To win prospective clients, provide proof

By Stephen Wershing

Imagine being an advisor in one of the highest-rent zip codes in the country. Competition in this millionaire-rich environment must be fierce, right? And yet one firm consistently wins clients who do their due diligence and shop around. How? They do it by providing proof that clients receive the valuable guidance the firm promises.

When I first began working with the firm, I asked what they do to win over prospects and convert them into clients. “That’s easy,” they replied. “We show them a sample plan.”

After the presentation, many prospective clients thank the advisor and say they will visit several other firms before making a decision. In contrast, this firm ended meetings by suggesting to prospects that when they talk to other advisors, they ask to see those advisors’ plans and compare them. Generally, the prospects return ready to sign up because, while all the other advisors also claim to do financial planning, none of them produced a sample plan.

I was shocked. This was a market of experienced advisors competing for multimillion-dollar clients. But there it was. Every advisor claimed to provide financial planning, but only my client provided proof.

Proof is a tricky thing for financial advisors. You certainly cannot prove an ability to generate client outcomes. You cannot prove a state of mind. If you’re a smart marketer, you won’t try to promise outcomes anyway. Advisory services provide tangible value. While you cannot prove that value without providing the service, you can show evidence you deliver on the processes that generate the value.

There are some ways you can offer a form of “proof” that the experience of working with you will be the way you describe it. Here are some to consider.

1. Provide a sample deliverable

In the sample financial plan mentioned above, prospective clients can see all the areas that are addressed and the extent of the advisor’s work. If you offer special analyses, like a Social Security report, tax analysis, or a college financial aid calculation, show them. Offering a sample of what comes out of your process can be a direct way to provide evidence of the kind of work you do.

2. Show prospects what you do

I am frequently surprised when I talk with advisors I believe are good at what they do who cannot succinctly describe the process they guide clients through. The most frequent justification is that every client is different.

While the results for each client and the advice you give to each client will be different, the process you take them through should be consistent. Show prospects what you do. It is not necessary to get into details. Just naming the outcome of each step is sufficient. For example, you need not walk prospects through each item you analyze on a tax return. It can be enough for one step of your process to be “analyzing the tax return to identify planning opportunities.”

It is useful to develop a graphic representation of your process, such as a flowchart; pictures make it a lot easier for a client to remember. You do not need much text. Give each step a name and talk the client through the steps when you meet with them. When they bring the flowchart home, the pictures and titles will be enough to remind them of all the things you address at each stage of the process.

3. Show checklists and other tools

One of my clients has an extensive checklist that planners on the staff use when reviewing a client file to ensure that their plans are up to date. While they would never ask a client to complete such a complicated instrument, they thought it would be interesting to show a blank one to clients as a way of demonstrating how thorough they are when preparing financial plans. The clients were impressed. They made comments like “I knew you were thorough, but I never realized how much work you put into these things.”

4. Share fun facts

A few choice statistics or exposure of common myths can be a great way to prove your expertise. Show your prospective clients that you know things within your specialty that the average generalist does not know. They can be great little sound bites to drop into conversations as well. The unexpected and the surprising are engaging. Starting them off with “for example, did you know” can capture people’s attention.

For example, did you know that:

• You can use your health spending account almost like an additional IRA?
• Moving money out of this specific company’s retirement plan can reduce your retirement health benefits?
• 90% of women will ultimately have total responsibility for their finances later in life?
• If a college athletic director wants your child on their team, they can help you get a better offer from the financial aid office?

5. Offer client stories and case studies

Stories are powerful for two reasons. First, we are wired to remember them a lot better than we can remember lists of benefits. Second, they show the effect of what you do on someone’s life—ideally, someone that your prospective client will empathize with. A good story can help a client envision their own life being improved the same way instead of their struggling to interpret an abstract benefit.

But be careful. What makes stories powerful also makes them tricky from a compliance standpoint. Depending on how they’re written, stories and case studies (see “How ideal client profiles and case studies improve advisor marketing” and “Keeping case studies compliant” in this issue of the NAPFA Advisor) can be considered testimonials. With the new, updated marketing rule, they can be allowed. Just make sure they fit within your compliance procedures.

6. Provide social proof

Social proof, the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something, can be hard to come by in financial services. Except in referrals, of course, which are the ultimate social proof.

But one firm I spoke with had a brilliant way of creating it. They recruited prominent citizens in their city to serve on their client advisory board. The role required consenting to be included in the firm’s public announcements about the board. Financial advisors, of course, cannot disclose the identities of their clients. With permission, however, they can promote the members of their advisory board. People in the community would often assume that if those high-profile people were associated with the firm, the firm must be of high quality.

7. Mention designations and affiliations

I mention your designations and affiliations last because they are the weakest kind of proof, and I say that as a Certified Financial Planner™ professional. Professional designations and affiliations with organizations like NAPFA say important things about you as a professional. But they translate into specific benefits to a client too indirectly to make them a powerful marketing tool. If you are a CFP^® professional and NAPFA member in competition with a single other advisor who holds neither credential, your credentials will give you an edge. But in a crowded field where many other advisors have the same designations, they do not provide much leverage.

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Stephen Wershing, CFP^®, is a speaker, blogger, author of Stop Asking For Referrals, and president of The Client Driven Practice, a consulting firm that conducts client advisory boards for financial advisors to enhance value and attract referrals.

image credit: istock.com/matdesign24