Mailings
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Sounds good wizard. We don't even have a TV in the breakroom.
BTW-The minimum is $50 by the way on our DCA's. With that being the case, we wouldn't be able to set up your Roth for that amount. Sorry.Be ballsy.
Walk into a competing FA’s office when he’s in a meeting and tell his client/lead that they’re f*cked if they’re going with THAT FA.
Walk out calmly and cooly. Do it a few times and you’ll have a few dozen people follow you back to your office. Hell, close on the side of the street. Then duck into your limo and have George take you to the country club by 1.
Yup. Works 75% of the time, everytime.
[quote=Ron 14]
Sounds good wizard. We don’t even have a TV in the breakroom.
BTW-The minimum is $50 by the way on our DCA's. With that being the case, we wouldn't be able to set up your Roth for that amount. Sorry. [/quote]haven't qualified for a roth in many years...oh yeah, bank brokers wouldn't know about that - but next time i need some help setting up my online banking i'll come by.
no hard feelings - i'm just playing a little devil's advocate as the advice: everyone should work at a bank - is simply not good advice. it works for some and doesn't work for others. if someone is interested in limiting their income because they are lousy marketers than a bank could be a good fit. for someone who wants no limitations and is willing to sacrifice for a few years for better long-term success and freedom, a bank situation would not be a good fit - so they need to find a better solution.
I never gave the advice that everyone should work at a bank, but nice try. You have to start somewhere and if you don't like EJ or sitting next to 50 dudes in a call center, it is not a bad option depending on the program.
The muni bond mailers you guys are using? Do they give rates or just basic info on muni bonds.
[quote=chief123]The muni bond mailers you guys are using? Do they give rates or just basic info on muni bonds.[/quote]
You need to have a rate. That creates some urgency. The best idea I’ve ever seen is to hand write on a blank postcard: ‘My firm has recently made available a tax free investment yielding 5 percent. Please call Chief 123 at 555-1234.’ Then take that to a printing shop and they’ll run 500 copies for you.
Then you or your assistant should handwrite the address and personalize it if you can.
[quote=chief123]A lot of compliance issues with that I would think…[/quote]
I’ve seen it approved, maybe not that exact wording, but make it look handwritten and put the rate.
NO, rates are acceptable in print as long as you have the proper disclaimers. Lots of firms do it. In my market, Morgan Stanley runs CD rate ads all the time in the paper (not much lately, though).
Is the majority of most the rrforum users transaction based? Just curious. It seems doing a mailer that is product based would get some response but I was wondering if a high percentage of the new sales lead to a more all-encompassing relationship down the road. If so - how long does it take?
Not sure about the first question… My business is 70% fee based… The other 30% is a combination of items…
Typically it takes some time if ever to develop… For example I have some clients who are purely fixed income(mostly muni’s… some corps) and they will never be anything else, they don’t want to pay an annual fee and they understand that I markup the bonds to make a profit…My goal with these people is typically to move on to the rest of the family, since they will inherit the money, then I can move it back into my feebased account because they are typically not strictly fixed income…
[quote=chief123]Not sure about the first question… My business is 70% fee based… The other 30% is a combination of items…
Typically it takes some time if ever to develop… For example I have some clients who are purely fixed income(mostly muni’s… some corps) and they will never be anything else, they don’t want to pay an annual fee and they understand that I markup the bonds to make a profit…My goal with these people is typically to move on to the rest of the family, since they will inherit the money, then I can move it back into my feebased account because they are typically not strictly fixed income…
[/quote]
Thanks - this is helpful and along the lines of what I figured.
Jason- (advisorControl)
Are you finding the Dan Kennedy stuff still works. It worked great last year. Seems to have hit a brick wall with it. However I do enjoy the non stop CDs they mail me :)Here’s the postcard I’ve seen. Handwritten.
Dear Clients and Friends (you could personalize each one):
An issue of (your state) tax-free bonds has become available. These bonds are federal and state income tax free for (your state) residents and offer a very attractive yield.
If you expect to have $5,000 or more available in the next week, call immediately for the details.
