Posts

Are you still a Salesman?

/1 Comment/in , , /by

I was with an adviser recently who ticked me off on a couple of occasions when I mentioned the word selling. He contended that he is an adviser and not a salesman. I say that you need to be both…but not like the guy in the picture!

There’s nothing wrong with selling!

For some people, selling is a dirty word. Particularly so when you are dealing with financial services. That’s understandable I believe when it comes to mis-selling, however this is an experience being suffered thankfully by fewer and fewer clients today. Financial advisers have continued to raise their game, industry standards have increased, and compliance oversight has increased too – all of these factors resulting in fewer incidents of mis-selling. Yes, there have been a few high profile cases (the latest one involving a well known stockbroking firm) unfortunately in recent years that again undermine trust, but these are not representative of the market in the main.

In fact these cases increase the need for selling! Not of financial products though, instead there’s a need to get out and sell the value of doing business with you!

Selling is exchanging

The Wikipedia definition of selling is; “Selling is offering to exchange an item of value for a different item”. A key part of your job is to convince your clients to exchange your item (advice, guidance, expertise) for their item (commission, fee). So selling is not passé. The financial advisory business model still needs selling.

The old days of “the insurance man” out selling products are thankfully long gone. This was where the seller was very transactional focused, having access to a very narrow range of (poor) products and their role was to convince people to buy these products, whether they really needed / wanted them or not.

The difference today of course is that the process starts and ends with the client. The transaction (if needed at all) is only a means to an end, a mechanism which helps clients to meet their own specific financial objectives. The value that the client gains is the advice, leading to the optimal product choice, rather than the product itself. Of course nothing stays the same as well, so advisers also need to sell the benefits of ongoing monitoring to ensure product adjustments are made as required to help the client to achieve their objectives.

Selling is necessary

Independent financial advisers provide a really valuable service to their clients. However prospective clients who haven’t experienced your service and seen the value being gained, may still be living in a world of mistrust of all financial advisers. So you’ve got to convince them otherwise and sell them the value that they will derive from having an expert on their side of the table, guiding them through the complexities of the world of personal financial planning.

To do this, you need to have developed a very robust proposition for your clients and then be able to communicate this in a very engaging way. If you can’t do this, they won’t see the value that they are getting and of course there is no way that they are going to part with their hard earned cash to buy your services.

Don’t be ashamed of selling, it’s a very noble pursuit when carried out with the right intentions! You can be very proud of the product (advice) that you provide and of the value that clients get from exchanging value with you. So get out and shout it from the rooftops!

How do you move existing clients onto a trail or fee basis?

/2 Comments/in , /by

Well here’s my tuppence worth on an issue that many advisers are grappling with today!

How do you convince an existing client to agree to you starting to receive trail commission (or a fee) for pension or investments business written some years ago? How will you answer the pushback that you’ve already been paid?

I’m working on the premise that the overall charge is going to increase. Of course if you can receive a trail within the existing price structure (with the product provider taking a lower annual management charge), this conversation will be a lot easier!

When does trail commission / a fee make sense?

These remuneration bases make a huge amount of sense when real, ongoing value is provided by you. To my mind it’s as simple as that! I would argue that if the product provider is providing all of the value – why should you be paid a fee or trail commission? But if you are providing expertise and ongoing value to your clients, year in and year out, these are the only bases that make sense. I’ve worked with a number of advisers over the last year that have each said that clients don’t understand when a fee is not charged! When clients receive value, they expect to pay for it…

So you first of all need to add real value to your clients. You then need to ensure that you demonstrate this value in a way that clients clearly recognise the value that they are getting. And then you need to remind them of the value that you are adding, again and again.

Trail commission or fee?

If you’re clear enough about what you do and the value that you are adding, whether it’s a fee or trail is somewhat irrelevant, these simply become a method of payment. So really it shouldn’t matter?

But of course that’s not the real world. I know many advisers prefer trail as it is a bit more “below the radar” and you don’t have to ask for a cheque each year for your fee. Of course that is easier and is perfectly fine, where you are adding that ongoing value.

