Business Innovators Radio - Interview w/ Daniel Collison w/ Advice2Advisors & Author of Building Bigger & Better Discussing Confident Growth Plan

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Daniel Collison has over 30 years in the financial services industry. Dan is the co-founder and Managing Partner in the financial education firm Advice2Advisors, which trains, mentors and coaches financial advisors of all tenures.Dan is a CFP, TEP and taught Personal Financial Management, in the MBA Program at the Schulich School of Business since 1998, and is the author of The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Excellence and Building Bigger & Better: Growth Strategies of Top-Producing Financial Advisors.Dan regularly presents keynotes and trains advisors across North and South America.Learn More: https://advice2advisors.ca/interview-w-daniel-collison-w-advice2advisors-author-of-building-bigger-better-discussing-confident-growth-planBuy “Building Bigger & Better: Growth Strategies of Top-Producing Financial Advisors”https://www.amazon.ca/Building-Bigger-Better-Strategies-Top-Producing/dp/1039143652/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-w-daniel-collison-w-advice2advisors-author-of-building-bigger-better-discussing-confident-growth-plan

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Daniel Collison, and he's with advice to advisors and the author of Building, bigger and better. We'll be talking today about confident growth plans. Dan, welcome back to the program. Thanks very much, Mike. Great to be here again. You know, I think that it's cliche to talk about a growth plan.

I love how you say competent growth plan. So let's just jump right into what do you think makes an advisor in the financial services industry. What do you think make their growth plan effective by adding in that confident aspect to it. Yeah, and given that most advisors really don't have a background in business, business planning and such, again, much like myself, fell into the business, really figuring out how to grow a business is challenging for advisors. And one of the biggest challenges, in fact, is deciphering the difference between marketing and prospecting.

And so often we hear advisors saying that they're doing marketing, you know, and it doesn't really lead to what they want. And in my book, I show that there needs to be this differentiation between marketing and prospecting and then bringing them together than what we call the duality of client acquisition. So when we look at marketing and what we recommend advisors do is say, okay, what is it that I want to market well? we talked last time, Mike, about the unique value proposition that advisors really need to have in place tells who their ideal client is, why they work with them. In other words, what pain points they help those ideal clients with, you know, how they help them, what the processes are, and what the clients get from that. And when you can build out a unique value proposition that answers to all those questions and you internalize that as an advisor and then start to speak to it in your typical

lexicon that you would talk to prospective clients or clients. That's your marketing, a very simplistic way of looking at marketing. So if we can get our marketing message through our unique value proposition out to our ideal clients, that's half the battle. But the reality is consumers, for the most part, aren't shopping for financial advice, they will fall into it more likely than not. So advisors need to be out prospecting. Even mature advisors, you know, once you stop prospecting, you tend to see a huge diminished amount of people coming in. So what we're saying is, have your unique value proposition out there as a marketing piece,

then get prospecting. which really is where the rubber hits the road. It's where you're talking to an individual that fits your ideal client, your ideal client profile, and ask them for the opportunity to sit down with them to see if you're able to help them with their financial needs. So bringing those marketing prospecting opportunities together is what most financial advisors are missing. Yeah, you know, I've heard a stat that about 90% of the time prospects, in any industry aren't ready to take any kind of an action.

They need to get more information. So they're ready for education. They want to understand. And then when they're ready to buy, hopefully you're the one they choose because you've taught them, educated them, and that kind of gets into your example there of having awareness from marketing and then prospecting to stay in front of that perfect target audience. Absolutely. And, you know, to be in front of enough potential clients constantly,

is exactly what top producers do. They're always top of mind to their ideal client profiles because they're always there. Their marketing is there. But importantly, their opportunity to prospect to those potential clients is ongoing. And what we've seen by researching top producers in the industry is that there are four fundamental prospecting methodologies that most of these top producers use. They may not use all four, but they're using one, two, or even three at any given time. Quite often, they're piling them on top of each other.

So when we look at, okay, we've got our unique value proposition out there, what it is we do for our ideal clients. How do we approach these individuals from a prospecting point of view? And really, we break it down to these four categories. The first is conscious referability. So whereas most advisors have been trained to ask for referrals, that age old, you know, you onboard a new client, make sure they're happy with what your services are. Then that old question comes up, who do you know that could use my services? You know, what the research tells us is that you're making your new clients aren't comfortable by asking that question. They don't want to be involved in anyone else's finances, and they really don't know what position their friends, families, colleagues are in.

