The most onerous task for any wealth management firm or financial advisor has to be deal sourcing. Simply put, generating consistent leads is not a simple endeavor and it's been made all the harder- or at least more complicated- in this rapidly changing Digital Age. Gone are the heyday of the cold call and the golf-course deal-making; they've been replaced by newer, better ways to enhance wealth management prospecting.
Below, we'll discuss the new financial prospecting strategies that expand upon traditional models and introduce efficiencies, from new approaches to personal relationships to Business Intelligence Software. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about the different prospecting methods.
Strategies for Wealth Management Prospecting
These days, the private equity market sees wealth management as a fertile space for investment and acquisitions. Recognizing that wealth management is a fragmented market, PE firms are beginning to focus on strategies of consolidation. Per Investment News:
There were a record 168 transactions involving registered investment advisers last year, up 22% over 2016 levels. According to the research, of the 97 acquisitions and breakaway broker transactions of $1 billion or more over the past two years, private equity money was behind 41 of the deals. There are thousands of targets because it's a highly fragmented market, and private equity investors see a lot of growth tailwind.
This private equity influence on the wealth management space has led to increased competition and has forced wealth managers and wealth management firms to readjust their prospecting methods and strategies. Such finetuning includes the following methodologies in wealth management services:
- Leveraging Social Media - New technologies provide a host of opportunities and ways to connect that otherwise would be impossible.
According to Investopedia: In another recent study of 400 U.S. financial advisors, 48% of advisors report using social media to interact with investors on a daily basis; 74% of U.S. investment advisors say social media is a useful tool in hiking assets under management, while 50% say they have "successfully used social media to convert prospects into clients." Further, 9% of investors surveyed by Accenture claim firms that fail to leverage social media will lose clients to firms that use social media to engage clients.
Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter allow you to interact with others, establish your authority, find targeted clients, and meet your financial goals.
Benefits of social media include that it:
- Allows you to generate and distribute content
- Gives you a platform to promote your brand
- Lets you join groups
- Enables you to research prospects in a highly targeted manner via faceted search and saved search
- Dinner Seminars - Somewhat similar to golf course networking but on a much larger scale, dinner seminars require a modest upfront investment in the form of wining and dining but can yield serious ROI. It allows you the opportunity to reach a much larger share of high-quality wealth management prospects in a single evening than you would otherwise be able to meet with over the course of a month.
- Referrals - Despite changes in technology and new opportunities created therein, referrals remain one of the strongest wealth management prospecting strategies. Simply put, people are more likely to trust the opinion of those they know. Therefore, it's essential that you establish an efficient and robust referral-generating process to ensure a steady stream of potential new clients. If you want this to happen, it's crucial to develop strong relationships with current clients and then incentivize them to issue referrals. This strategy can help put you in the right place so that once a founder or business owner with whom you've been connected does transact, you'll be top of mind as a wealth manager.
- Origination Platforms - These days, most companies have embraced data in order to help them measure growth, chart trends, and source deals for their financial services. Sourcescrub is one such wealth management prospecting platform that connects buy-side and sell-side interests via Private Company firmographic data on a global scale. Such technology leverages cutting-edge AI computing power and combines it with human auditing, allowing you to:
- Stay atop market trends
- Prospect new investment opportunities
- Track KPIs
- Maintain a dialogue with other investors in alternative markets
- Scrub private company data and growth metrics
- Lead Groups - Most big cities will have "lead group" composed of professionals from various industries that meet at least once per week to share high-quality leads. Due to the sheer variety of interests, there tends to be little crossover or competition, which makes it an optimal opportunity.
- Reports - One of the better ways that you can establish your authority and encourage potential investors to seek you out for your services involves sending out free reports. Whether you decide to do so via email, physical mail, or on social media, you have the opportunity to convince people that you know what you're talking about and have the know-how to grow their fortunes. By having your contact information at the bottom, you create a simple prospecting tool that works far better than a cold call.
Prospecting for Investments
Today, wealth management groups and financial advisors have been forced to adapt with the times or go the way of the dinosaurs. Fortunately, there are a host of prospecting actions you can leverage in order to separate yourself from the pack. Ready to learn more? Find out how Sourcescrub can help with effective prospecting, how to achieve data integrity and more efficient conference preparation by visiting our website or requesting a demo today.
Sources
1. Benjamin, J. Investment News. Private equity dollars pouring into wealth management. (2018).
2. O'Connell B. Investopedia. How financial advisors are leveraging social media. (2019).
3. Bill Walton Sales training. The new era of prospecting in wealth management.
