The Financial Advisor Leads To Look Out For
There are companies out there that claim their leads are
- Prospects with a certain level of assets that are “looking for an advisor”
- Claim to sell leads to a fixed amount of Financial Advisors
- Claim to have phone contact and verification with the prospects to ensure they are legitimate
Each one of these leads cost around $200 a piece (see example here).
Out of 50 conversations with Advisors leveraging this type of platform is the following (summarized)
- Stale, wrong, or unverified information leading to a waste of funds
- Prospects state they have received calls from 6+ different firms when these companies state they sell the information to only 3 advisors
- Repeated or recycled prospects. Instead of scrubbing the contact from their list, they re-sell it to another advisor
We spoke to 1 advisor that had spent over $43,000 in a matter of 8 months with no success.
Depending on your marketing budget, firm resources and income your book is producing, this can be a lot of money or a “drop in the bucket”. However, we don’t want you to waste precious resources if we can avoid it. Every dollar you invest in a program, software or marketing channel should return you 4-10x per dollar.
There are many dealers of such information out there that can promise these types of financial advisor leads, but we have yet to find one that can deliver successfully.
It makes sense. The time, resources and dedication that goes into generating lead would have to sell for 10x the price specified above.
Try it if you must, but be cautious. The data, reviews and research say the numbers are working against you at the get-go.
Are you looking for inbound or outbound?
We believe inbound leads are a good secondary strategy but should be a passive, meaning you focus your efforts on outbound.
It is very difficulty to nearly impossible to build your book of business purely on keywords, competition separation, or seen as an authority on a service in this industry.
Every advisor will each have their own story on how they built their book of business, Most of them will tell you that outbound strategies were their primary means of generating leads and growing their business.
The good news is that there are a growing population of firms and advisors that have completely axed generating leads through cold calling.
This makes it very difficult to prospect effectively and companies lose
If you are gaining prospects through outbound strategies, you will have a leg up on the majority of your competitors.
Try different combinations and platforms
When we developed the Affluensee Platform, we had this in mind for the individual Financial Advisor or their team to generate new business quickly and methodically.
If you end up trying out a different platform, the important part to remember is that it may take 2-3 different combinations of it to be effective. This is usually the case for Financial Advisors targeting a very specific set of individuals.
The biggest complaint we hear with Advisors taking this path is that it is “clunky”, “time consuming” and “not consistent”. These are all critical pieces of your business growing efforts you need to consider handing off to a junior advisor or streamlining.
Social media is bottle-necking the Financial Advisor Leads Process
With some firms removing cold calling and resorting to LinkedIn for their lead generation, it means there are more advisors competing for the same prospects.
And let’s be straightforward about LinkedIn…
I have received thousands of cold-messages and inquiries about selling me some marketing or technology service for our platform.
The messages miss the mark just about 100% of the time.
Either I don’t understand what it is they are talking about or they haven’t taken the time to read my profile.
The bar is set so low on social media but it is being flooded with mass, automated messaging and you should not be expecting generating any financial advisor leads this way.
It is not unusual for Advisors in the same firm to be competing over the same prospect. Chances are the prospect won’t choose any advisor from that firm because of the appearance of disorganization.
It has never been more important to ensure you have the right information, knowledge and processes to prospect on social media.
Without it, your efforts will be all for nothing.