When you become a Financial Planner, you'll soon realise how important it is to create and retain relationships with clients. This is because if you don’t make any efforts to create new relationships and retain old ones, you will find it difficult to grow your client base. And there is not much that you can work with if you have no client base. While there are plenty of ways for you to attract more clients, one great and surefire way to do it is by prospecting.
Prospecting is the process of finding new leads and converting them into paying customers as they move down the sales funnel. And for Financial Planners, prospecting is their lifeblood as it helps bring in interested leads.
However, prospecting is not as easy as it may seem. Before you can start prospecting, you must first set a goal that goes beyond just getting more clients. In this competitive industry, you need to be able to think creatively and find out how to make yourself unique among other Financial Planners. You must let people know that they can depend on you to help them make informed financial decisions and show them how you can add value to your clients. Your prospecting goal should be specific, measurable, challenging, and achievable because prospecting can not only bring you potential clients, but it can also build your brand as a trusted Financial Planner. Here’s how prospecting can benefit you:
Through prospecting, Financial Planners no longer have to rely on cold calls to get new clients. Knowing who to target, when to target and how to target can greatly help Financial Planners to not only get new clients but also to retain existing clients.
1) Establish your brand
Before you approach someone, you need to make sure that your branding is clear. If your messaging is vague and doesn’t indicate what you can offer, it is difficult for you to obtain clients’ trust. If you want to make sure that people remember you, you would want to highlight your mission statement and previous success stories. Other than creating a mission statement, it also helps to create a slogan and logo for your brand. Once you have created your brand, remember to stick to your brand values as consistency has shown to increase revenue by up to 33%.
2) Get started in email marketing
Other than creating a pipeline of potential clients, you should also focus on retaining existing ones. Email marketing is a great way for you to stay on top of your customers’ minds as 99% of email users will check their inboxes at least once a day and 61% of clients prefer receiving brand updates via email. You can opt to send a monthly newsletter to your client base to connect with them and drive traffic to your website. And this doesn’t necessarily mean you must only talk about financial topics. You can also give them life updates and holiday wishes to show them that you care about them.
3) Capture leads on your website
A lot goes into driving traffic to your website. For instance, if a prospective client has landed on your website, they are most likely already interested in what you have to offer. When this happens, you can offer live chat services to encourage them to take action and do business with you. You can also use exit-intent technology that shows a pop-up or widget when a visitor is about to exit the website to keep them from leaving and produce downloadable content that may encourage them to become clients.
4) Share your knowledge through seminars or thought leadership posts
This strategy allows you to showcase your expertise and credibility as a Financial Planner. It is something that can help you set yourself apart from other Planners. For example, if you are well-versed in the topic of early retirement, then you will want to highlight your knowledge and expertise in that particular topic through your thought leadership posts, webinar or seminar events. This will provide you with a platform to answer client questions and connect with them. This will also increase clients’ trust in your services.
5) Create a top-client chart
The top-client chart is used to identify who you deem as top clients—their demographic information, education background, interests, goals, and spending habits. You should also include when and how these people came to be clients. Once you have compiled this information, you can use it to determine who, where and how to pursue more similar prospects. Find out if certain areas can be improved and areas that you can revisit to obtain like-minded clients. This will allow for a more targeted prospecting tactic.
6) Leverage social media platforms such as LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great platform for Financial Planners to get their brand across and connect with other people as it provides filtered searches and key terms. Using LinkedIn, you can identify commonalities with prospects and narrow down your pipeline of potential clients. You can proceed to find a common ground between you and the client and use it to build a conversation.
As you can see, prospecting helps you to find and develop your clients easily and strategically. To find out what else you can do to step up your prospecting game, join us and receive more useful tips like this from our seasoned Financial Planners. If you seek a promising career with a work-life balance, join us today!