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A Cautionary Story Of A Financial Adviser

Monday, November 17, 2008

What would you think of a financial adviser or stockbroker who had told you to get out of the stockmarket and into cash back in June/July of this year?

Would you be just a little bit pleased with that advice?

Well I absolutely would.

This adviser would have steered me away from a huge chunk of the biggest stockmarket meltdown in most people’s lifetimes.

In fact, while everyone else was watching their hard-earned assets evaporate I would have been earning a trickle of money, and now be cashed up to pick and choose.

Now…

What if I told you that there is an adviser who did just that for his clients…

…but he has had to leave the company!?!

Incredible, but true!

By advising his clients to get into cash he lost all the income from commissions he was making by having people in the stockmarket. Therefore, to make ends meet he has gone off to get a job at a bank!

This guy is in Canada where the stock market has fallen around 30% in the quarter.

This means he saved all the clients who followed his advice a whopping 30% of their savings (and remember that if you have suffered a 33% fall, the maths sayd you need a 50% rise just to get back to where you started!)

His clients are now in a position where their cash can buy up stocks that are 30% or more cheaper than they used to be. A double advantage!

And yet in a couple of weeks time he will begin a new job with a bank to get back the income he has been losing.

This a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone doesn’t know how to apply Word of Mouth and referral marketing.

So when I heard of his plight I arranged to give him a call.

Do you think he is pleased to have lost an income because he gave good advice?

No, certainly not.

Do you think his client’s want to lose him as a financial adviser?

Not if they have any interest in their financial future they don’t, but they don’t know this is happening. He hadn’t told them a thing!

Do you think this is an fantastic dinner-table conversation starter that would have word of mouth recommendations flocking to him, if only this story was out there?

I absolutely do!

The tragedy is that this adviser had no idea how to turn this situation into an event that MAKES his career, rather than ends it.

Heck, this would be worthy of a page in a local newspaper…

“Elderly Widow’s Home Saved From Stockmarket Crash”

“My friend’s are all worried about how they are going to survive with bills increasing and their savings way down, let alone whether there will be anything to pass on to the kids.”

“But my financial adviser steered me clear of this and I sleep so much easier at night. I am not having to cut back on prescription medicines, or buying my dog his favorite treats!”

[Okay, so I never wrote for newspapers. Radio was more my thing.]

Let me get personal for a moment.

What are you saying about YOUR financial advisers at the moment?

Where do you think their real interests lie, and what word of mouth are you giving them?

Finally, what would it have been worth to you to have had THIS adviser looking after your money?

What’s your opinion?

Enter a comment on this post, and I will make sure to pass it on to the adviser himself for his learning.

-Martin Russell

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The Worst Mistake Has To Be…

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Many businesses have their busiest time in the November / December period.

Often this is the make or break time of year when earnings have finally passed overheads and taxes, and they are relieved to at last be making money for their own pocket.

Yet perhaps because it is so busy, this is exactly the time most businesses will stumble and drop the ball.

They will get so caught up in servicing customers that they will forget to think about their marketing - and in particular how they will go about following-up.

It happens in one of two ways…

1. You focus on the immediate customers, and forget about building relationships with the past ones who have done business with you throughout the year.

Or even worse…

2. You let all these new customers buy, and then leave - without collecting their contact details and permission to follow-up with them in future!

I was reminded of this just this week when doing a consulting session for a clever businessman about Christmas sales.

I knew he was doing alot of things right because most of the people in his industry have been driven out of business by changes in technology over the past 20 years. Yet he had kept upgrading his marketing and he was kicking along nicely.

He was certainly clever enough to be collecting contact details for his customers.

Much more impressively he had been using those details year-in year-out to recontact people. He was producing excellent repeat holiday business just like clockwork.

But when I asked him how regularly he was contacting these people DURING the year to offer them the rest of his product range, he paused.

“Never”, he said. “I hadn’t considered it.”

Hmmm.

As I say at the top of this blog, there are 3 keys to word of mouth.

By far the easiest to implement is ‘Follow-Up’. Personal, frequent, long-term follow-up.

The easiest sale you will ever make is a repeat sale.

The second easiest sale is a referral.

Both of these are far more likely when you follow-up.

If your follow-up is not bringing you all the results you want (or if it’s just been all too hard) then help is at hand.

