Compliance
and the Letters Library®
By Shauna Moyes, WebEx Administrator & Compliance Liaison
Great
news regarding compliance! BGM has established agreements with more marketing
review departments than ever before. For many of our Gorillas, this means
getting your compliance department to approve BGM letters has never been
easier.
As BGM's Compliance Liaison, it has been my goal to establish a good working relationship with as many corporate compliance departments as possible. BGM is currently working with 19 separate companies, and relations are being established with even more as this article is written.
If your compliance department appears on the list in this article, here is what you need to do when you want to send a BGM letter:
- Check the Letters Library to see if your marketing review department has approved the letter you want to use. If a company-specific version already exists, that is the version you should use.
- If an approved version of the letter does not exist for your company, all you need to do is send the full name of the letter to me at shaunam@billgood.net and I'll take it from there. (That's probably the easiest compliance process many of you have used in years!)
I will send your request to my contact in your corporate marketing review department. Pieces are usually approved within 24-36 hours. When the approval comes back, I will make a version available in the Library with all your compliance information already in the document. You'll see it in the footnotes of the letter in "hidden text" so it doesn't print out for your Clients. The compliance approval code and expiration date, if applicable, also appears on the download page in the Letters Library.
Be sure that you always use your company-approved version of any letter if it is available. And if a compliance agreement has been made with your marketing review department, always send your requests for approvals to me--not directly to corporate headquarters. You'll be asked to "submit them to Shauna" anyway, so it will just save time if you send them directly to me.
BGM continues to work to establish contact with all marketing review departments. If your company does not appear on the list, and you know someone in your corporate marketing review department I can speak with, please feel free to email that information to me and I'll do everything possible to establish a relationship with your compliance department.
When a new compliance agreement is reached with any company, Gorillas there will receive a letter confirming the agreement and explaining the procedures for submitting letters for approval. Be sure that every member of your team is aware of these procedures and that they are followed.
Here is the list of companies Bill Good Marketing® has established compliance agreements with:
- American General Securities
- AIG
- First Allied
- HR Block Financial Services
- ING
- InterSecurities, Inc.
- Janney Montgomery Scott (some restrictions)
- Legg Mason
- LPL Financial
- PrimeVest Financial
- ProEquities
- Prudential Securities/Wachovia
- Raymond James
- RBC Dain Rauscher
- Securities America, Inc.
- SII Securities
- Tower Square Securities
- WFG Securities of Canada
- Woodbury Financial Services, Inc.
If you have any questions about compliance, please direct them specifically to me, Shauna Moyes, as I am the one who negotiates the agreements. Other BGM staff members may be able to give you general information, but there could be some specifics you need to be aware of that only I may know. If we all work together, we can make the compliance process quick and easy!
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What
Is Marketing?
By Matt Hicken, Director of Marketing Support
The concept of marketing is comprised of two key ideas:
- The Goal of Marketing: Define a limited market and seek to dominate it totally.
- Sales: The process by which you increase your Clients' or Prospects' desire to own your product or service over their desire to keep their money or give it to your competition.
To accomplish your personal marketing goals, just follow the principle of "AIDA":
TTENTION
NTEREST
ESIRE
CTION
Let's look at each part of AIDA in detail.
Attention
Every piece of marketing that you use to dominate your market has to create attention first. If you don't catch the intended audience's attention, your letters (or other marketing pieces) will go straight into the wastebasket. To really catch someone's attention, you have to target his or her greed, fear or curiosity. If you can capture your audience's attention, you are already doing better than some of your competition.
Interest
Once you have your audience's attention, you have to start getting them interested in your products or services. This really comes down to targeting your marketing to the right people. Make sure that the product or service you are advertising applies to everyone within your niche. You might be doing a little better than some of your competition now, but to stay ahead, you have to go on to the next step.
Desire
I don't know how many of you watched the Super Bowl commercials in an analytical way, but I did. All of them caught my attention, and some sparked my interest, but very few increased my desire to own the advertised product or service over the desire to keep my money. Being able to complete that last step is where you will leave your competition behind.
