Why I’ve Become a Financial Educator—Again

Editor’s note: In this edition of What’s Working Now, an AdvisorRADIO feature in which Horsesmouth members tell us about recent success they have had running and growing their businesses, we hear from advisor Victor Connor, who grows his business by offering financial education workshops that bring in prospects who become clients and stay with him. You can hear the full interview by clicking the audio file below. The following article includes edited excerpts of Victor’s comments.

I’m sort of a walking, living history of the whole profession. I started in the business in 1977 at Merrill Lynch. I left there to become a manager at E.F. Hutton, then moved to Prudential Securities, which was at that time Bache Halsey Stuart Shields. After a decade there, I went to Smith Barney until the 2003 crash when the debate between investment banking versus retail raged. I decided to look at the independent side, and so moved over to Raymond James in 2003. I’ve been with them since then, and absolutely love it. I finally decided that I work for my clients, not the firm.

‘Why aren’t you doing seminars anymore?’

I’ve built my business by doing seminars all throughout my career. They’ve always worked to get me good exposure. For years I wrote my own seminars, then I learned it’s not writing the seminar that makes you effective, it’s just being there. You need good material, but the big thing is really being seen in front of people. That developed over time, especially as I taught at two community colleges and a four-year college. Becoming an educator was natural.

I think being an educator is an important part of the selling process. It allows you to explain your investment strategy and also get your clients to understand what they’re doing and why. I translate “brokerese” into English and take complicated processes and make them simpler. My credo is that if you can’t understand what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

After 40 years, people often ask me how I built my business. I answered that I did seminars. And so they would ask if I am still doing seminars. When I said “No,” they asked, “Why not?” The answer is that they were so successful, I quit doing them. That realization hit me like a 2x4 upside the head. I thought, “Wait a minute, you stopped because they were so successful? What’s wrong with you?”

I recently brought in a new graduate as a junior broker, knowing that I’ll retire in 10 to 15 years. I decided that I need to ramp up my business again, and if seminars worked before, they’d probably work again. I needed to get “re-lit.”

I’ve been a member of Savvy Social Security Planning for Boomers since 2013 and found the material extremely helpful for clients, but I never actually put on any workshops. So I saw the Horsesmouth marketing seminar being held in Atlanta and decided to give it a try and see what they had to say. When I saw all the different products, it was like getting hit by a 2x4 again! I thought, “I need to revitalize my business and here’s everything!” The products are well done, but what I really love is that they all come with a FINRA letter. The only thing I have to change on Horsesmouth products is putting my own disclaimer on the bottom.

Local marketing

In the past I marketed the old-fashioned way with “feeder seminars,” a lunch or a dinner. In Boca Raton, Fla., where my business is located, you can have lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday just by going to seminars. I told my staff that if a client began to make a reservation with the question, “What are you serving?,” they were to tell them we were full. It began to get too expensive—$5,000–$7,000 for mailers plus $20 a person for the meal. That’s why I stepped away, and I’m taking a different approach this time.

Right now I pick one subject—Cybersecurity, Medicare, Social Security—and have four seminars every other week. I do lunch and dinner on Wednesday, then again on Saturday, then skip a week and do it again with a different topic. I’ve got that planned all the way through the year. I’ll knock off in December, then go full blast again in January.

I still feed people, but I don’t want them coming just for the food. What I’ve found works well is going to Subway the day before and ordering some sandwich platters, which serve 8–10 people each. It’s easy but still makes a nice presentation. I also have a little cooler that I fill with ice, soda cans, and water. It’s very casual but still a friendly atmosphere. A lunch seminar is from 12–1:30, and a dinner 6–7:30. There are usually 10–15 people, with fewer on a Saturday.

My city, Wellington, has a community center designed with classrooms that I rent out for seminars during the week. I pay $100 during the day and $80 at night. On Saturdays, I use my office building, which has a seminar room that holds up to 40 people, and a conference room that holds 12. I haven’t yet had a Saturday with enough people to require the seminar space.

My main forms of advertising are the local newspaper and Facebook. A community paper gives you a bigger bang for the buck than a city newspaper. I pay about $300 for each full-color ad, which is not expensive. The ad runs every week and on weeks I’m not having a seminar, I have an ad that says I am a financial educator and lists the topics I talk about. By using a community paper, I’m not paying to reach somebody who’s 30 miles away.

Facebook is also very targeted. For about four or five days before the event, I do a boosted post. It costs about $30 or $40 a day, and reaches literally thousands of people. This isn’t a plug for Facebook, but it works well and zeroes in on your target area.

Visibility is the best marketing tool

I also do email blasts and send copies of the ad to all of my prospects, clients, and connections. Consistency is a very important part of marketing. You can’t give one seminar and then quit giving them, even if you repeat the same topic. It’s for visibility. I had one workshop where a participant came up and said, “Wow, I was really surprised. I expected this to be a sales event.” The only selling I do is giving the name of my firm, my background, and why I’m doing this. Then the participant asked if I would be willing to come and speak to another group. The answer is “Of course I will!” Have mouth, will travel! If you have 10 or more people, I’m there. Like I said, consistency and visibility.

In that case it was a property appraisers association. But there are all sorts of professional associations all over the country. Lots of them have baby boomers as members. I used to be the president of Wellington Chamber of Commerce and we had a luncheon with a speaker every month. I learned that if your job is to get speakers, it’s hard. Organizations are always looking for speakers.

