Referral Systems for Financial Advisors and Wealth Managers

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. Now on this podcast, in each episode, Stephen is joined by various members of his team or special guests to 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 exciting new future because of Stephen Oliver.

Stephen Oliver (01:04):

Hey there, Stephen Oliver, good to be with you again, and Bob Dunne with Advisor Wealth Mastery. And what we want to talk to you about a little bit today is facts and fallacies of the new client acquisition process, of the new client sales process, and just mechanisms for combining two very important factors. One is, building credibility, trust and rapport with a new prospect coming into your pipeline. But number two, is having effective and immediate closing skills so that they don’t get lost and distracted with other things going on. Bob, let’s start with this is, I see, and of course I’m shopping everybody and going through all this, but so many people have a website with an opt-in page, they have ads running on Facebook. They have ads running on LinkedIn, they’re doing direct messaging on LinkedIn [inaudible 00:02:03]. But they’re driving them to a website where somebody gives them contact information obviously interested in wanting more information, then what happens is that that prospect just sits there and nothing happens.

Stephen Oliver (02:17):

You’re on this all the time, how quick and immediate do you try to follow up with a new qualified lead that comes in, let’s say from a Facebook or LinkedIn or something?

Bob Dunne (02:27):

Yeah, I mean, with all the information that is getting tossed in front of us through social media and even scanning websites and so forth, people forget about you almost instantly. So it’s imperative that… I mean, what I like to do is catch them when they’re actually looking at my page. So they know who I am, where I’m coming from, they get it and obviously the returns diminish exponentially, almost in minutes. I mean, it’s just five minutes, 10 minutes, obviously 30 minutes, it’s a diminish on the return. They completely forget about you the longer you wait. So I would say immediately as fast as possible, for sure.

Stephen Oliver (03:11):

Yeah. And by the way, we’ve done a lot of research on this. The difference from an outbound call going to the person while they’re looking at the information that you offered them or the reason they raised their hand versus… I see a lot of businesses where maybe every day at three o’clock or every day at four o’clock somebody, looks at it or a new lead comes in 9:00 AM every day like clockwork. People look at the notification by email and that’s who they follow up and that’s a big mistake. I mean, in today’s day and age, I mean, the numbers used to be people see 7,000 advertising messages a day or something like that. God knows what it is today. I wouldn’t even fathom a guess between cruising social media, all the stuff they get in their mail, they use Gmail or something. They’re getting ads in their email as well as most of their emails are advertising, they’re getting unsolicited phone calls, everywhere they look they’re seeing advertising. And people, no matter how interested they are in what you are offering on what the lead magnet, if you want to use that term, whatever the offer was to get them to raise their hand, no matter how interested they are, they forget about you and if you’re followup is strictly email, I don’t know.

Stephen Oliver (04:34):

I think the average person is getting 200 emails a day, an awful lot, especially Yahoo, et cetera, is going into spam and they’re never seeing it, with something like Google is going into promotional email a lot of times. But Bob let’s talk about our mechanism, is we always build a page whatever the offer is, because sometimes we’re using Leadpages, sometimes it’s WordPress, sometimes it’s other software, whatever. But we’re always building in with the CRM and there’s several different options to do this, it’s very inexpensive, where the minute the lead comes in, they’re getting a text introducing, in this case, you inviting them to initiate a call with a live link to your phone number right there in the text, right? At the same time, they’re getting a live outbound voicemail, they’re getting a live outbound email, the email is the least important of the bunch. Same time, you’re getting a text message and an email, but the text messages, the important one, you’re getting a text message to your phone that says, “Here’s the person who’s just opted in, here’s their qualifications. Here’s their phone number.” And short of is 3:00 AM and you’re sound asleep, you’re getting it on your phone and you’re making every effort to contact them immediately when they’re looking at the webpage.

Stephen Oliver (05:51):

Add to that, you call, it goes to voicemail, they’re getting a text message, which by the way, an awful lot of people will respond to a missed call. But the response rate to a text message is far exceeds the live outbound call. And then at the same time, their text messages, including what’s called a V Card, excluding a full contact form with explanation, “Here, put this in your contacts so that when we’re connecting, you’ll have my information, you’ll have the ability to call me, all that. If I’m calling you, you’ll have my information in your database there, did I miss anything? I mean, we’re doing all those steps immediately upon them filling out any kind of form.

