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all right we are going to go ahead and get started um welcome uh advisors thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to hang out with us here today uh as we get into what i think is going to be really fun discussion with my friend and colleague aaron grady who i'd like to introduce he is our director of advisor consulting here at usa financial i'm our chief business development officer uh and very simply put aaron and myself have been extremely involved with advisor consulting for many many years in fact most of both of our short careers in this industry and we spend a tremendous amount of time with advisors in the trenches working on systems processes practice management uh things like the appointment process so he and i geek out on this stuff we're excited to be able to share with you today what we think some of those best practices are i want to run through just a couple of quick housekeeping items uh before we get started we're looking to wrap this up in about 45 quick minutes uh so we've got a lot to cover a lot to get through um in that time if you have questions what you're going to notice is at the should be the bottom of your screen you're going to see a q a box please go ahead and type in a question to us i can't guarantee that we'll be able to get to it but if time permits at the end of the event we will go ahead and try and answer some of those questions if we can't get to it live we will follow up with you individually after the event so uh don't be bashful shoot us a note if there's something that you want to hear more about also uh be sure to stick around to the end we are going to have a giveaway for those of you that have been a part of these events uh the last couple months as we've been doing them is part of this series uh we've had some cool things that we've been arming advisors with these are actual tools that we're going to get in your hands with no strings attached so stick around to the end so you can find out how to get your hands on that uh and and really i think a good launching point here for us to to get started is to springboard off of a meeting that we just did yesterday here at usa financial and we had a group together of about a little over a hundred financial advisors that were viewing a broadcast for what we call our chain of secrets event which we did virtually uh in that event we were interviewing five uh advisors that in 2020 had some great growth uh in their practices so it was fantastic in fact the group of five uh they accounted for on average 49.1 growth in their revenue in 2020 over 2019. and what's really important about that is there's a common denominator there that you know they have a lot of things in common that they do in their practice and and one of the things that really jumped out and was really made apparent yesterday was systems and processes and i think this quote is an awesome way uh aaron for us to get started it's uh you know you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems and today we're going to be talking about a part of the business a part of your practice that you probably really should have a refined system and process for uh and that is the appointment process um and we're gonna be getting into some of our favorite things to talk about best practice wise um but here's what we can tell you and here's what we know from advisors that we've worked with both of us for years now implementing these best practices and when i say implementing best practices don't get overwhelmed we're not saying you need to overhaul what you've got going on don't stop what you're doing that's working well rather let's identify some small tweaks we believe and you've heard us say this before if you've seen one of these that small hinges can swing big doors so what this is all about is uncovering what some of those small hinges are what some of those small tweaks are that you know you can help yourself with and and throughout doing that these are the things that we know inevitably will take place your conversion rates will get better you will get more introductions which is a lot different than referrals uh we'd love to talk with you about that we know for your staff and for your quality of life productivity is going to change uh you're going to have more order and liberation you may be able to work less if that's a goal for you we know that this kind of stuff is is possible but it all starts with looking at the systems and the processes and many of the advisors here at usa financial we really can point to some specific things that make them stand out make their revenue stand out uh in 2020. specifically i've been talking about revenue and i think it's appropriate that we begin with the end in mind here and you know i i referenced yesterday the five individuals that that we were interviewing uh in in a round table format for our chain of secrets uh and golly the the time just went too fast um and and what you see here is they're uh they're all scattered about five the five of them came from this list and this is a list of uh in 2020 at your end the top 40 advisors here at usa financial in regards to the revenue that they generated for their practices so this is the sum of um you know transactional securities business uh fees from aum revenue uh commissions from insurance and fixed products the sum of all that together and what they would view as their their revenue to their business and what you can see at a glance here is what happened in 2020 when you go down the line and you look at all the individuals that have the dark green highlight they grew their business in 2020 in the year of the pandemic and what's even more i think revealing is to look at the ones that maybe they didn't have a huge year go ahead and look at their three-year growth um this is pretty astounding you know just this group of the top 40 that we could fit on the screen they on average they grew their business over five percent last year we think that's a really big deal when we're talking with advisors uh out in the industry that haven't experienced that the numbers are can be quite surprising and sometimes they can be a little bit unbelievable which is why i like to put them up here and show you um because what we know about 2020 is that everything changed overnight right the way that we interact with our clients the way that we acquire clients the way that we run marketing in advertising everything was turned upside