Category: Marketing

As a Financial Advisor, you may not be aware of the most important asset you have available to you.  It’s Social Capital.

The way to understand Social Capital is by thinking about your relationships with your best quality clients.  They trust you with their financial assets.  But do they trust you enough to bring you into their circle by warmly introducing you to the quality people they know, people who are just like them?                                                                                                                      

That’s Social Capital. It leverages your relationships with your best quality clients into warm, personally introduced and endorsed appointments with their quality friends and colleagues.

Social Capital introductions bear no resemblance to standard referrals.  These are high quality introductions from your best quality clients, your best Centers Of Influence. 

So, how do you acquire Social Capital?

It’s driven by having a compelling  Remarkable  Marketing Story  (see post – The Bad News. Your Marketing Story May Suck!) that subtly addresses your clients’ Worldview of Financial Advisors and the Financial Industry –  that they are Darth Vader’s working for the Evil Empire.  (see Darth Vader post)

A compelling  Remarkable Marketing Story is what  moves your best quality clients to share your story with their quality circle of friends and colleagues.  It opens the door to consistent high quality personal introductions and high quality appointments on an ongoing basis.

Almost all of your best clients will give you permission.

These clients have made you their Financial Advisor – they have taken a leap of faith with you. At the same time you feel privileged and grateful because over time you have earned their trust. You protect and nurture it.

When you have your clients’ trust they will give you permission to talk about warm personal introductions, their most important asset. Different from referrals, open permission removes the discomfort and fear of asking – it’s the key to a personal introduction and endorsement. It’s the reward for earning their trust.

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Wondering why your quality best clients are not personally introducing you to their quality best friends and colleagues? Wondering why you have so few brand new, warm quality first appointments?

It’s probably because your “Marketing Story” is not worth talking about.

It’s not remarkable!

However, we’ve talked with countless Financial Advisors and for the most part, their marketing stories are basically the same. Their focus is on how their firm is different, where they went to school, the degrees they’ve earned, how great their numbers are, their charitable work, family, et al.  

Quality best clients and prospects don’t see this kind of story as remarkable.

As soon as you move away from your old marketing story to a new more Remarkable Marketing Story, everything changes… because your story is perceived as remarkable. Not only will your clients respond to you, they will also talk about you to their friends and colleagues. You have become more remarkable and quality activity goes way up… consistently.

Developing an effective, more Remarkable Marketing Story is a simple and effective process that shows you understand your market and their predominant Worldview…  distrust of Advisors and the Industry (See Darth Vader Post). Any form of puffery or selling will literally and figuratively slam the door.

Think about it.  If you don’t have a schedule that’s consistently filled with quality prospect meetings and first appointments that are warm and personally introduced to you by your best quality clients, your story probably sucks.

Most people don’t fully trust the Financial Industry or Financial Advisors. (See our “People Don’t Trust You”  post)  This is their Worldview, a bias that focuses on bad experiences, bad news. It makes it extremely difficult for Financial Advisors to get quality prospects and clients to listen and open up.  And yet, most Financial Advisors have received little training to recognize and effectively address this bias.

Successfully addressing this Worldview begins when you craft a Remarkable Marketing Story.  A Remarkable Marketing Story is very different from a garden variety Marketing Story. It is told in a way that focuses on and addresses what’s important to your prospects and your clients – not you. It effectively addresses biases and puts you in sync with your quality best clients and quality prospects.

It’s not about your numbers, facts and figures. And it’s not telling them what you think they want to hear. That will just shut them down, they won’t listen.                   

When it’s right you are a standout. When it isn’t, you’re invisible.