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Convert Prospects into Clients with Three Meetings

6/6/2027

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. — Ray Kroc

If you want high-quality clients, follow this structured three-step approach that gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your strengths and capabilities from the start.

Meeting #1: Build rapport and trust with a prospect. Show you care about who they and their family are. The prospects should be speaking 80 percent of the time; you are listening and taking notes so that you can learn as much about the prospect as possible. This is not a presentation meeting. You are focused on asking and answering questions. You have no prescriptions, recommendations, or opinions until you fully understand the prospect.

Uncover their needs, wants, unfulfilled desires, and concerns.
Emotionally and economically qualify the prospect.
Create interest to get the prospect ready to select you as their financial advisor.

Meeting #2: Gain a complete understanding of the prospect’s current financial situation and experiences. The goal is to uncover technical needs, review their goals, and continue to increase their level of trust and likability in you that was built in meeting one so when the time comes to take the action of committing to you, they will say yes.

Meeting #3: Discuss your strategy and plan for the prospects and their family. Your plan assumes the sale as a prelude to the question, “Are they ready to start working together?” Your plan is general enough so the prospects cannot implement it themselves but specific enough to
define the actions they need to take with you.

Demonstrate how you are going to help prospects achieve their goals.
Shape your presentation around the prospect’s communication, buying style, and personality.
Use emotional tie-ins and be prepared to handle objections so the prospect takes action with you because they are confident you have described a solid plan for their future financial well-being.

Four Rules From 30+ Years of Success:

Know the prospects in-depth. Know their thoughts about their lives; their values, beliefs, hopes, and how they got to where they are, what they care about and why, who they care about, and what’s most important to them. In these meetings your questions will go beyond money and finances. You want to know about the prospect’s family, their health, their leisure interests, what they are interested in learning, their inner growth goals, and their home, community, and work lives.
If your prospect is part of a couple, you must meet with both parties. The National Center for Women and Retirement estimates that 90 percent of women will be solely responsible for their finances at some point in their lives. We also know that 70 percent of women fire their FA within a year of the loss of their spouse. It is critical, respectful, and appropriate, as well as of value and service, to treat couples in any relationship as equals in all ways—from what you say and how you say it, to the amount of time and the type of professional attention you pay to each partner. You need to understand each partner’s wants, needs, goals, risk attitudes, time frames, etc.
Listen for the real message your prospect is sending. Subjugate your ego to listen, hear, and understand your prospect. Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships. Listening results in better discovery, better recommendations and decisions, better plans, more respect for you, and uncovering opportunities based on the prospect’s true wants and needs. This is service and value.
Show your strengths, capabilities, values, integrity, and character. A Forbes article states, “Within the first seven seconds of meeting, people will have a solid impression of who you are” — and some research suggests a tenth of a second is all it takes to start determining traits like trustworthiness. Prospects make up their mind about you quickly and spend the rest of their time justifying their initial belief. In those first seven seconds, your prospects observe your grooming, your welcome, your demeanor, your teammates, your opening comments, as well as the physical environment in which you meet. These are areas in which you need to approach perfection.

David I. Leo, Your Intake Process (Discovery and Close) Process Snippet 6

David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients.

If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com

My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136

How to Measure Your Practice Profitability in Six Easy Steps

6/5/2027

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” -- Harvey Mackay

Client loyalty, retention and growth are critical to practice success. Each client loyalty component can bring value to the client and value to the practice in terms of retention and growth. It also costs you (and your team) time. You need to be in balance for an efficient and effective financial advisory practice.

How do you balance costs and benefits?

Most financial advisors determine general client profitability by client based on their revenue.
Fewer financial advisors have measured their time and costs for servicing their clients by tier. Practice profitability can of course be measured in aggregate. Few FAs “know” where they are spending their time and costs and whether the time and costs are being appropriately invested in the “right” clients based on their profitability.

Consider your time, value, and knowledge.

Time is your most precious raw material because it’s one thing that we can never get more of. This asset is specifically limited.
Value is determined by the client; cost is determined by you. Don’t deliver items to the client that they don’t value because they always have a cost. If your service model calls for a certain deliverable (e.g., a financial plan) that the client doesn’t value, then you either need to convince them of their need for that plan or it may not be of value to deliver it. Find that out in conversation by asking.
Knowledge is an important asset, and it should always grow over time.