Send hundreds, call to follow up, put them on a list to repeat if it’s an encouraging call.
I wasn’t able to find out if we can put an actual yield on the card.
(Probably not. You can SAY anything to a client as long as you don’t put it in writing. … Just kidding. … I think.)
[quote=CALI123]Jason- (advisorControl)
Are you finding the Dan Kennedy stuff still works. It worked great last year. Seems to have hit a brick wall with it. However I do enjoy the non stop CDs they mail me :) [/quote] I presume your referring to Dan Kennedy stuff in terms of style? He doesn't produce anything specifically for advisors. I do think you are right though, about his style getting over-cooked in our market. Basically, there are a few larger organizations that are private clients of his. They've put out a lot of stuff the past few years and even more is probably being put out by copycats. This sucks for the uncreative copycats - but creates great opportunity for others. The days of "six mistakes..." or "10 deadly traps..." or any other highly sensationalized marketing pieces - are dying a slow death. Seniors (especially) have seen so much of this crap that anyone using that style is getting lumped into the same bunch and thus numbers are down accross the board in terms of responses, seminar attendance, appointments, etc. The solution for most reps doing this style is simply to gouge out higher commissions per client via creative (or sometimes blatant mis-use) of annuities and life insurance. This is sad; but alas, it creates opportunity. My own marketing has adapted to be more oportunistic rather than fear-based. The style of wrting (how you talk, etc) is still pretty much the same - but I've found that moving up-market and focusing on what those prospects want rather than what they fear gets very good results and delivers a prospect that is in better spirits (not scared to death) and more enjoyable to work with. The other great evolution is via the web. Sales letters are great - but there is nothing like a sales video. It touches more senses, communicates more implicitly, and creates desire and trust unlike anything in print format. It's no wonder that Dan Kennedy (who just a few years ago was a technophobe) has moved online in a very big way lately. My opinion and a large amount of my money is betting this will be similar for advisors. There is no better medium for cheaply reaching a large audience, tracking results, and automating most of the heavy lifting than the web. And fortunately, most advisors have yet to scratch the surface of it's potential (myself included). All that as it is - there is still profitable impact from direct response mailings (especially for seminars) and more old fashion forms of prospecting. Once enough people burn out of marketing in the Kennedy way it will likely cycle back some years down the road as being just as effective as it was years ago. A reversion to the mean of sorts. Hope this helps, J[quote=buyandhold]Here’s the postcard I’ve seen. Handwritten.
Dear Clients and Friends (you could personalize each one):
An issue of (your state) tax-free bonds has become available. These bonds are federal and state income tax free for (your state) residents and offer a very attractive yield.
If you expect to have $5,000 or more available in the next week, call immediately for the details.
Send hundreds, call to follow up, put them on a list to repeat if it’s an encouraging call.
I wasn’t able to find out if we can put an actual yield on the card.
(Probably not. You can SAY anything to a client as long as you don’t put it in writing. … Just kidding. … I think.)
[/quote]
That is the exact postcard I used when I was at Edward Jones. Some guy
in Kansas built a huge business by mailing thousands of those a month.
My response rate was always very good with those postcards and some of
my best clients came from them. A good friend of mine from St Louis
sends out 1000 of the postcards per month and he has been bringing in
500k + per month off of them. He has been doing it for a little over 2
years to a list of 4000 people.
I also had good luck with newspaper ads that mentioned some sort of interest rate and short maturity.
Anyone with LPL use the Clients First postcard mailings? I’m curious if anyone has had success with them, the headlines are pretty catchy.
You can put rates on them. We have compliance-approved post cards (munis, corps, CD’s) in our system that can be ordered, or sent to a printer to mass-print, and they have rates and terms on them.
I would ONLY use post-cards for rate/time sensitive stuff. This way, you know people will at least glance at them at the very least.chief,
This is just how it worked for me. Adding a rate reduced the response significantly, even if the rate was great.... The exact text from the postcard on a letter in a window envelope generated 2-4 times the response of the same text on a postcard.