Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 151: Ideas to Implement - Two Phrases To NEVER USE When Following Up with a Prospect (and What to Say Instead!)

Transcript

151: Ideas to Implement - Two Phrases To NEVER USE When Following Up with a Prospect (and What to Say Instead!) · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I am so glad you're here.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Every week, I want to create a follow-up episode to the longer Tuesday release episode.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: That is, you know, short, sweet and all about the action steps from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Now my goal is to distill the episode down into just a couple of bullet points that I want you to be able to act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I want to actually take the thing that we learned and do it, finish it, make it happen, get it implemented.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And this week's is super easy.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I am your host of the efficient advisor, libby Graywee, and I built from scratch a 100% referral only planning practice 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.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I am here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same, to help you take immediate action on the super tactical things that you can implement now, in a month from now, three months from now and a year from now.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We're talking short, mid and long-term actionable items that you can use to scale, organize and create less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It's a real thing.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: This week's episode was all about two phrases not to say when following up with a client and what to say instead.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: This isn't something that I learned.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: This isn't like a woo-woo, I just made it up or hey, this worked for me.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: This is based on actual science, stats, data that support what we're talking about here today.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: This isn't like a Libby thing that I just made up.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This is actually backed by hard numbers.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: We've all heard that.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Jim Rohn quote the fortune is in the follow-up and the man is not wrong.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: In the longer episode from this week, I shared some statistics around what the average salesperson is doing when it comes to follow-up.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We need to have an actual system or process in place.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Your follow-up shouldn't be willy-nilly, and it's not just when you follow up that's important.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It's how you follow up that's important.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: We all wanna stay top of mind for a prospect, but we do not want to sound desperate or needy.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That is like a deep desire, for most advisors is wanting to sort of maintain that status as an expert or an advisor who is sought after, right.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But you also want them to take action or to respond to you.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And so in this episode we shared at least two things to never say to a client follow-up and the two things to say instead.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So what those are is we never, ever want to say what I consider the F word in financial planning follow-up.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: We never wanna say, oh hey, jim and Jan, I just wanted to follow up with you guys and check in.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Those are the two death phrases following up and checking in.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And I go into all of the rationale and reason behind that.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And again, this is supposed to be a nice short and sweet episode for you guys.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So what to say instead is we want to come from this place of authority, this place of being sought after, this idea of kind of maintaining our status.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And if you go back and listen to the Lost Cause episode and I've linked that in the show notes for you there's a Lost Cause letter that we would send at the six month point for our clients after we would do like an event, or back when we were doing workshops or our white glove referral events or our intimate client experiences.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Right, we would send this Lost Cause letter at the six month mark and the idea is that there's some finality here, sort of, hey, we have, you know we've.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: The premise is that we've been, you know, reaching out to you and we haven't heard back.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So what do you wanna do now?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And instead of you know, continuing to reach out and continuing to sound desperate, it's perfectly acceptable to say you know that you've reached out multiple times now and at this point you are just gonna leave the ball in their court, right, that's what we're trying to do, and I can't tell you the results that we had from that letter.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It was crazy to me how many times we would send out that Lost Cause letter and almost immediately we'd get a call from the client saying oh my gosh, we're so sorry.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I cannot believe it's been six months.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: That's so embarrassing.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: We definitely wanna do that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We're so sorry, gosh, we really wanna move forward on this.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for reaching out and thank you for your persistence.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Right, and there was something about that finality and in our group coaching we're gonna go through.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So, for those of you listing, we're gonna go through the follow-up process and we're gonna talk about how you restate their goal that they articulated and you restate the solution for that goal, like we're gonna talk about the formula for follow-up.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So you're wanting to kind of remind them like, hey, this is what you wanted, here is what we can do to help you achieve what you wanted.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And at this point the ball is kind of in your court and it's up to you to take some action.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And then what to say instead?
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So the two power phrases that we talked about in this episode were one where do we go from here?
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: And two what do you see client as the next step?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That, to me, is the mic drop at the end of your email, putting the ball in their court, letting them know that you are kind of done with pursuing them and letting them kind of make that call.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And the good news is, you only wanna work with clients who actively want to work with you, that wanna be engaged in their financial plan.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Right, we don't want clients that we're gonna have to twist their arms to get them to come in and then they're gonna be a big old pain in the butt getting all of their documents together and getting them back in for a presentation of recommendations or whatever that looks like for you and your business.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: We only want clients that are actively engaged, and we also live in a society where everybody is crazy busy.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: There's seven million things grabbing at our attention all day, every day.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So it's not a bad idea to have a follow-up process in place to be that gentle reminder to show these prospects or to show your existing clients that maybe you've recommended a strategy to.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: It's not a bad idea to show them that you don't drop the ball right.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: This is why you need a process with set intervals and set methods of how you're gonna follow up.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna wanna follow up with them in a strategic way so that they know that you are on top of it and you're not their mom.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Right, you're not going to follow up with them and nag them and make sure that something gets done and I'm a mom so I can say that and I never nag my children, of course.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Of course I'm just gently reminding them, so you can gently remind them, aka nag.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: However, you wanna do it in a way that's professional, that maintains your status.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe I need to switch doing this with my kids.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try this and I will report back to you guys.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start saying to them and what do you see as the next steps?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I can just imagine I have teenagers, so I can just imagine the eye roll that will occur.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: You guys will probably feel it from wherever you are listening to this, so I'm gonna give it a go and let you know if this also works on children.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: So follow me for more parenting advice as well.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, anyway, all right, let me wrap this up.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: If you guys have any questions, I'd love to connect with you further out in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook, or you can DM me on LinkedIn.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Those are the two places, as you know, that I hang out online.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And don't forget to check out the St Jude Family Tree Template and the OnePage Masterclass from my friends Micah Shalansky and Matt Jarvis over at the Perfect RAA.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I've got those both linked for you in the show notes as well.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And if you're like Libby, what are you talking about?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Go back and listen to the episode from Tuesday, and in the intro I give a detailed description of the OnePage Financial Plan Masterclass that the Perfect RAA has launched and the Family Tree Template from the podcast a couple of weeks ago and how to get your hands on that.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Hope you have an amazing rest of your week, thank you.