The Best 2010 Planning Ideas That I Can Offer
Clear Your Roadblocks | December 2009
Welcome to the December 2009 and 5th Anniversary edition of
our Clear Your Roadblocks E-Newsletter and Leading Advisor Web Site.
What if after fourteen years since the inception of the internet, you
have not invested in a web presence via a web site, e-newsletter, blog,
FaceBook, LinkedIn or Twitter? According to Seth Godin, it will only take you
about a year to catch up.
I’m no different than you. There are days when I am fueled by
inspiration and fooled with desperation and the belief that I have too much to
do.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and
five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet
While we are ranked on page one on Google search engines for
financial advisor coach, financial advisor coaching, financial advisor
speaking, investment advisor coach, investment advisor coaching and investment
advisor speaking, it would not take all that long to lose this ranking and the
inspiration that e-marketing helps to create.
Perhaps 2010 will be the year for you to understand that
committing to building a web presence will help you to find your voice and
assist you to develop your vision, business plan, marketing plan, brand, unique
selling proposition and become a recognized expert within the niche that you
choose. If you were me, you would be lucky enough to receive a call like this from
a complete stranger that says “I’ve been reading your blog and your
e-newsletter, I have $120,000,000 under management and I want to grow my
practice to $150,000,000.
I believe that your web presence has got to be a part of
your vision for 2010 and beyond because if your prospective clients can’t find
you on Google, FaceBook, LinkedIn or Twitter, notice that I said OR … you don’t
have to do them all, then you may not exist in their minds.
This edition of our Clear Your Roadblocks E-Newsletter includes;
Many thanks go out to Laura my love and business partner, to
Tiffany Mayrhofer who joined our team in September to help us provide our
clients with the best customer service, to Chris Barrow my friend and business
coach and to Kim Black our IT Expert that keeps our online presence fresh and
operational.
It has been a huge developmental year for us with being
chosen in September to speak at the June Vancouver 2010 Million Dollar Round
Table Annual Meeting, creating the Clear Your Roadblocks One Day Workshops
& 60 Day Coaching Program and speaking at 24 Advocis Education Days in the
last four years. As much as I am a strong advocate of a web presence, let’s not
forget that Marketing & Sales 101 is really about Marketing & Sales One
On One … I hope to see you One On One in my travels in the coming year.
As we come to a close of a challenging year, may you meet and exceed
your goals for 2010.
 Enjoy the read and thank you for the opportunity to be of service.
Simon Reilly
The Financial Advisor Coach
1 877 248 6019 |
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 What Do The
Best Financial Advisors Exhibit?
What are
the attitudes, behaviors, characteristics, and strengths that
the best financial advisors have?
The laws of attraction
are absolute; you will attract what you focus on. Think of the best financial
advisors and think about their attitudes, behaviors, characteristics, and strengths.
Write these down as the more you focus on them, the more you will be able to
attract and exhibit these qualities to yourself and to your clients. Use the
philosophy from the One Minute Manager; “catch yourself doing the right
things”. For more on this please click the following link to Behavioral
Marketing & Sales Characteristics.
What are the positive
beliefs, feelings and values that the best financial advisors
exhibit? As an exercise, to remember the inherent qualities that are within
you, write a story about a time when you were really challenged and when you
were wondering if you were going to make it through and how you used your
positive beliefs, feelings and values to break through. As part
of the exercise, contact us for a copy of the Values Inventory and Feelings
Inventory and ask yourself what Values & Feelings did you exhibit? This
exercise will help you to associate to the passion that runs within you.
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Needs, Beliefs & Business Planning
Your subconscious is a lot like an iceberg.
Roughly 5% of it makes itself known while 95% of it exists below the surface.
Business planning is great, but all the planning in the world won’t help you if
your subconscious beliefs are completely unknown to you and running contrary
to, or limiting your ability to achieve the goals you put in place.
Are you able to speak to clients with
conviction about their own retirement plans if you aren’t entirely sure about
your own? I’m not talking about some idealistic or skewed notion of truth
telling or ethics, I’m referring to believability. They might not know where
the signals are coming from, they’ll almost certainly interpret them the wrong
way (many times I’m sure they’ll think the feelings of anxiety are coming from
themselves), but your clients can feel it when you are not completely
comfortable or confident, or if you are simply putting on a show of confidence.
So the question is what are the beliefs you
hold, consciously and unconsciously, that generate limiting emotions? (For
those who haven’t read my book or heard this piece before, examples of a limiting
emotion are anxiety and fear.)