down and we really saw as we were in the trenches with with advisors we saw two reactions and i'll say that the first reaction is really to hunker down and kind of ride it out and a lot of advisors especially those advisors that had sizable books of aum and recurring revenue they thought to themselves well it's only going to be two weeks i'll hang out for a little bit and this will be a little bit of a break and then it kept going and then it kept going right and and for some um you know climbing out of that could have been more difficult right or maybe a little late to getting back into the game like they wanted to that we also saw another reaction and that other reaction was to immediately recognize that there still exist opportunities in our business new opportunities and to embrace what those could be and to really try and grow and embracing that meant uh you know getting a stronghold around new technology new systems and processes and doing things to change the client experience uh and actually we saw our advisors that really did adopt this mindset they became more referable than ever in their business which is awesome now when we've talked to advisors out there what we know to be true is that for those that didn't experience that growth it wasn't that they weren't trying in 2020 in fact most advisors that we talked to worked harder than they ever have in their careers last year the problem wasn't they weren't trying the problem was that we as advisors were relationship people we're not the best people to go out and create systems and processes and technology and stuff on our own and and for many of us they were just you know kind of grasping at trying to keep the practice afloat and keep clients from losing their sanity and things like practice management took a back seat and again it wasn't because they weren't trying we believe it was because that most advisors weren't getting the support that they deserved in 2020 the support that really mattered to them you know someone bringing them tools and systems and processes and technology and ideas and being able to think faster and take all that heavy lifting off of their plate so they can spend time in front of their people and we know that that was was difficult and you know what we want to talk about today is an evergreen topic aaron it's no matter 2020 or not we know that a simple appointment process formula can do big things inside of a practice and yes we saw that things changed in 2020 but many things especially in regards to the appointment process did remain consistent uh and we're going to jump into that so before we kick it off i do want to have some fun with the group right we actually coach advisors to do this in in their own live event marketing and i'm going to address the elephant in the room you know the elephant in the room is you're sitting here thinking all right maybe i've been to something like this before one of these guys gonna try and sell me something so i've got great news for you um and we're gonna share that so this is the what's in it for you what's in it for me pitch from matt eilers and what's in it for you today is uh you're going to get some great nuggets you can see them bullet pointed here this is the takeaways that you're going to get you know we learn in sales you need to tell them what you're going to tell them tell them and then tell them what you told them this is what we're going to share with you we're going to talk about these things and what they mean to to advisors in their businesses you're going to get some good snapshots of some of the tools some of the things that advisors were using in 2020 and still now that really helped their appointment processes and some of these they've been using for years uh and we're going to give you the opportunity to get your hands on some of these with no strings attached so that's what's in it for you what's in it for us well aaron and i like i said we like to geek off geek out on some of this we get to show off uh some of our favorite things to talk about in the industry and that's appointment process and along the way as we get to talk with you and share some stories and ideas uh some of you it's going to click and you're going to think all right i get it this makes sense to me this i'm the type of advisor that i could use something like this in my business and some of those you're going to say all right i want to talk to these folks and you're going to want to have a discussion with us so what's in it for us is we're going to get to talk with some of you at length and when we do that enough in this business we end up making new friends and find advisors that we're able to help so that's the big sales pitch you know for those of you that like what you see and like what you hear today let's have a chat that's all it is so relax i want you to enjoy the rest of our discussion today aaron and i are excited uh to kick this off and aaron i think we're going to jump right in to you know one of the first topics that we're going to talk about which is uh lack of consistency and this is we won't really call this a best practice maybe we should call this a worst practice this is one of those things that that you want to avoid so aaron um you know let's talk about what the importance of repetition uh is in in these and it starts with fit process i'm curious uh your thoughts around this yeah you know it's it's interesting and one of the things i will say is um you know today with a limited time we have we we had to pick out six things to talk about today uh we probably could have talked all afternoon um you know and into tomorrow about best practices around um you know a lot of things that help elite advisors achieve success um but we wanted to kind of narrow the focus specifically around the appointment process and these were six things that we thought were important the lack consistency here's one of the things you know whenever i engage with an advisory team most advisory teams have a process of sorts they just most advisory teams don't have a consistent process they don't have a documented process and uh it's definitely not repeatable and so one of the things by creating a repeatable process whether it's a three appointment or a four appointment process one it allows for scalability in your business uh it allows for you to you know bring another advisor in right behind you a junior and they're step right in lock and step and take right off in what you're doing it also removes a lot of