Estimate the cost of delivering services to clients by tier.

Improve your client servicing costs by determining what may be restricting time for business growth and calculating advisor contact workload.

Decide how much time you specifically spend with each client, by tier, and how much you can afford to spend with each client. You are running a business, and there are practical aspects of that responsibility to your clients, your family, yourself, and your firm.
Costs are more effectively and efficiently managed in an environment that is process-based, establishes clear expectations for the client and team, has defined team member roles, and works with a definitive set of targeted clients.

Part of the costing process is determining how much time you can and want to devote to each major task.

Here’s how to do it in 6 steps:

Define practice tasks at a high level.
- Business planning—annual and quarterly (~1% of your time) – Costs reflected in your hourly rate.
- Relationship management including meetings, other contacts, life and financial planning and the other elements important to relationships that are in your service model. (~50% of your time) – Detail the elements of your client deliverables by tier.
- Business development including introductions from clients, introductions from COIs, educational sessions, other. (~20%–25% of your time) – These costs should not be attributed to clients but will be reflected in your hourly rate.
- Practice management including oversight of your teams work and communications with external personnel, e.g., management, wholesalers, other. (~10% of your time) – These costs will be evenly divided by the number of clients, e.g., Total practice costs of $1MM. 10% = $100k, 100 clients = Each client assigned cost of $1,000 since these areas benefit all clients.
- Asset/investment management (~15% of your time) – These costs are apportioned by tier as higher tiers have more complex investment needs, e.g., Total costs = $100K, 70% of assets from Tier 1 or A, cost for investment management of Tier 1 = $70,000 / number of tier 1 clients, e.g., 35, each Tier 1 client assigned cost of $2,000. 15% of assets from Tier 2 or B, cost for investment management of Tier 2 = $15,000 / number of tier 2 clients, e.g., 70, each Tier 2 client assigned cost of $214.
- Cleaning up messes (overtime) – Costs reflected in your hourly rate.
Determine the deliverables in your Client Service Model/Promises.
Determine the time to develop each deliverable.
Calculate an hourly rate, e.g., a million-dollar producer has a $500/hour rate ($1,000,000 / (40 X 50).
Using your list of deliverables and your “Client Service Promise”, estimate time and therefore cost for each deliverable for each tier.
For example:

This table and spreadsheet takes explanation but in summary, using a set of assumptions on numbers of contacts by tier, type of contact and time per contact type, you can see 35 Tier 1 clients will require 350 hours of advisor contact time per year or 10 hours per client per year at $500 per hour or $5,000 per year of advisor cost. These data are exemplary, does not consider CA offload at lower hourly costs or variations in individual client requirements.

What are the next steps?

Determine how much time you spend on other services for clients by tier and the other tasks in your business: asset/investment management (estimated at $2,000 / Tier 1 client), any other client service/relationship management services, team management (estimated at $1,000 / client), and assumedly other activities. In addition, there are emails and inbound phone calls.
Similar techniques can be applied to each of these other FA business activities.

The point here is to organize and structure your business as best you can based on the realities of your current book of business, your team, an effective and efficient set of roles and responsibilities, your business plan, and the goals your plan includes.

David I. Leo, The Cost of Loyalty Snippet 5

David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients.

If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com

My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136

Business Growth Begins With This

6/4/2027

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. — Ray Kroc

There are two ways to grow advisory practices:

Retain and deepen relationships with existing clients to acquire assets away, cross-sell, and earn access to their networks (e.g., the client’s other professional providers and centers of influence) for introductions.
Consistently acquire new relationships and their assets, fulfill their other financial needs, and earn access to their networks for introductions.

Business growth can be limited by a lack of organization and structure in financial advisory practices such that there is little if any time for new client acquisition.

Separate yourself from the pack by serving your existing client base AND acquiring new clients with an efficient and effective structure and organization.

How do you have time for both servicing your existing client base and acquiring new clients, their assets, and fulfilling their other financial needs? Consider the following...

