How Financial Advisors Can Consistently Close New Accounts

I know there’s a lot of folks out there that want to tell you how to grow your financial practice, so just give me a few undivided minutes of your attention and I’ll show you the simple 4-step process that has brought in over $150,000,000 of new client assets within a 5 year period for just one financial advisor who followed the financial advisor marketing strategies and processes found on this website.

Yes, you read that correctly, $150 Million within 5 years!

You see, unlike others on the net and in our industry magazines that just want to teach – these results are from an advisor who actually did it. And he did it all before his 26th birthday.

He collected monthly advisory fees of over $30,000 as well as quarterly advisor fees of nearly $40,000!

All told, his trailing 12 months of completely recurring fees was $518,992.28. Built completely from scratch – no wealthy relative, no inherited book of business.

Every single client was attracted using the strategies, materials and processes found in our financial advisor marketing systems and turned into clients with the masterful 4-Step Closing Formula you’ll learn of in just a few minutes.

Now that you’ve seen the proof of what he accomplished at such a young age, now let me tell you how he did it.

But First, Let Me Tell You – It Hasn’t Always Been This Good:

Like many, he struggled his first few years trying to get new clients. He was a wirehouse rookie pounding the phones like an idiot. But he didn’t know any better.

There was no one to mentor him as to how to get wealthy prospective clients into his office; and furthermore, how to get them to become clients once they did.

He told me that he remembers it like it was yesterday — living in a cramped $500/month apartment with his wife and son that smelled so bad he could hardly sleep at night (this is no stretch – it reeked in there like there were dead rodents in the walls). His car had about 39 rust holes in it and the power steering was completely shot making 90 degree turns nearly impossible.

You are much more fortunate than he was!

“How can I be more fortunate than a twenty-something who makes $500,000 a year?”, you ask. Because I’m actually willing to spill the secrets that he used from our financial advisor marketing systems. It took 6 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in testing and research to refine. Something nobody did for him.

One of the real beauties in what I’ve put together for you and other advisors is that it’s a formula. A finely tuned system, so to speak. With formulas, all the typical human-error is removed. It’s replicable. It’s like 2+2. When I do it I get 4. You do it, you get 4. You see, if you know that a formula works – virtually anyone with a pulse can ‘plug-in’ to the formula and get the same results. If you haven’t reduced everything you do in your business to some type of formula…then you’re working too hard and will never get predictable results.

And results like his are mucho-predictable. Using the strategies found in our financial advisor marketing system, he was able to fill his calendar, on demand, anytime he wanted, and tell exactly how many new clients and new money under management he’d have in two months; or 6 months; or 6 years for that matter. You can too. It’s easy and I’ll show you how and why it works for anybody, anywhere, all the time.

So let’s get to this…

What I’m about to share with you is not for:

• Someone looking to get rich quick without actually working. You have to work hard and anyone who’s made it big did it by working hard. However, you do what I tell you and I can guarantee that you’ll get rich a lot quicker than you are right now.
• Someone who is looking for ‘hypnotic sucker sales techniques’. My process is all about doing what is right for people who need the assistance of a professional advisor.
• Someone who thinks they know it all. You don’t, I don’t, nobody does – all successful people are lifelong learners always refining their skills.
• Someone who is too proud to listen and learn from a kid with a second (or third) rate education. Most of the Million Dollar earners I know personally in this business didn’t even go to college – including one advisor who earns over $4 Million each year working part-time!

What I’m about to share with you will show you:

• How to easily convert 70% or more of your prospects into clients regardless of your experience, education, or how ‘financially sophisticated’ your prospects are. Rich people are just like everyone else – except they have more money…that’s it.
• Learn the Stealth-Like packet I send to prospects that literally closes 32.4% of the clients for me; before they meet me in person or step foot in my office.
• Where you should hold your appointments, what color the room should be, what refreshments you should offer, what type of chair you should sit in, and how I’ve ‘scientifically’ designed my setting to close at least 1 in 10 clients I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
• The 11 word sentence you must use to open every appointment in order to guarantee your prospect tells you exactly what you have to be able to do for them to become a client.
• The 2 words you absolutely must use to finish each and every meeting. This is priceless, and if you don’t do it you will lose MILLIONS of dollars.
• How to know within the first 18 minutes of meeting someone whether or not they will become a client. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that a bird in hand beats two in the bush. Once you know this you’ll know which clients to focus your attention on and which tire-kickers to drop like a bad habit.
• How to spot a problem client within the first 7 minutes of meeting with them.
• Why asking for referrals from clients and non-clients directly is a cardinal sin that should be avoided like the plague. All the referral “experts” are dead wrong about this and I’ll prove it to you.

