Jenine:
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us with this edition of Straight Talk. I am here with some close colleagues, Doug Orton, who runs our business development group. You have been with MFS since 2007.
Doug:
Perfect.
Jenine:
Industry since '93.
Doug:
Yes.
Jenine:
Very good. Those are my cheat sheet notes. And I have Emily Dupree, who is our national sales manager. And you have been with the firm since 2004.
Doug:
Yep.
Jenine:
Four, right?
Doug:
That's right.
Jenine:
And I am so excited because we are celebrating a birthday, 30. And it sure as heck ain't me. So 30 years of Heritage Planning. So you run the business development group. Do you want to talk a little bit about what your team does?
Doug:
Absolutely. So my team goes out and talks to advisors, talks to clients to figure out what they're concerned about, what they're trying to address. And then from that, we develop the value-add programs that we and our wholesalers can deliver to advisors or to end clients.
Jenine:
And Heritage Planning being the first, right?
Doug:
Absolutely.
Jenine:
30 years ago.
Doug:
The foundation of the whole thing.
Jenine:
And Emily, also with the field, do you leverage the value-add programs? You want to talk a little bit?
Emily:
Yeah. One of the things that we think is important is teaching the wholesalers to deliver value-add as well. It's important to know product. It's important to know what's happening in the economy. But I think having more to add value to a client, to their clients is incredibly important today. So thinking about Heritage Planning, we have all been at the firm roughly 20-ish years, but I think the concept of value-add is not new and it certainly isn't new to MFS being in the industry for 30 years. And I think it'd be interesting to share with the audience how actually that program was developed here.
Jenine:
I love the story. I really do. So 30 years ago, like many asset money managers, we did a survey. We went out and did a survey about retirement. And so the intent was to prove to advisors that their clients were not sufficiently ready to retire. But what ended up coming back was amazing. So retirement was not the number one concern. It wasn't in the top five. It actually landed at number nine of so many concerns. But what we realized was it was the start of what we call the sandwich generation. And the sandwich generation being crunched between taking care of their kids, taking care of their parents. So retirement just wasn't really on their mind. So what did we do with those results? You want to share?
Doug:
What we thought from that was sharing with advisors what the average client might be worried about doesn't really help you build your business or deepen your relationships. We wanted to give advisors a tool to figure out what each client or prospect was concerned about. And we developed the What Keeps You Up at Night? checklist. And as you look at that, you'll see that there's not really investment topics on there because it kills me to say it, but nobody wakes up at two in the morning because they're worried about the sharp ratio of their value fund. They're waking up because they're thinking, "I don't think mom can live independently anymore and I have no idea what I should do about that." And so that's what we wanted to help advisors figure out. And we think that has an incredible impact, not only on that client relationship, but helping you grow your practice, get referrals, a lot of other benefits.
Jenine:
And this checklist that actually you see here is one of our most popular materials, but correct me if I'm wrong, in that gray box, you can actually customize information that the advisor could put in there, either their information or a little note for their clients. Emily, you, before you were the national sales manager, and I know you were very passionate about our value-add programs, you used it a lot when you were a wholesaler. You want to talk about that?
Emily:
Yeah. I think that as a wholesaler, I was very interested in what are the issues that were facing financial advisors. And I think one of the biggest was the loss of information advantage when it comes to investing. You can do it yourself trading, you can go online, you can watch the news. And that was a few years ago. Think about today with AI. I mean, I could go onto ChatGPT and say, "Could you give me financial advice or could you build this investment portfolio?" And although we know it's better in the hands of a financial advisor, when a client feels like they can do it themselves, they don't necessarily want to take the advice anymore and they might not want to pay for it. So when I think about the example you gave of knowing that there are other issues that our clients are worried about, you can use that as information advantage because those are much more emotional and they're much more impactful for the client.
So thinking about Heritage Planning, we've talked about before, is I was very passionate about helping advisors lead with those higher planning topics because that is what's important to the end client and that's what sets them apart and that is something that AI can never do. And I think about when I traveled as a wholesaler and I would go in front of those top teams, they were expert at it. They were really good at figuring out what was the biggest concerns of their clients and their families, and they made sure they were there every step of the way, solving for those problems.
Jenine:
I remember actually doing a event with you where I was talking about the opportunity going after women in wealth and these advisors were going nuts recommending your office audit. You want to talk about that and share some tips?
