people who perhaps they opted-in for some offer on your website. They filled out a form on Facebook, one thing or another, or they were referred to you, somebody gave you their phone number, their mailing address, their email address. Maybe you scheduled an appointment. They no-showed or they canceled and never got rescheduled. Maybe they showed up for initial discovery meeting and then the followup never happened to really get to the point of finalizing whatever their needs were.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:12):

Sooner or later, there’s a big group of people that you never really got finalized and as you were saying, it’s a huge mistake to think of them as dead, to think of them as not interested. Just because they didn’t do business with you today, doesn’t mean in six months, they’re not going to have the need or they’re not going to mentally or emotionally be in a different situation.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:36):

One of the terms, you’re probably familiar wit it is, sequential autoresponder. And what that means is let’s say I get a new lead comes in. I can program a follow-up sequence where I follow up with them 10 times. Let’s say, like a lot of sequences we setup, lead comes in, we differentiate high quality, medium quality, not worth talking to. Then they get sequential email, they get a text messages, they get voicemails, they get outbound calls, they might get cookies or flowers or popcorn, postcards going out, big mail piece going out, et cetera.

STEPHEN OLIVER (26:19):

But you should think about a new lead that comes in. You go way beyond, the lead comes in, I try to give them a call or I send them an email. I get an appointment. I don’t get an appointment. I give up. It’s an ongoing education process. Many times we think in terms of once they have fallen off my card, they’re dead, which is wrong. And number two, is we think in terms of one method of outreach, and if that doesn’t work, give up rather than message them on LinkedIn, text them, voicemail, email, message them on Facebook, direct mail, live outbound call, having all of those mechanisms where we’re getting to them and then continuing to educate.

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:08):

This is back to what you were saying, Greg. Let’s pick up from there, is continuing to educate, stay in front of, and create awareness with everyone you’ve touched so that when they’re ready, you you get some follow-up.

Greg Moody (27:22):

Well, and I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. I think we get a lot of questions, like, “Well, so I got this prospect, how long do I work with them before I give up?” and the answer is never, unless they’re adverse goes bad.

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:35):

Never give up.

Greg Moody (27:37):

Yeah, unless you can’t, especially … You hit on something. I want to anchor something that you said, especially if you’ve designated them as a high likelihood or a high quality prospect.

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:53):

High value.

Greg Moody (27:54):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they’re the CEO of a company or they’re in the tech industry and you know they’re a high income client versus maybe somebody you don’t know anything about or somebody that you’ve already identified as below your income threshold, you want to be careful about how much you spend both money and time on the different niches that you’re working on.

Greg Moody (28:20):

If they fit your niche perfectly, then we would spend more money on them. If they’ve responded more, we might spend more time and effort on them than if somebody who we don’t know if they’re going to be a good prospect or not. They haven’t responded much. They might still be on our email autoresponder. But if you’re going to do more pieces of this marketing, like you mentioned, direct mail. We get a lot of people saying, “Well, direct mail doesn’t work,” which is complete baloney. It does work just great, but you’ve got to use it in the correct way.

STEPHEN OLIVER (28:49):

Oh, yeah. It works a heck of a lot better than email and pretty much every other alternative you used appropriately. Let’s go to that is you’ve got to know always what’s your average case value is going to be, if you want to use that way of thinking about what the average client is going to bring in and revenue for you. Then you have to back that into how much you can spend to get a new client to have a positive ROI.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:21):

Again, I was seeing a stat recently that most advisors are spending one to maybe 3% of their gross revenue on their advertising. That’s a really, really, really low number. What you get is that people who are really good at direct response advertising and really good at generating new client flow on demand, they’re willing to spend and get a three to one return on investment of four to one return on investment, a 10 to one return on investment.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:53):

If I know my average client is going to end up being worth, let’s say $3,000 a year, and on average I retain them say, six years, that’s $18,000. I should be willing to spend 1,000, 2 or 3,000 to get somebody who’s worth $18,000. If you don’t start thinking that way, one, know your numbers I talked to two advisors recently. One had, I’m going to pull a number out of the air because I don’t remember specifically, but let’s say 220 million in assets under management, but that was split among a huge number of clients, so that the average was like in the mid-hundreds. So, 150 or something like that.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:37):

But another one I talked to, the average assets under management that they had per client was 2.3 million. Well, if I’m going to bring in somebody who is going to let me manage 2.3 million, I’m going to receive 1% of that gross. My net is going to be maybe 60% of that. I can spend a lot to get that client. If I have a base of people who all fit that profile, I should be willing to be mailing them constantly and repetitiously to convert them.

