Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 202: Ideas to Implement -- Is Buying Leads Worth It? How This Advisor Turns Paid Leads into Paychecks with Guest Philip Snyder

Transcript

202: Ideas to Implement -- Is Buying Leads Worth It? How This Advisor Turns Paid Leads into Paychecks with Guest Philip Snyder · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Every week, I want to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about the action steps from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: So the goal is really every week, to distill the longer format episode down into just a couple of bullet points for you to think about or act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I want you to actually take the thing that we learned together and go do it right.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm your host of the efficient advisor Libby Grywee and I built a 100% referral only planning practice from scratch that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I am here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: My goal is to help you with that work life blend.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And before I dive into the action items from this week's podcast, which was all about buying leads.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to share one more time that this is the last reminder to get on the wait list for the systems to scale group coaching program.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Registration for wait listers starts July 1st with a $500 discount and for the rest of y'all it starts July 8th.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So if you want to participate in the program, go ahead and get on the wait list so that you can get the early bird access and discount, okay.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So enough about that Cause we'll be talking about the group coaching program plenty here in the upcoming weeks.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I am really excited about this week's episode.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It was one of those that I was like, ooh, do I do it, do I not do it?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: And lately those have been the ones that have been the absolute best performing.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So buying leads is something that comes up pretty frequently out in the efficient advisor community and every time someone posts a question asking about it, there is just a barrage of comments right Like terrible, horrible idea, blah, blah, blah and I always try to comment on there that there are advisors who are having success with this and I realized after working with my client, phil um after a couple of years, like he has actually done really well with buying million dollar plus leads, and I thought it would just make an interesting conversation.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying I am promoting for every advisor to buy leads or that I think it's the world's greatest idea, but it can be done successfully and my job is to just expose you guys to a variety of opinions, a variety of ways of doing things and to hopefully give you another arrow in your quiver if it makes sense for you.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So Phil shared about what his journey of buying leads has looked like and how he has successfully built a process around using he uses smart asset.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: But he talks about how he's built a process around these smart asset leads and it's something that he and I started working with.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: You know he started working with me and early on we started building out this process and a nurture sequence.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And how do you actually distill your longer financial planning process down into something short and sweet that you can give these leads to move them to being a client right?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Because the big concern or question that he had coming into it was that it takes a lot of time to convert these leads.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: So how can we actually reduce the amount of time, energy and effort that goes into converting the leads without negatively impacting the conversion rate.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So that's where I stepped into Phil's world to help him build that out and he's done it quite successfully.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So I thought it would just make a really cool episode for him to share just a little bit about his journey and what that looks like.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: So the big takeaways for me after this conversation and really after having working with Phil for a while having been working with Phil for, I mean, gosh, two years is really setting expectations for yourself and going in with a totally open mind and a very realistic, very realistic expectation that the conversion ratio is going to be very, very, very small and that you are going to have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: The second takeaway in the conversation was that you really have to and I mentioned it just a minute ago you have to really build a process.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You cannot just call clients that you get the leads for and bug them and keep checking in on them and following up, like you literally have to have a well thought out, documented process.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So Phil has a nurture sequence that he uses for his leads and that includes his process right when he actually, once he does connect with them, that he can take them through his planning process.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And you have to be thoughtful about how you address all of the things right, the fact that they're probably going to be getting a call from a couple other advisors.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So you need to be able to stand out from the competition.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: You need to have a process that nurtures them and I mentioned in the long format episode, I think in the outro, having a process that really directly discusses with your clients, the fact that, hey, we know you're interviewing other advisors as you should, and here's some questions that you should be asking those other advisors and here's the answers to those questions.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Again, kind of preemptively setting yourself up for success and, again, kind of really trying to stand out from the competition.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: The third thing that really kind of stood out to me is Phil said plan on paying for 150 leads.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: So again, setting expectations for yourself that, of course, anytime you do something, the first is the worst, right, you are going to botch it, the first couple of attempts that you have, and maybe not necessarily botch it, but it's not going to be your absolute best, finely tuned, dialed in process, right.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So giving yourself some time and some money to really invest.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I liked how Phil used the word invest multiple times in it.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So I think sometimes we can get caught up on this idea of spending money, and this is a very unpopular opinion.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: But I don't believe in having a marketing budget, because if your marketing is working properly, you're not throwing good money after bad right.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: There is a direct ROI on great marketing.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So if you have a marketing budget and you plan on spending $8,000 this year and getting nothing back for it, then yes, that is a marketing budget and you have a spray and pray strategy and I would suggest that you actually redirect those dollars and efforts towards something more fruitful.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Marketing should have an ROI.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: So if you're going to spend money on a workshop, you should be making $3 to one.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: If you're going to be hosting a one of our white glove referral events that we talk about here at the efficient advisor, you should expect an ROI of anywhere from 15 to 30 to one right.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So traditional marketing you you, regardless of the strategy you want to think of it as an investment, because you should be getting an ROI on that money.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: If you are not, it is not a sufficient marketing strategy.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: It's awareness campaigns, it's brand building campaigns totally different than actually trying to drive business.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but most advisors that I work with don't just have the money that Pepsi or Coke or Nike has to build just general brand awareness.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Most of the advisors that I work with are really actually wanting to generate ROI with the money spent.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: So Phil said plan on paying for 150 leads and really setting your expectations.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So those were kind of my three takeaways from this conversation of you know is buying leads worth it and how do I actually turn paid leads into paychecks?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys so much for listening.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to sign up for the systems to scale group coaching wait list in the show notes below.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I've also linked all of the things that Phil and I talked about, including the link to smart assets, in the show notes.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.