Client retention and advocacy are functions of effective, structured, high-quality, and valued client service deliverables that earn business growth from existing clients and the acquisition of new clients.
You must efficiently manage your quality and have a proactive client service system to ensure you:

o   Deliver the right levels of services to the right clients.

    o   Leave enough time to grow your business with new client acquisition approaches.

    o   Deliver service levels consistent with the value of clients, their needs, and your business and its profitability.

Data clearly shows that clients that are merely satisfied are not satisfied enough to ensure loyalty no less advocacy.

A “very” satisfied customer is a loyal customer. “Customers who rate you 5 on a scale from 1 to 5 are six times more likely to buy from you again, compared to those only giving you a score of 4.8.”
The “zone of affection” is where clients are very or close to very satisfied and whose loyalty is highest. The higher the satisfaction, the higher the loyalty and the closer to advocacy. If clients are less than very satisfied, they fall into the “zone of indifference” or the “zone of defection” where they are at risk of leaving you.

To succeed with client retention and growth, clients and centers of influence must be completely satisfied. It is primarily those who are completely satisfied with you and your exceptional service that will be pleased to advocate for you and be a potential source of introductions.

Being completely satisfied requires the development and implementation of the “Six Core Client Facing Processes”:

Intake Process
Financial Planning Process
Risk Management Process
Investment Planning Process
Client Service Process
Client Planning and Review Meeting Process

Improve client loyalty and retention, deepen client relationships, grow assets and introductions, and reduce costs with a structured and organized client loyalty process!

Client loyalty and the supporting processes represent a summary of the many deliverables you provide as an advisor. The sum of those deliverables are intended to be presented formally to your clients as your “promise” to them of your services, i.e., your “Client Service Promise.” These promises/deliverables include perhaps 50, 60, 70 or more elements you provide to develop relationships, loyalty and advocacy as well as differentiating you as a financial advisor.

The “promise” or deliverables are outlined in the areas of:

Planning
Investing
Communications
Extended Services
Internal Notation

Deliverables vary by client tier based on the client’s value and importance to the business. It is critical that clients fully understand your deliverables and accept them as of value to them.

There is a progression of service expectations or a growth of service expectations over time. It’s never enough because that which pleased, even delighted, a client yesterday becomes a basic expectation today. Client’s requirements, wants, and needs change over time. In essence, “delighting” the client and solidifying his or her loyalty takes more and more effort over time. What may have been a unique service 5 or 10 years ago over time can become a “normal” expectation and then become “expected.” Therefore, to delight and retain the loyal client takes more and more effort and continually growing levels of service over time.

See my paper, “If Your Client-Service Model Ain’t Broke… Fix It Anyway!” https://www.coachdavidleo.com/articles/if-your-client-service-model-aint-broke-fix-it-anyway.

David I. Leo, The Client Loyalty Process Snippet 4

David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients.

If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com

My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136

Know Who Contributes To Your Profitability

6/3/2027

“Segmenting is the crucial first step in the strategic marketing process. All customers are not the same.” —Joanne Scheff Bernstein

Know who contributes to your profitability by conducting a detailed assessment of your book and your clients. We describe exactly how to formally segment your book, analyze the results, and develop a structured client contact plan.

A client segmentation analysis will identify:

The ~20% of your book that is responsible for ~80% of your assets and revenue.
The distribution of clients by value to the business.
The service levels that should be applied to each client tier.
The communications plan that should be applied to each client tier.

How can I enhance the value of segmentation? Have an in-depth understanding of:

Which clients require/deserve the most retention efforts? It is reported that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. In addition, the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
Which clients provide growth opportunities for assets under management, revenue, and return on assets? It has been estimated that some clients have 4 or even more advisors. When I was at a wirehouse, the firm always estimated the FAs held about 50% of their client’s assets and most FAs claimed they held almost 100% of their client’s assets. Many clients have assets away.
Which clients may be candidates to be transformed or transferred to increase their value or reduce their costs to the business? Analyses usually show some clients have an ROA of less than 50 bps and in too many cases, less than 25 bps. The question is what to do and is it worth doing?
Where should you focus introduction/referral efforts? Our methodology for determining the client’s value to the business not only considers assets and revenue but four other factors including whether this client is a source of introductions.
Where should you focus marketing efforts? Segmentation also considers how clients were acquired so we can see what methods have worked in the past.
What specific communications protocols should be followed? A solid approach to segmentation employs a contact disciple that can ensure appropriate contact for 100% of all clients including what, when, who, why and how. “...loyal clients are much more likely to perceive that their advisors contact them appropriately. Just 35.3% of moderately satisfied clients believe that their advisors contact them appropriately, compared to 83.7% of loyal clients.”

