Andrew Gluck: Good afternoon and
welcome to the MarketingSmart Webinar Series. Thank you for
joining us this Wednesday, November 11, 2009. This is a webinar about www.advisorproducts.com. This is our
monthly webinar series, MarketingSmart, where we talk about ways that
you can market your practice and communicate with your clients much more
effectively.
Today we’ve got a number of things that we’re going to
tell you about: exchanging web links, creating brochures, and integrating your
client communications with your CRM – having those two work in tandem. We’re
going to have the brain trust here at www.advisorproducts.com
addressing all of you.
I see a lot of www.advisorproducts.com
friends and clients and we really appreciate your attending this. Thank you.
I just want to remind you that the other webinar series
that we do, Financial Advisor Webinar Series,
which has been going on for over a year now and has just been doing great –
it’s cranking along and this week we’re going to have Joanne Day from Trumpet,
Inc., talking about Going Paperless 2.0. This is really how to go paperless
properly.
A lot of advisors over the past five or ten years have
gone paperless, but quite honestly, a lot of it was done in a very rinky-dink
fashion. We’re going to address ways to really take it to the next level
whether you’re doing it the first time, or if you’re already set up and want to
do it better.
The following week, we’re going to have an attorney from Proskauer
Rose LLP, and he’s an expert in data security privacy law and we will be
talking about the privacy laws as they pertain to financial advisors. There is
new legislation recently passed in Massachusetts that will effect privacy rules
for advisors probably nationwide, from what I can piece together so far. It’s
going to be very influential, this law. This is a nationwide trend, what’s
going on in Massachusetts. We’re going to talk about things like what you need
to do to ensure that you’re not going to be in violation of the Massachusetts
statute that really is very specific about what small businesses need to do in
terms of personally identifiable information that you store on your systems.
Please join us for that webinar.
Then we’re going to follow up with another one about
secure hardware systems. It’s a related topic. I didn’t want to just explain
the challenge and the problem of data security and privacy without giving you
some solutions, and we’re going to have some of the manufacturers and product
managers at the manufacturers – some of the largest companies in the hardware
business – that make hard drives. I expect Seagate’s going to do a
presentation, among others, and talk about encryptions, your hardware systems.
I’m really nerdy, I suppose, and I’m looking forward to that one.
I want to remind everybody that we started a new website
called www.advisorsforadvisors.com
and it’s really great that so many advisors are coming in now and rating
applications that they use. Over here this is the www.advisorsforadvisors.com
homepage. What you can see in this content box here, these are reviews of
software packages, so what we’re seeing is that many advisors now are coming
in, reviewing their applications, and sharing their knowledge. The wisdom of
the crowd is just so powerful. You can see that. Ten (10) users, for
instance, have rated this application, www.redtailtechnology.com. It’s
gotten an overall rating of 3.2. You can see all the individual ratings: the
good, the bad, and the ugly, as well as the average of all those ratings. So
ten (10) advisors have now rated RedTail and you can see all of their ratings
over here.
Another really cool thing is that you can see all of the
applications, features by feature, side by side. You can compare different CRM
systems. So if you want to compare Morningstar Office with the CRM system that
you get at www.redtailtechnology.com,
you can do that. We’re seeing additional applications come in all the time.
The vast majority of companies in the industry have inserted their
specifications into this and I’m thrilled with that.
The other thing with www.advisorsforadvisors.com is
that we have premium content for you now. We have the 2010 RIA Compliance
Calendar. We’re giving away, also three processes designed by Blane Warrene,
an Operations Specialist, and we have replays of over 50 Financial Advisor
Webinars that we’ve done over the past year. It’s really great content, so
please check it out on www.advisorsforadvisors.com.
Today, we’re doing to hear from Steve Gordonson who will
speak about how financial advisors can integrate their CRM system with their
website to serve clients better.
Then, Jim Voss will talk about a new online system for
financial advisors to get referrals from other professionals. Creating a
professional referral network is critical to a financial advisor practice and
we have a tool that in built into advisors websites to help you create a
referral network of attorneys, accountants, CPAs, and many other professionals.
This is a great way for advisors to build their local marketing presence.
Finally, Barry Weinstein, our sales VP, will talk about
financial advisor brochures. The brochures that we create are printed digitally
and come with marketing copy. Barry will give you details about these
brochures.
What I’d like to do now is turn over the reins to my
partner, Steve Gordonson, who is going to talk about the Client Portal
integration with EZ-Data SmartOffice. EZ-Data is perhaps one of the most
complete CRM systems available to financial advisors. We’ve been working on
this integration for many months.
www.ezdata.com was recently purchased for over $50 million
and it was purchased by www.ebix.com. This
is a system that has a lot of breadth.