There are many ways to increase your audience's desire to buy from you. Three keys to this kind of strategic marketing are image, packaging and build-up.
- IMAGE: You have to look like a professional advisory team. Through your advertising, or even just your name, you must show your niche market that you are a team that exists to help people reach their financial goals. (For those of you going to our 19th Marketing Conference, you will get a great explanation of how to do this from industry leader Peter Montoya.)
- PACKAGING: Make sure that no matter what media that you use to capture your audience, it appears professional and it will increase the desire of your market to work with you rather than your competition. This is one area we can help you with. Just send us a copy of any marketing piece you are unsure of or want a second opinion on, and we will look it over and make sure it will help increase the desire to own your product or service.
- BUILD-UP: Once you catch your audience's interest, if you haven't increased their desire enough, continue to drip on them with information to build up to bringing them into the office. You can slowly increase that desire over time.
Action
Once your market has a strong desire to own your product or service, it is just a matter of calling the buyers to action. Let them know it is time to come and meet with you. Tell them to respond immediately via phone or reply card. You must let your market know they have to do something about their desire.
If you keep AIDA in mind every time you sit down to work on your marketing plan, you will be able to dominate your market and beat out your competition.
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Editor's
Note: The Old Rules Still Apply
From
time to time, we republish classic articles from previous issues of the
Gorilla Times. This month, we feature a piece by former Gorilla-turned-retiree-turned
BGM Consultant-turned retiree again, Rod Roth. Rod was a million-dollar
producer for years before selling his book and retiring. Bill coaxed Rod
from retirement and into consulting for BGM, where he provided valuable
advice and direction for many clients. Rod has since hung up his Consultant
hat in favor of surfing in his hometown in Florida, but his legend and influence
live on. We hope you enjoy this reprint--it is just as useful today as when
it was originally written.
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Three
Phases of Gorilla Growth
by Rod Roth, BGM Senior Consultant
Most
new Gorillas go home from the Gorilla Training Seminar® in a
state of total shock. The information overload is stunning. I remember one
Gorilla admitting later that he broke down in tears when his wife picked
him up at the airport.
I was very fortunate to have my Service Assistant, Tammy, with me when we trained on the original DOS-based System. What I failed to assimilate at our training session (probably 85%), she was able to reconstruct and get us started. Eventually, with lots of ups and downs along the way, we put the System to work, and I was rewarded with nine of the most productive, stress-free, enjoyable years of my career.
For most new Gorillas, adapting to the System requires a lot of change in both work habits and mindset. The latter involves understanding the value of patiently building a pipeline of qualified Prospects, then nurturing that pipeline over time in order to convert many of the Prospects into Clients.
There is a cycle involved in "getting it right" and then reaping the rewards. If you can anticipate this cycle and not be discouraged by the earlier stages of it, I am sure you will have a much better chance of long-term success. After reflecting on my own experience as well as that of the many Gorillas I've consulted with, I've identified three phases of development you should expect to go through to succeed with the System.
Phase One: Adapting to the System
Phase One is where you learn to do everything you're supposed to do: update every contact, drip consistently, build a team with the right kind of person for each job, etc. In this phase, you experiment with lead-generating campaigns to find the ones that work best for you. You learn to run a campaign by the book.
After the immediate benefits you get from running the first Find the Money Campaign, there's usually a little letdown. Nothing seems to be happening and revenues aren't going up. We have to work through that, get your old Prospect list weeded down to the ones that are interested in hearing from you, and start generating new leads to work with.
If you do seminars, you may also get immediate business, but the biggest benefit will come in qualifying those who don't come in immediately for future interest, and then working with them over time. Most of the business potential from seminars is down the road.
The two principal resources for getting through Phase One are Marketing Support and the 110% Gorilla Chart. The BGM Consultants are there to guide you through to completion of the Chart.
