Build Personality Into The Mix

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Prospecting ideas come and go, but the best ones stay around year after year.

One way to keep those old ideas fresh is first to consider a healthy mix of activities. For starters, do you have a marketing plan that encompasses a number of strategies and tactics?

Its best to have some that target your existing clients, while others warm up prospects for a second appointment. Still others simply can build your image in a given market or community.

Within the mix of strategies, one must next design tactics that appeal to different approach techniques; some aggressive, some more passive. An example of passive strategies would be direct mail and article placements in association newsletters. Seminars, qualified referral approaches and client appreciation events could be considered more aggressive pursuits of time and money.

Once you feel comfortable with your mix of activities, its important to think through how you will keep them fresh. Why? Because, if youre not convinced there is value in where you invest your time and money for marketing, then you will not commit to implementing your plan and you will be no farther along than having never done a plan.

Second, if youre not convinced there is value in where you invest your time and money for marketingyou guessed itno one else will either.

The best way to keep marketing approaches fresh is to keep them personal. Pick a theme or two that defines something you value as a professional, or even as an individual. If family is an overriding source of satisfaction, then build your family into the occasional marketing approach. This might include a photo of your family on a holiday card, rather than the less-imaginative corporate cards that are often the choice of uninspired sales people.

Talk with the local paper and offer to host a monthly column on finance topics for families. Make sure you have a good client/prospect tracking system for learning the names and priorities of the family members of the people you serve, and weave those tidbits of information appropriately into all of your approach talks.

If you hold a client appreciation day, dont exclude the family members. It may not be practical to include your “theme” in every marketing approach, but striving to include it in half of them is typically a good goal.

Another example of a personal theme to integrate into your marketing mix could be a hobby, like photography. Start by adopting a memorable approach line such as, “I help people keep their financials in focus.” Then, build a postcard cultivation program using some of your favorite scenic shots, or host a client appreciation event that features some of your photos displayed at the cocktail reception. (Not for sale, obviously, but for conversation purposes.)

A couple of my clients are using their interest in photography to start a photo gallery of their “financially focused” clients. The idea is to take an “unfocused” photo of a prospect in one of the first meetings (with permission, of course) and then to take a more focused image of the client once shes committed to going forward with a financial plan.