First, it helps to clear the emotional and
psychic garbage you’re carrying around. It’s not as fluffy as it sounds – read
my August 2009 E-Newsletter, Beating Emotional Retirement, for steps on how to do this. It’s uncomfortable but it’s not difficult.
The process simply requires a commitment to see it through to the end.
In my own situation, it was hard to see how I
was being limited because the unmet needs I had, and the limiting beliefs that
grew from there, were being masked by the fact that I was positively driven, a
trait which probably started to emerge when I was seven or eight years old.
My father’s a great guy. He was an
entrepreneur and made all the mistakes entrepreneurs make. He didn’t have a
vision. He didn’t have a business plan. He didn’t set 90 day goals. He loaned
all kinds of money to people; I have no clue why. Oftentimes he didn’t get paid
back. He was very unfocused and very inconsistent. The income in our household
went up and down like a yo-yo. It made my mother very crazy.
Now, they say that if the needs of a parent
don’t get met, they’re going to be passed on to the next person in the
household, which happened to be me. In my mind, I had to be the breadwinner for
the family at a very early age. I had three of the largest newspaper routes in
the city, shoveled driveways and unloaded alfalfa bales. I had the work ethic,
but being that driven came at a cost – family, friends and education – because
I was always working.
Despite this, I still managed to lose a
business in the early 1990s. You can read about that in my earlier column as
well. Motivation and drive alone could not sustain what was incomplete or
missing inside myself, which is why I suggest undergoing the clearing process
to find out what exactly it is that might be holding you back. In my case, it
was the fear I was never doing enough – that drive gave me the nickname
‘Supersales’ but I lost the business because I wouldn’t, couldn’t or didn’t
even think about focusing on certain details that would sustain me and my
business.
Most people don’t understand that they’ve got
unmet needs beneath the surface. When you’ve got unmet needs, they generate
limiting emotions. Most don’t have a written business plan. Why? Safety is a
basic human need – the belief that there isn’t enough time or money can create
anxiety and fear, which in turn can cause people to believe they must be run by
the phone, e-mail, by their sales targets, or by walk-in appointments.
Once you’ve cleared your head, work to find
your centre of authenticity. This will give you the passion you need to be able
to pull yourself forward. Part of this is working with the right people.
Four years ago I hadn’t branded my business.
My clients included an heir to the largest shoe manufacturing family in the
world, one of the most successful Re/Max realtors in California, the owner of
one of the largest fine writing retailers in the world, a client who imported
hydraulic truck cranes from Italy, and more. What do all these folks have in
common? Nothing at all. I found myself getting very, very tired trying to be an
expert for everybody. When I looked at my practice though, 70% of the work I
was doing was with financial advisors. Today I specialize nearly exclusively in
helping financial advisors.
I suggest you make a list of the ten clients
you most enjoy working with. Pick ten and ask them why they like working with
you.
In my book, Curing The Unmet Needs Disease, I
talk about why we don’t have these conversations. Usually it’s because we’re
afraid.
We don’t ask for referrals and we don’t write
down our business plans, because we are afraid. Oftentimes this is tied into
the granddaddy of all unmet needs – worthiness (am I worthy enough to ask for
this recommendation?) and the limiting beliefs that I am not good enough, that
I do not know enough and even if I write my plan, I probably wouldn’t follow up
on it anyway. Rather than stuff
these feelings beneath the surface, visit them for a while. Get comfortable
with the range of emotions you have and address them. Only in this way can you
get past them.
When asking your top ten clients what they
like about you and the services you render (take notes and record this
conversation – they’ll give you the language and words others like them will
need to hear when the time comes to develop your marketing), ask them the
following questions:
- What do you like best about working with me?
- What do I do for you that you didn’t expect?
- What do I need to do to improve my service?
(If there is something to fix, go do it! Clients will feel appreciated or
ignored, depending on the actions you take in response to this question.)
- Who do you know who would appreciate the same
products and services that I offer you?
Then, wait.
Wait three seconds – count it: One
one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand. Most of the time the person
won’t have a name at the tip of their tongue, so ask then if it would be ok to
call in one week to 10 days to follow up. Almost always they will say yes.
What you’ve done is put them on notice that
you do ask for referrals. You’ve also obtained permission to ask them for
referrals again. The most interesting thing about this is someone usually
crosses their path during those 10 days. It’s the funniest thing. Like one of
the laws of the universe.
I believe everyone should do this with their best 10
clients. Do it as an exercise. Block out a day or two and do nothing but. You
will be amazed by what they say to you. Not only will they help you with your
branding, at the same time you will be inspired and you will feel good because
you’ll be hearing it straight from the client’s mouth.