The biggest downfall I've noted in this process is if the RR delegates working with the MS Consultant entirely to the Sales Assistant. There is often a failure to fully connect, and the RR loses track of what is important. Generally, this is the beginning of deterioration in System use.
Otherwise, we eventually get all of the Phase One pieces in place. We then transition into Phase Two.
Phase Two: Flying with the System
WOW! Life is beautiful! The team functions as a unit. The pipeline is flowing with an unbelievable number of new accounts. Clients are very happy about the way they are being treated. Referrals seem to come from everywhere. Revenues go through the roof. Production goals that were once a dream are being blown out of the water. The producer hardly has time to go to the restroom between appointments. And most amazing of all--THERE IS NO STRESS!
It took my team two years to struggle through Phase One. It was painful. I'm not a fast learner. But was it ever worth it! We then went on a five-year tear in Phase Two, and I was able to exceed all of my long-held personal goals.
Phase Two is where all Gorillas would like to spend their whole careers. But inevitably, something happens to derail the process: a campaign loses its effectiveness, a new staff member doesn't work out, or there is a big change in the behavior of the financial markets.
What happens next is a period of analyzing, rethinking and testing while the team searches for the key to smoothing out the process. This searching period is Phase Three.
Phase Three: Retuning the System
With really successful Gorillas, the most common reason for getting into Phase Three is that business has grown to the point where the team has maxed out its resources; the number of Clients to be taken care of puts a strain on everybody, and marketing gets bogged down. Typically, this happens at around $1,000,000 in production. Sometimes it happens sooner.
At this point, many Gorillas around the country have brought in a BGM Consultant to help create a new organizational chart and a new process for the workflow.
Regardless of their production level, I believe that most teams could benefit from a careful examination of their business plan. Our industry is experiencing some of the most radical changes I have seen in my 31 years in the business. Much of this change is characterized by shrinking profit margins and commission rates. Bill Good has pointed out elsewhere that there are some parts of our business that have so little profit we can't afford to be in them.
One thing is certain: We need to get the absolute most out of the System if we want to grow our businesses profitably!
Phase One Again?
Many of my consultations are with Gorillas who have had the System for some time and have never gotten out of Phase One.
If you feel this is the case with your practice--or if you have wondered for any reason whether a personal visit from a BGM Consultant would be worthwhile--call our Marketing Support Receptionist at 1-800-678-1480 x1250 and ask to arrange a 20-minute conference call to discuss your options. We're more than happy to help, and it's free!
There is no better time than right now to get your business in tip-top shape.
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Planning
Your Monthly Drip
By Brian Taylor, Start-Up Specialist
Whether
you are a brand-new Gorilla or have been a Gorilla for years, the Monthly
Drip Campaign is the best way to both effectively and consistently
communicate with your Clients and Prospects.
I'm sure you have heard of "The Five Critical Elements of Success" for using the System. The second critical element is: All Clients and Prospects receive a message each month on a subject that is of interest to them.
At first, this may seem to be an overwhelming task. You may think, "Okay, Brian . . . I have X number of Clients and Y number of Prospects. How on Earth am I supposed to target messages to these folks every month and still do everything else I need to do to keep my business going?"
That is a fair question. Here is a fair answer.
We have created a grid that divides the year into months, with separate sections for planning Client and Prospect campaigns and mailings. If you click here, you can see what a completed grid might look like. Click here to download a blank grid to use in your own planning.
The purpose of the grid is to give you a place to jot down the types of messages you want to send to your Clients and Prospects. We suggest that you use this grid in conjunction with your business plan and campaign strategy for the coming year. Many Gorillas begin by writing down Monthly Drip ideas for their Clients and then move on to ideas for their Prospects.
As you plan your strategy, we recommend that you send the following types of letters at different times of the year:
Service Letters.
