Part 2 of Scheduling Meetings: Prospect Process

Those of you who have met me in person know that I look like I’m 12. Straight baby face. I was regularly called “kid” or “bud” by coworkers right out of college and it was so annoying. My first impression on people is often that I look young and it is common for me to be asked, “how long have you been in the industry?” when meeting with prospective clients.

I’m no longer annoyed by this but it struck me to the core so much that I intentionally do everything I can to portray absolute professionalism and maturity in every encounter with prospective clients and clients because my baby face doesn’t do me any help.

One key part of this, and a piece of low hanging fruit, is making the communication with our firm as smooth and easy as possible. In the prospect process, this mainly includes “wowing” the prospective client at each point of the process. My process is below and I’m assuming it is somewhat comparable to the typical firm. This post will cover opportunities to automate the “wowing” for prospective clients. My process, listed in chronological order, is as follows:

1. Prospective Client Visits our Website – it’s often the first impression and viewed before any engagement with the prospective client

2. Prospective Client schedules an intro call from our website – The experience of actually scheduling a meeting. Is it easy and professional or clunky and amateurish?

3. Communication between scheduling the initial call and the actual call – What do they get from me? What do they see? Again – is it displaying professionalism?

4. Holding the Actual Meeting (20-Minute Intro Call in my firm)

5. Communication between the 20-minute intro call and the 60-minute information meeting (What happens between our first prospect meeting and our second prospect meeting)

6. Holding the Actual Meeting (60-minute informational Meeting in my firm)

7. Communication between the 60-minute informational meeting and the 60-minute Plan Foundation Review meeting (What happens between our second prospect meeting and our third and final prospect meeting)

8. The Actual Meeting (60-minute Plan Foundation Meeting in my firm)

9. Follow-up after the meeting (What happens after the last prospect meeting and the prospective client making a decision)

While I cannot control my baby face, I have 9 opportunities to “wow” a prospective client, and most of these (six) can be completed through our scheduling process.

Our Website (1) and Ease of Scheduling the Initial Call (2)

I use Calendly but most (or all) scheduling software allows you to embed a link on a website. Allowing this to live on your website accomplished multiple objectives:

1. Easy, prospect-driven scheduling. They schedule on their time, when it works best for them without any back and forth.

2. It looks clean and professional; it sends the message that I know what I’m doing.

Communication between scheduling the initial call and the actual call (3)

Calendly allows you to build workflows and reminder emails that are automatically sent out in advance of the call. As covered in our post last week, by creating specific meeting types for each specific type of meeting you can then create a specific workflow/email cadence for that specific meeting. So by using a specific “20-Minute Introductory Call” link on your website you can schedule a cadence to send the exact messaging you want to this prospect leading up to your call. An example of a cadence that I love (and admittingly have yet to implement) is:

1. Upon scheduling, a “Thanks for scheduling” email is immediately sent with a Loom video embedded in the call that introduces you to the prospect client. The Loom video doesn’t need to be any longer than 30 seconds.

2. Every 2-3 days leading up to the meeting you send a reminder email that includes a Loom video that covers items like “what to expect during this meeting”, “what you can do to prepare for this meeting”, and “questions to ask a financial advisor”. Essentially planting seeds every few days leading up to the meeting that introduces yourself and also portrays extreme professionalism.

Holding the Actual Meeting (20-Minute Intro Call in my firm) (4)

During the call is your time to shine. Hit the points you want to hit and let your personality out and hit your key talking points. But, don’t forget the last part: if you want this prospective client to move forward, schedule the next meeting during this call! And of course, use the specific Calendly link for the meeting so you can control all communication between the conversations.

Communication between the 20-minute intro call and the 60-minute information meeting (5)

Just like the videos you can send before the initial phone call, do the exact same thing here. I know some advisors who customize the content based on the specific prospective client and I know others that keep it more generic. Whichever you prefer, don’t miss this opportunity to continue communicating with this person and to maximize the opportunity to display absolute professionalism.

Steps 4 and 5 are then repeated verbatim, just with different videos, fore steps 6, 7, 8, and 9. 

But by creating the infrastructure one time you have now created an incredibly high-touch, highly professional experience for the prospective client that will increase close rates and make your job easier as everything is either automated or can be delegated to a team member.

Next week we will cover how I schedule for Surge Meetings.

Until next week,

Steve

——————————

What’s Quivr?

I’ve received quite a few questions about Quivr since launching this blog. As promised in the first few posts, I strive to make this content applicable and valuable to all readers regardless of your tech stack. But Quivr is a real thing and a real community. Our mission is to be the CRM built for the small but mighty financial planner that does real financial planning. Below are a few key features and how to learn more if you desire.

• Access to the Quivr Community where we discuss all things operations and host weekly Office Hours to assist with implementing efficiencies in your practice. I’m an open book about my practice and so are the other community members. A rising tide lifts all boats.

• Workflow Engine to create multi-person, multi-role processes natively in your CRM prepackaged with 30+ workflows that my firm uses

• Task Template builder to create simple, repeatable tasks in an instant prepackaged with 25+ prepacked Task Templates that my firm uses

• 35+ client-friendly, compliance-approved reports summarizing specific financial planning data

• Meeting Module that decreases meeting prep to five minutes

• Store, retrieve, and report on all financial planning data

​Schedule a demo to see Quivr live.