Emily:
Yep. So a little bit different. So we also have business development programs helping you differentiate yourself. So I think there's so much choice for clients today. There's a lot of different financial advisors you could choose. And when you have choice, I think the financial services industry, it's fallen into kind of a commodity. And if you ever look up the definition of commodity, it is a good or service and the absence of value is determined by price. So good or service and the absence of value determined by price. I don't think anybody wants to be the cheapest in that definition. So other services, whether we talk about coffee chains, we talk about hotels, the ones that charge the most, they have the best experience and the best service and clients are willing to pay for it. So not only having topics to lead with like Heritage Planning, putting your parents in a nursing home, thinking about the way that you treat your clients and your prospects when they come to visit you is just as important.
So we built a program called Creating the Platinum Practice. And what I like about it is it's a good way to also bring efficiency into your practice because we train the entire team how to think about little things that they can add along the entire client journey from when they leave their home till they get to your office, till they have the meeting until they go back again. So something as simple as having a standard operating procedure of sending an email in advance of the directions to get to your office. It seems simple, but it oftentimes is not sent.
And think about that, that changes the tone of the meeting if a client gets lost or stuck in traffic or the beverage service. Most people, when I arrive, they'll just say, "What can we get you? Would you like a glass of water?" Why not have somebody on the team, maybe the person that confirms the meeting, ask, "What would you like to have during your meeting?" And imagine if you're the client, you walk in and sitting at your table, is the coffee or the diet coke you ordered that is just doing... I always say, try to do the little things in a big way and that is a total change and that really sets you apart and you're no longer a commodity.
Jenine:
I remember you making the comments that someone on the team should be the director of first impressions, which I thought was an amazing title and what an important role. So you mentioned actually a couple of the programs that we have. You want to talk about the brochure that many of your wholesalers have walking around?
Emily:
Sure, yeah. So if you want to put the brochure up. So I think being so involved with value-add for 30 years, we have continued to evolve the program and add programs really to help advisors. And there is a distinction of what advisors want to talk about when we walk in. So we want to make sure we're spending the time with them that they need and being as efficient as possible because we know financial advisors and their teams, they don't have a lot of time.
So the way we develop this brochure is we have the wholesaler really be the consultant and they can choose the path that they want to go with the advisor. So if the advisor and their team want to talk about ways to really work on business development, that Platinum Practice, maybe it's teaming, maybe it's efficiency, client segmentation, they will walk through the programs that we have there and spend the time there.
Or if the client wants to focus on what are the concerns of my clients or the bulk of them that, "I either need to get better at understanding this, maybe teaching my team, maybe it's learning social security or learning about wealth transfer", then we can spend the time there. So it goes in two different directions. If there's time and they want to do both, they can, but it's really meant to allow the wholesaler to spend a really good time being that partner. We want to be the most trusted partner to our clients in the industry, bar none.
Jenine:
I love it. Can we get the brochure back up? I just want to point out, because we talk about Edge a lot, and so this is what we mean by Edge. It's actually an acronym. So you can see in the first three buckets, efficiency, distinction, and growth. And then the last bucket is what Emily was referring to is excellent. So the first three is about the advisor's practice, and then the last is about what we can offer for clients. So just shout out to our clever marketing department for the Advisor Edge acronym. I love that brochure. Doug, you and team are in offices all the time. So what are you hearing? I mean, there's a lot of challenges out there. What are you hearing?
Doug:
So it hasn't really changed that much over the 30 years about what people are worried about. They're really worried about their families. And what we've done is then just built on depth. So going back to the What Keeps You Up at Night? checklist, one of the things, and I mentioned the, "I need to pick a nursing home or a care home for a loved one", what we found back from advisors was people saying, "Well, that's great that I've identified that issue, but where do I go from here?" So we started to build backup materials for all of those questions. So we have a Nursing Home Checklist, if you can bring that up, where it's just questions that you might want to ask a care home before you decide to put a loved one there. So as you look at the What Keeps You Up at Night? checklist, all those 27 questions, we've built resources behind that.
And then depending on the feedback we get from advisors and clients, we'll go deeper and deeper. So elder care has always been a big one, so we've added Medicare expertise to that or consulting to that as well. And then the big phase we're seeing now is a focus on true family wealth or multi-generational wealth. I think that's what's changed, that there's benefits to advisors to having a multi-generational practice, and there's a benefit to clients having multiple generations of the family using the same advisor team.