The letter and questionnaire you send in the Find the Money Campaign and Client report card letters such as "Service-Report Card-Focus on Quality" are prime examples of Service Letters. Service Letters create an active exchange of information between you and your Clients. We recommend that you send two Service Letters per year. In addition, there is a series of Service Letters referred to as Handholding Letters that are used to convey a sense of confidence in a volatile market, to educate Clients on news-making market trends, and to generate business during catastrophic times. We also strongly recommend that you send a Statement Review letter to all Clients at least once a year. This kind of letter generates great results and further demonstrates your competence as Sole Provider of financial services.
Values Letters.
These letters are used to celebrate patriotic holidays such as Independence Day or Canada Day and family-oriented holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and so forth. Values Letters are designed to convey a sense of community and recognition of seasonal events in your Clients' lives. The $50 Million Wilson Campaign letters are also in this category. We recommend that you send at least two Values Letters per year.
Targeted Letters.
There are three additional types of targeted letters used in the Monthly Drip--Product, Concept and Education. A Product Letter targets a specific investment position (e.g. stocks, bonds, mutual funds). A Concept Letter targets a broader idea or strategy (e.g. tax-free investments, growth strategies, safe investment choices). An Education Letter takes a generalized look at the financial realm (e.g. planning for retirement, how to save money for a child's college fund).
Now that you have an idea of some of the types of letters available to you, you can start to "put the tiles in the mosaic." Use the grid to help you look at the big picture--don't worry about getting everything perfect on your first try. Create two or three (or more, if needed) versions of the grid and compare them to your business plan and the campaigns you want to run during the year.
Once you have fleshed out your grid, you can focus on one month of mailings at a time. As part of the Monthly Drip, you and your team will meet once a month to discuss setting up the letters for the upcoming month. The Monthly Drip Campaign Order Form will assist you in determining what type of letter to use in your monthly mailings and the specific week of the month the letter will be mailed out. In addition, you will determine the type of action you want your Clients and Prospects to take once they have read the letter. Do you want them to call you or send back a coupon? Will you call them a week after they receive the letter, or are you simply sending a message of good will that requires no follow-up?
As you review the final version of your grid, you may begin to wonder how you are going to write all the letters you want to send. Worry not! You have a vast repository of letters available to you via BGM's online Letters Library®, and we invite you to modify those letters to match your needs (we have found that it's much easier to rewrite than to write!).
Let me leave you with a final thought: the greatest complaint we have in the industry is "I never hear from my Rep!" By consistently sending targeted messages to your Clients and Prospects every month, you will find new muh-ney, discover and promptly address service issues, and promote referrals by the barrelful.
Happy planning!
What's
Working Out There?
By John Tillotson, Campaign Specialist
Bob
and Jim lived in Montana, and they really enjoyed fishing. However, Bob
was not very good and continually had to ask Jim what he needed to do to
improve his fishing skills.
One day, Bob leaned over to Jim and asked, "Hey, Jim . . . what's working out there?"
Jim replied, "Pink Powerbait."
Since Bob knew Jim knew a lot about fishing, he accepted that as a truthful answer and set out to catch some fish. He left for a new stream that he hadn't been to before, and after eight hours without even a bite, he returned home, quite frustrated with his lack of success, and gave Jim a call to tell him what had happened.
"Where did you go fishing?" Jim asked.
"The Muskogee River," Bob replied.
"Well, Powerbait doesn't work in the river--it only works on lake fish. Use a fly next time, and you'll have better luck."
Bob felt a little better about himself now that he knew Powerbait didn't work in the river, so the next morning, he went back to the same spot and tried using a fly. He spent all day and worked really hard to catch fish using the fly, but he ended up with the same result as before. Thoroughly frustrated, he called Jim and told him what had happened. This time, Jim asked him what kind of fishing rod he was using. When Bob said he was using the same rod he had used for the last twenty years (a lake rod, not a fly rod), Jim advised, "Go get a fly rod and return to the river, and you'll have better luck."
Bob did as he was told, but yet again, he didn't get a single bite. Late that night, Jim received another call from his friend. This time, Bob was irate. He told Jim how hard he had worked, how much he wanted to catch a fish, and how no matter what he did, nothing Jim told him to do was working. He was ready to give up fishing altogether.