Bob Dunne (06:36):

Absolutely. I mean, the only thing I didn’t hear you specify also in that communication is, maybe you did say it and I missed it, but scheduling the appointment. So there’s a link for them to actually go ahead. If maybe we caught them at the wrong moment, maybe they’re I don’t know driving. Maybe they went to the bathroom who knows? But obviously they can do it. Maybe they are interested and they do want to follow up, but it’s just the wrong time to chat. So giving them the opportunity to book the appointment directly to your calendar or my calendar in this case where we can set a good time when they would be free and we can have a further discussion.

Stephen Oliver (07:10):

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and so to further, this gets into a lot of online marketing stuff, whatever the offer is, right? So it’s a free report, a free book, a free a webinar or a freebie, whatever it might be, whatever the offer is, we’re always landing on what would be referred to as a success page. They fill it in and sometimes it’s two steps, so sometimes they feel a little information and then we ask them for more. But we’re landing them on a success page that says, “Hey I’m available now, give me a call. We can schedule an appointment for more information. Number too, here’s a number where you can text us. And by the way, here’s a scheduling link click here and you can schedule a time for us to have a meeting by phone or via Zoom to give you a little more information.” So all of that’s happening immediately upon them filling out that form. So that’s exactly right.

Bob Dunne (08:04):

Correct.

Stephen Oliver (08:05):

Again, depending upon the offer, depending upon where the lead came from, sometimes we seen 80% even 90% fill out that form. Sometimes it’s almost nobody. But it depends upon what the offer, the traffic source, what it is you’re promising and a host of other factors as well. But-

Bob Dunne (08:27):

And just to reiterate too, how important it is to communicate right away. I mean, I’ve ran into people where they’ve clicked on a few different things, right? And so when I call, they’re asking, “Who were you, where did you come from?” And so forth. But anyways, at least I’ve built that level of communication up and reminded them on something that they may have clicked on five minutes ago or two minutes ago. And then opened a discussion to really try to help them build upon whatever it is problem they’re looking to solve, or at least get to know them, make that connection. So many other companies out there, they just really fail in this department. I don’t know if you’ve… I’ve clicked on other things and other companies just to see it and learn a little bit more about them and get zero follow-up, they’re completely and solely dependent on that person making the inbound call, which will never happen.

Stephen Oliver (09:21):

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:22] Or what they do is they rely on sequential autoresponder email and nothing else.

Bob Dunne (09:28):

Correct.

Stephen Oliver (09:29):

And it’s great to have a nurture sequence built in. That nurture sequence nowadays, fine it can be email, but it also should be retargeting on Facebook, it should be retargeting on Google. It should be text message follow up, it should be live outbound phone call, and it should be direct mail. I mean, you get all of the above in a follow up sequence. And sometimes they’re interested immediately, sometimes it takes a little bit. We’re talking about here and I want to introduce Mindi who just joined us as well. So you have Mindi and Bob Dunne and myself, but we were talking about the sales sequence of bringing in a new client and so forth.

Stephen Oliver (10:12):

You were just having a conversation, you and I had this conversation a little bit earlier with, let me typify this an advisor who’s now an independent RIA who came out of a big company. He was, what’s the right word? Tethered or a captive or whatever the right word is and now he’s independent. He’s out on his own, growing excruciatingly slowly. With an expectation about sales is, people appreciate my authenticity. I don’t need any script or I don’t need any preset stuff in the process. Is that a way to typify what the comment was?

Mindi Godfrey (10:52):

Yeah. That’s a really good way to simplify it, yeah.

Stephen Oliver (10:56):

Yeah. And so let’s talk about that and now we have Greg Moody. So the gang is all here, all we need is Jeff and [inaudible 00:11:04]. We would have the gang all here, but-

Greg Moody (11:06):

[inaudible 00:11:06]

Stephen Oliver (11:10):

… but Greg, what I was saying is we were talking about the sales process and we’ve kind of been talking about the immediate followup from a lead base. We’re going on through the the sales process here. But let’s follow up on that comment, which is just completely off base. And-

Greg Moody (11:29):

Sure.