emotional stress from you and your team um you know if they're having to recreate the wheel every single time and you're having to recreate yourself in front of a client it just creates all kinds of immense stress in the organization um so one of the key things are whether three or four appointments where there's two appointments having a documented repeatable process is important but here's two big takeaways in those processes you need to have a good fit process now part of the fit process is really establishing you know who is our ideal client who do we want to work with by having a fit process now instead of being a salesperson which remember there's two different types of advisors out there there are sales people that are chasing commissions and there's consultants that have a process and so we can position ourselves with a fit process that look we're not a fit for everyone and that's okay you know and so it starts becoming attractive and allows us to get a commitment on the front end from the client which we're going to talk more about the types of commitments we can get so having a well thought out fit process also creates immense professional contrast because it's not that you know hey i'm chasing the commission or i'm chasing you know i'm not pressuring someone to sail for a sale it is you have to be a fit for my practice the other piece to it is the welcome and on board in fact i was actually just having a conversation with an advisor this morning about this very process and they said you know we do an okay job with this and quite frankly it's something that gets missed more often than not that understand this there are two times in a client relationship that you the advisor are at the highest point of introduceability one or is during moments of crisis or either personal or financial and how you the advisor respond to the client the other time is when they first became a client it's that new bottle of wine it's the new restaurant it's the great book you just want uh read that's the movie you just watched you want to go out and tell somebody about it so there's an opportunity when a client first comes on board to really celebrate and stretch that moment in time where you're at the top of mind awareness and the highest peak of introducibility and so those are two things that we would say you know bar none those are two things you should definitely have in a consistent repeatable process agreed and consistency is so critical in this business and we see advisors take this super serious right to where you know you're seeing something here on the screen this is an example of what a welcome or an onboarding process could look like we believe that as an advisor you should have a system in a process like this and your client should know and understand it and could they explain it to somebody else aaron i'm sure you've had plenty of discussions with advisors that they get more introductions because of the fact that their best clients can articulate what the process is that the advisor has and and why it's a good thing why it's different why they should check it out and a lot of people struggle to do that absolutely it allows you by having a documented and a formalized appointment process you can share that with a prospective client your existing clients and it allows them to future pace the relationship it allows them to see down the road as you know is this going to take 15 sessions is it going to take five it's going to take two when they know that you're not just winging it out there you're not just cobbling stuff together it gives them peace of mind that you are a polished professional that has a process and you're right they're able to share that same message with others yeah awesome um let's jump ahead let's jump ahead to take away number two uh which is wasting clients time um you know this one and i'll i'll i'll start this off with what you see the first line keeping appointments to an hour or less some of you are very offended right now looking at this don't take major offense i know this is hard this is really hard because we're in the relationship business at the end of the day and one thing that we're all very good at those of you that are tuned in right now you're really good at building relationships and building trust with people and what comes with that conversation and catching up and it's your family with these people so i get it there's gonna be times where you're gonna talk for 30 45 minutes about family stuff before you even get into business and that's okay that's important what i'm encouraging advisors to think about is how can we carve that up and how can we separate those things how can we make sure our best clients get that one-on-one time with us to to do those things and talk about those things that are important when we don't even have to deal with business and when we need to get down and put on the the business hat how can we make sure that we're most efficient as possible where this is really important is in a first meeting with with a prospect um i believe that we should have uh your meetings an hour or less uh in fact aaron will share with you here in a minute what that could look like on an agenda which is another item that we we stress you must use but keeping things to an hour or less is going to tell someone that doesn't really know you yet it's going to tell them a couple of things uh number one you have some sort of a path to what this meeting is going to look like you're not just winging it right it's not hey come on in i don't know how long this is going to take it gives them some predictability it tells them that you have a little bit of a process uh the second thing is it's going to program them to the idea that okay when i go in and meet we're able to get down to business and we can get this done inside of an hour imagine the opposite if someone comes in for a first meeting and it goes just short of two hours what might be going through their head when they leave your office maybe a lot of good things but they also might be thinking golly that was two hours it was fun but if i come back is it gonna be another two hours and then if we do business with this this advisor is it going to be two hours every time that could start to get tricky uh to manage that time investment so we don't want to be in a situation where we're fighting against that because we did a good job building a relationship so there are ways that we can really try and tighten things up become more