Many advisors jump to the conclusion that their leads who back out of the sale simply weren’t ready or qualified.
And the answer to this which I hear a lot of is, “I just need more leads.”
This spurs advisors to launch into time-consuming marketing projects, like building out complex email series, hiring LinkedIn consultants, starting social media campaigns, and buying expensive CRM systems like Salesforce, etc.
But those strategies can ultimately prove to be rabbit holes which lead advisors away from the real issue.
In a low volume/high margin business like advisory — where one new client can easily be worth $10,000 to $20,000 in annual fees — a lack of clients is not a lead generation problem.
The truth is that most of your prospects have some kind of financial problem or issue, otherwise they would not agree to meet with you in the first place.
Their lack of commitment to you at the end of your process is not necessarily because they’re an unqualified lead (although there will be some of those). Instead, it’s more likely that somewhere in your sales process they didn’t trust you enough to open up to you and tell you the truth of what is really going on behind the original challenge they shared with you.
In short, they didn’t trust you enough to go ahead and make the decision to hire you.
A Better Approach
If you’re getting say eight leads per month, that’s plenty of leads from which you should be converting at least four new clients per month. For example:
An inbound lead agrees to a phone call or a Zoom meeting with you.
You have the meeting to discuss what they need help with (the financial problem or issue which they haven’t been able to solve on their own).
You onboard them as a client in that meeting.
That’s it.
The only question at the end of the meeting is whether or not they want you to solve their problem.
There should be no emailing, phone calling, or chasing after that.
A lack of new clients is not solved by continuing to create a high volume of new leads.
It’s caused by a lack of trust, from not going below the surface in the initial meeting with your prospect, to truly address their underlying core issues.
Shift the Spotlight
The question that you need to come clean with regarding yourself is:
“What am I doing, that’s causing these leads not to trust me, to make their decision in our first meeting?”
Stop using “fact-finding” and “relationship-building” questions, and a long complex sales process, where you try to prove yourself as an advisor.
That puts the spotlight on you to perform, which forces you to prove your value.
Shift to the sales conversation with the aim of understanding and addressing your prospect’s core problem. In other words, shift the spotlight off you and onto your prospect.
You don’t have to prove your value or sell yourself to make the sale — you just have to prove that you can be trusted.
And with the right approach, you can do that in the first meeting.
Ari Galper is an authority on trust-based selling and a sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book is “Trust In A Split Second.” Click here to get a free copy of the book and a complimentary consultation.