Stephen Oliver (11:29):

… when we work with a new client is oftentimes what we find, I mean, of the many that we’ve worked with over the years, I forget who coined it, but somebody started calling it drinking from a fire hose. And we’ve got all kinds of pictures of a dog in a fire hydrant, a guy holding his hand with a fire hydrant a fire hose, whatever it might be. But the reason they started talking about that is, we would typically create more intro traffic, more new prospect, new client traffic in a month than they had in the previous 12 months, sometimes in the previous couple of years. And what happens when you have a trickle, hardly anybody ever comes in and the people you are talking to or friends and family and you already have a relationship, yeah. You don’t need to have much of a system. You sit down and you ask them about their situation and you do discovery on their processes and I mean their opportunities and their assets and their needs and their goals and timelines and all that stuff. And then you tell them what you have, and you’re fine.

Stephen Oliver (12:35):

I mean, if you are only approaching people in your fraternity or people that you already have a relationship with and it’s a small number of them, yeah. You don’t need a process, right? Is that a fair thing to say, Greg? But if you-

Greg Moody (12:50):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I mean, we’ve talked to a lot of people who say, “Well, no, I don’t have any problem with my sales. I get 100% of people to start with me.” And yeah, but the only people that you talk to are your neighbors or the only people that you talk to, are the people at your golf course.

Stephen Oliver (13:08):

Yeah.

Greg Moody (13:08):

Big deal.

Stephen Oliver (13:10):

Yeah. Or by the way, an awful lot of them they say, they don’t know their numbers, right? So the only ones that they keep in mind are the ones they had success with and everybody else dissipates pretty quick. And it’s a completely different topic, but knowing your numbers and knowing what’s really going on, especially small office, if you have a bigger office, you’re supervising a bunch of people, you’re more likely to keep track of everybody’s numbers because you want to have objectivity when you’re doing it. Oh my goodness. What you remember and what really happened are often two different things and we never want to think of ourselves as being incompetent. So we have a tendency to glorify what’s happening. But my point was, when you go from a trickle of people that you already have a relationship with to all of a sudden five times that or 10 times that, when you do that drinking from a fire hose or just as importantly, if you want to clone yourself, have staff, have associate advisors, et cetera, they can do this for you. I mean, if you ever want to a take a month and Maui, or worst case scenario, you get injured, have a back injury or something and you can’t be there for a period of time, you need to be able to have other people that can keep the momentum going and handle that.

Stephen Oliver (14:34):

It’s very difficult to do, if you don’t have a set process that you’re training them on thoroughly. And then we’re not talking about sales gimmicks. I mean, when we do sales scripting and outlines and so forth, most of the outlining the words is so you create the opportunity to build a relationship. You create the opportunity to ask questions, you create the opportunity to listen to the answers. You create the opportunity to really bond with the other human being and treat them like an individual, not treat them like a sales script. I mean, we’re never talking about it’s the idiot used car salesman with alternative choice and the Ben Franklin and one thing or another, we’re talking about building a real relationship and having tools to facilitate the process and accelerate the close. Maybe what would you [crosstalk 00:15:24]. Well, go ahead Greg, I’m sorry.

Greg Moody (15:25):

I was going to say it’s to make you more thorough. And what we see with a lot of people that just wing it is they forget stuff, they forget to be comprehensive about what they’re assessing, what they’re making sure that they understand about the client, and then they missed up. And then they either miss opportunities to provide other services that they can provide and solve other problems that they can solve, that’s a big problem. And then there’s all kinds of services that they can do that they don’t do. I did want to mention one thing, it’s not just that we have people that are selling to their friends and neighbors and golf buddies, it’s even when people are marketing and they are good at selling to strangers or they’re good at that. If they’re not good at marketing, the strangers that they do get, and they are selling to are ones that had to work really hard to find them.

Greg Moody (16:26):

So if you’re not good at marketing and you’re not getting enough lead flow, and you say, “Well, yeah, I know what you’re saying. I listen to what you’re saying, Stephen but I do get a lot of people that I don’t know, and that are not my buddies and I do sell 100% of them.” Yeah, but if you’re not getting enough lead flow, it was hard for them to find you. And if it’s hard for them to find you and they had to go through a lot of hoops to find you, same thing applies, it’s still really easy to do the sale if they had to dig to find you and look you up on the internet and go down a funny alley to find you and you’ve got other problems that you create other obstacles for them to find you, then it also makes the sale easier.

Greg Moody (17:03):

So still, if you’re really good at marketing, you have to be good at the sales process and the ongoing retention process of keeping your clients. If you’re not good at marketing, then you can be deluded into thinking those things are working.