So Do You Think Knowing Those Things Would Be Helpful in Growing Your Financial Practice?

You Bet it Would!!

Allow me to know take you through each step in just a little more detail.

The Million Dollar Sales Formula Step #1:

We’ve all had prospects that no matter how much we know they should work with us, for some reason or another choose not to. Often times financial advisors will beat themselves up chasing the prospect, trying to figure out what went wrong – and almost always think it’s because either:
A) The client’s an idiot (which is sometimes true)
or
B) We said something wrong in our meetings/sales process

I on the other hand would contend that most our our sales failures in financial services is due to something we did far earlier than when we asked for the business (you are asking for the business, right?). Through extensive trial and error, what I’ve found is that we fail to make the appropriate ‘first impression’ before the meeting process has even begun. And that’s why we lose clients that should never be lost.

How do you fix this?

By making sure you send out a packet to all prospects prior to them meeting with you. When done correctly this ‘packet’ can literally close 32.4% of the prospects before they even meet with you. I know, I’ve measured with and without and can substantiate that exact number. Let me share with you the pre-meeting components that must be executed to significantly increase your closing ratio:

1. An appointment reminder letter with map to your office along with instructions of what your prospect needs to do to be properly prepared for the meeting. Think of this as a welcome letter and short home-work assignment to ensure both their and your time is well spent. The cover letter should be printed on a professionally designed letterhead with a professionally designed logo, and should have your website address on it. Which, by the way, you should absolutely have a website – and it should look good and serve a purpose.
2. A Confidential Personal Profile. This is what they put their name, date of birth, children’s first names, and the like on. It should be no more than one page and should also ask for the names of their current broker, advisor (these are different and will make your client decide exactly what their current “advisors” are in their eyes), attorney, accountant and insurance agent. In the same section you should also give the your prospect a satisfaction scale of 1 – 5 to rate their current financial professionals.
3. A Confidential Financial Profile. Now this is basically what it says it is – a place for them to answer a few thought provoking financial questions, create an income statement and a balance sheet. You should also always ask what they would change about their financial situation if they could change just one thing, as well as what is truly important about money to them. The responses they give to this questionnaire will prove vitally important in your meetings (note that I said ‘meetings’, not your one-shot-wonder single appointment slam-dunk appointment).
4. Your PROFESSIONAL business card. Don’t try to be cute, please don’t put your picture on it, and don’t print your own. Your card should be on par with the finest law firm in your city, town, village, tribe…whatever.

If this all sounds like a lot of work – don’t worry, I’m not writing all of this out of pure kindness! – so if your lazy and want to ensure it gets done right you can swap out my name for yours and voile – you’ve got the perfect pre-appointment packet done in less than 5 minutes.

The Million Dollar Sales Formula Step #2:

The Initial Meeting and Most Important 45 Minutes of Your Sales Process!

Why 45 minutes? Well, for those of you who haven’t studied direct response marketing…allow me to enlighten you. There’s an adage in copyrighting that says the purpose of your headline (and everything you ever send out should have a headline) is to get people to read your first sentence. The purpose of the first sentence is to get your prospect to read your second sentence and so on.

The same is true of a well executed sales process.

