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hey what's up in this video i'm going to talk about financial advisor sales funnels and why they suck and i'm also going to tell you how you can make yours better so hello and welcome back to my channel my name is sarah and i'm a cfa charterholder i for many years was myself a financial advisor now i'm making this video because so many of you watching me have reached out to me for advice about how to follow up and i just see that there's so much crap out there that i just do not want you listening to because it's bad advice so don't listen to them listen to me subscribe here for the real story the real deal you know you get it here and that's why you're going to stay here so please subscribe click the subscribe button [Music] do it y'all before we do anything else so what is a financial advisor sales funnel let's start with the basic definition of it a financial advisor sales funnel is basically a series of interactions that are designed to allow the financial advisor to get new leads and to follow up with these leads until they agree to be your client sales funnels to some extent are usually automated although i'm going to discuss in this video how to do that correctly because i see a lot of bad advice about that but the typical components of a financial advisor sales funnel are phone calls emails email blasts social media drop-in visits and mailers follow-up is important i'm going to tell you why a lot of you have just built your businesses through referrals and word of mouth and you kind of have this idea out there that a good business sells itself the service sells itself or whatever bull crap that you all are saying understand that no prospect moves out of the funnel until the papers are signed and i don't know about you but the funnel having prospects in the funnel doesn't make me any money maybe it does for you but it doesn't really make me any money i only get paid when the client signs the deal could be different for you but what i'm saying is it's gonna take work and surely by the fact that you put effort into it you're going to be separating yourselves from other financial advisors that are willing to do this because there are a lot of you out there that are not willing to when two people don't know each other when you meet a prospect the prospect has all the power and you have none even if it's the best referral in the world the prospect is the one that has the goods and you're the one that has to convince them to let you manage them so they have all the power and you have none the follow-up process is the point is the process through which you have to gain some of that power and you do this by getting the prospect to give you information that you can then leverage to build trust during the sales follow-up process when you're moving these prospects along in the sales funnel the critical exchange of information should happen if you want to be allowed to build trust with the prospect if no information is exchanged if you can't get the prospect to give you information then you will get no power over them if there is high information exchanged if you're able to get them to tell you things about them then you will gain power over them and eventually be able to close the deal now with every interaction you gain information little by little with every interaction you gain the trust little by little so i don't want you to look at the sales funnel like something painful it should be fun in fact the word funnel has the word fun in it but you have to approach it that it's a process of getting to know each other rather than that you're gonna shove some information at them and hope that they just turn around and decide to fedex over the contract signed okay if you're looking at it like that you're really not doing justice to the process you have to honor and respect the process of little by little through every interaction gradually getting to know the prospect and allowing them to get to know you so by the way did you subscribe to my channel yet because i have future videos on this that i'm going to be making and i also have other playlists that you could watch about financial advisor lead generation and marketing so the financial advisor sales funnel let's think about what the prospects need to see or experience in the sales funnel okay so the first thing is you should get a way to get leads into the sales funnel and you can go about a variety of ways i made a video about how financial advisors create leads but however you do it whether it's social media in-person networking email newsletters or referrals once you get them into the funnel that's one thing okay but in order to get them into the funnel a lot of times you're going to have to use what's called the lead magnet so a lead magnet would be giving them something of value usually a document that they download and in exchange for that thing of value they provide you with ding ding information such as their email address usually it's their email address now you need a really great lead magnet examples of lead magnets that aren't great they're kind of typical for financial advisors to use would be like some kind of a retirement cash flow planner retirement income calculator worksheet or a sample investment policy statement all of these are lead magnets that i've seen financial advisors use in the past it doesn't really matter what it is as much as it should be really compelling you don't have to give the whole world away but it should at least give them something where they're looking at it like this was of value and this creates questions for me that i perhaps should contact this financial advisor now next how do you move people along in the funnel this is another thing that financial advisors really get stuck with i've not seen a lot of creativity here typically a financial advisor will just try to email or voicemail and say oh i'm just touching base just checking in i mean so boring and what opportunity does that create for them to receive information from you and for them to give you information that you can use to build trust it really doesn't so what you want to do is you want to get creative with it and kind of take them off guard and be a little bit more compelling so how about liking their facebook page how about maybe going to their business or commenting if they're a business owner how about buying something from their business and then making a video about it how about sending them something in the mail or um you know maybe sending them some kind of a a note like a thank you note that's really creative do something interesting for heaven's sake don't be boring now closing the deal closing the deal is the last step of the financial advisor sales funnel so throughout the process of moving the prospect along through the sales funnel you should have been gathering information from them learning about them and understanding them better if you do this correctly by the end of the funnel it should get to the point where the prospect should be giving you indications that they're ready to sign or that they're ready to be closed now an example of such an indication would be asking about price asking about custody arrangements asking about paperwork okay these are not all the signs they are just some of the signs but when you're sensing that the prospect is ready to close you want to be careful and make sure that you don't do it too early because if so it can create kind of an awkward situation jumping the gun can kind of take you back a few steps in terms of trust but the point i'm making here is that you shouldn't expect somebody to want to do business with you you shouldn't expect somebody to want to be closed until you really have done the work and gained the information about them to where there's in their mind enough of a comfort level and enough of a trust and enough of a rationale for paying the 10 grand a year and working with you you have to move quickly quickly within the close move use logic and also just remember to use you can't have any logic to use if you don't understand and have information about them so like another great example of a clothes would be like okay so we're coming up on you know the end of the summer now that you're going to be getting back into the swing of things how about we sit down and start doing some of that retirement planning because you said that this was something that you wanted to get in place before you do your charitable planning for the year executing a close is a science it does have to be done succinctly and with a certain process to it but a lot of times people get so caught up on the clothes and executing the perfect clothes but the reality of it is is that if you've done the work and you've built the trust it should be obvious how to close the prospect and there shouldn't be too much of an issue it shouldn't be too much of a fight at that point the real fight should be during the sales funnel during the follow-up process when you're learning about them that's really where the fight should be and what you should be fighting for and really for where you should be devoting high attention and high effort and if you do that then the clothes should take care of itself if you're having difficulties in the clothes then that means you have to go back to the follow-up process sorry that's just an example of why you really have to focus on the sales funnel be creative get some great lead magnets out there and get as much information as you can so that you can potentially build the trust make them feel comfortable and have them understand the rationale for wanting to a cat their money over to your custodian now i make these videos on a consistent basis so make sure you subscribe into the channel and we will see you for the next video