Stephen Oliver (17:19):

Well, and it is the key to building that rapport or relationship, really getting to know the person as an individual and having a standard process that you go through. Again, it lets you not be so stressed out on what you’re going to ask them next or what the next step is, but it lets you more really listen to what they’re saying. Find things that you should delve in and ask more questions about, find commonalities. I mean, the basis of rapport. They get the NLP, which is the matching mirror and modeling but what all humans do naturally is, “Where’d you go to school? Oh, great. I went there. What are your hobbies? What do you do? Oh, I like to do that too.” It’s finding all those commonalities from geography, from hobbies, from career background and in creating commonalities. Yeah, to some extent artificially, but it’s what people do naturally of really matching and mirroring and feeling comfortable, having them feel comfortable with you.

Stephen Oliver (18:20):

Another topic on that, when you talk about somebody who’s coming in cold is, I’m a big fan of and we create a lot of tools, meaning stuff that they’ve read, listened to, watched before you sit down with them face-to-face and oftentimes between your first session with them and the second session with them. So that they come in and they’re really ready to go with you when you’re talking to them. I see a lot, again, a lot of advisors who feel like they have to sit down with a prospect cold, they don’t really know about anything going on and then they have to sell them cold and they have to pitch them. They have the 20 minutes script where they don’t take a breath and they go at it. I don’t ever like that to be a conversation, I’d be rather asking them questions, following up, listening to the answer, having them come in prepped, already familiar and aware and excited about what we do. Anyway, Mindi, I was handing off to you a minute ago. Well, what would you add to that?

Mindi Godfrey (19:18):

Well, I think the big thing to remember is when we talk about process, we’re not talking about creating a cookie cutter experience for everyone. It’s giving you a framework and a structure that allows you to not forget anything on your end, but still providing a unique experience based on that new client or prospective client’s needs. And the great thing about being able to do that, is then on your end, you still have all of your bases cover but you’re truly giving that client a personalized, unique experience that’s really going to benefit them in the end, which is the whole point of you doing this anyway.

Stephen Oliver (19:52):

Right. Let’s go down to the other end of the process for a second, and then we’ll cycle back and outline what we’ve talked about so far. But the point at which in any sales conversation that really gets a bad rap and that terrifies people who don’t feel like they have sales background or don’t want to be salesy, is the actual close. Getting somebody to finalize the decision and to complete the transaction. And as you guys know, I’ve been on a mission to listen to every podcast out there by all the experts and the gurus and so-called gurus and so forth, as well as I just added a stack of about 100 books that I’m sorting through. But I was listening to one the other day and this is a guy who’s a sales expert to the industry. And I’m hearing him explain the process that he teaches and when he comes to it, he says, “And then I give them all the packet of information. I give them a really nice folder and I send them home and say, get back to me when you made a decision on what you want to do.”

Greg Moody (21:05):

That’s terrible. [inaudible 00:21:06].

Stephen Oliver (21:09):

I was listening and the I go, “Oh my God.” Now, what you don’t ever want to be is be perceived as pushy, you don’t want to be perceived as needy. You want it to be where the body language that they’re getting from in a nice and friendly way is that, “We’d love to work with you. We’ve got a lot of people we would work with but we think specifically in your case, we could have a lot of benefit-

Lee Milteer (21:39):

It’s Lee Milteer and I’m delighted to interrupt you today and let you know that I’ve been working with Stephen Oliver for 10 or 15 years now. He’s a great guy, I love all the research that he does. And 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. So again, take the time to go to advisorwealthmastery.com.

Stephen Oliver (22:29):

… for you and could accomplish great things. But you don’t want to be needy and you want them to feel like that you’ve got a lot of other people you’re working with on one thing or another. But you want to have a day in time when you’re going to finalize and to me, finalize is they write you a check and they give you all the information they need to transfer money into the account to finalize paperwork, to do whatever it is the recommendation is going to be. But there’s got to be a day in time where they sign the paper, they write a check. And what happens with all human beings is, we have this stuff that goes into our mind, never make a decision before you sleep on. Never make a decision before you read the paperwork, all this crap that people have been taught by mom and dad and seen at the steps that give them the natural inclination to as they can make a decision today or tomorrow, they push it off to tomorrow.