efficient we work with advisors on on strategies of how to do this it could be as easy as just booking your calendar and stacking it and making sure you have that uh assistant that that knocks on the door and points at the wrist watch to let you know the next competing meetings out in the lobby it could be as simple as the agenda which we're going to talk about um a lot of things that we do but we believe that respecting their time and aaron i'm going to let you you speak to that here in a moment is is super important so your thoughts yeah you know and there's something we talked about the other day too um it's the idea that as an advisor you also don't want to plant the seed in your client's mind that you have all the time in the world everybody wants an advisor who's available but they also don't want an advisor who has nobody else to talk to everybody wants to be part of something that's special and exclusive and elite and if you have all day long to sit and just chat well why you know so it creates seeds of doubt that you really don't want to go down that path so so i agree with you 100 you know keep the meetings to a defined amount of time definitely that first meeting you want to try to keep that first meeting for sure to an hour to set the right expectation of what these meetings are going to look like going forward so we're going to put up an idea of the agenda and aaron i'd love for you to speak to this i know this is a big part of consulting that's yeah agendas are great uh they do they accomplish a lot of things you know you know we're talking about trying to keep a tight um you know band around how much time we're going to spend but you know one of the things we talk about as we're coaching with advisors we talk about barriers to entry and barriers to entry are simply mental hurdles that the client has to go through to progress to that next step and there's two that happen in that first meeting or any meeting for that matter when a client is going to meet with you but it's more important when you think about it with with someone who doesn't know you and those two barriers to entry are expectations so what's going to happen you know what are we going to talk about how long is this thing going to take the other barrier to entry is am i going to get sold because like it or not we as an industry people have this pr you know this assumption that when they walk into a financial advisor's office no matter what they think they know about you there's this presumption that somewhere along the line i'm going to be sold matt started this call out just a little while ago talking about hey let's take that off the table we're not selling you your clients do the same thing so by using an agenda and sharing that with them one it lets your clients know that you have a process it lets them know what's going to happen in this meeting so it clears the expectations and then also it clearly shows that hey look this is our agenda and there's not going to be a sales process here in this first meeting specifically it allows them to know hey we're not selling we're consultants here so what it really does is it allows the clients to focus on what you're saying and be present in the meeting an example i always use is you think about being on an airplane i'm sure many of you have been on an airplane probably not recently but in the past and you pull up that in-flight magazine you're flipping through you find a nice article and you're reading the article and you're probably two or three pages into it but during that process you're thinking about are we going to land on time you know when is she going to bring me my drink um you know why is that kid crying behind me there's all these mental distractions that you're going through and then also you realize you've read three pages and you don't remember anything you've read your clients are doing the same thing they're jumping through all these mental hurdles going what are they going to talk about next when is it when is it going to jump out with a sales pitch by putting the agenda there we could clear all that away and we let them be present and focused in the meeting with you bingo you know i remember aaron when this concept this earth-shattering concept was introduced to me and the light bulb went off and i'm like oh my gosh it's so simple it's it's a freaking agenda but i'm telling you like it it makes such a big difference it's so it's so profound what it actually does and advisors they create one they send it to someone and here here's this big right they send it to them in advance of the meeting email the agenda it's not very hard and then what do you do you print it off and you have it in front of you when they come in and they are like you said they're gonna be so much more comfortable and aware of like what's happening they'll be able to relax but also it's a big accountability tool for the advisor you put this down now i got to stick to it now my meeting will be 55 minutes as advertised on this agenda so um such a small tweak that makes a a big difference that we've learned over the years and this is a fun one so be sure you're using an agenda we'd love to talk with you about how how we can help here so um on to the next another worst practice we'll call this one selling too much um i'm gonna get up on my soapbox for a moment here because this is a problem that the industry is riddled with we have got and aaron mentioned this earlier when talking about a sales person i refer to him as a sales pest there are way too many sales pests in this industry that in the first meeting you go and you sit down with them and it is nothing but a sales pitch and they're talking product and they're talking about what you need and what they can do like oh it's gross and you know what it doesn't work as well as what we're proposing here and which is to and now this is hard we're sales people i get it but to listen more which means talking less and asking better questions along the way um the easiest way to be able to talk less and listen more is to ask better questions we spend a ton of time with advisors on this and this is really foundational in building that relationship that you're trying to do we need to uncover what are the most important things to them in their personal life and all that before we even get into the finances and we've got to have a strategy or a process on our end for how we're going to engage that and have an idea of how it's going to work because there are some