STEPHEN OLIVER (31:11):

But, hey, let’s move along. What everybody pretty much does with direct mail is they choose the wrong list, so getting direct mail to work has to do with offer and list. Then it’s about getting the piece opened, right? The first thing to do is with direct mail is get real good with direct mail with your current client base, with the idea of maintaining relationship, continuing to educate, obviously generating referrals expanding into their circle of influence. The second thing is get really good at using direct mail with any new lead that comes in and with your existing leads until basically they move to Afghanistan or they yelled at you to take you to take them off their list, but stay with them forever.

STEPHEN OLIVER (32:00):

Then the next thing to do is you want to really, again, huge mistake that people make, and I heard this again. I was listening to a very well-respected coach and speaker in the industry, but he started out a book on marketing with everyone is your potential customer. Well, that’s just the dumbest advice ever. What it should be is here’s my definition of what my current customer, here’s my, if you want to use the word avatar customer, that I’m looking for, here’s how I go find them.

STEPHEN OLIVER (32:35):

Then when it comes to say direct mail, I was hearing the advisor say he likes to work with teachers who are at a certain level in their career who have certain assets. Well, I can get to them in all kinds of different ways, right? If that was my niche, there are events that are just for teachers where vendors to education show up. I could go be a vendor at an event for teachers. I can go get the magazines, the trade magazines that they use. I can go through the unions and contact those people.

STEPHEN OLIVER (33:07):

There’s a ton of different ways that I can get a list to mail to, that I could be in a magazine that’s targeted. I could be in Facebook groups. I could be in LinkedIn groups that are strictly for that audience. Again, I can find 20 different ways if I really spend some time and effort to target that particular niche, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (33:29):

Another one of my clients, he’s into Porsche’s and his desire is to have every of the 911 Turbo. I gave him this vision of here’s your office and here’s the glass wall, and here’s the car collection, and you’re advertising through local Porsche club, you’re advertising to the regional Porsche club, the national Porsche club. I mean, there’s magazine lists, all kinds of different things. I have a 911 Turbo and when they released the Cayenne, I got this big mail package. I get crap from Porsche all the time. But if you want it to become like the guy for that niche, there’s all kinds of ways to get to them and you’ll be much better spending money that then trying to draw a radius around and be the faceless, nameless financial advisor in your niche.

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:20):

If you’re going to do that, I mean, all your marketing should be, you’re standing next to the car and you got the helmet on, on a day at the track, and you’ve got all these different things that, that audience can identify with.

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:31):

So, pick up from there, guys. We’ve barely scratched the surface. We’ll have to do another session where we talk about public relations, becoming the expert, and you can become the expert pretty easily locally and being the go-to expert on radio, TV, newspaper, and so forth, you write articles for your magazines, but even better, picking a niche and now becoming the expert for architects or becoming the expert in all the teaching magazines, et cetera.

STEPHEN OLIVER (35:04):

The other thing we’ll have to talk about more later is getting really, really, really good at direct mail and how to find targeted lists and so forth. Another thing we’ll have to spend more time talking about is how to get really good in social media, but focusing on LinkedIn and Facebook, which are, I mean, hopefully not dating myself, but I don’t think there’s a lot of opportunity right now in TikTok and Pinterest, but there’s a hell of a lot of opportunity to Facebook and LinkedIn for us right now

Greg Moody (35:34):

Keep an eye on it, right? I mean, we keep an eye on it to see if-

STEPHEN OLIVER (35:36):

Oh, constantly. Yeah.

Greg Moody (35:38):

That’s one thing we’re trying to do with all of our clients is making sure we know when. For a while, Facebook wasn’t really that helpful. For a lot of-

STEPHEN OLIVER (35:45):

No, I hated Facebook three years ago.

Greg Moody (35:47):

Right. Right. People would be wasting their time with that kind of stuff. And then it kind of flipped and then we were helping our clients immediately jump on it as soon as it flipped.

