Ellis Communications, Inc.

Financial Advisors Should Stop Selling Products and Start
Selling Solutions to Please Clients, Grow Revenues

What financial advisor wouldn’t love to be able to grow his or her business without pushing products?  There is a way to accomplish this.

“Stop selling products and start selling solutions,” says Martin R. Baird, president of Annapolis, Md.-based Advisor Marketing and author of The 7 Deadly Sins of Advisor Marketing.  “People don’t care about products.  They care about how you can solve their problems, how you can help them.”

Baird offers the following seven tips on increasing sales through solutions.

Tip No. 1.  When you  meet with clients or prospects or talk with them on the telephone, think in terms of solutions.  “You will be amazed how much easier it is to help your clients if you adopt that simple point of view,” Baird says.  “You will also be amazed at how this approach increases your sales.”

Tip No. 2.  Emulate retail stores that go out of their way to offer complete solutions.  “For example, home electronics stores that package cables and batteries for remotes with DVD players should see an increase in sales because it gives customers everything they need to set things up at home,” Baird notes. 

Tip No. 3.  The key to success is a client’s or prospect’s total needs.  “When you discuss long-term care insurance with a client, there’s a lot more at stake than just the need for insurance,” Baird explains.  “What other problems does the client have that you can help them solve?  If you start looking at your client’s complete financial situation, you will be looking for complete, holistic solutions.”

Tip No. 4.  Develop solution tip sheets and keep them at your desk.  “You can refer to these tip sheets to identify complete solutions,” Baird says.  “You can develop these solutions in a variety of ways.  You may do them by age or income level.  You could also base them on common financial problems that people face.  Develop a solution tip sheet for college education or for estate planning, for example.”

Tip No. 5.  Address all issues in the tip sheets.  “Estate planning needs to deal with more than just life insurance,” Baird notes.  “It could also include addressing long-term care and trusts.”

Tip No. 6.  Develop favorite solutions or favorite problems to solve and become an expert in those areas.  “What areas of financial services do you love?” Baird asks.  “What areas get you excited when you talk about them?  Once you answer these questions, you should have a good idea of what your ‘favorites’ are.  By doing this, you develop solutions for those needs.”

Tip No. 7.  Developing solutions makes your day easier because you have passion about the solutions you are providing.  “And providing complete solutions not only increases your revenue, it also makes your clients happier,” Baird says.

Advisor Marketing provides a variety of services to financial advisors to help them improve their marketing methods and increase revenues, including seminars and conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals, marketing, client communication and transitioning to fee.  The company also provides a service that tests multiple variables of a marketing campaign simultaneously so advisors will quickly know which elements of a marketing effort offer the best opportunity for success before they launch the campaign.

The company’s Web site, www.advisormarketing.com,  is the premiere Internet-based source for marketing advice, information and tools for self-driven, success-oriented financial advisors who are demanding information that helps them market their practice, meet the needs of their clients and increase sales. 

Advisor Marketing may be reached at 480-991-6420.