Most advisors I work with need to reorganize their sales and prospecting process. The truth is that many financial planners begin their practice by signing on people with a relatively ad-hoc workflow. They tailor their sales and prospect follow-up process to each new client, and it works- for a period of time. When you don’t have many clients, tailoring your sales experience to each individual family you sign on is time-consuming, but not the end of the world.

However, as your business starts to scale, having a sales pipeline and prospect process that’s hyper-custom, or all-over-the-place becomes unsustainable. Unfortunately, many advisors don’t realize this, and their ability to sell and sign new clients suffers as a result. The best way to head off this problem is to create a tried and true process for every single lead or prospect you sell to.

What Should You Be Tracking?

Your first step is to organize your sales pipeline. If you’re unable to follow up efficiently with your prospective clients, you have no way of tracking your close rate or scaling your business. Tracking your pipeline will be dependent on how you organize your firm’s services. For example, some advisors have two separate pipelines – one for new business, and another for existing clients who need updated plans. You need to track:

• When a person converts from a lead (they are on your email list) to a prospect (they book a call and are qualified). In my mind, a person becomes a “prospect” as soon as you have a call booked, or an in-person conversation occurs.

• When a prospect converts to a client.

• The quoted project or engagement fee. This is huge! When you can see all of the pending fee amounts that are available, it helps you remember what you quoted, and helps you stay organized when onboarding.

• Inactive v. Active prospects. Your inactive list is a good candidate for drip email campaigns, and you can also run the list during slow seasons to drum up additional business.

Once you have determined what you’re tracking, you can start to leverage automation to organize your follow-ups even further.

Automation For The Win

The easiest way to automate follow-up reminders by creating a workflow. If you have a process for following up with prospects, you’re already ahead of the game. All you need to do is plug it into a workflow in your CRM so that you receive scheduled reminders to stay on track. This is more efficient than setting follow-up tasks for yourself because your workflow already has the ability to add multiple steps. For example, if you want to follow up three times over the next six months, build out a pipeline with those specifications in your CRM.

Another way you can automate is by organizing a drip campaign. Your drip campaign can either be an ongoing newsletter that promotes your blog content and timely financial information, or you can build a more organized drip campaign based on the lifecycle of your prospects. You can also include new leads in this drip campaign, to encourage them to convert to prospects. Need ideas for growing your opt-in list? Check out this blog post.

Another area you can automate your pipeline is by creating email templates for every step in the sales process. These templates help you build a framework for following up efficiently and effectively. Your templates should be geared toward common responses or questions from active prospects. For example, your email templates could include:

• Initial prospect follow-up outlining services and conversation points

• Covering FAQs

• Requesting prospects to book a follow-up call (if this is part of your process)

• Long-term follow-ups (sharing a favorite blog post or article to follow-up casually a few weeks after your initial call)

Where Can You Organize

Your Sales Pipeline?

Most CRM’s have sales pipelines that you can customize. Wealthbox and Redtail call this the “opportunities” feature. This is a great way to track your pending business and keep your business organized using one tool. Email marketing systems can also help you organize and categorize the type of prospects you have – which is fantastic for ongoing drip marketing. I help many advisors create workflows in their CRM to organize their prospecting and sales processes. However, I also recommend teaming up with a sales and/or a marketing consultant to create a strategy for lead generation and conversion.