Ellis Communications, Inc.

Financial Advisors Should Leverage Great Sales Message
Into An Effective Marketing Tool to Reach Prospects

Financial advisors have a wonderful marketing pitch at their fingertips.  All they have to do is leverage their sales message.

 “Marketing is all the effort that goes into making a person positively predisposed to your product or service the next time they have a need for it,” says Martin R. Baird, president of Annapolis, Md.-based Advisor Marketing and author of The 7 Deadly Sins of Advisor Marketing. “When you’re ‘selling’ or offering solutions to your clients and prospects, that’s a form of marketing, too.  Marketing is salesmanship in a print or electronic format.”

            Baird offers the following seven tips on using sales as marketing.

Number 1 – When you do marketing, take your sales message and put it in a different format so more people are aware of your solutions to their financial needs.  “That different format could be advertisements, direct mail, TV or radio,” Baird says.  “What’s important to remember is that the message doesn’t change with the way it’s delivered.”

Number 2 – If you have a great sales presentation that works every time, duplicate it as marketing so you can leverage it.  “Don’t make the all-too-common mistake of thinking you must do something different when you’re doing marketing,” Baird notes. 

Number 3 – If you know what to say when you’re face to face with a client or prospect, you’re 75 percent of the way to having a great marketing message.

Number 4 – Record your sales presentation several times and then have them all transcribed.  From that document, you have the most important elements for a great marketing tool.  “It could be formatted so it’s a brochure or it could be revised slightly for a sales letter or it could even make a great article for your trade media,” Baird says.

Number 5 – If you can “touch,” move and inspire people in person when you’re selling, marketing is a way to do that to hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously.

Number 6 – What’s stopping you from doing this?  Is it a feeling that you may not have a great sales presentation?  Is it fear that you don’t have a system you can repeat?  Is it that all your presentations are custom and no two are the same?  “The sooner you forget about these questions and focus on what works, the easier it will be for you to make progress and move forward with the great opportunities this brings to you and your prospects,”  Baird explains.

Number 7 – If you don’t have a great sales presentation, you need to retool it before you leverage it.  “If your sales messages aren’t working, don’t waste your money trying to make them succeed as marketing,” 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.