Jim decided to make one last attempt to help Bob. He talked with Bob for awhile, finding out what kind of fish Bob wanted to catch and helping him plan exactly what fly to use, how to set it up, and where to go. It turned out that Bob wanted to catch a marlin, a fish found only in the ocean. When Bob found out this important detail, he was much happier. He booked a tour boat to take him out on the ocean, and he quickly caught a nice big marlin. He had simply been looking in the wrong place, with the wrong bait, and with the wrong pole. After he got the right combination of variables, he got just what he was looking for.
Well, this long story helps illustrate a very important concept in marketing: You may need to go through a lot of ideas and frustration before you find the combination of variables that produces the results you are looking for with a campaign.
If you're wondering what is working out there, be sure to consider the possibility that your area is unique. To be certain that something will work in your area, complete a sufficient market test and evaluate the results, then change one campaign variable and try it again.
The variables that you have control over that can directly affect a campaign are list, objective, style, offer, message, sound and numbers.
Let's take a moment to define some important terms:
Campaign: A campaign is a series of steps taken in a given market that produces predictable results. This definition is important because you are looking for a recipe that, when followed, will produce the same outcome each time you use it. The difficult part is figuring out the recipe that works best in your area.
List: This should be your starting point in campaign development. When you decide what group of people you want to work with, you will be able to more accurately tailor your message to that group (i.e., if you want to direct a campaign to retirees, focus on the benefits retirees are looking for). Doing this allows your campaign to be more effective because the target is narrower and it will hit closer to home with the group you want. Targeting a specific list is about 40% of your campaign!
Objective: Your objective is the level of "hotness" a lead must attain in order to be turned over to a salesperson. Do Prospects need to jump up and down in excitement before you are willing to speak with them? How much money must they have? Take time to define an objective before moving on in your campaign development. It may seem like a small step, but it is very important. For example, if the lead must be red-hot before you speak with him/her, you should expect to get a lower response rate with a higher quality of lead.
Style: Style is the medium or combination of media used to produce a lead. The more effort you put into this variable, the higher your response rate will be. If you send a letter and wait for people to call or respond by mail, your response will not be as high as if you are a little more aggressive and follow the letter with a phone call. An even higher response will come from a campaign that prescribes a "watch for it" call beforehand to let people know that a letter or invitation is on the way. Get creative.
Offer: The offer is the end that you stress in your campaign--what someone might enjoy as a result of buying your product or service. As a general rule, a product offer gets better results than a service offer. Should you choose to offer a service, make certain that you are very specific about what people will receive as a benefit and be sure that the offer is congruent with the needs of your audience/list. Try offering an investment product, a special report on a fund or information on an investing concept. Whatever you choose, I repeat: make certain that the offer is congruent with the needs of your audience.
Message: This is what you actually say in your calls and letters . . . the words, the script. Choose your words wisely! If you are not great with words, find someone who is, choose a letter or script from the Letters Library®, and rewrite some of it if necessary (since it is easier to rewrite than it is to write).
Sound: This is, quite simply, how you sound. Remember your three identities--expert financial advisor, caring individual, good citizen--and be professional.
Numbers: The number of letters you have sent or phone calls you have made that constitute an accurate market test is crucial. In a Mail Only campaign, 1500-2000 letters are enough to tell you if your idea worked or not. It takes just an hour on the phone cold calling to find out if your idea will hold up. If you haven't sent enough letters or made enough phone calls, it will be difficult to determine whether your campaign is a success in the making or a potential flop.
When Bob's variables didn't line up correctly, the result was no fish. There are many variables at work in your prospecting efforts. The right combination of those variables might be different in your area than in another, and it will definitely take some testing to find the perfect combination. When you find it, and your tested campaign turns out to be just what you were looking for, roll it out completely and keep doing more of what you were doing. Good luck!