Adding value, being really clear about your proposition and communicating what you bring to the table in an engaging fashion also future proofs your business. We only have to look across the water at the UK, where we see the days of trail commission (without demonstrable value added by the adviser) coming to an end. This will prove very challenging for advice businesses over there that have been simply collecting trail without providing and demonstrating any real value. How will they justify a fee to their clients in the future? On the other hand, it poses no threat to those advice businesses that are clearly demonstrating value to clients and having transparent conversations about how much and how they are being paid. Trail commission and fees are simply methods of collection to these firms…

What about existing clients though?

So that’s all well and good, you demonstrate the value that you will provide in order to justify trail commission to new clients. But how do you move existing clients onto a trail basis? How do you answer the client who challenges you that you’ve already been paid?

First of all, you need to provide clients with more than they have received from you to date, or at a minimum make them aware of all that you do for them. You need to set out clearly all of the services that you will provide to your clients that you hadn’t discussed at the outset – services such as;

  • ongoing portfolio analysis and restructuring
  • rebalancing
  • future cashflow planning
  • access to your network of specialists (tax advisers, solicitors etc.)
  • your market insights
  • the money you are making / saving them every year

At the start of your relationship, you identified the right product for your client and set up their policy, and were paid commission to do so. Now you are going to add real value to these clients through the range of advice-based services that you offer – and for this you must be paid, either via a trail commission (or a fee).

You need to demonstrate your proposition that will add ongoing value year after year, for the lifetime of your relationship. You need to communicate this very clearly in an engaging way, and use case studies and testimonials to demonstrate the results that you achieve for your clients.

Doing these, you’re giving yourself every chance to gain the agreement of your client to pay you each year. Because the value they get will significantly exceed the 25bps or 50bps that they will pay.

How do you convince your existing clients of the value that you add and to pay for this by a trail commission or fee?

Segmentation, targeting & positioning – fundamentals of adviser marketing

/in , , , , , /by

Going back through the eons of time, I can recall a number of the key marketing principles that were ground into me time and time again; the importance of research and knowing your customer, understanding buyer behaviour and the role of the four P’s (product, price, place and promotion) among others.

However in my day-to-day work with financial advisers today, the principles that I find myself returning to more and more to address the challenges of advisers are Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning (STP). Many advisers today recognise the importance of these strategies as they attempt to make best use of their limited marketing resources, be they time or money or both.

Some definitions

So to start this 60-second marketing lesson, here is a definition of each, as set out by Philip Kotler, the grandfather of marketing education.

  • Market Segmentation: Dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers with different needs, characteristics or behaviour, who might require separate products or marketing mixes.
  • Market Targeting: The process of evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to enter.
  • Market Positioning: Arranging for a product (or service) to occupy a clear, distinctive and desirable place relative to competing products (or services) in the minds of target consumers.

What’s happening in the financial adviser market in Ireland?

Many financial advisers realise that a “one size fits all” proposition just doesn’t cut it any more. Either for the client who is looking for more than a generic service, or for the adviser who cannot profitably or successfully deliver the same service to all clients irrespective of their value, characteristics, needs etc.

As a result, many advisers are undertaking segmentation exercises, analysing their client bases and potential markets, most often by value. Others are also segmenting but by different dimensions – some are focussing on SME’s, others on specific professional groups.

A smaller number are then going on to specifically target sub-sections of their client bases and target markets at the expense of other groups – for example focusing all of their attention on clients of a certain value. In this case, some are even offloading their lower value clients to truly target their desired groups. Others are identifying specific occupations that they will target and also those that they won’t. And then sticking to this!

Finally, a relatively small number are taking that final step of actually positioning their business and all of their communications to appeal directly to their target market, even at the risk of alienating other potential customers.

Why STP is so important for financial advisers today

It’s this final step of having the courage to position yourself within a specific target market (or even a niche) that is a step too far for many advisers. They struggle with the thinking that while business might be quite tough today; it might actually be easier if you narrow your focus! How does this make sense?

If you offer a generic service to clients, they will recognise this. They won’t feel any particular connection with what you do, as it is not targeted at them. Instead if you have a clear target market and all of your communications are aimed with that group specifically in mind, the customers within that group will connect with your messages and are more likely to view you as a specialist who is out to serve their specific needs.

There are lots of very good financial advisers operating in the Irish market. At the end of the day, how are you going to stand apart from the crowd if you offer a very generic service?