Next week I’ll be doing a special-offer webinar specifically on follow-up and Word of Mouth - and demonstrating what I regard as the Ultimate Service to put your follow-up on autopilot. You will also discover…

  • A three step seasonal message that eases people into the next level of the buying relationship with you.
  • Follow-up that is personal, powerful AND, best of all, automatic.
  • How to make your follow-up marketing a profit-centre, not an expense.

Never risk the follow-up mistake again. Click on this link to sign-up and I’ll see you on the webinar Wednesday November 12.

-Martin Russell

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WII-FM… Really.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

In “Word of Mouth Magic” I cover, as many marketers do, tuning in to WII-FM.

That is, tuning in to the ultimate buyer’s question that you must answer, “What’s In It For Me?”

Sometimes I get really frustrated, and I think of it as WTF-III-FM - “What The F*** Is In It For Me?”, also known as “Who cares” or “So what.”

I usually hold back when I feel like this, and sometimes holding back is a good thing. One example of this was a UK guy I came into contact with called Gary Coyle.

Gary calls himself a “Post Office Consultant”.

Cute eh?

The only problem is that I don’t have a post office so I don’t need his services right?

100% wrong!

I found Gary on one of the business networking sites I use and as I read through his profile which explained his history of ups and downs of being in business with Post Offices. I would ask him how the UK postal service worked because of my interest in SendOutCards worldwide.

In actual fact when I spoke to Gary he wasn’t wanting referrals from Post Offices at all.

I became really confused.

I am trying to work out who I could refer to him who would be an ideal referral for him. I’m trying to think of myself as a potential client of Gary’s and asking myself “WTF-III-FM” as I’m listening to Gary.

Then Gary explains it in a way I finally get. What he is actually wanting is products and services to put into those post offices.

His real value is in offering businesses a new way to access the vast retail market of the Post Office.

The penny drops.

His ideal client is someone who already has a product but wants to expand their retail marketing in the UK. There are certainly businesses that want that.

An even better referral is people who have connections with such businesses, eg marketers, business advisers, accountants.

Then I explained to Gary that his profile didn’t make it clear who he was wanting and how they could benefit from what he offers ie WII-FM.

The first thing Gary spontaneously said to me…

I’ll be changing my online profile immediately.

Even better, he actually did what he said he would!

He asked me for feedback on the new profile. I gave it. It was still very feature driven eg “22 years in the post office business”. He responded again with more changes.

If you check out his profile currently, the first section and the final paragraph is new. The with middle history with features and no benefits is the original profile.

His first re-draft profile included this explanation of his work…

If you have an idea, product or service that you would like to introduce into 10,000 Post Offices and 40,000 independent convenience stores in the UK, I have the expertise, contacts and know-how to fast track this process.

With a little more thought he has made it even more punchy…

24 million people visit a post office every week. I will show you how to reach them.

For the right client that certainly gets the WTF-III-FM attention!

It takes time to really understand your buyers & clients, but making the effort is worthwhile.

Oh, and did I mention that Gary had been active on this business network for 6 years without any resulting business. We’ll see how much business his new WII-FM profile attracts.

How well do you communicate your WII-FM?

-Martin Russell

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Really Getting A Buyer’s Point Of View

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Do you really ‘get’ your customer’s needs?

 Moody Cow Florist

Too bad this is actually an ad by, of all things, an Irish online bank.

Sure, understand your customers needs. But do realize that one of their needs might be not to reveal their real needs.

Saving face is an important need too.

-Martin Russell

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Getting The Media To Call You!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Probably the most leveraged area of word of mouth is the media.

With newspapers, articles, books, TV, radio etc the media offers word of mouth opportunities that cost you nothing but your time.

Even better, you instantly become the expert rather than the advertiser. This means people will trust you and respond to you.So even though word of mouth in the media is incredibly powerful, it’s a tricky area.

But who knows how to put together a Media Release? Find a newsworthy angle? Word it so as to catch a journalist’s attention? Format it correctly? Include all your contacts details? Set aside time to be available? Then work out who to send it to en mass, in the hope that it does something?

Not most people in small business that’s for sure!

But…

What if you had a particular area of expertise, and you could just stick up your hand whenever someone in the media needed to interview someone on that topic?

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Especially if it was free!

Well it is free, and first I told those people who connected up with me when I advised readers about the start-up social network www.PerfectNetworker.com, and now I’ve told all my readers via email how to get access to it.

Ryan Coleman of www.TheNextForce.com told me his experience with this service…

Just in the past month… i picked up a radio show, been interviewed for 2 book interviews and sourced 9 hiring managers to interview on my book that I am working on!

