If you’re like many advisors coping in the coronavirus pandemic, you’ve turned to your existing book of business for most of your sales, since convincing strangers to meet in person is a formidable challenge.
In a recently released survey reported in ThinkAdvisor, 78% of advisors said they were selling more to their existing clients, including 24% who were selling exclusively to their existing clients. In the survey – conducted in May among some 400 financial professionals including sellers of insurance, annuities and investment products, by LIMRA, the Insured Retirement Institute, Oliver Wyman and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors – most advisors surveyed said social distancing had made it harder to find new clients and conduct initial planning activities with them.
Turning to existing clients is an understandable way to keep your business afloat, but it won’t sustain you – you’ll eventually exhaust that pipeline of business. Plus, if all or most of your colleagues are turning to existing clients, imagine the pent-up demand for people needing insurance and financial advice. There’s an even greater opportunity to grow your business now, and turning to existing clients means you’re missing out.
The First Step: Shift Your Mindset
Two effective ways in the current pandemic to reach new clients are conducting virtual education workshops and expanding your services. And neither has to be a monumental effort if you have the right attitude and the right support.
“We’ve seen that advisors who use these tactics for reaching new clients are actually growing their businesses right now,” said Chris McDonald, Assistant Vice President, Director, Annuity and Institutional Sales at Senior Market Sales® (SMS). “SMS is uniquely positioned to identify what support will help advisors thrive in these challenging times, because it’s what we’ve always done. SMS’ own success story is adapting through adversity over nearly four decades.”
The first step for advisors is to acknowledge the reality of the so-called “new normal” and to adapt their prospecting accordingly, McDonald said.
“Advisors who cling to the past are struggling right now,” he said. “Don’t feel like you have to abandon all that has made you successful this far – simply think of it as shift. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is mental.”
The human brain tends to respond to uncertainty in one of two ways, writes Forbes contributor Rasmus Hougaard – as tremendous opportunity or as a paralyzing threat.
“The situation will be stressful no matter how you frame it, so it’s best to approach this time as a challenge that you’re ready and willing to face,” Hougaard writes. “It’s not the situation itself, but how you respond to it that makes all the difference.”
SMS helps advisors respond to uncertainty in two ways, McDonald said.
“A designated marketing consultant coaches and guides you, so that you, too, can see the opportunity in this chaos and not be paralyzed by it,” he said. “And secondly, we provide the tools, processes and technology that are proven – outside a pandemic – to attract prospects, and we adapt those to the current challenges. We’re basically transferring our long history of resiliency to you so that you can confidently see this crisis as an opportunity to grow and so that you have the means to do so.”
Whether you choose to use educational workshops or expanded services to reach new clients, accept that, for now at least, much of this prospecting will be via video conferencing or telephone. Advisors waiting for life to go back to in-person meetings will lose clients and prospects to advisors who connect virtually.
Reach New Clients With Virtual Educational Workshops
Educational workshops typically are offered by insurance and financial planning professionals on a variety of topics that pre-retirees and retirees are already interested in learning about. The educational value serves as a way of prequalifying leads, making the conversion to client easier.
Whereas before the pandemic these workshops would be held in public spaces such as community centers or libraries, today you can easily conduct them virtually – by video conference – for groups at an advertised time or for individuals in online appointments.
While there are many benefits to meeting prospects in person at educational workshops, conducting them virtually has some surprising advantages. With in-person workshops, you might have lost would-be attendees because the location simply wasn’t convenient. But virtual workshops are accessible to prospects from the comfort of their own homes. Whether because of government-imposed limits on group gatherings or personal concerns about going out safely, people may be looking for things to do from home. You may have a better shot at capturing their attention now. And finally, virtual workshops are simply easier on you – no more booking venues or hauling around projectors and printed handouts.
SMS’ Client Stream Workshops
Educational workshops are the flagship of Client Stream, SMS’ lead-generation program that gives you everything you need at whatever level of event support you need, from do-it-yourself to full-service turnkey options. Client Stream’s educational workshops offer compliance-approved, scripted presentations, client-facing materials, marketing collateral and technology on topics proven to resonate with pre-retirees and retirees: Social Security planning, long-term care planning, Medicare, taxes in retirement, annuities, and core retirement decisions.