Is a niche positioning viable in the Irish market?

My view is that it is 100% viable. Indeed you can build an extremely successful business based on a niche strategy! I’m not saying that it’s easy – you need to first of all very clearly and carefully segment your potential markets. You then need to decide the markets that you will target and have a clear strategy for building presence and scale in these markets. And finally you need to relentlessly build your positioning and re-affirm it time and time again.

I’m a believer and would argue that I practice what I preach in this area! There are 1,000’s of marketing consultants out there but not many that position their business specifically around meeting the needs of the financial adviser community. I’m really happy that I’ve pitched my tent there, attempting to meet the needs of a community that I admire and enjoy working with! Thank you all for welcoming me into your world and helping me to grow my business! I passionately believe that you can do the same within your chosen markets.

Do you have any views on this topic? Is a niche strategy viable? What are the challenges you face in running with this approach? All your comments as ever are very welcome.

Bowl your Clients over with your Content!

/in , , /by

One of the main marketing challenges faced by many of the financial advice businesses that I meet, is around the production of good quality content that will really help them engage their clients. Here are a few thoughts to help you overcome this challenge.

Be Organised & Committed

The secret ingredient! We’ve all faced that looming deadline for “my turn” to produce that article we’d promised to go into a newsletter or as an update on the website. It’s tough when you’ve no idea what you’re going to write about! The good news is that you’re not alone, this is the single biggest challenge faced by everyone tasked with writing content.

To avoid this, set up a “Content Calendar” for the year. Get all the potential contributors into a room for an hour or so and brainstorm loads of article topics. As potential subject areas come to mind, drop them into the calendar with a few bullet points of what the article might cover.

What will this achieve? First of all, it gets you started each month – you know what you’re going to be writing about. Secondly and as important, as new ideas come along over the year, they get inserted ahead of other articles that mightn’t be as strong. So now you’re driving up the quality of your topics. You’ll actually find after a while that you’ve too much content and now can actually start being selective about what you write. Hard to believe but it happens, every time you have a Content Calendar.

And once you start, stay committed to the process. Don’t stop now!

Be Relevant

Your audience are far more likely to engage with your content if it is relevant to them. So as you develop out your content topics, spend some time thinking about them from your audience’s perspective. The latest developments in investment software or some obscure technical point about pensions might be of interest to you. But your clients probably won’t give a hoot!

They want to know about topics that will impact their lives, so put yourself in their shoes and develop your content with them in mind. Of course you need to know who your audience is before you can do this. Are they business owners, professionals or are you focused on personal protection etc. for families? If you have very diverse audiences, you might need to target specific content at specific people. All pretty straightforward to do with the wonders of modern technology!

Be an Educator, not a Salesman

Your audience will switch off if you spend your time pushing sales messages at them. At the end of the day, they will see your content as simply an ongoing sales campaign and will disengage.  Add value by writing about financial issues or challenges that affect them in their lives, in which you can exhibit your expertise. Aim to be seen as an expert, an educator, someone with valuable insights that will help your clients, rather than a salesperson.

To make this easier for yourself, write about topics you know. This means that you won’t have to spend loads of time researching topics, and this familiarity with the subject will help you write better content too!

You see the world of marketing has changed. Rather than trying to constantly interrupt people with messages to sell, sell, sell; successful advice businesses are establishing themselves as thought leaders, as educators and as experts. So then when potential clients at their own time of choosing have a financial need, they will naturally gravitate towards these advice firms that they already see as valuable.

Be Alert

Great topics to write about will emerge from a range of sources. Presentations you attend, conversations you have, comments from other clients. Once your antenna is up, you’ll start to identify nuggets from what other people say – their challenges, their areas of interest, the issues they want to read about. So write about these!

Also when reading a newspaper or surfing the web, you’ll come across loads of topics of potential interest to your audience. Put your own spin on these topics and write about them too.

Be Brief

Be expert but also be brief. The purpose of your content is to engage your audience, not to demonstrate that you know every intimate detail of a topic. Typically an article of 750 to 1,000 words can be read (and written!) quickly and will perform well in search results. If you only have 500 (good) words though, go with that – don’t pad it out to get to 750 words.