So they don't want to get in the middle. So if it makes the client uncomfortable, it makes the advisor uncomfortable. And our suggestion is stop asking for referrals. Unless you're so good at it that you're knocking it out of the park, we recommend. And strangely, most advisors are very happy when they're. hear our suggestion. Stop asking for referrals. And in fact,

what we say is become consciously referable. And there's a list of elements within that conscious referability, you know, that really stands out that makes you that much referable. You know, people have to like you. They have to trust you. There's got to be similarities.

They have to understand your unique value proposition. There's so many different elements. And the thing is to focus on which element, you have to highlight in your conscious referability for absolutely every individual you meet with. That's conscious referability. That's baseline as far as prospecting goes. The second methodology is what we call targeted introductions.

So whereas we say don't ask for referrals, we strongly recommend that you go for introductions because for the most part, people are very happy to introduce you to someone. It's a slight mindset shift, isn't it? It's just a slight mindset in fact. But the process of doing it is very specific, very methodical. And what we're really suggesting is you want to mine names, as it were, as you're talking to your clients, your ideal clients. You want to collect names of people that are like them, that you would like the opportunity to talk to about what you do and how you could help them. So we want to collect names.

We want to hold them in abeyance. We don't want to ask for introductions to them immediately. It usually isn't the appropriate time. So we're going to collect those names. And this starts from very first meetings with it with potential clients when your goal setting, finding out who they work with, who they holiday with, you know, siblings, whatever it is, whoever meets your criteria of ideal clients. but mind those names, hold those names in advance until it's the appropriate time to either ask for an introduction.

So, Mike, you mentioned your colleague, Tina. I was really hoping you might be able to introduce me to her. So if she's ever got any questions on investment planning or tax planning, then she's got someone to contact. Would you be able to connect me with Tina, Mike? And for the most part, that's going to be good enough. But you could also go for a self-introduction. You can set up an opportunity where an introduction is going to be made because you're going to be face-to-face. Maybe you invite them to a seminar, to a webinar, to a wine and cheese event, whatever it is.

But collect those names of those ideal prospects, hold them in advance until it's the appropriate time to get introduced to them or do a self-introduction. That's the second methodology that we see top producers using. The third, in fact, is building a personal network group where you're working with other professionals. You're meeting with them regularly. And we suggest there are five, at least five key professionals, very much like we had talked about that personal CFO model. So you'd be talking about accountants, CPAs, lawyers and attorneys, money managers, insurance specialists, lenders. but any professional who is also focused on the same ideal client profile that you are. Yeah.

Collecting these people in a group, meeting regularly, whether it's lunch, dinner, whatever it would be, you know, every two weeks, every four weeks, talking business, but then also creating the opportunity to refer to each other with your existing. So nothing wrong with the leads groups, networking groups, BNI Chamber, but do you really need to to be side by side with the chiropractor or the person selling whatever nutritional supplement. So you're creating your own strategic alliance inner circle mastermind. That's really key. Exactly it, Mike. Not only that, it's very much like to be BNI is a great model for these personal networking groups.

The thing is, you're picking who's going to be in your group where with BNI you're put into a group of people. Usually you don't know any of them. You don't necessarily trust them because you don't know them. don't necessarily like them. And you don't know if they're the type of people you put in front of your clients. Or in fact, if you would want to be referred to their clients. Right.

Their clients are in target audience. There's probably not your best ideal client. Very possible and very likely reality. So build your own personal networking group. And then rather than just, you know, offering up referrals once in a while, the whole idea of this personal networking group is to cross-pollinate your company. clientele. So in fact, if there's 10 people within our group, and let's say all 10 of us have 100 clients, there's 900 potential clients that I can talk to, you know, just from my nine other

partners within this group. And that's true of every single member of the group. So if we can cross pollinate, there's really no other reason or need to be prospecting in any other way, although top producers are always looking for other ways. So that building your own networking group is one of the most powerful methodologies of prospecting for your ideal clients. And then finally, the fourth methodology that we see top producers use is really becoming the star on stages, as it were, by doing seminars, webinars, or workshops towards your ideal client profile.

