Financial, insurance, and lending advisors are facing unique challenges and problems as the advisory teams are striving for retention and growth of their business in the digital age. LinkedIn and other social platforms are the solutions to their prospecting and profit goals and here is how:
When it comes to prospecting, financial, insurance, and lending advisors have three major goals:
- Marketing Process: Find and capture prospects who are potential investors, by getting them to know, like, and trust your advisory services and get an appointment.
- Sales Process: Convert these prospects into clients and strengthen their relationship with your business by building a deeper level of trust.
- Servicing Process: Go above and beyond to cater to their needs so that these clients refer you to other people and grow your business.
Why is LinkedIn Important for Professionals?
There are two major categories of social media apps; where people make friends or make money. LinkedIn is the social media platform where people grow their business, find jobs, and network which at the end of the day makes money.
As compared to other social and networking platforms, LinkedIn is 227% more effective in B2B lead generation. People trust content posted on LinkedIn because it is written by professionals for professionals, which reduces the chances of ambiguity and is considered authentic and reliable.
LinkedIn is used by the affluent demographic according to a study which revealed that the average income of a LinkedIn user is $109,000. There are 130,000 articles posted on LinkedIn every week and 5.3 billion updates viewed on LinkedIn per week. Moreover, 3 million U.S jobs are posted on LinkedIn, which makes it the perfect platform for business professionals.
How can LinkedIn Help You?
With so much happening on LinkedIn, professionals like you can generate sales by using a structured process to reach your potential clients.
LinkedIn can provide you with high-quality prospects if you can use the platform to network the right way. It is most effective in helping you reach your clients when you have connections that have further connections. All these first-degree and second-degree connections will help you extend your network. The more you will get to know them and they get to know you, will higher your chances of productive prospecting.
How to Set up Your Business Profile?
Your first impression on LinkedIn is your LinkedIn profile which your connections will be looking at to know more about you. You need to appear as a professional who is a perfectionist at their job to grab their attention.
However, don’t promise to be someone you are not. Be honest and truthful in the description box. Use excellent words to describe yourself but never over glorify yourself as it can make prospects think that you have an ego-centric personality and working with you can be problematic.
One of the big no-nos of prospecting on LinkedIn as a financial, insurance or lending advisor is to NOT have a niche. You will NOT appeal to anyone on your network if you are broad in who you help. "I help my clients" or "I help business owners" is too broad and frankly, unappealing.
Here is an article we wrote to guide you to pick a niche and stand out from the crowd:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-ask-yourself-do-i-have-niche-bilal-malas/
Also, when people search you up on LinkedIn, they may also go to other platforms such as Facebook or Instagram to know more about you. Remove everything unprofessional and unpleasant about you from the internet. Yes! meaning those drunken photos from the last wedding you attended and old photos of you getting tattoos with your high school friends need to be deleted or hidden. If there is false news on the internet that you are a scammer, get it removed because it can harm your reputation, diminish clientele and make prospecting difficult.
Tips for Making Connections:
To make high-quality connections and then connect with their connections for prospecting, you need to keep a few things in mind.
- You need to connect with prospects, not your competitors or people from the same industry which is why you need to avoid connecting with colleagues and classmates and focus on prospecting.
- Connect with friends and family. There are numerous connections of your friends and family that might need your services.
- Connect with people who have bigger networks. For example, an accountant working as an intern at a corporation may have a small number of connections compared to a company’s CEO who will have connections with a bigger network of HNW individuals.
- Connect with business owners of any size (small to medium-size). Businesspersons have several high-quality connections because they are directly involved in business activities.
- Connect with people you know, such as your health practitioners, your next-door neighbor who works at a corporation, or friends of your friends. Because chances of productive prospecting are higher when people come to you through a connection or reference.
- Selling your financial, insurance, and lending services to strangers is a difficult job and there are fewer chances of getting sales, so focus on people you may know or can get to know through your social circle.
Productive Ways to Prospect
In the old days, financial, lending and insurance advisors put themselves in front of a lead through cold calling, daily meetings, and networking events. Today, these methods are extinct because the leads make their decisions online. So, the question is how to put yourself in front of the leads?
Studies show that at least two-thirds of online B2B clients make their decision using online sources. To be visible to them and earn their trust you need the right method to prospect. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to online prospecting because every advisor and client is not the same.
In the absence of a one-size-fits-all method, every financial, insurance, and lending advisor boils down the available information and creates a plan that helps them prospect effectively. However, there are some very important tips that you need to know when putting yourself in front of the prospects:
- Get Introduced: Instead of blowing your own trumpet in your posts and cold calling your connections through messages, get introduced to them by someone else. Ask a connection who is already your client to introduce you to their connections. This will help them look at you from the perspective of a satisfied client and build trust.
- Don’t Just Sell: One of the biggest mistakes, you can make when prospecting is jumping to the point of selling your service immediately. Recognize the prospect’s problem and present them a solution. Make them reach out to you by establishing yourself as an expert.
- Follow Up: Sending follow up emails and staying connected with the prospect is crucial to get sales. Make sure that you are there to answer their questions whenever the prospect seems confused and when they are making a decision.
- Stay Connected: Staying in touch with your prospects and joining the LinkedIn discussions will help you stay updated with what’s happening in the financial world. Let your connections know that they can contact you if they need any assistance and be willing to have further discussion.
Financial, Insurance, and Lending Advisors need to up their game more than ever to prospect effectively in the digital age. Every 1 out of 10 millionaires has a LinkedIn profile which gives you a chance to rub your shoulders with the cream of the world, grow your business and make higher profits.
To your success in 2021, friends!
-- Ramzi Malas