Make your content easy to read too. Use headings and/or bullet points to make it easier for the reader. If the topic is just not capable of being explained in anything close to 1,000 words, break it out into a series of articles. And now the challenge next month has just got easier…

Be Found

What has this got to do with Content? Well, one of the key drivers of strong performance in Google search results is original, good quality content. While this might not have been a driver behind your efforts to produce a regular stream of good content, it’s a very valuable bonus!

At the end of the day, I reckon the initial thought of producing a lot of content is far more daunting than the reality! I hope these thoughts help you with your challenge.






image courtesy of Flickr / Mohammad ALNajdi

Be the Hub of your Client’s Financial Affairs

/in , , /by

I was recently helping a very progressive financial advice firm in Cork with their marketing planning. As part of the conversation, we discussed value added services that advisers can offer today and indeed I got talking about my relationship with my own financial adviser.

I see my financial adviser as the hub of my financial affairs. My accountant does a very solid job in terms of the production of accounts and ensuring I pay my taxes on time and basically don’t break the law! But I really see him in a transactional / compliance capacity.

On the other hand, my financial adviser provides a broader range of value to me. Yes, he has of course developed my financial plan and ensured I have the right investments, retirement planning and protections in place – I’d expect no less! But he also guides me in relation to much broader financial-related issues and I’ve found this a bit unexpected and extremely valuable. He’s now the go-to guy for me in relation to my broader financial affairs – he’s the hub of my financial world.

Having been the beneficiary of such value-added services, I’ve identified below a few areas in which you can add value to your clients beyond the preparation of traditional financial plans and beyond the products that you recommend to your clients. Why bother with these? To build your client’s appreciation of the value that you can bring and to make you the first port of call when changes in their circumstances arise.

Budgeting

I’m starting with an easy one that is often overlooked by financial advisers as not needed by clients because “everyone does it”. I disagree! People tend to do personal budgeting in a very unstructured fashion, usually in their heads. The opportunity is here for financial advisers to bring templates to their clients and help them structure their budgeting and examine all of their day-to-day spending.

Apart from the value that the exercise brings, for married clients it is a great way of engaging the spouse too in the overall process, as their spending is equally important in the overall picture.

Future Cashflow Planning

I refer to this a lot, but only because I see it as such as a valuable service offered by some financial advisers. It certainly isn’t appropriate for every client, but is hugely valuable to those who are suitable. The reason for this is simple. Traditional financial planning focuses on the starting point (as identified within the factfind – where you stand financially today) and the end event (death, investment maturity date, retirement date).

Future cashflow planning focuses on every year between now and your death, highlighting times of particular financial challenge to you in the future. Knowing the challenges that you will face, gives you an opportunity to plan to overcome them.

Tax Advice for Individuals

Business owners and professionals will usually have an accountant. Most PAYE workers probably don’t. That doesn’t mean that they can’t benefit from tax advice; some want help in completing their tax returns, some want general tax advice. There’s a growing trend internationally of financial advisers moving into this space, in fact some financial advice firms are now employing accountants or tax advisers to provide this service and other tax advice to clients.

Now this approach is not going to be for everyone. At a minimum though, you should have a relationship with a good tax expert that you can plug your client into. The benefit for you is that it’s another demonstration of your value, as you are the catalyst for your client receiving the broader solutions needed.

Financial advisers also play a very valuable role in helping clients prepare for later in life and indeed end of life through retirement planning and life assurance solutions. However there are a number of other ways that you can help your clients prepare for these latter years, again helping to position you as the hub of their financial affairs. Some of these areas can also potentially bring you into contact with your client’s adult children, an important target market for many advisers.

Advice about Bank Accounts

Neither my bank manager nor my accountant spoke to me about having multiple signatories on my bank accounts, both personal and business accounts. But my financial adviser did. This is very practical advice, ensuring that in the event of my death or loss of capacity, that my wife would be able to access my money without jumping through all types of legal hoops…

Enduring Power of Attorney

This is a legal document that can be set up by a person during their life when in good mental health. It allows another specially appointed person to take actions on their behalf should they become incapacitated through illness in the future. This prevents assets being frozen and going under the control of the courts and allows the person acting on your behalf to make a range of personal care decisions on your behalf.

