When you’re looking to grow your business, it can be exciting to receive a batch of new digital leads. At first, this seems promising – a potential goldmine of new business. But as you dive into the pile, the excitement quickly turns into a daunting task. Sorting through hundreds of leads, only to find that many are lukewarm or irrelevant, can feel like navigating a maze with no clear exit.
The real challenge begins when you finally manage to connect with a prospect. The roadblocks quickly become apparent: Some aren’t ready to engage, others don’t fit your ideal client profile, and a few seem to have forgotten why they reached out in the first place. This disconnect between the volume of leads and their value can waste precious time and resources, leaving you frustrated and overwhelmed.
To turn this scenario around, it’s crucial for an advisor to shift their focus from chasing numbers to honing in on quality. By refining your lead vetting process and prioritizing high-potential prospects, you can overcome these hurdles and improve your conversion rates.
Instead of playing the numbers game, it is crucial for advisors to enhance their vetting processes and prioritize quality, sales-ready leads, which can be accomplished in a few ways. As a starting point, consider leveraging lead platforms – particularly those able to deliver leads that meet more specific criteria (such as net worth, age, desired services, etc.).
Additionally, you may also want to consider exploring opportunities outside your target audience range. When collecting leads, being broader in your client criteria may help you close more clients who could grow into your ideal net worth range.
To heighten your focus on quality over quantity, here are some advanced strategies:
Stand Out With A Solid Follow-Up Process: SMS Messaging
Speed to lead is incredibly important. Both your messaging and the timing of it can make or break a lead engagement, but you must also be willing to engage prospects where they are while minimizing the intrusiveness of your initial interactions. The question is, how can you put yourself in front of your target demographic in a way they can’t ignore without coming across too aggressively?
In a world inundated with communication, people don’t respond positively to cold calls from strangers. There’s another way to get in touch, and that’s through conversational text messaging (SMS).
Texting provides several benefits to advisors during the sales process. It not only screens for correct content information and prospect intent but also enables them to respond when it’s convenient. You’re able to create real-time, rich exchanges that aren’t intrusive to your prospects, which you can eventually leverage into a phone call or email.
Connecting with prospects through texting can’t be an entirely automated process. You must be willing to personalize your messaging and participate in conversations that will move the prospect further down the sales funnel.
Make A Good First Impression: Navigating The Initial Conversation
Once you get a prospect on the phone, often advisors focus too much on who they are and what they do. This can come later. Instead, focus on identifying and addressing the prospect’s pain points. What is their biggest financial roadblock? Why are they seeking an advisor? What keeps them up at night when it comes to their finances?
Focus on identifying and addressing the prospect’s pain points.
Another key to nailing your first impression is to believe in what you’re doing and the impact you can make on the other person’s life. Go into the conversation believing the person on the other end is open to the possibility that you can help solve their problems.
Improve Your Credibility And Visibility Online
Your online presence is integral to establishing your credibility, positioning you as a subject matter expert, and building trust and authority. Prospects are likely to research online before reaching out or engaging with a business.
Update your firm’s website, establish a social media presence and consider developing high-quality content (e.g., short videos, email newsletters or blogs). Also, build your online presence through mentions on credible third-party websites, which act as endorsements from trusted sources, lending authority to your business and improving your search engine rankings.
Focus On Quality
Even with the best follow-up process and digital presence, you will still struggle to close clients if the leads aren’t high quality. But what makes one lead more likely to close than another?
If you’re utilizing a lead generation platform, find out their criteria for gathering leads. Quality platforms pull leads from sources like paid search and search engine optimization (SEO). This means they’re attracting prospects who actively make queries such as “advisors near me” so the intent to work with an advisor is high. By comparison, someone who sees a contextual ad in the middle of an article might click on it out of curiosity but has otherwise not indicated their level of interest – and therefore may not intend to establish an advisor-client relationship.
The key to transforming digital leads into loyal clients lies in prioritizing quality over quantity.
Ultimately, the key to transforming digital leads into loyal clients lies in prioritizing quality over quantity. While it may be tempting to chase after a high volume of leads, the real value comes from leads with genuine potential. Embrace the shift towards quality, and you’ll find that the effort invested in nurturing high-potential leads will yield more meaningful and lasting client relationships.
Rishi Bharathan is CEO of WiserAdvisor.