As the pandemic was unfolding, SMS quickly pivoted to offer guidance on conducting its successful Client Stream workshops virtually, with “The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Workshops.” It walks you through conducting a virtual workshop with everything from choosing a video platform to following up with attendees. As the name implies, Client Stream is specifically designed to deliver leads for years to come. It not only helps you attract leads, it helps you convert them to lifelong clients. And loyal clients who see your value clearly refer friends and family for years to come, providing a steady stream of clients who help sustain and grow your business.
“We’ve seen advisors pivot from in-person workshops to virtual workshops smoothly and with notable success,” said Jon Summers, Senior Marketing Consultant at SMS. “In fact, because the follow-up to virtual workshops is an easy-to-set virtual appointment, we’ve seen a greater success rate for converting attendees to appointments than when educational workshops were being held in person.”
Summers stressed that it’s important to consider what works best for your prospective clients right now. Some pre-retirees are reluctant to venture out to an educational event, but they would consider attending an event virtually. Offering the option to meet virtually also shows that you are able to adapt and provide information in a safe way to those in your community. So, in addition to providing qualified leads immediately, Client Stream workshops offered virtually can help build your name and reputation in the community for future benefit.
“Client Stream really does give you everything you need to reach prospects and convert them to clients, with short- and long-term impacts to your bottom line,” Summers said. “It’s interesting to see that by pivoting this program to work virtually, the advisor can work more efficiently and get better results.”
Expanding Your Services to Reach New Clients
A key part of SMS’ proprietary Client Stream program is SMS’ proprietary technology – an entire suite of web-based tools that position you to be an expert on these retirement planning topics. And because the technology is so easy to use and comes with behind-the-scenes expert technical and topical support, you can expand your services, reaching even more prospects and growing your business even more.
For example, you decide you want to reach new prospects by offering an educational workshop on understanding Social Security. Client Stream offers everything you need – the marketing materials to advertise your virtual workshop, a guide on how to set it up, the presentation content, and tips on how to secure appointments. But if you’re not a Social Security expert, how do you help clients decide when to claim Social Security once that appointment rolls around?
Total Social Security® is a turnkey SMS program that provides easy-to-use software that calculates different decision options. It comes with an entire support team to answer questions on the software and the complexities of Social Security claiming decisions, so that you don’t have to be an expert and you’re never stranded. (However, it does also offer training to help you grow your knowledge.)
But where is the opportunity in Social Security? By helping people with one of the most important decisions they will make in retirement, you have created a meaningful relationship that can open the door to helping them with their other retirement needs. Specifically, the Total Social Security software shows them where Social Security income may fall short, positioning you to present various solutions to fill those gaps.
For each of the retirement topics offered in Client Stream educational workshops, there is an SMS technology solution that helps you deliver clear value to prospects and secure them as clients. If you want to show clients how their retirement account withdrawals and Social Security will be taxed, SMS offers Tax Clarity®. To help them understand the real risk in their investments, there’s SmartRisk™. And to help them determine how to retire with enough income to live how they want, use Income ArchiTech®.
Other organizations may offer lead programs, and still others may offer technology – but only SMS offers the combination of lead-generation and technologies together, so that you can truly expand your services easily.
Even More Ways to Reach New Clients
Expanding your services and conducting educational workshops virtually are just two ways SMS can help you reach new clients.
SMS offers an on-demand webinar series on lead-generation and other resources for working virtually or by phone during the pandemic.
You also can become an investment adviser representative (IAR) or add one to your practice by partnering with SMS’ retirement investment adviser (RIA), Sequent Planning. Call Mike Chochon at 1.800.786.5566 ext. 3758 for more information about Sequent Planning.
The possibilities are endless with SMS.
To discuss how SMS can help you reach new clients in these unique and challenging times, call 1.800.786.5566. A marketing consultant can answer your questions and help you find ways to grow your business.