So wherever possible, targeting who it would be. you want, having a presentation that fits their needs and getting out and being seen as the expert, where this becomes prospecting on mass. Usually you can have 20, 30, 40, even more individuals in seats in front of you. It could be virtual if you're doing webinars, but it's a way of being seen as the expert in front of a whole lot of people that hit your ideal client profile. So looking at those four different methodologies, conscious referability, targeted introductions, building a personal networking group, and then doing targeted seminars, webinars, workshops. Within those four, we find that most advisors will be able to pick a couple that they are

very comfortable working with. But I've got to say that conscious referability, again, is baseline. If you're not preferable, business is going to be very challenging, no matter. That gets back to that word we've been saying that starts with F. That's foundational. You have to have that as a foundation. And then you can start building on some of these other things. And none of these are hard. I didn't hear you say anything about cold calling 100 people a day. All of these things make sense. Forming your own leads group, mastermind networking group, however you want to think of it as. But you need to know what to say to these groups and having that messaging down, Pat, having your ideal audience. I think that is just so key. I love that marketing and prospect. being duality that you're bringing up. Right. Yeah. And when advisors see this, they do see the simplicity.

Certainly it takes steps to put these these methodologies into place. But when you can see that there's a process to do each and every one of them that you can work through and that you can constantly do. And in fact, your team can support you in doing everything gets easier. And the reality is this is how most top producers operate wide, wouldn't you go root of a top producer if you're not there already or if you are and want to sustain that top production and mimic what the best of the best are doing 100%. So now let's kind of shift into once you've gotten these things in place. What are some of the results you've seen

advisors having when someone is methodically and concisely executing on these? And they're doing it Right. They're not just, you know, like hitting it a little bit here, a little bit there, someone that's just putting this into place over time. What are some of the results that they're seeing? Yeah. And with conscious referability, Mike, we actually asked the advisors that we've coached to go back over the last 12 months, put down on paper what they've received as referrals, how many have converted to clients, so that we've got a good history to run on and then measure what happens over the next 12 months. And what we've actually seen is easily at doubling, quite often even a tripling of referrals that come to them when they become consciously referable. In other words, it's no longer just doing the best job.

But at every opportunity when they're communicating with a client, you are going in there being referable and being conscious of what you've got to do to be referable. So doubling and tripling, you know, the amount of referrals you receive is quite the norm. for our coaching clients. On the actual targeted introduction, we've seen some dramatic shifts. In fact, one advisor, Glenn, who already was a top producer, his assets under management,

close to 600 million when we started working with him just over two years ago. He was bringing in over $20 million a year of new monies. What was interesting was he didn't have any specific way of prospecting. He was doing virtually everything and anything that he could. Certainly referrals were bringing, but he wasn't even aware of who his ideal clients were. And when we went through everything, we found out it was actually business owners. His top four clients were business owners.

So we focused on that, made that his conscious ideal client profile. And then we went into introductions, targeted introductions to business owners. and within 11 months, as I said, his previous year he brought him 20 million. He tripled that in his first 11 months by focusing on business owners, which he hadn't specifically done before, and by then focusing on collecting names of other business owners from these clients and getting introduced to them. He went from 20 million a year before to 63 million within 11 months. and in 2022, he went from $63 million in the previous year to actually $141 million of new assets brought in within a 12-month period.

And this year, he's on track to do significantly more than that even. And again, his primary focus now is the targeted introductions because it just works so well for him. And you know, the really frustrating point. realization to all of that is that all of that opportunity was right under his nose for years previous to that. It's just he needed to have that train track to run on to learn these methods to ask the right way to be consciously referable to have all of this done. And boy, if he had done that sooner, he would have been that much further down the road. So that's really powerful. You're so right with that, Mike. But that's like any field, any profession.

Quite often the coach is going to be able to shine a light on things that you would think are so obvious. Yet advisors are buried in so much of the day-to-day activity. They don't have time to work on the business, right? They're always deep into the business. And that's what we're here to help is work on the business. So back to what works. I've got to say that as good as building a, personal networking group is. That's the one that we see the fewest advisors do, which I think

is unfortunate. It certainly takes more time, more effort to put into place. But for those advisors we've worked with that have put them in place, it's a stunning difference in how business originates once that personal networking group is set up. And then finally on the targeted seminars, webinars, workshops. I got to say, not every financial advisor should be standing up on stage. Some just don't have the ability to carry it off. Some don't want to do it.