Jenine:
It's interesting. If you go back to the Nursing Home Checklist, this is exactly what Emily, you were talking about. If the way you're making your clients or prospects feel, "You help me find a facility that I can trust to care for my aging parent, I am absolutely going to pay you."
Emily:
I think clients don't always remember what you say to them. They will always remember how you made them feel.
Jenine:
Absolutely.
Emily:
Talking about family wealth, I think it's such a massive topic and it's always, when we go in, I think advisors are, they know they have to deal with it and they want to deal with it, but the how is really difficult. So I think we developed a piece to hit on this just to start the conversation. It's called the Family Map. Do you want to walk through how your team has been at least getting advisor teams a more efficient way to tackle the family wealth conversation?
Doug:
Absolutely. And I think there's really, if you want to picture just sitting down with a couple that you work with face to face, take a blank piece of paper, put their names in the center, and then just start having a conversation about their family. So if Doug and Amber, Amber's my wife, if we're your client, we go in the center and then you're going to have lines going down for Jesse, Colby and Nathan. Those are our kids. You're going to have siblings on there. You're going to have our parents if they're still with us. And there's a couple of things that I think this can do for you as an advisor. The first is they're going to share stories about their family as you build the map. So if they don't really like or trust their daughter-in-law, that's going to come up and it's going to help you build a better plan.
So from the client side, it's a better, more in-depth experience. From the advisor side, one of the things I'd recommend doing is think about your top households. I generally believe in the 80/20 rule in businesses, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients. I don't think it fits in our industry. I think it's more like 10% of your clients drive 80 or 90% of your revenue. And so if you think about your top 20 households, the ones that really matter to the profitability of your practice, could you build a map like that without looking at your CRM? And that helps you be more efficient of, "Of my top 20 households, these six or seven, I'm nowhere near being the family financial advisor." That way you know where to focus. And then we can help you with the questions and the conversations of how do you identify which of the adult children are the biggest opportunity and the biggest threat, and then where do you go from there?
Jenine:
You know what I love about these ideas is that every time we share some of the ideas, they're not heavy lifting. So the Family Financial Map, I mean, it's really simple. And so a lot of the ideas in particular when you're talking about sending a map to the office, they're actually actionable but easy. And you don't find that a lot, I think, in our industry.
Doug:
And I think the difference between a practice that's been growing and has hit a plateau and those practices that just keep growing, a lot of times it's nothing dramatic. It's focusing on the details that matter to the client. It's about having efficient standard operating procedures. It's those little tweaks that can take a practice from pretty good to steadily growing and great.
Jenine:
Well, I think about, as you know, I go out to eat way too much, but the restaurants we tend to go back to are the ones who know our name, they know our order, they're already, they see us, they're prepared. It's just those-
Emily:
Do the little things in a big way.
Jenine:
... They do the little things in a big way. I love it. So how are we evolving?
Doug:
So what I-
Jenine:
Because we're 30, but we want to keep aging gracefully, of course.
Doug:
... You stop growing at 30, the next 70 years aren't that great. So we're continuing to do what we've been doing, which is we don't sit here in Boston and just make up what we think the next trend is. We sit down with advisors and we talk to them about their concerns. And then we also interview top producing teams to figure out what they're doing that's a little different. And so some of the things that we're working on is we're finding a lot of financial advisors who started out, they just wanted to be an advisor, and now all of a sudden they find themselves essentially the CEO of a business and they don't know how they got there or where to go next.
So we're developing more services around how do you not work on your business or in your business, but what are you worried about? Is it hiring? Is it retention, whatever that is? So I think teaming is a big focus. And then we're always looking at what the next big topic is. So if something comes up that's timely, a new tax law or whatever, some of our programs aren't permanent. We'll talk about something for six months and then it'll fade away. But I think the core is we're always looking at what are those opportunities for an advisor to deepen the relationship that they have with their existing clients? How do they gather more assets from the clients that they already have? What do they do in terms of retaining their assets? And really that's what guides our new program development.
Jenine:
Got it. Anything that you're hearing out there that's top of mind?
Emily:
I would say the most requested for our wholesalers to deliver social security all the time.
Jenine:
People love our guides.
Emily:
They love the guide.
Jenine:
Our social security guides.