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The Six Degrees Of Life Insurance Connection – Revisited
Illness, death and the unforeseen circumstances capable of
tearing families apart are incredibly random. What difference does life
insurance make? It allows the purchaser to take an honest look at the future
and take responsibility for the unseen, both for themselves and their families.
With that in mind, it seems particularly unfortunate that so
many are so uncomfortable with insurance sales.
I believe in this industry and I’d like to take a minute to
share with you what I work on in my workshops with clients – we’ll pretend you,
dear reader, are in a seminar for a few minutes where I will help you reignite
your passion about the value of life insurance, give you the tools you need to
break into the insurance conversation with clients and, perhaps most
importantly, discuss the ever-changing circle of personal stories you have all
around you to share with clients – the six degrees of insurance connection.
Your values, your
passion
What are the values, your values that can be related to life
insurance? Altruism, protection, security, covering your liabilities, peace of
mind, legacy, love, financial freedom, responsibility, satisfaction, care, and
lifestyle are all items that have been brainstormed by advisors just like you
in past meetings I’ve had with them. I would add education, encouragement,
facilitation, impact, protection and service to the list.
This is our list of values.
You want to get associated with these intangibles you
deliver, sometimes every day. Altruism, protection, security, peace of mind,
love, legacy, financial freedom, responsibility and care – that is what you’re
delivering. You’ve got to be able to feel it at a heart level. Your clients
have got to be able to feel that’s where you’re coming from and that it’s not
about making a sale.
Consider your list of values. How do they make you feel?
Satisfied, competent, secure, confident, excited and passionate come to mind,
do they not? When we wake up, we want to get associated, perhaps reacquainted
with the values we work with in our profession and the emotions or feelings
that are created by living and working with those values.
They say it takes 21 days to break a bad habit. Why not
spend 21 days to create a brand new habit? Start integrating your own list of
values, link them to these positive feelings (make a few lists) and you will
start to feel it, you will start to own it and you will start to believe it. In
a sense, it will emanate from you and clients will pick it up.
Get your tools in
order
It’s true that we often do a poor job of answering one
simple question: What do you do for a living? When you respond to that question
with “I’m a financial advisor, consultant or planner,” we invite the listener
to place their own interpretation on what we do, based on their personal
experience of dealing with the last person who gave themselves that label.
Let’s step back to sales 101 for a second. It’s important to
have an elevator speech, a 10-second elevator speech and a 60 second elevator
speech.
People experience variations on the same problems. You know
what problems your clients have. When crafting your pitch, your elevator speech,
you’ll be talking about the outcome of the problem. Start by explaining your product
or service, the solution and the benefit. That is, the successful outcome you
help to create.
Your third tool is your personal parable. It gets to the
core of your passion and explains how your service is based on life experience,
both positive and negative. (The best advisors always seem to have the deepest
scars.) It’s important for you to share your real life experiences before you
get into talking about the product.
Everybody has a parable. It’s the defining moment or
catalyst that causes them to be in this business. What’s your story? It helps
the client to get to know you and it helps them to relate more to what you do –
they’ve heard your elevator speeches, they’re impressed and they’re going to
want to know more. You’ve got to make yourself real.
Examine the six
degrees around you
From there you have an opportunity to get into a deeper
conversation using the mother of all tools, the six degrees of personal experience
you have to draw on from all around you.
Everybody knows someone personally affected by illness,
death and the unforeseen circumstances we discussed at the beginning. Make your
own six degrees chart. I recently prepared my own to see just how random and
unpredictable illness can be. Share your own chart with clients – share that
little bit of personal information. Even if your client and everyone around him
or her is perfectly healthy, they’ll start to realize how close to home some of
your stories are. They’ll start to relate to your chart and maybe even
appreciate the randomness of it all.
This may sound like sales, but if you don’t talk about this, who is
going to? Get the client to understand why you believe in the products you
sell.
We all have the little voice inside our head that says it
won’t happen to me. Once that statement changes to why me? Or why him? It’s too
late. Explain to the client that you can ensure plans are in place to protect
the family while it goes through potentially life changing experiences. Give
clients the opportunity to change their financial concerns into financial
protection. Quite frankly, they deserve it. Ask your clients for permission to
gather the necessary information to provide them with an individual analysis of
the protection strategies that could matter most to them and their families. |
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The Best 2010 Planning Ideas That I Can Offer
My 2010 Planning process started in November and I’ve been gathering
ideas and writing articles along the way and here are the best ideas that I
have to offer;
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