Stephen Oliver (23:25):

And there’s got to be a point where during the process, you’ve prepped them, we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do this. Then we’re going to do this and that’s the point we’ll make a decision. And if it’s a good fit, here’s what the next step is and if it’s not, that’s fine too. But there’s got to be a point at which they’re ready to make that decision and to move forward with you, right? There’s a brief aside, one of the advisors we were working with and I was beating my head against the wall. Every conversation was left with, “If I’m going to have my assistant reach out and sync schedule and make our next appointment?” “What? No, no, no. This is our first meeting, what I’d like to do is get this information, we’re going to schedule, usually I like to have about 72 hours between now and then today is Tuesday. Do you want to make me do Thursday, Friday or what do you think? Monday. What’s going to be better in your schedule?” Narrow it down, have a specific appointment or Friday is good. “Well, I’m pretty tied up in the morning. I could do around noon or I could do late afternoon. What do you think would be better to get everybody together?” Well you get an appointment.

Stephen Oliver (24:48):

The other thing, we’re using a software, I mean, a lot of this stuff is automated. We’re using software to remind them by text messaging, by email, we’re reminding them of what their next steps are. We’re giving them additional tools to review videos, reports and so forth that they’re expected to have done and reviewed before that last meeting or the next meet. But anyway, I covered a lot of ground there, but let’s go back to closing. Mindi, what would you say about closing? Or Bob, what would you say gets missed on a lot of that stuff?

Bob Dunne (25:18):

I mean, number one, most of them feel like they do more talking than hearing. I mean, it’s so important to listen. Don’t fill void air with just gibberish. You always want to make sure and the other one is, [inaudible 00:25:33] just from Tom Hopkins. Feel, [inaudible 00:25:36]. Hear them out, find how you can help them and that’s what it comes down to. It’s all about helping your client so never feel like you’re selling always understand that it’s a helping moment.

Stephen Oliver (25:48):

Right. Well, what bothers me the most, is people who get verbal diarrhea in the sales process, right? Is really, it should be anything that you ask to teach them that could be handled by tools. Anything that you do individually one-on-one has to be stuff that’s personalized to their situation. Their unique proposal, their unique ideas, but things that you have to teach them about what you do, what the process is, what the opportunities are. That’s stuff that I can send them a link to a video tape, a video recording, it could be on YouTube, it can be on your channel. I can send them home with a DVD. Some people still have DVD players. I can send them home with a [inaudible 00:26:32]. But those tools can accomplish all of that teaching that’s not specifically individualized and personalized. Greg, what would you to that as far as actually finalizing and closing?

Greg Moody (26:46):

Yeah. We see a lot of people that are not listening at all, and they need to listen and not lecture. That’s the easiest way to say it. They need to listen and not lecturing. And you can tell what’s happening if you’re doing most of the talking.

Stephen Oliver (26:59):

Right.

Greg Moody (27:00):

If you do most of the talking, then it’s not working very well. That’s the way to break it down.

Stephen Oliver (27:06):

I like it to be, I’m doing 10%, which is mostly asking questions, they’re doing 90%. And also I want the process to be, to the greatest extent possible what would be considered takeaway. So they’re asking me, and I’m more or less taking it away and pulling away. That’s a better process than I’m like begging for business. It’s again, nobody likes needy and nobody wants false urgency, they don’t want somebody who feels like they need a check this week to make the rent. All of those are a massive turnoff. So you’ve got to have that sense of professionalism, that sense of frankly, whether they’re a client or not it’s not going to affect your lifestyle. However, here’s all the things that I think makes us a good fit and all the things that we can do and the reasons why it would be a smart

Greg Moody (28:00):

Yeah. And I think for some people that are listening and maybe they don’t feel that way right now, and you may not feel like you’re… You may be feeling like, “Gee, I really want to get more business,” and I’m really maybe not feeling desperate but you may be feeling really anxious about getting business. So maybe you’ll feel anxious about getting more clients and it may not how you feel personally, but that’s why when we work with people, we need to practice and help you with how to say it and that’s why the sales process is really important. And when people just wing it, they’re more likely to express the wrong emotions when they’re talking to a client. If they have a set process in place, then they’re going to be able to express the right emotions, which is if the process is to explain something but then make sure that the client has room to talk, that’s built into it, it’s baked into the process then they won’t make that error.

