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The total wealth of high-income households in the U.S. is predicted to more than double by 2020, rising to $87 trillion—and the need for savvy, motivated financial planners to manage this money is going to rise accordingly.
Are you ready to capitalize on this growth and take your financial services practice to the next level? Whether you're new to wealth management or a seasoned pro, The Million-Dollar Financial Services Practice will help you build your business, expand your pool of high-end clients, and increase the number of products and services each client uses.
Author David J. Mullen, Jr.—a former managing director at Merrill Lynch, whose advisor training program is famous in the industry—provides everything you need to build a million-dollar practice. It's all here: templates, scripts, letters, and Market Action Plans that will help you target your niche market and turn prospects into clients.
Taking a prescriptive and practical approach, Mullen lays out the fundamental requirements of a successful financial services practice, and also shows how the human touch makes all the difference in this industry. You'll learn about the five characteristics of million-dollar producers, pick up essential time-management techniques that will boost your productivity, plus get expert advice on:
• Setting and reaching goals by breaking them down into manageable and realistic parts
• Leveraging existing clients to gain new ones
• Identifying your "natural? markets
• Developing and retaining a loyal client base built on trust and communication
This second edition is bursting with new information and updates, including a chapter on using social media to acquire new, affluent clients and assets, valuable tips on using "alumni marketing,? and new strategies for attracting successful Realtors as clients. An expanded section on motivation will help you pinpoint the personal goals behind your desire to succeed, and then show you how to use those drivers to push yourself and your business onward and upward.
With these skills and strategies in hand, you'll be able to successfully grow your business to a million-dollar practice and reap the rewards of the exploding wealth management market.
David J. Mullen, Jr. recently retired as a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch, where he personally hired, trained, and managed over 500 financial advisors. His advisor pro?gram has had a consistent success rate of twice the industry average, and his methods have been adopted by many managers and advisors firm wide. He has worked directly with over 100 individual million-dollar and multimillion-dollar financial advisors. Mullen is also the founding partner of Altius Learning (www.altiuslearning.com), a training company specializing in the financial services industry, and the author of The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor.
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Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ A BOOK THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR CAREER.
Building a million-dollar financial services practice is not complicated,
but I'm not going to pretend that it is easy. If it were, there would be a lot
more financial advisors making millions. In the thirty-two years I have been
in the business, I have seen hundreds of people fail to make it past the first
two years and few who have reached the million-dollar level.Yet those who
reach or exceed $1 million in business have one of the best jobs imaginable.
The autonomy and income of, and the excitement experienced by, milliondollar
and multimillion-dollar producers are unparalleled.
There aremany books and training programs that claimto help you build
your financial services practice. This book is different, however, because it
gives you step-by-step instructions for carrying out a proven, comprehensive,
tactical process that will make your practice more successful.
The Million-Dollar Financial Services Practice covers every aspect of a
financial advisor's job, from prospecting to client service. No matter where
you are in your career, it will give you all the tools you need to build your
financial services practice to a million dollars and beyond—including templates,
scripts, contact plans, lists, tasks, marketing plans, letters, and
resources, each of which is integrated into the overall process, and it will
show you when to use them, how to use them, and how often to use them.
The process I present here has for thirty-two years guided financial advisors,
whether working at large firms or on their own, and it will do the
same for you.
The book also addresses each of the three distinct stages of an advisor's
career. Stage one is building the foundation.This is done during the first two
years. During this stage, the advisor should spend 70 percent of his time on
marketing, with the objective of getting a minimum of eight appointments
with new prospects a week and building a "practice?of fifty client relationships
and a prospect pipeline of one hundred.
Stage two runs from the advisor's third year through the fifth year of
service. Now she must balance client service with marketing.The number of
client relationships should be increased to one hundred, and the client relationships
and the one hundred prospects should be upgraded at a higher
level of affluence compared to your existing average client. The advisor
needs to spend at least 50 percent of her time on marketing—on clientleveraging
activities, on niche marketing techniques, and on attempting to
identify and acquire all her existing clients' assets. At this stage, the advisor
should have at least four appointments per week with new prospects.