Go figure!

I also have heard of people passing on these media opportunities to their clients. What a WOW! of a customer value-add strategy is that!

This media link-up service is so powerful I am including the details for anyone who subscribes to this blog.

Go up to the top right side of the home page of this blog, in the boxes enter your name, your email address, and click the subscribe button.

Then go to your inbox, find the confirmation email from me, and click the link in it. With your subscription you will be sent details on how to access the FREE media link-ups, and future blog goodies too.

-Martin Russell

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What Consitutes Bad Marketing?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A couple of weeks back a friend of mine, Don Farnden, did a nice promotion for his coaching work. To get physical addresses for his database, he offered to mail a special “Boosting Business” gift valued at $597 to everyone who replied with their mailing address.

He already had my mailing address, but I was curious so I sent my details in anyway.

A couple of days later I get a small package in the mail.

Inside was a disc with the company name across it, Boost Business Results.

I’m in a rush so I take it with me and stick it in the car as I drive. But it’s not a CD, it’s a DVD. I hadn’t see that on the label.

When I get to the office again I stick it in my computer and watch a seminar room with people sitting at tables and no presenter, just a testimonial video playing  at the front of the room.

I fast forward through and about 8 minutes in the business coaching seminar begins. The video is 6 hours long and is unedited footage.

When I realize this I immediately give up ever finding that much time, and eliminate the problem by throwing the DVD in the bin. Step 1 of Time Management. Elimination.

Question…

Was this bad marketing?

Let’s take the story further.

A week later I phoned Don and he mentioned they had already had 2 big coaching sales from people who HAD watched the DVD all the way through.

This is the power of filtering.

Giving away a whole coaching seminar, unedited, meant that only the really keen were going to respond. But a whole $597 seminar for FREE! That’s a WOW for the right prospect.

So, was it bad marketing?

Answer…

Not based on results. And actual results are the only way to decide. Opinions from non-buyers are simply dangerous.

Maybe however this approach was just a fluke.

Another example…

A few months ago a UK business coach, Eric Sutherland, set up a 7-week series of complete Business Coaching pdfs - once again for free.

He was asking busy business people to set aside consistent time every week to implement the information. Who has that sort of time?

Well, when I spoke to him he told me not only had he already gotten some big coaching contracts from the quality of the information he presented there, but he had also had ZERO unsubscribes.

[If you want to check out this quality of his coaching program go here.]

Rather than go for the big sale, you can use the classic funnel effect as shown in this video here from Ed Rivis where his free course on improving a sales website drew in 1035 subscribers in 35 days and Ed then built the relationship from small sales up medium sales and then to bigger consulting ones.

But if you truly give away quality, the method matters much less.

Getting known is more important than getting it right. Your ideal customer will love you and rave about you, but can NEVER buy from you until they know you exist.

NOTE:-

All 3 of these expert marketers, Don, Eric, and Ed made sure they got contact details up front.

Not all marketing works. That’s not good or bad, it’s just a fact. Even these experts could have produced a dud campaign.

However with contact details they could always try something else instead, let alone go for future sales as well.

Where is your list of people who have already been attracted to you?

Bad marketing is when you don’t capture the list so you can’t try again.

-Martin Russell

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A Networking Multiplier

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Ever gone to a networking event and ended up only speaking to people you already knew?

I’m sure you had every intention of linking up with new people and building new relationships, but let’s face it. Did you actually do it?

If you didn’t do it as well as you would have liked then I bet you spent much of your time instead with people you already knew.

That might be good for building your relationship with them, but it didn’t expand your network.

Of course, you don’t want to be rude to people you know and ignore them, but how can you stop yourself from simply hanging around with them for the entire event.

Take a tip from PerfectNetworker founder and referral educator, Glenn Garnes on what to do…

How many times do you walk into an event and immediately begin looking for familiar faces? We all do it, but it’s the wrong thing to do. If you hang out with people you already know you’re limiting your opportuunity to meet new people. Networking events should focus on making new connections because the environment is not usually conducive to building relationships. That’s what one-on-one follow ups are for.

So, instead of hanging out with familiar faces, greet them quickly and let them know you came to meet other people you may be able to refer to them. Now, they’ll love you and actually encourage you not to talk too long. Imagine if all your friends each canvassed the room to make connections for each other. Wouldn’t that be a better use of your time and resources than shooting the breeze with people you know already? I have found it to be both fun and productive for everyone involved.