Emily:
And I think the biggest thing around social security is it's helpful in general. You should know that topic because all clients are going to go through that program, but it's also helpful for the financial advisor because you really can't help a client choose social security until you see all of their retirement assets. So it's a great way to get a full picture from a client that you might not know has a second or third advisor. So I think advisors sometimes miss that concept, that it's a great growth tool as well. I would also say anything-
Jenine:
That's a great point because most people just look at it that social security is not a big part of the...
Emily:
"My clients are very wealthy. They don't need to worry about it." We actually think of it as, well, you probably need to know to do a plan where all their investmental assets are.
Jenine:
That's great.
Emily:
So that's helpful. Cybersecurity I think is going to get worse and worse and worse. And as much as we are on top of the topic talking about scams, I would say the next week a new one is happening and then a new one is happening. So that's heavily requested right now as well.
Jenine:
Yep, I could see that. I mean, it's really unfortunate in particular with clients who are aging. So that one I can definitely see. You want to take some questions?
Emily:
Yeah.
Jenine:
You guys ready?
Doug:
Sounds good to me.
Emily:
Sounds good.
Jenine:
We polled, we got a lot and we will follow up to try to answer. There were a lot of questions, so thank you. But we did pull the top ones. Zachary from Colorado, what are some of the most efficient ways to prospect for higher income individuals?
Doug:
What I would say is looking inside your own practice is the easiest way to do it because that's the first problem is, "Where do I find these people and how do I get a warm introduction?" So I'm going to argue for your clients who are 65, 70, 75 year old, if you can figure out which of their adult children is making good money decisions, that's the easiest place to find your next high net worth prospect. And that alpha child is incredibly dangerous to your practice if you don't get them to believe in what they do. Because what we're seeing is after that first spouse passes away, the survivor starts to rely on one of the kids for more and more support, and we see the assets flow to that adult child's financial advisor well before the second death. So you can find new assets and protect the assets that you have.
Jenine:
So that's family wealth. And then the other one I'm thinking about is how to host a high net worth-
Doug:
High net worth family meeting.
Jenine:
... family meeting to find that alpha child.
Doug:
Absolutely. So however you want to tackle it, the way a lot of advisors engage with us is they'll describe what they're struggling with. And you don't have to go through all 12 programs-
Jenine:
Sure.
Doug:
... we have, but we can then figure out which one fits your needs.
Jenine:
Love it. Great. All right. Renita from Maryland, what are some best practices for customizing client services at different life stages? How do you stay adaptable to changing client needs and market conditions while maintaining these four pillars?
Emily:
Sure. So the Heritage Planning Program, the What Keeps You Up at Night, that's more of a needs based program. You have to find the need and then provide the solution by asking the client the question. We have a number of other programs, one of which is called Milestone Marketing, which is age-based. So we start in the 60s, but you can implement any age-based contact program in your practice, and I highly recommend it. So what you would do is you'd figure out exact things that a client would go through when they turn a particular age that provides you a reason to reach out and call. And then you would just sort your client base by age and on a monthly basis, whichever client fell into that particular milestone, you have an automatic outreach.
It's incredibly efficient, whether you're a sole practitioner or whether you're a large team, you are getting all of those client touches, which again are not market or product related, right? They're very impactful. And if you're the person calling them to tell them about something they don't know, that could also bring on more clients because then they're going to tell their friends who are probably of a similar age, that you just told them something important that they need to do now. So for us, it's called Milestone Marketing, but our wholesalers are also trained to help advisors develop their own age-based content exactly to that question.
Jenine:
I'm thinking to your point, our start at 50, but we all know at age 18, everybody should get a healthcare directive for their child. So there are different milestones.
Emily:
My Son just turned 15 and I signed up for driver's ed. I almost died.
Doug:
Well That's a scary process.
Jenine:
Been there. Well, just had one there, so far so good, knock on wood. All right. Taylor from South Dakota, please speak to staff member growth once you surpass a simple one advisor, one assistant model. What have you found is the most efficient method to scale with your next hire?
Doug:
One of the things that I can tell you what is the most inefficient might be where to start, where we find that people who hire carbon copies of themselves, you don't get a lot of benefit from that. But looking at what maybe you're not good at or what you don't like to do and hiring to fill that need is a great way to start building efficiency. And then what a lot of advisors struggle with going from a sole practitioner to bringing on staff is learning how to delegate and do that effectively is a great way to build efficiency as well.
