We’re often asked how to incorporate non-producing team members into the team’s marketing efforts. It’s a great idea, but only if done the right way. We’ve seen countless examples of advisors attempting to delegate client acquisition responsibilities in full. Never, we repeat never, does this work.
That said, we do see a lot of value in having team members involved in your marketing efforts. Think about your assistant, a junior advisor or anyone else on the team with good organizational skills and creativity. If set up properly, they can be incredibly helpful in planning and tracking the marketing and sourcing new opportunities. Let’s dive into those three roles in more depth:
1. Marketing Planning
Many teams wing it when it comes to marketing. We’d recommend having a weekly marketing meeting with key support personnel and junior advisors. Every meeting serves as a planning session for the upcoming week’s marketing activities. You might discuss:
- Upcoming social prospecting opportunities
- Opportunities for second opinions
- Facebook ads plans and past performance
- LinkedIn direct messaging plans and past performance
- Next steps for client events
- Introduction requests
- And so on…
If you’re meeting once a week with an agenda covering these critical activities, you’ll end up doing much more of them. Why is the team involved? More than likely, they’ll be helping execute these strategies. Plus, it’s helpful to have others helping you stay on track.
2. Activity Tracking
If you’re hoping to actively grow your business, you’ll need to define the activities most critical to your success and track them diligently. For example, if you decide that growth will ride heavily on referrals, how are you tracking the behavior that leads to referrals? This might mean tracking social outings with clients, small gifts sent and other relationship-builders.
Team involvement here makes the tracking “stickier.” We’ve all started an initiative at some point and seen it fade. As a team, if you’re saying this short list of activities is the most critical to your growth and you’re tracking their execution on a weekly basis, you’re unlikely to lose steam any time soon. Be open to the accountability that group activity tracking provides.
3. Sourcing Opportunities
Everyone on the team runs into opportunities, but not everyone takes advantage of them. It’s important that everyone first understands what an opportunity looks like and how to pass this along to the team. An opportunity might come in the form of a friend talking about their parents’ upcoming retirement. It might come in the form of another parent on the soccer team asking you how are things going at work. It could also come in the form of a client mentioning the name of a colleague or tennis buddy.
Taking advantage of the opportunities isn’t about teaching every assistant and junior advisor how to sell themselves. It’s about teaching them how to sell the team. Specifically, talk with them to ensure they can:
- Explain the team’s differentiators (i.e. What sets us apart is...)
- Suggest a meeting with the team leader (i.e. You should really talk with…)
- Offer a story of how the team has helped someone (i.e. We’ve seen a lot of that…)
- Relay key information to team leaders (i.e. Client John is heading on vacation with…)
The bottom line is that by involving your team, you’ll likely end up with more consistent and thoughtful marketing. The quickest way to implement this advice is to forward this article to those on your team you’d like to be more involved in marketing. Then plan a half-hour meeting to discuss.
Stephen Boswell and Kevin Nichols are coaches with The Oechsli Institute, a firm that specializes in research and training for the financial services industry. @StephenBoswell @KevinANichols www.oechsli.com