strategic ways to do this you know i one of my favorite questions uh and we're gonna talk about it a little bit later is one that comes from the strategic coach process uh it's called the r factor question other will subscribe to somebody like maybe george kinder and and his his questions but subscribe to something is what i'm saying something that's going to help you get to the core of of what's important and and be mindful that these questions can also serve another purpose they can also drive a wedge between you and the other advisor and we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment here too but what we need to make sure we don't get caught in is the trap of trying to get out all the word vomit of everything we know in this industry right and and we know it starts out and it looks like this and and then we it whittles down a little bit and we know it gets a little bit smaller about what we can actually put into words and articulate with clarity and then there's what actually comes out what we think that we can articulate right and then very small circle is what the clients actually are going to understand and sometimes is what they actually want to talk about remember they're not coming to see you as the advisor they're not entertaining the idea of hiring you to learn everything that you do that's why they're hiring you for you to do it for them so having an understanding of what it is that they actually want to talk about believe it or not family goals uh personal milestones family muscles those are the types of things they actually want to talk about and they just want you to help them figure out how you can use their money as a vehicle to get them to those things so having a process to make sure that you aren't overstepping any of the lines of where you turn into that sales pest especially in your first couple meetings with a prospect is really important i would agree um the only thing i would add matt is and we're going to talk a little bit more about this we're going to share some some ideas around use for useful tools that you can create to help with this process um just a simple old adage that we've all heard before that you know facts tell stories sell and you know we live in an industry that's full of jargon and acronyms and financial data and that all becomes a swirling mass for most clients and so you know coalescing a lot of this into simple stories that imprint a compelling message which we help advisors craft every single day is where you really move the needle and separate yourself from the pack absolutely you know one thing that you see here is this is an example of a a snippet coming out of our ace process ace is a homegrown usa financial appointment process ace stands for advisor client engagement and essentially it's a track that advisors can run down uh and it gives them tools documents scripting the whole thing for pre-first appointment first appointment after the first second after you know the whole thing um and advisors like to go and grab bits and pieces and tools from that and you know here's one example of questions that we need to be talking about in a meeting and you see here this is a a modified version of of the strategic coach r factor question right here i shortened it so it could fit on the screen a little bit better but we need to engage prospects differently this is stuff that we like to talk with you about this this is a long conversation we really can't do it justice here um in regards to teaching you how to do this but just know that selling less and asking these better questions is going to differentiate you big time from anybody else that they've sat down with and most importantly differentiate you from the preconceived notion that these people have of you as an advisor when they come in to sit down which we've talked about they think you're gonna try and sell them something let's just not do that there is another way right so this this moves us on into item number four which is throwing mud and no we're not recommending that you throw mud we recommend that you don't throw mud and we talked a little bit about um wedge questions and we locked we talked a little bit about um how to get their wheels turning and ask them things and what we're recommending here is that your questions are geared around the idea of helping them understand maybe some of the areas of focus that haven't been given in the past maybe some areas that need attention and sometimes we can just show them that here's an area that needs some attention and it hasn't had any without throwing mud at the other advisor because you remember you remember when we do this when we throw mud we're not just throwing mud at the other advisor when we talk negatively about them we're throwing mud right at that prospect they picked that guy or that gal they picked that advisor they chose to work with that person they chose to give that person uh you know decision making power over how they should manage their money so some people they take it as a major insult we believe that it's not necessary and there are ways to ask the right questions you know when it comes to like you know maybe service related questions you know asking them about services that they should have had like hey have you has anyone ever built out for you an asset cycle portfolio system has anyone else built out for you a pension max analysis start to get them thinking about all the things that they could be missing out on and that's essentially like balling up the mud and handing it to them and allowing them to draw their own conclusions aaron i know this comes up when we're talking through uh appointment process stuff what are your thoughts yeah you're absolutely right um you know kind of most advisors have been trained in a methodology where when they first meet a client it's you're running through all their you know it's do the rake over you know grab all the statements that they're going through and they're as they're doing the analysis which is just natural as soon as they find any opportunities to you know where there's a problem mistake they try to draw drive a wedge by pointing it back to the other advisor and you're absolutely right every time i try to run down someone else to make myself look better it always backfires um it's as you said it's better to position yourself as uh and let you know ask the right questions to get clients to lead themselves down their their own path and you know what at the end of the day you know