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Parents become children as they experience role reversals later in life. Well, it’s happened to me.
Not with a child, but with my former work mentee becoming my mentor. Anna Sergunina, CFPÒ, my assistant who became a financial planner, then a business partner, and eventually bought me out, is now giving me business advice. Her latest advice? Listen to the Amy Porterfield podcast. Wow, did she turn me on to a fantastic information source!
I’m hooked.
In Amy’s podcast #554, she explored the concept of ditching the “origin story” in your sales pitch and rather focusing on your “conversion story.” While an origin story exemplifies how you accomplished all the good things and speaks to how smart you are, your conversion story will make an impact on how your prospective client feels about you. Your conversion story is about how you became what you are today and what it means to you in daily life – just like what your prospect would want to achieve.
My conversion story began at home by observing my mother, a secretary to a famous actor/director in Hollywood. I was born in Hollywood, California. I’m not an actor, but I play one on YouTube.
My mother always had a “steno book” close at hand, as well as an accordion file folder to store bills and receipts. She took good notes and reviewed them often. Doing so ensured she never forgot to complete her tasks, which included paying the family bills and managing its budget. My brother and I laugh at how much we are like her to this day.
Fortunately, most financial tasks are automated through apps, like online bill paying and automatic deductions to savings accounts. What is the result both then and now? We watch our savings grow while making determined and researched financial decisions – just like Mom did for our family and her famous boss. As a financial planner for over 20 years, that’s what I always wanted to pass along to our children and my clients.
How does it feel to have your financial life well managed? Pretty darn good. Even when I’m stressed about other things, the financial part of my life is on (semi) automatic pilot. The impact is especially evident when I have periodic discussions about our finances with my wife. We’re both happy to know we’re covered in the event of any potential financial difficulties. We also find it much easier to support many charitable causes where we can have an impact.
That’s my conversion story for financial planning. How about my conversion story for my side gig in retirement? Now I focus my time on helping younger financial advisors have fewer meetings and more clients.
I remember starting my financial planning business. After several months of advertising mistakes that did not produce a single client, I helped resurrect a local fee-only study group. For two years, I organized meetings and speakers. The result? I became a well-known hourly planner, and referrals for prospective clients started rolling in.
But converting referrals to prospects did not go as well as I expected. I had lots of prospective clients say they liked my business model and would be hiring me shortly. Then they went dark. My success rate never got above 50%. I felt like a failure, and I blamed them, the prospects, for being time wasters.
All the sales skills I had learned as a commercial real estate broker, life insurance agent, bank trust department business development person, and investment sales representative evaporated when I became a financial planner. My professional sales training courses were all but forgotten. I had to relearn these skills and practice them often to become a successful problem solver.
It took me almost two years to become what I considered to be a success. In retrospect, I want to pass along the lessons I learned while being a persistent problem-solver and honing my sales skills to those who experience a similar sense of failure and frustration with landing new clients.
That’s my conversion story. Let me know what your financial advising conversion story is and how you will use it going forward.
After retiring from a 20+ year career as a fee-only advisor, Jim Ludwick helps other financial advisors improve their sales skills via coaching, books, and public speaking. For more information visit procrastinationjunction.com
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