Greg Moody (28:59):

They’re going to make the errors believe it or not, this is really building in the emotional content of it too. And I can’t emphasize that enough, that that’s why it’s really important to have really a professional process, a professional process means is, less of I’m the world’s greatest salesperson, I’m winging it. And a lot more of I’ve got something really professionally laid out that I’m going to, in a process, that I’m going to go through with you. That’s professional, not, I’m some sales dude and I’m winging it.

Stephen Oliver (29:31):

Yeah. And it’s all about them, it’s not about you as well. So you’re asking questions, you’re listening to the answers-

Greg Moody (29:38):

And that’s the process. The process is designed that way so you can’t screw it up.

Stephen Oliver (29:41):

Yeah. Well, it’s amazing. I mean, we’re not in a niche that’s short on ego. It’s amazing how many advisors aren’t particularly good at listening and hearing what the person says. And they want to roll on and wax aimlessly about their expertise, but they’re not really listening to the emotional needs, the actual monetary needs, financial goals, objectives of the client. And then it goes off a completely sideways. My pet peeve, we haven’t brought this up yet, but my pet peeve is always having all the decision makers in the cycle, right? So in all kinds of different sequences we see a lot anymore where maybe it’s a retired couple and their kids need to be involved in conversation, right? Or it’s not as an older family, but maybe they need to get their parents engaged because they’re talking about family planning or it’s a situation where you’re talking to the husband and the wife needs to be involved. Talking to the wife, the husband needs to be involved.

Stephen Oliver (30:54):

I always consider… Or you’re talking to a business owner about it’s defer compensation plans or something. And he’s got a partner, he’s got a board of directors, he’s got a CFO or COO, or maybe even he has an accountant and lawyer that wants to get their head in the mix, unfortunately. But whenever you’re going through the process, regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s a complete wasted breath when you don’t have all the decision-makers in front of you. When you’re using effective tools, when the other decision-makers haven’t gone through those tools and reviewed and are familiar with what you’re talking about. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a conversation implode because unknown to the advisor, wife needs to be involved, the husband need to be involved, business partner needs to be involved.

Stephen Oliver (31:44):

There’s somebody else that if they had just been good at asking questions, listening to the answer and asking the right questions, they would have figured out who needed to be involved in the conversation to begin with. I mean, I would never try to pitch something to a company without having all the right people in the room. I would never try to pitch something to a couple without having both of them there no matter what either one of them says, my process is I require a spouse to be there and or anybody else who’s going to be involved with this to be there. So we can get everybody on the same page and know what’s going on. Every now and then somebody gets agitated by that but I got to tell you, nine times out of 10, it saves the process rather than getting in the way.

Greg Moody (32:34):

Plus they probably should be. I mean, there’s potential for… What happens if it’s a couple and the wife says, “No, I can take care of it.” Or the husband says, “I can take care of it.” And the other spouse passes away first, they should know what’s going on and they should communicate about these things. but you’re right, in terms of how to make sure the sale is concluded then it’s much better than the whole, “Well this sounds really good and I need this, it’s a big decision and I need to go think about it.” Well, really when they go home and think about it, there’s nothing. If anybody that’s listing never heard that, people don’t go home and think about it and make some spreadsheet up to think about this stuff. They just don’t talk about it and then it’s over. If they think about it, you’re an advisor that’s built into the name, they should be getting your advice about it. And you’re supposed to be doing something really positive and good for them, so they probably need to have your input when they’re going through the thought process. And that’s something that we need to help you with too, on how to manage that. But they do need your advice on what things they might be thinking about.

Stephen Oliver (33:49):

And again, it’s not gimmicky if you’ve pre-framed all along, here’s step one, here’s step two, here’s the point at which we’re going to make a decision. Here’s the information you need to be familiar with before our first meeting. Here’s the information that I need and that you need before a second meeting, we’ll go ahead and make a decision if it’s a good fit and it’s a [inaudible 00:34:13] with any parameters and decide to move forward or not. At that point, as long as they’re prepped there’s nothing gimmicky about it and there’s no… It’s not bait and switch and it’s not alternative advance where it’s gimmicky. They’re clear, you’re clear on what the process is. And also it doesn’t look needy, it doesn’t look like you have to make the sale to make the rent, it’s just the next step in the logical process.

