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September 26, 2013 at 10:28 AM
In last week’s blog we discussed the importance of opt-in marketing and building a great prospect list. This week I’ll share with you more on how to create value in your practice once you have a list.
As many great marketers will tell you, “The money is in the list.” What they should say, however, is, “The money is in knowing what to do with your list.” Simply having a list won’t do anything for you, but nurturing and cultivating that list, now that’s where it’s at.
As I’ve shared in weeks past, not everyone is ready to do business today. But does that mean they should simply be ignored? If you think about it, that’s what most of us do. We simply ignore anyone who doesn’t close today. Operating this way is simply a symptom of being stuck in the survival marketing funnel. What we should do instead is nurture our lists over time to create a predictable, steady flow of new clients each and every month.
Sounds simple, but how do you do that? Let me give you some examples. Let’s say a prospect indicates interest in tax-reduction strategies. You might call and follow up to get an appointment, but as you and I both know, that may or may not happen. However, to properly nurture that prospect, to ensure when he is ready to take action he does so with you, consider crafting a series of messages on tax-reduction strategies. By doing so, you can leverage those messages and content to “warm the prospect up” over time.
If you think about it, you could do this with every area of planning for prospects and clients. Why not have a campaign around estate planning issues, risk management, IRA distribution planning, college funding, Social Security solutions, and other specialties? By doing so you’ll position yourself in the top tier of advisors who run real businesses and follow up more than just once.
Statistically, as we’ve looked at before, more than 80 percent of deals happen after the fifth follow-up, and yet, only 10 percent of advisors follow up more than five times. If you did nothing different in the next 12 months to grow your business but decided to put a nurture campaign like this in place, you’d be way ahead of your competition.