Hiring
a Sales Assistant
By Tony Parmenter, Start-up Specialist
My
clients often tell me, "Without a doubt, the hardest piece of the System
to put in place is hiring good sales support staff." Neither
you nor anyone else can hire a competent Sales Assistant based only on an
interview, and if you have ever tried hiring an SA, you know how true this
is. Adding staff members--and especially the Sales Assistant--is an issue
that many people fret about. "When should I hire an SA?" and "Who
is the right person for the job?" and "How can I afford an SA?"
are legitimate concerns that I hope to shed a little light on here.
The first concern to
address is When to hire an SA.
When you alone
can no longer produce the leads you need to set your necessary number of
appointments and at the same time hold those appointments to bring in your
target monthly assets, it is time to add someone else. The duty of a Sales
Assistant is to "provide the RR with qualified and interested Clients
and Prospects on a daily basis," so your SA should manage all prospecting.
Many RRs will start with a part-time Cold Caller or a Non-Registered Caller.
This person may become your full-time SA, or you may fill that position
with a more qualified person later on. Whatever the case, you must bring
on a Sales Assistant when you are no longer able to steer the sales ship
alone.
The second concern is
Who to hire as SA.
Some RRs will
bring in an intern or let the firm give them a trainee who is trying to
build his/her own business. Though these are easy resources for hiring an
SA, they are not the best possible candidates. A major disadvantage of relying
on trainees or interns is that they are completely temporary and not as
motivated to build your business. In fact, since interns are only
in your office on a temporary basis by definition (and even if you argue
that most staff members are only there temporarily), the situation of interns
prevents them from ever being as efficient as a specifically dedicated member
of your team.
There are many resources we recommend using to locate a good SA. Websites like www.closers.net or www.monster.com are a great starting place. You can also look at the local university for people in the business programs. And there is always the "X factor," where a person you find in a random location just has that "certain something." Some examples: One RR found an SA in the girl who served him coffee and pie at a local restaurant, and another hired a woman who was a youth leader in his local church group while being a stay-at-home mom. These people can be found just about anywhere, but they are not people you can usually search out; they just have something special that knocks you off your feet.
Once you have answered
When and Who, it's time to think about compensation--the How.
One of the critical
factors in getting and keeping a good SA is how you compensate him/her.
To compensate an SA fairly, we recommend a two-part plan made up of a base
salary and bonuses.
A salary will be different in every area for every person, but let's use an example of a $2000-per-month base salary. The salary should be adequate to pay the SA's bills, but small enough to motivate him/her to seek the bonuses.
The bonus schedule should not start until two things are taken care of. First, the SA has to be bringing in enough new revenue per month to pay his/her own salary. For example: Let's say Mr. Smith works at a wirehouse and has a 60/40 payout with about $35K in monthly production. That would mean his SA has to bring in enough new business to produce $40K per month to pay the cost of his/her salary. The second item to be completed before allowing bonuses is getting your SA licensed. It is important to have a licensed SA so that he/she can do all Client and Prospect profiling, saving you time in the appointments being generated for you.
Once these two things are in place, begin the bonus schedule. From $40K to $50K, allow your SA to make 2% of the growth over the base. At $50K, that's $200 per month. That may seem like small potatoes to you, but to your SA, it's probably a car payment or half of a month's rent. From $50K to $60K, increase the percentage to .25%--2.25% of growth over the $40K base. Continue to increase the percentage of the payout .25% for every tier of growth until you get to $83,333 in monthly gross production--the million-dollar annual production level--at which point your SA should be getting 3% of the growth over the base. That comes to about $1300 a month (about $15K a year), which, when added to salary, comes to about $40K a year. We have noted that this is fair market value for an SA on a team at $1,000,000.
As I mentioned before, this is merely an example. Fortunately, we have a set formula you can use to calculate the ideal for your area and your situation. If you are in the market for an SA, please visit the Document Library on our website. The Hiring Process folder has many resources to assist you in hiring staff, including the SA Compensation Formula and the SA Hiring Pack. These tools will help you successfully navigate the process of hiring and starting a Sales Assistant.
©
Copyright 2004 by Bill Good.
All rights Reserved.