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The following is excerpted from The Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors by Beverly D. Flaxington (ATA Press, 2014), which is available from Amazon via the link on this page.
It’s a great idea to complete a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis to help you define your marketing focus. But, what do you do next to use the data to enhance your efforts?
Identifying your ideal client
Marketing is a process of developing and putting into practice a plan which identifies, anticipates, and satisfies client requirements in such a way that a profit is realized. Market research and planning appropriate marketing methods are important parts of marketing.
The two requirements for successful marketing of any practice are to have both a marketing strategy and a marketing plan. These go hand-in-hand and are often confused. A marketing strategy is a list of the goals to attain as a result of marketing efforts. The strategy used will depend upon the business goals. The marketing plan is simply how those business goals will be reached. A simple way to remember the difference between the two is as follows:
Strategy = Thinking
Planning = Doing
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Many firms will start by completing a SWOT analysis. SWOT is a basic component of any business management program and is relevant to financial advisors, as well.
The first two sections, strengths and weaknesses, represent an internal look at your firm. What are you doing well? What things would you like to keep in place and build upon? What areas would you like to improve? Where, as a firm, do you run into obstacles and get sidetracked from your goals? This is an excellent chance to involve members of your staff and team. Often times people in different roles and with different areas of focus will all see, from their respective vantage point, some of the same issues. This can help the firm to understand where the “real” weaknesses are. Poll your team and find out generally where there agreement and where there is disagreement about what the firm is doing well and where it needs to improve. Document the results and keep the strengths in mind to build on, while remaining aware of the areas that need improvement.
After you’ve done the internal look, turn to the external side of the equation – the opportunities and threats. Those are the external aspects that affect your firm. What’s happening in the market right now? Who are your main competitors? What market changes, cultural changes, demographic changes, and so on are expected to take place? How will they either open new doors for your firm or close existing ones?
Break down your goals
Once you have the mission and the values very clearly defined, the next step involves breaking down your goals into discrete areas of growth.
The best plans involve clearly defining the areas of focus and defining – as specifically as you are able – what the actual goals look like in a number of different categories. For example, if you want to increase client referrals, you would start by identifying where you are today, and then identify what success looks like for increasing these referrals. This can be by number of new referrals, or by assets under management, or by revenue. By stating a specific goal for each area, you’ll be able to measure your success toward that goal and make mid-course corrections when you find you’re heading off-track in any one area. It also allows for the allocation of resources and focus, instead of just throwing budget money against something but not knowing how much each segment of your plan should get as an allocation.
Ultimately you should have identified the different areas within which you hope to improve your business development efforts and focus your marketing strategy in those areas. So, if you are hoping to penetrate the custodial channel and want to increase sales through your relationship there, don’t spend a lot of time writing articles for journals in a niche market the custodial reps don’t read! Where you want to go should be clear and concise and then should dictate what marketing tactics you want to apply against your efforts.
A sales channel is how services or products are brought to market for purchase by consumers. A direct sales channel applies if a business sells directly to clients. If a third party is involved in the sale, then it is considered to be an indirect sales channel.
The sales channel you choose will affect the marketing methods you use. It’s best to decide whether you are selling directly or indirectly to your target market. Most financial advisors sell directly to their clients but are also often using Centers of Influence, branch reps, existing clients, or networking in the community, to reach their audience. So it is a combination of indirect – through someone else to reach the prospect – and direct, when you sit down with the prospect to talk about your services.
Develop materials that make the audience care
As you create your marketing plan, you’ll need to determine which marketing materials to use at each step in the selling process. It is important to know what you want the materials to accomplish and the purpose you want them to serve.
While they are important as supporting tools, marketing materials alone rarely sell anything – especially something as important as wealth management. Therefore, be careful and specific about what you need, and why and do not waste a lot of time and money putting all of your messaging into written materials. Materials should entice and engage but they cannot tell the whole story.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. In 2008, she co-founded Advisors Trusted Advisor to offer dedicated practice management resources to advisors, planners and wealth managers. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University, teaching undergraduate students Leadership & Social Responsibility. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
Read more articles by Beverly Flaxington