One thing that has been helpful is putting together a take-home kit for the attendees. It has, for example, the “Baby Boomer’s Guide to Social Security,” and some articles. But the most effective is Horsesmouth’s “50 Things: What a Financial Advisor Does for You” handout. I tell people, “You don’t have to look at this right now, but if you want to know what we do, look at it later.” It gives them all sorts of ideas, subconsciously.

Talk about all topics

I like to have a variety of topics so that I can rotate them from week to week. And the beauty of that is that you can change them out depending on the news. I was planning to do the IRA seminar next week, but I’ve doubled up on cybersecurity because of recent events.

Savvy Social Security goes very well and gets me an even larger audience than I expected. I targeted people 50 and up but didn’t expect to get anyone under 62. But I actually had a number of people who were more than a few years away from retirement and yet wanted to start getting ideas together. That’s my pipeline. There’s an old expression that prospecting is like shaving. If you don’t do it every day, you start to look like a bum.

I’m even more shocked that Savvy Medicare has gotten the best response so far. I teamed up with a local health insurance specialist who only sells health insurance, which I don’t sell at all—I only sell long-term care. I get up at the beginning and say my usual bit, then tell people, “I believe if you’re going to do something, you must do it very well, so I’ve brought in a specialist today.” Then he does the bulk of the material on health care and I finish with long-term care insurance. We’ve ended up with more appointments and sold some lucrative policies.

The Savvy Cybersecurity has been a goldmine, a very timely issue. I tell people, “Are you breathing? Do you have money? Then you’ve been hacked.” People ask me why I do cybersecurity seminars, since I don’t get anything out of it. I tell them that my goal is to be seen in the community. But also, I’ve gotten smarter about my own security measures, like freezing my credit. Going over the seminar materials taught me a lot.

I also do a retirement planning workshop, which is a bit of a combination of several Horsesmouth products. The idea of retirement overwhelms people, and not just the financial aspect. It’s also a social issue of adjusting to life without work. When I meet with people, instead of talking about money, I ask, “What do you want to do in retirement? What are your dreams?” If you get people talking about themselves, you become a great conversationalist. Just let them do all the talking. It opens up a lot of doors and gives them a comfort factor. They like that I care for them and listen to their story rather than just say, “I think you should buy this, this, and this, and that’s why.” I don’t even look at their statements until I’ve talked to them and gone through all the questions on our checklist.

Prior to this, I wasn’t particularly well versed on Social Security or Medicare or cybersecurity. But I’ve really enjoyed the Horsesmouth training webinars that you can watch at any time. And as I tell my junior advisor, if you want to learn about something and give a seminar, don’t say “I’m going to learn about it and then I’m going to schedule a seminar.” You schedule the seminar now and by the time it comes, you’ll have learned the material. It forces you to learn. Otherwise, your “learning period” can just drag on forever.

Generational planning

I used to give an estate planning seminar with two attorneys at least once a month. You don’t see many estate planning seminars anymore, but there’s still a need for them. I’d say a large part of my job is just getting a client’s stuff organized. They’ve got stuff here and there and don’t really even know what they have in many cases.

On a side note, advisors really need to start relationships with their clients’ kids. My practice is in south Florida, and the average age of my client is “deceased”! Right now, more than half of my book are heirs, and if you don’t begin a relationship with the kids while mom and dad are alive, when they die, the money’s out the door. They’ve got their own lawyer, own advisor, own stock broker, everything. The best referral you can ever get is, “Dad said you were really good. He died and you were great with Mom. I really appreciate that. Can you help me?” With technology, everything is so much easier. And, to be honest, people are lazy, and moving money is a hassle, so if their parents liked you and they like you, money just stays. For me, I can also tell people that if they come to Florida, they can see Mickey Mouse and Victor Connor and write it off.

Attendees into clients

I believe in two approaches to prospecting: If you grab them by the heart, their minds and wallet will follow, and God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. I’m a great conversationalist because I don’t talk. I ask people, “Now that you’re not working, if money wasn’t an issue, what do you like to do the most?” When you get them to unleash personal stories, you’re not a salesman, you’re a friend. I tell them that more than likely I won’t have a recommendation at the first meeting because I need to know them as people first. I don’t know if it’s my clients or me who are long-winded, but I usually end up with 90-minute appointments.

I do a lot of listening, and it’s only in the last 15 or 20 minutes that I ask to see their statements and tax returns. I tell them that I couldn’t prepare anything because I needed to know about them and their goals, but now that I know I can get back to them in about a week. We schedule a second meeting.

I put their information into our firm’s financial planning suite, and it comes out with 30 or 40 pages of reports. You can’t go over that volume of paper with anyone, so I put together a two-page executive summary. Every once in a while I’ll get someone who wants to go through all the numbers, but not usually. It’s like buying a new piece of equipment. Do you read the owner’s manual? No, you go to the quick-start menu.

At the second meeting I make specific recommendations, which often lead to a close. Usually with women, it requires a third meeting. That’s how they like to shop. A man says, “This is what I want. We’ll take it.” Women don’t want to be rushed. They want to think on it longer. So I tell them to look at it, sleep on it, and we’ll talk again. It works well, as long as you have someone from the office call in a few days. Don’t leave it open ended—people will forget to call back.

We have little swans with orange ribbons around their necks that we give to clients, usually women. I tell them to write down S-W-A-N. They think it’s strange but they do it. Then I tell them to write “Sleep Well At Night,” because that is part of what I’m going to give them. They love the swan. I had people call for another one after the dog ate it or something. Part of the deal is economics, but part of it is making people feel comfortable.

Final thoughts

My advice for anyone who wants to position themselves as a financial educator is to be consistent no matter what. Don’t get discouraged whether you have low volumes or high volumes. The key is consistency, to be out there and be seen.