Isn’t this the ideal leverage multiplier you want from networking in the first place?

Keep accountable to others and let them keep you accountable too.

No exceptions.

My wife and I went to a 4-day event this past weekend.

We deliberately spent the first 3 days split up, only reconnecting during the main breaks and in the evening to sleep.

We have ended up with a networking list that’s much bigger, with some nice overlaps too. Now onto the next step…

Did anyone say ”Follow-Up”?

-Martin Russell

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The Real Sadness In HappYness

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I’ve only just got around to watching “The Pursuit of Happyness” with actor, Will Smith.

Incredibly sad movie for me.

It’s meant to be a movie about success, about the American Dream, where an on-and-off homeless salesman Chris Gardner risks all to stay with his young son, and make it into the high-flying world of stockbroking.

Despite the Happy ending, it’s a sad movie.

The marriage break-up is sad.

The homelessness is sad (and I am told it is even more realistic because many of the “actors” in the line waiting for the homeless shelter were in fact real homeless people.)

The troubles that happen in the story are saddening too.

But for me there was one further sadness that hit me from the way the movie portraited Chris Garnder.

Chris was training to be a “stockbroker”, when in fact he was merely being a powerhouse salesperson.

No knowledge of the underlying businesses was required. No knowledge of accounting. No knowledge of the industries. None of that.

Just an ability to network and sell people.

That’s sad.

It reminds me of Robert Kiyosaki saying, “The reason so many financial advisers are called brokers is because they are often broker than you” and Warren Buffet commenting, “Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”

Don’t just be a salesperson. Be something else first and foremost, so the sales skills will make sense.

Both you, and your customers, and their word of mouth recommendations will be better for it.

-Martin Russell

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Which Networker Are You?

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

About a month ago I finally tore myself away from my wife and kids for a night and went to a sales training event when Tom ‘Big Al’ Schreiter was in town.

It was a good event, but I was there for the networking.

Unfortunately everyone seemed to have come for the training only. In fact it seemed like they had all been brainwashed with the idea that they were in competition with everyone else in the room. The first question people would ask was “Which company are you with?”

Yuck!

Anyway at the end as I was chatting with the organizers to at least get some networking done with the top people there on the night, and I mentioned (in a loud voice) that I was there to network. Only one guy in the room took the hint and handed me his business card as he went past and said, “Contact me.”

So I did.

I tried calling, leaving a message, and a couple of polite emails. Then finally I left a phone message and sent an email saying, “Hope you are well. As I mentioned in my phone message if you want to network with me it’s now up to you.”

That got a reply…

“Sorry. I’m keen. Lets talk.”

So we set up a meeting.

Turns out that this guy is the most successful local MLMer I’ve come across so far. He’d been in quite a few different companies over a couple of decades, had a couple of belly flops, but also a string of successes as well. It really was no surprise that he was the one person in the room who was interested to network.

A few days later he emailed me about an new company that had just started that addressed one of the biggest marketing issues I had mentioned to him when we spoke. Moreover it’s a company he didn’t even know about when he first handed me his card.

That’s the key.

Just like word of mouth, networking often gets done before you ever realize you need it, and you need to go in with no preconceived idea what might come of it.

When this guy handed me his card he didn’t think he’d meet a medical doctor with an online marketing blog, and I didn’t think I’d join a new company. But we both knew that if we built networks these opportunities would come.

Are you thinking everyone is your competition?

Are you only networking within a known circle?

If so, then take a punt some times and become the networker who takes the opportunity to go that little bit further.

-Martin Russell

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SponsorDaddy Review

Sunday, August 10, 2008

[Note: Currently SponsorDaddy is in "soft pre-launch" which means they are keeping low key. I've tried to be as accurate in this review as possible. I'm in SponsorDaddy, but I'm not so high up that I know all the details, sorry. Some changes/upgrades have already been flagged, and you can be certain that lots of stuff is still open to change as they test and upgrade, but the fundamentals here can be expected to remain.]

SponsorDaddy is an amazing concept for an MLM company.

Sort of one of those “how come someone didn’t think of this before” ideas.

The SponsorDaddy Product.

The SponsorDaddy service is a website that coordinates all your online MLM prospecting.

It all starts with a landing page for your primary opportunity that introduces people to MLM / network marketing, and then when they opt-in shows them the particular business opportunity you are in (your ‘primary opportunity’).