They don't like it. Having said that, it was never something I thought I would do. I'm a naturally shy person. And I never would have thought I would stand in front of hundreds and even in some instances over 1,000 people and talk. But when you can find what your expertise is, and you could talk to it flawlessly, comfortably, confidently, it is so much easier to do.

But again, not every advisor is going to want to be on that stage. But for those that are, it just gets easier and easier. You become more of the expert, and you're doing that in front of more and more larger groups. And it's a great way to mass prospect, to be seen as the expert in your field by a lot of, potential clients. So we do see individuals do this. The one thing I would suggest is if you're going to do this, do it regularly, whether it's once a month, every second month, but get good at it

and stay good at it and be seen in public by doing it on a regular basis. You can do it to client and guests. You can do it to the firms where your ideal clients work. You could do it to associations and groups where your ideal clients go, or you can do it to the public where your ideal clients are. You either are going to prospect to it, which is very challenging for most advisors, or you hire a marketing company to do it. But it is a great way to be seen as the expert. 100%. You know, we've talked about having that confident mindset and how foundational that is, which then moves into the competent business structure and having all of those things put in the place with playbooks in your ideal client profile. And then right now, the confident growth.

Well, once that is executed well and seeing some results like what you've mentioned, at some point that advisor should be thinking, then what? You know, and it kind of gets down into your legacy. What is your, what is your goal for all of this to hit this certain pinnacle? Are you going to sell your business? Are you going to, you know, pass it along to your children? What do you advise your clients regarding legacy and succession planning? Yeah, it's interesting. I've been working with succession planning since I was a branch manager close to 30 years ago. So I've gone through a lot of successions with advisors.

And it's only recently within the last, I would say three to four years that succession planning has really come to the forefront within financial services industry. But to me, it's absolutely critical. My belief is that you should start the way you mean to end. In other words, pick a target, whatever the target, the size of your business, size of revenue, size of your team. But figure out what it is you want to see at the end of the day as far as a business goes and work towards that. And the one thing that most financial advisors don't take into consideration is what's the succession plan. And I'm going to tell you, I do see the industry going down the wrong path. And one of the reasons why advisors don't get into succession, as it's always so.

old as either you're going to retire or you're going to die. You know, what if you step off the proverbial curb and you get hit by the bus? Well, just like any human doesn't want to think of their immortality or sort of mortality advice you don't either. My belief is you look at succession as a way of building a business. And in fact, your business should be growing until the day you leave that business. and you look at any, say, public company, they've always got a succession plan in the background.

You know, the public doesn't see it, but they're always looking at, okay, who's the next CEO, who's the next CFO, CLO? There's always succession plans being built because those companies are always going to survive beyond that leader. And that's how we should treat our businesses. And we need to look at it. Who do we want to mentor,

to place to take over where we have been or who do we want to sell to. In other words, we've got to act like business owners versus acting just as financial advisors. And reality is, if you're not growing, your business is dying. And that's true of most businesses. But certainly in our business, we actually have clients passing away. So our business does shrink if we're not going just a natural, natural shrinkage as it were. Yeah, well, I think when you can think past the traditional end, you know, I will end my business here and sell it or whatever the case is. When you think long term, like I want this business to be my legacy and grow beyond when

I exit from it. So it helps you making decisions today when you have that mindset on the forefront of your mind. So such a huge opportunity that you brought up here with all of these pillars and teachings and foundational principles and just so much appreciate you coming on and teaching these to us. And if someone is interested in learning more and buying a copy of your book, what's the best way that they can do that? Sure. They can always go to advice to advisors webinar, and that is advice to the number two, advice to advisors.com. You can connect with us through that. If you're interested in my newest book,

building bigger and better. You can go to Amazon and pick it up there. Always happy to talk to advisors. So by all means, feel free. Connect with us on LinkedIn. Daniel Collison on LinkedIn. Happy to talk to advisors. That's what we do. Excellent. Well, Dan, thank you so much for coming back on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. It's been great, Mike. Thanks very much for having me on. You've been listening to influential entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders to learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes. Visit www. www.

influential entrepreneurs radio.com.