The only objective of a first appointment should be to have a second appointment. You do this by limiting the first appointment to allowing the prospect to ask you any questions they have about you, then asking them questions for about thirty minutes, then wrapping up. If you’ve sent out a packet like I do then every initial appointment will have your prospects coming into your office with their completed questionnaires and all of their financial statement. When you have about 15 minutes left, you simply say the following:

“Now that I know a little about you, here’s what we need to do next: I’ll take the information that you’ve completed, my notes, and copies of your statements and prepare an analysis I call a Personal MAP for Retirement. This will show you in detail the specific areas in your finances that can be improved and by how much. We’ll schedule a meeting time in the next couple of weeks to go over your report so that whatever you decide to do after that you will be able to make informed decisions that will improve your finances, fair enough?”

Did you see what I just did? Did you notice the last two words? These will become the most important two words of your career, guaranteed.

If executed like I do, nobody will be able to resist that second appointment. Now some people will ask how much it costs and tell them it’s free, but you’ll let them know based on what you find how much they would have to pay you should they make the educated decision to engage in your services.

Seriously, this stuff makes me giddy just writing it. You should be too! In just these first two steps I’ve already shown you how to at least double your closing percentage with wealthy financial planning clients.

As mentioned before, don’t worry too much about learning this on your own, you can order my Million Dollar Closer Sales System and it includes a DVD allowing me to quite literally ‘take-your-hand’ and show you exactly how I do it.

If you're not convinced just yet, but love the free education, just keep reading.

The Million Dollar Sales Formula Step #3

The Second Appointment – Separating the Men from the Boys!

As a precursor to this meeting, here’s a little tip: Make sure you send a thank you letter to the prospect for the first appointment and have it dual as a reminder of the second meeting. Follow the same rules as to the quality of the paper and the like and include another business card.

At the actual appointment, make sure you thank your prospect again for coming in, let them know it’s nice to see them again – and always ask if they have any questions before you begin to show them your analysis.

The analysis should include the following (nothing more and nothing less please):

1. Morningstar reports on their funds/variable annuities
2. An asset allocation analysis
3. A bullet-point style analysis of their taxes, long term health care needs, estate planning needs, and a quote of what you’d charge to fix their problems

And let's be honest here – everyone will have problems. Especially Million Dollar clients. If you can’t look at their investments and show them how to save money on taxes, eliminate estate taxes, and improve their investments – then you need far more than an education in sales.

This step is really super-easy. The key is this:

“So as you can see Mr. and Mrs. Prospect, I’ve identified approximately $4,000 of immediate benefit to you from this analysis with another $1,700 each year thereafter. So there should be around a $20,000 benefit over the next ten years and my fee for making this happen is $595.00 for a step-by-step detailed plan of action. Fair enough?“

Some people will agree on the spot, other will not. I never, ever ever ever ever push for a close. This all has to happen very naturally. Understand that the reason people work with you is not for what you can do for them but rather or not they trust you and like you. Not many people like pushy sales people. So I’m very nonchalant about all of this.

And about the fee – hey, this can be whatever you want but you have to be charging fees. If your not charging fees then these folks will know instantly that the other shoe has got to drop and it’s usually in the form of you selling them something for a commission. Now I happen to be fee-only so this is never an issue for me; but if you are fee-based or commission-based you have to be charging a planning or set-up fee for taking a new client, PERIOD. I haven’t the time or energy to go into all the psychological details as to why this works, but the end result is your closing percentage will go up dramatically when you do this.

If they don’t want to schedule their next appointment at that time, I tell them to think about this for the next few days and I’ll follow-up to see if they have questions.

If they have questions, I’ll show you how to overcome any possible objections – but not for free (sorry, I’m a nice guy but I am trying really hard to sell you something here 🙂

Again, this is all included on DVD in my Million Dollar Closer Sales System – so you can learn it at warp-speed in the exact same fashion I’ve presented it to gather over $50,000,000 in just the past three years. Click here for ordering info.

The Million Dollar Sales Formula Step #4

The Ultimate New Client Acquisition Process!

I’ve said before that I love systems and processes. They work so well and are so easily replicable that you must use them if you ever want to get to the big leagues of financial planning. All the Million Dollar Producers do it – so do what they do and you’ll get there too.