Greg Moody (35:58):

But one of the things I think that, and that’s probably a good point too, is what we’re going over here in our meeting now and the next time we get together, what I’d probably wrap up with is we’re going to go over 50 things when we get through this. There’s probably a thousand things that you get pinged on and hit on and asked to do, especially in online marketing, but even offline marketing that marketers will say, “Do this and do this and do this” and it’ll flood your business.

Greg Moody (36:34):

There’s almost as important to figure out what to say no to and what to not waste time on. TikTok might be a good example. Right now, stay away from all that. You’ll get Yelp asking you to advertise. No, that’s not going to do you any good in your business. What to say no to is almost just as important as well, so that you can stay focused, not just on your niche, but on stuff that’s going to be productive and get you a good return on investment.

STEPHEN OLIVER (37:01):

Yeah. Maybe just in summary of some of the things we’ve talked about so far is, if for want of a better term, a character, you want to have a personality in everything you do. You want to be completely different than everyone else. You don’t want to be milk toast. You don’t want to be the guy sitting behind a walnut desk in a JC Penney suit, looking like every other damn advisor, only distinguishable by you in their zip code. Avoid that at all costs.

STEPHEN OLIVER (37:35):

Two is, you’re always better to do two things, specialize and find a niche, right? So you’re much better off to be the best person at this specialty than you are to try to make the stupid statement of, “If I drew a radius around my office, I should be working with everybody in my town.” No. In today’s day and age I mean, you really don’t need to meet with people in person. You can do it on Zoom just as easily. Why does it matter?

STEPHEN OLIVER (38:06):

I mean, yeah. I know you have to spend a little bit of money to get licensed, but if I was the guy for architects or for teachers, why aren’t living in Colorado, working with teachers in Maine as opposed to worrying about there, in 80232 zip code? There’s all kinds of different ways to reframe your thinking. But, we talked a little bit about direct mail, the thing that makes direct mail work best is the list, getting them to open it and then having an offer. Again, the offer can’t be, “Hey, I’m a financial advisor in your area. If you ever have any needs, call me.” Right? That’s not an offer.

STEPHEN OLIVER (38:47):

What the offer is, here’s a free book on, name the topic. Here’s a free report on, name the topic, here’s a free … I mean, it could be a live meeting. It could be a Zoom meeting, a webinar. It could be a luncheon meeting like people are familiar with, but it has to be an offer of here’s something that I want to give you as a magnet to capture their interest and so forth and not just, “Hey, I’m here. If you ever need anybody, need me, call me.”

STEPHEN OLIVER (39:20):

The next thing is, in today’s digital day and age … There was an article in Wall Street Journal, you guys saw that. I don’t remember the exact ratios, but if you look at all media, magazines, newspapers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, TV is still holding its own, although it’s gotten really fragmented, but digital marketing, basically Google and Facebook are dominating advertising right now. You’ve got to get good at all the different social media aspects, but basically boil it down for our purposes to LinkedIn and Facebook. And, you’ve got to get-

Lee Milteer (40:00):

It’s Lee Milteer, and I’m delighted to interrupt you today and let you know that I’ve been working with Steven Oliver for 10 or 15 years now. He’s a great guy. I love all the research that he does. I just wanted to let you know that if you’re enjoying the content on this podcast, then you really want to make time to visit advisorwealthmastery.com. And why should you do that? Well, because you’re going to receive two of his great books and actually one of mine called Success Is an Inside Job, you’ll also get a lot of absolutely free material on growing your practice through effective marketing. Again, take the time to go to advisorwealthmastery.com.

STEPHEN OLIVER (40:49):

… really good at understanding how search works and how the online world works, so that you can be really effective with that.

STEPHEN OLIVER (40:58):

The last thing I’ll leave you with real quick is you always want to have the Parthenon. You want to have 10, 15, 20, 30 different things going on every month to generate new traffic. Some of those things are a little time-intensive. Some of those things are a little expensive. Two is, you want to know your numbers and be able to always compete what your return on investment is on everything, and be willing to spend … Again, I mean, we’re in the business of teaching people what the return is on their investments, but most business owners, and certainly most advisors aren’t willing to do the thing that’s going to get them a 10 to, 20 to 1, 30 to 1 return on investment and will make a decision that, that’s not going to work when they just don’t know how to work it.

STEPHEN OLIVER (41:47):

Mindy anything to add to that before we call it a day?

