NEXT Financial Group, Inc. Blog

How well do you know your existing clients? Are you confident you know what they think about you? Collecting the views, opinions, and personal information of clients provides you the baseboard in asking for referrals. If you fully understand your clients’ likes, dislikes and lifestyle, you are able to formulate the best way in asking for them to recommend friends and family.

It’s about conversion. Let’s be clear, a great website is NOT going to convert visitors into paying clients. A great web site is going to move a visitor to the next step in the process of becoming a client! The best way to accomplish this is to provide timely and relevant information about what matters most to your clients right now! 4WARD Financial Marketing builds websites that deliver the “Wow Effect”, bring your brand to life, and moves visitors to the next step in the process of becoming a client.

Pershing has initiated a “go paperless” initiative, which will provide all NEXT brokerage clients with a free, online website to see all of their statements and confirmations. Your clients will now be able to view their accounts online and elect to turn off the paper delivery of their brokerage statements and trade confirmations. This feature makes it easy to save, access, and review all account-related documents on the web in a secure, password-protected environment. To help support this initiative, NEXT will include a go paperless statement stuffer each month about this initiative. Although this program is voluntary, Pershing will begin to institute a charge of $1.00 per statement, and $1.00 confirmation to all clients who do not sign up for paperless delivery by June 2010. These charges will be assessed to the client and disclosed on their monthly statements. We will continue to keep you up-to-date with items that will impact your clients through the release of Operations updates, monthly Operations conference calls, and information posted on the Operations web page.

First, you need a GREAT website.
Second, you need to get people to your website.
Third, what are visitors going to do when they get there?
You could have the most beautiful and elegantly written website in world history and generate a ton of traffic but, will your visitors stay? That’s the million-dollar question. Visitors are going to decide in seconds if they want to stay or leave with a simple click. Do you have a cookie cutter website that has the same look and content as every other financial professional? If so, do you really think they’re going to stay? Would you? That brings us to calls to- action. In website marketing, a “call-to-action” can be defined as an unmistakable design element, usually a banner, link, or other interaction that compels a visitor to take some kind of measurable action that leads to a specific desired outcome. This is the central purpose for your website. It should be clear from the instant a visitor arrives. Do you want them to call you now, RSVP to attend a seminar, watch a video, listen to your radio show, schedule an appointment, read your impressive list of accomplishments, fill out a form, etc. This is something that you’re going to need to consciously and carefully plan. It’s not about you! One of the most common mistakes financial professionals make is that their websites are about what they like when it should be about prospects and clients. Your website should jump up and scream at the top of its lungs that, “YES, I have the answers to your most important questions, fears, hot buttons, concerns, and issues that keep you up at night. Yes, you came to the right place. I can help you. Follow me this way please.” That’s what it’s all about!

In another survey conducted at a National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) conference last fall, 71% of those polled said that they’re working twice as hard to maintain their practice, and they’re reaching out to clients in an effort to stabilize their emotions and keep them from taking rash action. The survey found that many representatives are not exerting enough control with their clients, and those who are most successful right now are taking a more hands-on approach to operations, communications, and marketing.

These representatives see these activities as practice-strengthening and essential for staying competitive. Respondents felt that they had bolstered their image with clients simply by being visible and accessible to them for help. An analysis of the survey concluded that financial representatives need to move themselves to “center stage” and adequately convey the passion they feel about their profession in order to attract new clients. The survey author maintained that the essential disciplines of marketing, productivity and time management, long term strategizing, and effective personnel utilization can all lead to more time in front of clients and practice growth despite what’s happening with the economy. The author reported that as many as half of a client base typically leaves because of poor investment performance, but the other half leaves due to insufficient service from their financial representative. The message is that you cannot control the markets or investment performance as much as you can control how you relate to clients.