as we talk about perception is reality you know the clients when they come to their own conclusion they'll understand that there's a better opportunity with the other advisor and that we are not selling anything we are simply providing you advice and direction and guidance um and if you've made poor choices before we're not going to point the finger say oh you made a bad decision there mr mrs client we're just going to say look here's our opportunities and this is where we see there are great opportunities to continue to improve your situation absolutely absolutely so let's move on let's jump into the fifth takeaway um not communicating value so aaron i want you to definitely take it away with this one um because this is very much about clients understanding the value that's created and i know that's a big part of the coaching that that you help advisors with every day absolutely um you know and i said it earlier um and i've probably said it a couple of times on this call and it comes up a lot you know there are two types of advisors you know sales people chasing commissions and consultants that have a process and part of communicating value is showing that you have a process and a methodology and you know there's a there's a saying that goes um price is only an issue in the absence of value um i've heard it said another way in the absence of perceived value everything comes back to what you cost and for those advisors that are out there constantly battling on price constantly you know warring on who's got the better portfolio really what's come down to is the client hasn't perceived value in your overall methodology and process and so the only thing they're left to judge you on is how much are you charging me so so the ability to really truly convey and move away from things like you see here on the screen industry terms and jargon but more importantly products pricing and performance because with products pricing and performance here's the challenge there if a client comes to you for those three things those are the same three reasons they're going to leave you if they came to you because you had a better or a lower price the first time they find another advisor that charges less than you do they're out the door yeah because you're emphasizing yourself well yeah absolutely so so and you said the word perfectly you know what we've seen is a huge movement in this industry to commoditization you know the e-trades the you know self-directed accounts it's they they're you they're looking at you as a transaction and so to push yourself away from that and truly show yourself as a true consultant what we have to get our clients focusing on is your philosophy your planning strategy and process because what that does is one it insulates yourself from movements of the market because if we have a process if the market goes down that's okay we anticipate that as part of our process we've positioned you to weather those things but if we said oh here's our performance record and it doesn't perform next year because covet happens i've tied my relationships to it so we want to get our clients focusing on philosophy planning strategy and process and that also allows us to dig a moat around our best clients and allow us to competitor proof those relationships i love it and what you what you shared is just so important about what does the basis and the foundation of the the relationship what's that built on we don't want it built on products pricing and performance because like i said the minute that that stuff doesn't work are we any good to them anymore we we want to be held out for the other things that we're doing things like philosophy things like strategy things like our process things that we can measure differently than just having to measure performance it keeps us out of tricky conversations and makes and it keeps the client's mindset where it needs to be so they're measuring value and how we want to be measured so super important um we'll get into the last item here and this one i think is really important and this is certainly a best practice this is a best practice of what um top advisors are doing out there now usa financial were a little bit more saturated with advisors that are doing this which is which is more than what you see at most firms um because we believe that you should go and get three commitments probably wondering what what the heck is he talking about well what i mean is there are really only as many as three commitments that you can get from a client when they are engaging your firm when they are becoming a client of the firm and that's a verbal commitment that's them looking to the eye and say yeah matt uh i'm in i want to be a client of the firm i want you to be my guy i want you when you do this for me then there's the written commitment which is where all right i'm going to sign something i'm going to make it official i'm going to ink this thing i'm going to say i'm signing this i'm in i'm a client of the firm let's do business and then even further and this is where when i was referencing about advisors at usa where we have a ton of saturation here is the financial this is when someone is actually willing to pay you for your time and for your expertise for doing the work on top of how you normally and traditionally would get paid if you can lock down all three of those throughout your engagement process those relationships are super solid if you get someone to the point to where they literally are saying yes i want these services so bad that i'm willing to write you a check for a couple thousand bucks for you to go and spend time doing it so that i can then give you my money and you can manage all of it i don't know how you can beat that so we really encourage that advisors go for all three go for all three forms of commitment uh i i mentioned the saturation at usa financial close to 70 percent here that's a high number 70 percent of the advisors at usa financial charge an upfront fee for their time and expertise now they don't always collect the money up front though sometimes they'll collect it in arrears after they've delivered the plan but they're charging a fee for their time and expertise and they're getting the commitment from the client that they're a client of the firm and that they're hiring the advisor to do all these services and things that they are uh engaging them for before they even are managing the money and receiving a diamond commission and what this does to the the