Mindi Godfrey (41:50):

No, I think you set it up really nicely. I think that the big thing is, you got to jump in and take the first step. If any of this is new to you, give us a call, reach out to us here on Facebook. We’d love to talk to you.

STEPHEN OLIVER (42:06):

Well, yeah. I mean, we haven’t even scratched the surface, but absolutely. And again, what we do with all advisors is we help you put together an action plan and a marketing plan to show you how to double, triple, quadruple your traffic. Again, Greg, you said it before. They’re mostly inundated with people who maybe they do Facebook advertising for 10 or 15 different niches or they do LinkedIn scripts or something like that. But really, when you’re building your practice, there’s so many different things that you should put in place and then just let it run and run and run and run and run and make it a consistent thing. It’s never one magic pill that’s going to turn things around.

STEPHEN OLIVER (42:51):

Bob, what would you add to this so far?

Bob Dunne (42:52):

Yeah. I would just say be sure you communicate, really get to know your clients and inform them how you can help them, maybe help their family, maybe help their friends, but really understand that they probably don’t know exactly how you can help. It’s just so important to imagine yourself being the client and explaining how you can really help them in their future.

STEPHEN OLIVER (43:21):

Yeah. Maybe to expand on that briefly, is I heard somebody else say, “I was trained in insurance and the pitch was Mr. and Mrs. Prospect, I get paid in two ways. I get paid in the commissions for what you buy, but I get paid in the friends that you send me.” Well, that’s a dumb ass statement to make. Everything that you say to a client about a referral and a hundred percent of the reason why a client is going to send you their brother-in-law, their CFO, their friend, their golf partner, whatever it might be is because they feel that, that person has a need and they feel comfortable that you’re going to handle them well, you’re going to treat them well and you’re going to facilitate well.

STEPHEN OLIVER (44:05):

Again, somebody sent me a catalog. Here’s all the gifts that you can give a catalog to your client and if they refer you somebody, they get this … I don’t know what it was, iPad or airless fryer or whatever. Well, that’s not why the client turns their friend over to you. The only reason they turn their friend over to you is they perceive their friend to have a need or their friend has expressed a need and they feel comfortable that you’re going to solve it and not put egg on their face. If you handle their friend poorly, that respects poorly on you. Every conversation with a client about a referral, shouldn’t be about rewards, it shouldn’t be about expectations, it shouldn’t be about you, your needs. It should be, Zig Ziglar used to say, WIIFM, what’s in it for them? It should be about how you can help their friends, what services you can provide and a reassurance that you’re going to handle that well.

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:07):

Greg, anything to-

Greg Moody (45:09):

Yeah, bribery doesn’t work in that case. You can try to bribe them all you want, but if you make them look bad with their friends, then that’s not going to work.

Bob Dunne (45:20):

Yeah. That’s not good.

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:20):

Yeah. It may be said at the opposite angle, gifting works, appreciation works, right?

Greg Moody (45:26):

Yeah. After the fact. They referred a friend and then we send them something nice-

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:35):

Mrs. Fields cookies or whatever.

Greg Moody (45:37):

Exactly. That’s wonderful. Then that feels really good. I did something. And then they say, “Oh, you didn’t have to do that.” That’s what you want.

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:44):

Yeah. Yeah. But if you say, “You send me X person, I’ll give you, Y,” that’s just transactional and it doesn’t feel good to them because the only reason they’re going to send a friend is the friend has a need and they feel like you’ll be the best person to solve it, and they’re comfortable with you’re going to handle this smoothly and not put egg on their face.

Greg Moody (46:01):

Absolutely.

STEPHEN OLIVER (46:04):

Well, at that, let’s leave it there. We’ve talked about four or five things out of a universe of 50. But make sure you know your numbers, know what your return on investment is, know what your lifetime value is, and do a good job of having 20 things going on all at once. A marketing guru friend of mine says he never finishes a day without doing at least one thing to market his business. That’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to have at least one new thing going on every day, and you’ve got to have a whole bunch of things running on autopilot that continually feed your practice.

STEPHEN OLIVER (46:41):

On that note, we’ll call it a day.

Greg Moody (46:43):

All right. Bye everybody.

Bob Dunne (46:44):

Bye-bye.

Mindi Godfrey (46:45):

Bye-bye.