Stephen Oliver (34:41):

One other language I like to use this, Well, it seems like this is a good fit. Do you have any other questions? No. Well, what our next step is this, what we would need to do today is finalize this paperwork and get this done. Our next step is going to be, I’m going to need this information, and then we’ll go ahead and get this set up and this setup, and this setup. What I’d like to do is schedule that follow up meeting for that. When’s good? Probably early next week, give you time to do it. Great. Here’s our standard paperwork. I might add that we talked about this, I’ll add that in. So let me get you to okay that, and then however much they’re going to pay initially. Do you want to do VisaCard or MasterCard, Discovery, check, whatever and I get the thing closed.

Stephen Oliver (35:27):

And frankly, oftentimes you get some little pushback at that point, but that tells you what you missed as well. So, “well, I’m not sure.” “What specifically?” “Well I need to figure out this.” “Oh, I thought we had talked about that.” Let’s go back and cycle back and it gives me a chance to come back, solve that, find out if there’s anything else that’s uncertain or unanswered and finalize. We’ve been on this topic for awhile, but guys have anything else to add before we close? We’ll come back to this next time.

Greg Moody (35:59):

I think we’ve covered it pretty thoroughly. I think everybody needs to make sure that number one, they have a process. Number two… And again, we can help you with that. You know you have a process if it’s scripted and you can… I guess, one measurement of whether you have a process is, could somebody else do it or does it have to be you? If it has to be you and you’re the only one that can do it then, guess what? You’re never taking a vacation for a month to Tahiti. So that’s one measurement. If that can’t be done, then that’s the next one of your tasks next and what we usually help a lot of people with.

Stephen Oliver (36:36):

Yeah, and we’ve been in a situation with a ton of employees spread across a whole bunch of different offices around the city or Greg in your case, you were in Arizona and California at the same time. We’ve been in the other situation of having a franchise offices where we’ve been doing sales training, as well as with training staff for clients across the board. And again, you want to have a systematic process, whether it’s you and a part-time receptionist, or whether it’s a whole office full of people that you’re training and developing and supervising. And frankly, for all of the other legal issues that we come up with in our industry, with all the compliance issues and so forth, you better have a checklist to make sure you didn’t miss any key components. You better have it in writing because you don’t want any of that stuff to come back and haunt you. So it’s really important to have that process. Bob, anything to add?

Greg Moody (37:36):

No. The only thing I was going to chirp in there a little bit back when Dr. Moody was bringing up, making sure they have the decision makers in a room because how many times we’ve not had [inaudible 00:37:47] way in the past that they’ve said, “well, I’ll go. I actually need to go and have a chat.” And you had brought this up with either the spouse or business partner, what have you. And the last thing you want them trying to do is re-explain the conversation you just had in that room to somebody else, because it’ll never translate correctly. So-

Stephen Oliver (38:08):

“My daughter’s a CPA. I wanted to run all this by her.” Well, okay. The last thing we’re going to do is send home a notebook of everything for them to review at the kitchen table, what we want is all of the people involved in the conversation. Mindi, what would you add?

Mindi Godfrey (38:24):

Yeah, I was going to say exactly what Bob said, that’s so key to have everybody there, but again, just that reminder of get your process, get comfortable with your process so that the really is on being personal for your client.

Stephen Oliver (38:37):

You bet. Yeah, and whether you’re meeting face-to-face or you’re meeting via Zoom or you’re meeting, I guess by phone nowadays, I love meeting people by video, phone misses a little bit of that interaction. But regardless, the face to face-to-face interaction really is about establishing human to human contact and having them really feel comfortable with you, with the environment, with your associates. If you’re in an office, with your office.

Stephen Oliver (39:13):

And by the way, Mindi we’ve seen a lot of fails, we’ve done a lot of conversations with both clients, prospective clients, but also suppliers. And all of a sudden they’re having a meeting and they’re in their bedroom and they’ve got an untidy situation or they’ve got an unimpressive environment, one thing or another. And you’ve got to be aware of all of that stuff. One of the advisors we work with, he has his office and he has a conference room then he has his Zoom room with the format and set up, hell, it can be a spare bedroom in your house with the right backdrop. But it’s having all of the staging right but then that’s to facilitate building that relationship and having them feel comfortable with you and having them both feel your professionalism but also your empathy and your concern for them. Well, let’s call it a day on that. That’s an awful lot of information today and we’ll pick up with that next time.

Greg Moody (40:17):

Sounds good.