Someone in any MLM company can join SponsorDaddy and get a full suite of online marketing and management tools; a professional lead-generation website with movies and audio, a follow-up sequence of emails, business opportunity leads, statistics and traffic analytics, built in blogs, training videos, live video actors, forums, the infamous Web 2.0 and Social Networking stuff, and much more.

The company behind this is Naxum. Their website has been up since 2006 and the best bit is where they show a portfolio of their websites for other MLM companies.

Basically SponsorDaddy is a non-company-specific version of these websites.

Lots of MLM companies now have an online marketing tool system, some good, many not-so-good.

The difference with SponsorDaddy is that because it isn’t restricted to one company, you can use it to promote any company you want, and even promoted multiple companies so that someone who doesn’t like your primary opportunity has a chance to say yes to another opportunity you may have.

You can add in contacts from your warm market, other networking contacts, as well as opt-in leads you buy, or the leads provided in the system (varies with the different plans.)

By sending them to your SponsorDaddy site you get to sort and filter those who are most interested so that you focus your follow-up on those who show the most interest.

Your new distributors can sign up on the system so it’s entirely duplicatable.

The SponsorDaddy Opportunity.

At this stage the marketing management service is just getting started. On a product/service basis alone therefore it would make sense to avoid being among the first people to join and wait until they mature the product.

However this is where the business opportunity comes in.

This system is of potential interest to two massive groups of people; the tens of millions of people who are already involved in MLM, as well as the traditional cold lead group of people who would be interested in business opportunities online.

If you trust that the underlying company Naxum and management can manage the growing pains and the standard risks of setting up any new venture, then the business opportunity is an incredible reason to get involved in SponsorDaddy immediately. Obviously if they can’t then this may go the way of so many MLM companies that curl up their toes in the first few years. It’s part of being in at the start of any business, but the ticket of entry isn’t so high that you can’t make your money back just on the networks you will form once you join, let alone from leads for your primary opportunity.

Being online and more easily scalable SponsorDaddy can grow very, very quickly, and distributorship is open to those outside the United States, and not just into the classic countries of Canada, England & UK, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand (NZ), and Australia. SponsorDaddy can also reach into countries like Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Europe, India, etc etc.

SponsorDaddy also enables you to build a network that will continue even as people switch from one network marketing opportunity to another.

Let’s face it. Many people don’t stay with the first company they join; perhaps they don’t succeed in their first company, or they don’t fit with the product, or they joined just because it was the only one they knew, or because their friend / family member was already involved. Many of them will try another company, and with SponsorDaddy you can continue to have them in your downline because which ever company they join, they will still need a tool for their online marketing. So the team you build can continue with you, even as they change their primary opportunity.

You can get more details about the compensation plan (it’s a binary), and the different plans ($199 sign-up then $25-$400 a month thereafter), from the site itself so I won’t go into it in more detail here.

What I Saw In SponsorDaddy…

SponsorDaddy is a solution to a problem I had been grappling with for myself.

How could I introduce people to MLM as an industry without getting caught up in the particular product line that I fell in love with if that wasn’t right for them?

I was still keen to help people appreciate this industry and the potential for an additional passive and residual income stream. But did this mean merely handing them on to someone else and hoping they would get the proper support?

SponsorDaddy gave me a practical way to get rewarded for my efforts, and yet also the freedom to make sure they found the right MLM for them.

SponsorDaddy In Summary… 

SponsorDaddy is an online MLM prospecting system that is marketed by MLM.

Nicely circular.

Barely two months old, it’s a great concept by a company that’s done the product before, but the sheer scale and growth of this means that I predict it WILL experience growing pains and has a finite chance of coming undone. Make sure to distinguish a scam from just what can be expected in business start-ups.

If you have no background in online marketing and no interest in SponsorDaddy as a business opportunity, then you can safely wait until the first phase of kinks are ironed out of the system. Watch this space, but my advice is don’t join yet. SponsorDaddy will be a valuable tool for years to come.

If you are interested in online marketing for your current MLM then this can be a great learning curve (for example, you can run your own Live Chat feature on your SponsorDaddy site, which will be a great tool for your marketing education.)

If you already understand MLM / network marketing, whether you are currently with a company or not, then I suspect you are either curious, or downright excited, and you can find out more by opting-in and making your own assessment…

http://martin.sponsordaddy.net/

[Note: If you came to this post from someone else who introduced you to SponsorDaddy please go back to them to get the right link for their site. You, they, and I will appreciate it. Thanks.]

-Martin Russell

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