relationship is it just changes it now all of a sudden hey you know mr mrs smith this is the money manager i recommend this is the product i recommend you're no longer in a situation we have to sell that because they paid you to tell them where to put the money and this is this is a big mind shift that it takes for the advisors we spend hours in hours with advisors individually on how to make this shift to start charging fees for time and expertise we believe you should do it we believe you're worth it your time is certainly worth it and what you're seeing here is a couple of examples of of documents that we use uh to to accomplish this you know is therefore i'll let you speak to uh the fit script here for a moment um you know that's how we're going in for that verbal commitment what does that mean yeah absolutely so you know one of the things um you know as we've been going through this um you know our call today um there's been opportunities where we haven't shown you all the additional resources we have behind the scenes um whether we're helping build an appointment process for an advisory team structuring their agendas uh helping them build out their scripts for what kind of questions they ask we have all these tools and resources and this is just an example of some of those um you know the fit script is one of the things that you know we believe strongly in establishing who is your ideal client and using that very first interaction with a prospective client to establish a fit once again it makes you very attractive so we work through the scripting and the the way to actually position that in a way that that draws the client in and allows them to to make that verbal commitment you know what i've enjoyed the time we've had together yes i want to take the next step you know some advisors go ahead and schedule the next appointment but that's really not necessarily getting a verbal commitment that's just saying they're willing to show up again right you know that you may give them more free stuff by getting a verbal commitment from the fit process what we're getting them say is you know what i want to take the next step in your process to becoming a client and so so the next logical progression is matt was sharing is the written commitment so once you've done some discovery once you've kind of gotten a good sense of their goals and objectives you've aligned with wedge questions as to what services and and you know what are the opportunities for planning you can do for them now you can build value in what you're going to be doing sometimes advisors will say well i can put this kind of stuff together and it's all it's a swirling massive conversation now i can put it on paper and they can physically see here's what i'm going to do it's going to take me 10 hours to assemble all of this for you and are you wanting me to do this for you mr mrs client and they get to be part of that process sign on the dotted line and say yes i want to engage you for these services so those are two big steps in the process and then obviously as matt talked about uh the next layer would be the financial commitment for a client but you know we have the tools and resources that we you know this is just a way to make it real and tangible uh for the advisors we work with absolutely and and this is this is really just a taste of kind of what's behind the curtain there's a lot more to this and what it comes down to is we have a system we have a process for all this kind of stuff and i think this was a fantastic quote for us to include that a bad system will be a good person every time and in this business systems and processes help and and good ones work and and we're we're believers in them and i know we we can't do a lot of them justice uh today but they're out there uh you know we're including just some some screenshots here of of some of the different tools these are just tools that we're using uh in the appointment process and tools that we have they're already created you don't have to do the heavy lifting here you know you you can tap into this library of things that we have um and there's a lot of them this is something that you know one of our senior biz dev consultants can run you through a demo if you'd like to see some of this stuff these all come from a tool called our easy marketing builder where you log in your logo is immediately put on the document your disclosure your address and it's automatically submitted to compliance department on your behalf and you can send it right to your printer uh it's pretty slick uh and then here are some more of you know practice management uh really like taking the idea of process and branding it and making it unique to your firm so now all of a sudden this this process you have for engaging new people you can actually brand the thing and it can be become you know one of the i guess pillars of of your financial advisory practice so that your clients can articulate it now this is um a lot of stuff we actually talked about in one of our first webinars if you'd like to get access to that uh please let uh the senior business development consultant that will reach out to you know we can get you the recording uh it's up on youtube and we talk in more depth about how this kind of stuff can really help uh in the engagement process so we are running out of time uh aaron so i'm gonna jump us through uh to to where we can start to close this thing out for everybody i know you're all busy uh to get back to your day but stick with me for another couple minutes this is important here um because what we know about all of the you know the advisors that we talked about you know those those top 40 that that we kind of spotlighted that that experienced the growth um this was a common denominator all the the appointment process stuff they're all very good at having a system in a process and it's consistent and we know that all these best practices did actually create these things for them that is why we were able to witness the results that we witnessed in green the growth in 2020 in the year of the pandemic i mean it's it's crazy to think about some advisors had banner years and that's just awesome so what we you know really invite you to think about here is with all the stuff that is out there that you could utilize that you could implement into your business sure you could go out and build it you could create it you could take the time to to to assemble it all and do the research and i mean or you could skip