Anyone who has been through this situation, needing to access the assets of a relative who has lost their mental capacity (e.g. to pay for their care) will know the value of having an enduring power of attorney in place. It can be incredibly frustrating being unable to carry out simple actions on the person’s behalf without it.

At the same time, many people also draw up a “Living Will” which captures their preferences in relation to areas such as end of life care, their preferences in terms of resuscitation etc. when close to death.

A financial adviser won’t set this up. However they can be the catalyst for it happening through setting out the benefits of it to their clients and guiding them to put it in place. The adviser may even be able to refer them to a solicitor who will carry out this work with the client.

A Will

Again this is an area where financial advisers can guide their clients to ensure that they have a will in place to ensure their assets are distributed as they intend on their death. A simple process usually carried out with a solicitor.

These are some areas that financial advisers can help or guide their clients through. They add real value to your relationships; way beyond the product solutions you advise clients about and put you firmly at the hub of your client’s financial affairs.

Are there any other areas beyond products in which you advise your clients?




image courtesy of Flickr / David Hunter

Why do clients leave you?

/in , , , /by

We’ve all cheerily picked up the phone at one stage or another when a client calls, only to suffer that sinking feeling as the client goes on to explain that they are in fact moving their business to another adviser. Often you don’t even get a call, the business just quietly moves. So why do clients actually move their business and put themselves through the hassle of agency transfer letters, bringing a new adviser up to date with their affairs etc.

It’s not about price, or at least very rarely.

The management consultancy firm Bain carried out research some time ago among a large group of accountants, 360 of them in fact. While I know they are not financial advisers, it’s a relevant survey as accountants are service providers in the financial space with SME’s and professional clients. When asked, 80% of the accountants felt they delivered above average service. The researchers also asked the same question of 360 clients, one from each accountant. Just 8% of them felt they got above average service. What a perception gap!

They also asked the accountants why clients leave them. The number one reason given was price. This was number 8 on the list of clients. Their number one reason was they just “didn’t treat me right”.

So what’s the lesson in this for all of us service providers? Worry about your proposition more so than your price, and work on effectively communicating your proposition to your clients so that they never forget the value that you are adding. Make your clients feel loved by you!

While we all might go through a short period of reflection when we lose a single client, it may be necessary to take a bit of a deeper look if you find that a steady stream of clients are heading out the door. So what are some of the questions you might ask yourself?

 

How good is your proposition?

Picking up on the Bain findings above, how good really is your proposition? Has it actually kept pace with developments in the marketplace and are you competing with the best advisers out there who may be wooing your clients away? As clients experience the benefits of structured budgeting support and the really valuable insights that future cashflow planning delivers to them, how are you competing with this? At the end of the day, are you really offering true financial planning rather than just a transactional product focused service?

 

How good are you at keeping your clients engaged?

Your clients receive great advice from you at the commencement of your relationship and receive the benefit of a review each year. But what value do they get from you in the other 11.5 months of the year? More and more advisers are making great strides at improving their communication with clients, enabling them to add value to clients throughout the year. However, they also target these communications at prospective clients too – and these might be your clients currently….

Are you satisfied that your ongoing engagement of your existing clients will keep these threats at bay? Do your clients see you as the important cog in their financial affairs?

 

What are your competitors doing differently?

There may be other areas that are influencing your clients to move to a competitor. Are your competitors more active than you at networking locally, or seen as a valued support within the business community? Have they just developed a bigger and better (and more influential) brand presence than you that is swaying clients to move? Are they very clever in the marketing of their business? While their proposition may be no better than yours, does your client as a result of their greater presence perceive them as a better proposition? It might be time for you to revisit your marketing activities and bring more structure and focus to them.

 

Is price a factor?

While price is not the usual reason for clients leaving you, it can be a contributory factor if you are way out of line. You need to satisfy yourself that your price is in the ballpark. If it’s higher than the norm, can you back this up by demonstrating that your proposition is better than the norm? After all, clients will only pay a premium for a premium service.

 

These are just some of the reasons why clients walk. If possible, talk to clients who are leaving you and try and get to the nub of why they are going. They may at first be slow to give the real reason in order not to hurt your feelings. However, if you persist with professional questions asked with grace, you might just uncover some nuggets that will help you avoid the loss of clients in the future.