Jenine:
That's to your point of these teams that are growing. We are getting these questions a lot and a lot is making sure you maximize the efficiency because I know a lot of teams just want to grow, grow, grow, and then they keep hiring people similar to themselves and that causes pain for the support staff and-
Doug:
Absolutely.
Jenine:
... then inefficiencies.
Doug:
Because if you focus on growth by just hiring advisors, but not hiring the support staff at the same time, we've all seen examples, not even in our industry, but across anything where you grow too fast and everything goes bad.
Jenine:
Todd from Minnesota, how to generate leads effectively digitally.
Emily:
LinkedIn. I know it's been around forever, but I would probably say it's... I mean, you can use the free version for a while. You can also pay out for premium. I think it's one of the most underutilized prospecting systems out there, and it's actually very user-friendly. You just have to know the prompts. And once the prompts are set, you can create a subscription feed for yourself that you are notified constantly of the exact client type you were looking for. You can set it up for weekly, for monthly. I keep saying we have a program, but we do. I think the best way to work with MFS is when you meet with your wholesaler is tell them what you're looking for, and then we can navigate you to the program. But LinkedIn prospecting is, again, another program that our wholesalers, our business development team, they're trained to do because that's how you can grow. It's really important.
Jenine:
Yeah, that's great. And I'm going to hit the next three really quickly. Pam from Florida is telling us what she needs, how to create a niche market?
Doug:
That's a great one. And I think what a lot of advisors can benefit from is sitting down and looking at their existing business, and you might already be in a niche. And that's the biggest piece of it, is trying to force yourself into a niche because it's high wealth or whatever that you're not a part of can be very, very difficult. But if you find that you already have four clients who are anesthesiologists, that's the way to start. And we can help with the language of having conversations with those clients to get them to make introductions to other people like them.
Jenine:
To your point, we have a program.
Emily:
Well, the other way I go about that too is where are you in your own community? So that's in your practice.
Jenine:
Absolutely.
Emily:
You can also think about yourself in your own community, write those things down. You may be trafficking in a niche and not even realize it.
Jenine:
I love it. Frederico from Florida, assuming everyone in today's connected society is playing at the top of the game, what can our team do different to separate from today's high average?
Emily:
So the first thing I would say is don't assume everybody is playing at the top of the game. I would assume people are relatively average. I would say the top teams that keep going higher, and these are things we've talked about. They're very consistent. They are doing just the little things. It's focusing on the little things and not trying to overhaul your practice every year, make dramatic changes, trying to stay ahead of a trend. It's thinking about small things that you can repeat every year. But the big thing is when you're growing throughout that process, you are spending significant time training the people that are coming up as part of your team, and making sure they have the same buy-in that you do to keep that level of service and experience going far beyond when you pass that practice on.
Jenine:
Great tips. And we are definitely close to time. I love this name, Mitzi from Virginia, and I wanted to get to her question. Do you know Mitzi from Virginia, you wholesale Virginia?
Emily:
I hope. I'm going to reach out to Mitzi after this since we-
Jenine:
And we can answer-
Emily:
... cover Virginia.
Jenine:
... her question. And for all those, we will get back to you. So we talked about a lot. We talked about a lot. And so there are a lot in the console to download. Hopefully people definitely grab the Advisor Edge brochure and learn more about our programs, Heritage Planning. Oh, look at that. Give Yourself the EDGE, so you can scan the QR code right there. But I think most importantly, as Emily said, reach out to our wholesalers and they can help whatever your needs are to see which program works best.
This was fabulous and such a great conversation. I love it. But if you want to have a deeper, more intense call, I suggest you join, not me, but our third party, I think it's Signum, I think it is, that we have to talk about what's happening in the Middle East. So that is a Wednesday at 10 o'clock. I'm sure our marketing department already hit your inbox with an invite. There will be more, but that is Wednesday at 10 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. And thank you so much-
Emily:
Thank you.
Jenine:
... for joining us. I appreciate it. And hopefully soon the snow will melt.
Doug:
Fingers crossed.
Jenine:
That's what we're going to say from Boston Massachusetts.
Emily:
From Boston, Massachusetts.
Jenine:
All right. You want to say goodbye?
Emily:
Take care.
Jenine:
Bye.
Doug:
Bye.
Jenine:
Thank you.
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