What you really know about your top clients? One study showed that while 68% of FAs said they had a friend relationship with their clients, only 28% of clients believed they had a friend relationship with their FA. There are many examples of disconnects between what your client thinks and what you think they think.

Client segmentation analysis can be used as a starting point for determining team workload and can also be used to develop client costing and profitability.

David I. Leo, Formal Book Segmentation Snippet 3
David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients.

If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com

My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136

Develop Your Differentiation Strategy To Get More Business

6/2/2027

Why a client or prospect should do business with YOU, instead of anyone else?

Your competitive advantage comes from “deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value,” according to Professor Michael Porter. “Strategies may center on low-cost leadership, technical uniqueness, or focus.”

Of course, it’s not about simply being “different,” - that difference must deliver value.

The more value you deliver contrasted to your competitors, the more unique you will be. Value must be in the eyes of the client.

You will always be one of at least several advisors offering what you offer. Take these five actions to be in the top percent of your marketplace:

Build your business based on a set of processes such as the “Six Core Client Facing Processes” discussed throughout the book and shown in Chapter 3.
Offer the full range of solutions your client set wants and needs. Especially critical is to be a financial planning-based practice offering as many of the 55 components as the client requires and as shown in Chapter 1.
Exceed client expectations by providing the ambience, service, and value they require. This includes a written Client Service Model or Promise as shown in Chapter 3.
Communicate in a consistent manner and personalize your deliverables to your client based on highly effective CRM usage. This includes being a “money coach” to an inter-generational family.
Be part of a multi-talented team that serves the client as a cohesive unit based on a common culture and value system.

These are core requirements for success. They are the basic cost of entry into today’s and tomorrow’s advisory business, though they may not make you 100% unique...

Narrow your competition by offering your services and solutions to a specific niche.

For example: “business owners” is not a niche, it’s too broad.

“Plumbers or electricians in a geographic area” can be a niche if there are enough of them.

If you are in Cincinnati, perhaps “individuals retiring from Proctor and Gamble” can be a niche. Proctor and Gamble executives can be a niche. Airline pilots may be a niche, though it could be more specific as in “Delta Airline pilots based in Atlanta.”

Be prepared to offer unique value to your niche, but don’t be surprised if you are not the only advisor seeking those niches.

Here’s the good news:

An advisor only needs 50 to 150 clients at most to have a “successful” business. “Success” is by your definition. They can be million-dollar clients or ten million-dollar clients. You can have a team of 2 or 20 or 200.
Remember what Sam Silverstein calls the Law of Fractional Advantage: “All you need to do to win at anything is to be slightly better than your competition.” Be your best possible in all the areas noted above.
Kenichi Ohmae states, “If you are fighting with a competitor who has equal qualifications, effective and persistent execution in critical functional areas may be the only differentiating factor.” Note that “80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting yet, 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up.”

If you are great at what you do, if you have a niche, and especially if you build relationships...you should be successful.

“When all else is equal, I make the difference.”

Be clear and convinced of the value you deliver to your clients.

Pricing Integrity says: “... at the core of pricing inconsistency we find that advisors are not fundamentally convinced that they provide significant value to their clients”.

Studies conclude that up to 90% of the decisions we make are based on emotion. We use logic to justify our actions to ourselves and to others. In your client acquisition efforts, take note that emotion will almost always prevail over logic, and imagination will almost always prevail over reality.

David I. Leo, Develop Your Differentiation Strategy Snippet 2

David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients.

If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com

My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136

Convert Prospects into Clients with Three Meetings

How to Measure Your Practice Profitability in Six Easy Steps

Business Growth Begins With This

Know Who Contributes To Your Profitability

Develop Your Differentiation Strategy To Get More Business

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