Stage three is beyond five years. The advisor should continue to cull
through his client list, retaining only the top one hundred client relationships
and focusing on attracting increasingly affluent clients. A minimum of
fifty prospects should be in the active pipeline. At this stage, the advisor
should spend a minimum of 25 percent of his time marketing, and he needs
to see at least one new prospect per week.
The road to a million-dollar practice is a series of steps that build on one
another. The new advisor needs to understand that building the right foundation
greatly increases the chances of creating a million-dollar practice and
greatly reduces the time required to get there.An advisor can commit to the
million-dollar road at any stage of her career, but the fastest and easiest way
is to take the proper steps at the beginning. As the practice grows, the fundamentals
remain the same, but the allocation of time changes.
HOW THIS BOOK IS STRUCTURED
This book is divided into three parts and an Appendix.
Part 1,"The Foundation,?comprises Chapters 1 through 8. Of particular
interest to new advisors, it outlines the first things you need to do on the
pathway to building a million-dollar practice; it shows you how to build the
foundation you need for a million-dollar business. But I encourage any advisor,
no matter how much experience she has, to review the information in
this section. The importance of motivation (Chapter 3) and the marketing
process (Chapters 3 through 7) outlined in this part of the book applies to
experienced advisors as well as to new ones.
Part 2,"Taking It to the Next Level,?includes Chapters 9 through 19. If
you are a more experienced advisor, it will be particularly useful. You will
find everything you need to do once you have built the proper foundation.
If you are a new advisor, these chapters will be helpful because they provide
a vision for how to reach a million-dollar practice once you have built the
foundation of your business.
Part 3, "Market Action Plans,? contains Chapters 20 through 34. It
includes more than fifty approaches to fifteen different markets. Each market
action plan gives you all the tools you need to succeed in that market:
when the action plan is appropriate, how to implement the plan, sample
phone scripts and letters, and case studies.
At the end of the book, the Appendix provides you with resources for
finding names and directories for each market.
WHAT IS NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION
Lots of things have changed since I wrote this book in 2007. Back then,most
of us in the industry had no idea of the financial turmoil that would occur a
year later. Since the book was published in 2008, the job of a financial services
professional has been challenging as the financial markets have struggled.
This doesn't mean that you can't create a million-dollar practice, it just
means that you need to be on top of the changes in our industry and learn
how to adjust your business to keep up with them.
In this new edition, I've thoroughly updated the business model to meet
these changing times. I've interviewed dozens of million-dollar practitioners
and learned from both their successes and failures, especially in terms of
how they have weathered the storm. In general, I've found that the milliondollar
practices established before the recession have continued to thrive,
which gives me great optimism for the future of this industry.
I've also taken a close look at every chapter and adjusted the content
accordingly, including snippets of my interviews and their firsthand
responses to my questions. In addition, I've culled my list of distinct markets
and updated my targets for potential clients to include different types of
professionals and referral networks, Realtors, and alumni marketing.
New ideas on how to set and reach new targets are included as well in
this edition. The most important of these is the implementation of an effective
social media marketing plan. I've found that social media—especially
LinkedIn—are important for every financial advisor to master. While the
Internet has become an indispensable tool for all of us, the ability to navigate
and increase the reach of your marketing efforts will have a positive
impact on the growth of your practice.
Finally, I've taken a much deeper look into the wealth-management
process,which I believe must be the cornerstone to any million-dollar financial
services practice. Chapter 10 has become a must-read for every practitioner,
whether you have been in business for five months or fifteen years.
What's more, the earlier you can adopt it, the more successful you can
become.
I hope you find this industry as compelling as I do. The most successful
financial advisors have made a 100 percent commitment to this business. To
them, it's more than a job, it's their career.With that attitude and the lessons
in this book, you're off to the best start imaginable. Together, we can set the
stage for you to create a long-term, million-dollar practice that will be both
challenging and enjoyable for years to come. Let's get started.
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