So here’s the process I use to take a new client:

Meeting Three – I have clients sign my Advisory Services Agreement (for the fee) and we create an Investment Policy Statement (for those who don’t know what this is – it’s basically an outline of what the clients goals are and what we will be attempting to accomplish for them as their advisor)

Meeting Four – We fill out transfer paperwork and new account forms. I always use brokerage accounts to gather the assets up and consolidate them first. The recommendations and financial plan come next.

Meeting Five – We go over the clients Written Financial Plan and Investment Recommendations

Meeting Six – A three-month review meeting

Meeting Seven – Another three-month review meeting

Meet with all clients every six months thereafter.

Holy Cow!, That’s A Lot of Meetings!!!!!

That’s right – and they love it. My closing percentage and asset growth can be matched by no one. This, my friends and colleagues, is what the wealthy want. They want a system, some attention, a WOW experience. An experience so different and so superior to that of any other advisor in your area.

And let’s get this straight:

This process is easy. It can be learned by anyone. If you have at least one staff person (and please get one as soon as you can afford one if you don’t) all you will have to do is the meetings.

Plus,Check out all of the benefits…

I usually will meet with 8 prospective clients each month (except in December when I do not take any new clients as I take the final 2 1/2 weeks off each year). Not too many really. That’s why I go home at 2:00pm on Thursday and don’t step foot back in my office until the following Monday. But here’s what happens:

My average prospect has $579,632 of investment assets (if you don’t have prospects like this lined up for you then you desperately need my seminar marketing system to attract wealthy boomers and seniors. Click here for it’s details.).

I will send at least one of these prospects to another advisor as some don’t fit my profile of an ideal client.

Of the remaining 7 — 3 will not become clients and 4 will

I charge a flat $500 financial planning fee for all new clients

I charge an average of .92% to manage portfolios for my clients

So each month I’ve averaging $2,000 in planning fees and $2,318,528 of new client assets that will generate $1,777 in monthly advisor fees. So while I spend 7 hours with each new client during their first year – it will generate $5,882 in revenue year one and $5,382 each year thereafter for just 2 hours of meeting time.

This is how you make your hourly wage exceed $2,000.00.

Admittedly, I am NOT a Rocket Scientist

But $2,691 per hour is a pretty good wage for a small-town kid or a big-city slicker.

What On God’s Wonderful Green Earth Are You Waiting For!

As mentioned a few times already: I’ve packaged my entire sales system into the ultimate financial advisors sales system called Meeting Mastery and it includes all of the following:

• My Pre-Meeting Packet in MS Word Format for your easy editing.
• My Confidential Personal Profile in MS Excel Format ready to use with no editing
• My Confidential Personal Profile in MS Word Format for your easy editing.
• An Instructional Video going over every painstaking detail of each appointment.
• An interview revealing the body language and verbiage that creates the highest possible closing ratios with high net worth clients for financial advisors.

Plus as promised you’ll learn exactly:

• How to easily convert 70% or more of your prospects into clients regardless of your experience, education, or how ‘financially sophisticated’ your prospects are. Rich people are just like everyone else – except they have more money…that’s it.
• Learn the Stealth-Like packet I send to prospects that literally closes 32.4% of the clients for me; before they meet me in person or step foot in my office.
• Where you should hold your appointments, what color the room should be, what refreshments you should offer, what type of chair you should sit in, and how I’ve ‘scientifically’ designed my setting to close at least 1 in 10 clients I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
• The 11 word sentence you must use to open every appointment in order to guarantee your prospect tells you exactly what you have to be able to do for them to become a client.
• The 2 words you absolutely must use to finish each and every meeting. This is priceless, and if you don’t do it you will lose MILLIONS of dollars.
• How to know within the first 18 minutes of meeting someone whether or not they will become a client. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that a bird in hand beats two in the bush. Once you know this you’ll know which clients to focus your attention on and which tire-kickers to drop like a bad habit.
• How to spot a problem client within the first 7 minutes of meeting with them.
• Why asking for referrals from clients and non-clients directly is a cardinal sin that should be avoided like the plague. All the referral “experts” are dead wrong about this and I’ll prove it to you.

I’m sure this was well worth your time – just imagine how your closing percentage will shoot through the roof when you apply this information.