the trial and error and what we found and this is a common denominator of all the advisors that tend to partner with usa financial is that there are some things that they have in common that make what we do a really good fit for them and so i ask you the question you know are you are you a believer that investments in insurance and annuity you know all of those things should have a place in the financial plan are you looking to grow your aum and your recurring revenue are are you coachable that's kind of a big deal in regards to you know systems and processes are you willing and able to invest in things like marketing and branding and practice management are you are you able to work on your business are you someone that you know realizes that importance of systems and tools and processes and tech and are you humble but yeah driven hungry and ready to grow um and are some of you sitting there thinking man who's talking to me about this kind of stuff you know are you tired of a partner that doesn't quite understand your business in this degree and what i would ask you is if if you answer yes to these questions let's just get on the phone and have a chat we should probably talk because if you're answering yes to this and this sounds like you we're really really well suited to help your business i'm just putting it out there we know who we're best suited for and if this is you and if this is what you know over here is something that you're wanting to aspire to we need to talk let's just kick the tires and have a conversation and have a chat and one thing i want you to know and this is super important all these numbers in green and all the stuff you see this didn't happen overnight these advisors weren't having this type of success when they partnered with usa financial to help us or for us to help them grow their business this was this took some work some of this was years in the making sometimes it's a couple years before they start to see the things that they want but that's what we're good at helping advisors grow so at this point you're probably wondering all right who the heck are these guys matt and they're they're talking about appointment process stuff are they uh are they a bd are they an ria are they an fmo are they what and the answer is yes we are all of those things in fact we're a lot of things here at usa financial we've got a broker dealer under the roof we've got multiple rias we've got a tamp we've got an fmo or an imo for insurance distribution we have a coaching firm a marketing firm an hq tech firm yes we have all of those things but what's important isn't that we have all of these things all these companies under the roof it's what having all of these in one place does for the financial advisor it gives them one-stop shop to just focus on growing their business right increasing the enterprise value of of their practice and you're probably sitting there thinking now well golly a company um with all these entities and all this going on there's there's got to be thousands of advisors there how the heck am i going to fail and the answer is well no there isn't and it's completely by design uh what you're seeing here is probably one of the most telling slides that i can put up about the story of usc financial yes we've been around since 1988 and no currently we don't align with thousands of advisors currently we're aligned with about 252 advisor offices across the country and it's completely by design what you see here is our history there was a point in time where we were on the trajectory of aligning with many and we made what i think is probably one of the most pivotal pivotal excuse me decisions in the history of usa and it's that we knew who we were best suited for and we realigned with those individuals parted ways with a good chunk of this 3700 to realign with about 200-ish at that time and this blue line is our aggregate revenue growth since then but that blue line is absolutely nothing but a direct reflection of the advisors that we work with their revenue is our revenue we only uh you know make money so to speak when advisors are growing their business so what you can see is the power that we've kind of figured out by really finding the right fit and and identifying the advisor we know that we're best suited to help and aligning with them and and this is all about rather than going a mile wide in an inch deep into a bunch of practices we go an inch wide and a mile deep into some specific practices that we know we can really move the needle so if you feel like uh that's you from some of those questions seriously let's just get on the phone and have a conversation so to wrap this up what i'm going to do is we're going to talk about uh what we're going to get in your hands this is hot off the press we have a guide to improving your appointment and process goes into more depth on some of these items as a thank you for being here today uh you're officially alumni of of matt and erin's lunchtime academy we're going to get this in your hands uh and then also we want to make available to you if you'd like to have a quick chat we'd love to demo something that jumped out at you today if it was a specific tool that you saw that we talked about or it was up on the screen please make note of it uh better yet you could even shoot us a note in the chat box or the q a box and let us know what that is and we'll get that ready to be able to show you um but we would love to uh hop on a quick demo do a screen share arm you with some of these tools and show you how to use them no strings attached let's just have a conversation and see where it goes and one last thing and we'll then we'll start to close this out is uh please save the date write this down thursday april 22nd at 12 noon eastern we are going to have our next installment of the advisor advancement mastermind series this is going to be taking a dive back into the practice management and marketing direction so it's no doubt going to be fun um so with that uh aaron i want to thank you for joining me it was a lot of fun today to get into this stuff so thank you for your time uh advisors thank you so much um we never take your time for granted i know uh for some of you you you sacrificed a lunch hour to spend time with us others you sacrificed uh hours out of your day that you could be spending with your clients so thank you for your time we look forward to that next conversation thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you soon take care