Top Financial Marketers Gain Instant Credibility by Seniorleads.com

SeniorLeads finds Insurance Prospects and Investment Prospects for Financial Advisors and Life Insurance agents by advertising on websites that affluent 45+ investors & insurance buyers frequent. You sign up for your zip codes and these exclusive insurance leads, investment leads, financial planning leads, social security leads, 401k Rollover Leads (and other lead types- see above). Consumers who respond to the ads matching your products, services and selected zip codes are passed on to you. Each lead is matched to only one financial advisor or insurance professional.

Here’s an example. A 27-year-old stockbroker named Scott subscribed to our overnight author program. We printed our book Retirement Investing with his picture and biography. We made him an overnight author.

He gave a seminar. An elderly couple in their 80s came in to see Scott. Twenty minutes into the appointment, Scott sees that these people think he’s a youngster. He asks them, “Did I give you a copy of my book?” “You wrote a book?” asks the elderly gentleman. Scott hands him the book. He looks at the front. He turns it over and looks at Scott’s picture and biography on the back. “Ethel, he wrote a book!” says the old man to his wife. Within 20 minutes they were signing the papers to transfer their $1.1 million investment account from a major securities firm to Scott.
All aspects of superior financial advisor marketing must have the objective of gaining credibility FAST. One way to increase your trust and credibility in the prospect’s eyes is to become an expert. This can happen in a few minutes, as the above story indicates. So, if you get interviewed in the newspaper (our Public Relations Kit explains how to make that happen) or have a book published (our Overnight Author Program is for you) or appear on a television show, in an instant, you become an expert.

ANYONE can implement such financial advisor marketing tools. To do them quickly, you hire others. What’s' that, you don't want to invest in your business? Save yourself and go get a government job now.

Be There When the Prospect Needs You
Early in my career, I sold securities in a bank. Some depositors came to the bank once or twice weekly and, every time, see me sitting at the same desk. They knew that I offered investment options that paid more than their CDs. But they did not approach. After a few months, they started coming to me to ask, “How can you help me?”
I did not do anything other than show amazing consistency. I was always there!

How do you replicate this if you do not work in a bank? With a newsletter. You send it every month, month after month, to those 28 people from the seminar that did not make an appointment with you and to the six who did not do business (and to every other prospect in your database). Month after month you stay in front of them, and eventually, you're the most trusted financial adviser they know! Because you're always there!

Any type of drip marketing works like a financial newsletter or monthly letter (you cannot do this quarterly, as it’s too infrequent) and holiday cards for every possible holiday. The goal is to stay in their face. I get at least one call each week from someone who attended some past seminar or responded to one of my ads or mail pieces months ago. Those calls are almost always sales. If you had 50 extra sales a year (one per week) from people calling you, would that increase your income?

This type of drip marketing works while you sleep. You can set up software to do it and then have some hourly person or outside firm do the mailing. Set up a system so that you can ignore it, and the system just keeps on working, making your phone ring.

Now you have two important components of financial advisor marketing that make life easier and increase your earnings:
• automate the marketing
• focus on gaining clients that produce recurring revenue

Financial Advisor Marketing is Useless When You Cannot Sell
Most salespeople talk too much.
The more you tell, the less you sell.

If you want to close a lot more sales, do nothing but ask questions for the first half of your client interview. The payoffs to asking questions are enormous. Questions increase your sales in five ways, to:

1.direct your prospect’s thoughts
2.find out the necessary facts;
3.determine the “emotional facts”;
4.increase your stature and credibility in the prospect’s eyes;
5.Maintain control of the conversation.

Direct Your Prospect’s Thoughts
How would you like to make your prospects think what you want them to think? You can indeed direct your prospect’s thoughts with your questions. Before we proceed, would you make a mental picture of a large gray elephant for me? With this simple question, I can make you form a mental picture. And you can consistently direct your prospects’ mental activity in the same way. I know one super salesperson that asks prospects, “What are your plans when your health fails?” Immediately the client’s thoughts and mental pictures turn to scenes in a hospital bed or wheelchair. Questions are your most powerful tools for closing more sales.

Just the Facts, Ma’am
Additionally, questions allow you to find out the facts (how much money they have, how much tax they pay, how are their current investments allocated, what insurance do they have) and allow you to protect yourself. You must have all of these facts before you can ever ethically and legally discuss any recommendations ("know your client" rule).

Emotional Questions
More importantly, questions allow you to determine emotional preferences: what do you like/not like, what’s comfortable/ uncomfortable, what do you move toward/away from? Do you feel comfortable with the stocks you own, or nervous? If you became disabled tomorrow, what would you feel remorse about not having completed? These emotional questions are critical to understanding your client’s feelings. They keep you from making recommendations that will never fly with your prospect.

Junior financial advisers often think their job is to do the “best thing” for the client and to have lots of product knowledge. The best thing for a particular prospect might be tax-sheltered growth, and the advisor, therefore, recommends a variable annuity. But if the prospect is afraid of market fluctuations, then this recommendation is dead in the water before it is spoken! Therefore, the “best thing” is an appropriate recommendation that your prospect also feels comfortable with. And you can only know what’s comfortable by asking questions.

Gain Stature
Questions communicate to the prospect that you are a professional and that you are thorough, that you get all the facts before starting a sales pitch. You position yourself as a true advisor, a knowledgeable expert, rather than salesperson. (Think about a visit to the doctor. Notice how he relentlessly asks questions and hesitates to make any diagnoses until he is 98% sure? If you did the same with your prospects, your closing ratio would soar.)
You can always tell the smartest guy in the room, not by what they say, but by the questions they ask

Maintain Control of the Sales Conversation
Questions allow YOU to control the conversation. If the prospect starts firing questions at you, and you start answering them, who is in control of the conversation? You’ve lost control and the probability of a sale is very low. Picture an intersection full of traffic. Do you want to be the cop in the center directing the traffic or one of the drivers being told to make a left turn? Questions allow you to stay in control of the sales conversation.
As you see, ignoring the lost art of asking questions can cost you dearly. Where can you learn this skill? The best books I have seen are Neil Rackham’s "Spin Selling" and "Spin Selling Field Book. “Even when you do start to “tell” rather than ask questions, end each explanation in a question and give your statements real power, as in this example:

“This mutual fund has had a five-star ranking, the highest rating, for the last 15 years. And you do want the best, don’t you?”

By ending every explanation or paragraph in a question, you have the prospect “buy-in,” and you also test their temperature. If you ask the above question and they stare into space or start squirming, you know right away something is off, that you are misreading the prospect. You can then ask, “That fact seemed to make you uncomfortable. Did it?”

For any Question please visit our website: www.Seniorleads.com