What I’d like to do is, Steve, is I’ll turn the reins over
to you.
Steve Gordonson: Thanks, Andy. Hi, my name is
Steve Gordonson, like Andy told you. I’m Vice President of Technology here at www.advisorproducts.com. We’re going
to talk about an implemented integration with EZ-Data SmartOffice and Personal
Client Portals.
For those of you who don’t know what the Personal Client
Portals are, they are a dedicated client communication system that provides
personalized websites for your clients. Some of the benefits of those Personal
Client Portals are:
You can customize the content that your client sees by
setting up a profile so you can show them financial planning stories that we
provide that are tuned to their particular interests.
You can write a blog for them that will be visible to your
clients in their portals.
Clients can also customize their own content by adding RSS
Feeds, and we have a large number of RSS Feeds that they can choose from.
In addition, we’ve also integrated an online document
vault so that you can place documents in there as specific to them, portfolio
reports, or other types of documents.
But a really key feature of the Personal Client Portal is
that you can let clients see their personal information from financial
planning, portfolio reporting and CRM systems that you use in your practice.
And the last one, integrating with CRM systems, is what
we’re going to be talking about today.
Before I go on, if you’re interested in Personal Client
Portals, we have information on our website or you could give Barry Weinstein,
our VP of Sales, a call to find out more.
Personal Client Portals currently has integrations with www.redtailtechnology, a well-known CRM
system for advisors, and www.XLR8online.com,
maybe a slightly less well-known, but as Andy said, EZ-Data SmartOffice is our
new integration and it’s a very, very, very robust system that’s widely used in
the insurance industry. I think they have something like 125,000 users using
EZ-Data.
One of the issues that many applications that advisors use
is that they lack a way for the clients to get in and see their information in
those applications, so what we’ve done is use Personal Client Portals as a hub
to be able to plug in different applications and let clients see their personal
data there.
What we’ve done here is, one of the great things about the
CRM Personal Client Portal integration is that this allows advisors to involve
the clients directly in the workflow that they have as something we call
“straight through” processing of client tasks. One of the things you can do is
show clients completed to-dos – work that you’ve done for them.
Your clients probably don’t know all the work that you do
for them. Showing them the completed work via these to-dos in the platform
really puts the value you’re giving them front and center. The other thing
that you can do – and this is the straight through processing part – is assign
to-dos to clients right out of the CRM system. So you go into the CRM system,
you create a task, you set a certain setting, and it will show up in the client
portals, and I’ll be showing you examples of that in just a moment.
You can also show clients what you’re working on so they
know the tasks and things you’re doing for them. In addition, the integration
with CRM allows you and the client to exchange comments and notes about each
one of those tasks, helping them get done more quickly. So let’s go on and
take a look at some of these screenshots.
Here is a screenshot of a Personal Client Portal and what
you see in front of you is a list of completed to-dos and then you see the
advisor’s completed more than a dozen things and it’s showing right there in
front of the client what’s been done. It also shows the to-dos that the client
has performed as part of that straight through processing.
In EZ-Data, you log in and you go to a particular client
and here we’re showing a list of the tasks that we already have in EZ-Data. If
we wanted to create a new one, we’d click on that little cross there and it
would pop up this form. So we see here, this one is we’re telling the client
to go fund his 529 Plan – make a deposit – and over here you see under the Sub
Type, it says “For Client.” That’s the way that you tell the system that this
is a particular to-do for the client to do.
At the bottom, if we didn’t check that, you’d see visible
to client, and that would just allow the client to see a particular task that
you’re working on for him.
Now, in the portal, this client sees this web part here
with three tabs on it. It has My To-Dos, which is the client-assigned
to-dos, and you see there’s that “Fund Education Plan.” There are Advisor
To-Dos, and then Completed To-Do tab.
Now if you click into that “Fund Education,” you’d see
that there’s another page that shows the to-do, and below it, a place to add
comments so that both you and the client can be exchanging information or
questions about any particular comment. The client can also take a look and
see which tasks you are performing for him and get a feeling for the workload
that you are doing.
Now one of the tough things is, “How do I get my clients
into the portals?” and we’ve made that really easy to do. In the BackOffice of
the portal, you log in. You click on EZ-Data Integration and click on a
button called Map Portals, and you’ll be presented with a screen. This
function goes out into EZ-Data and grabs your client list and presents it to
you so that it’s easy to pick which clients you want to put into the system.
If you wanted to create a portal, you could do it right from here. You don’t
have to do it in a different place, so it really streamlines the process for
getting the clients from EZ-Data into the portal. This is true for our other
CRM integrations as well.
Now after you’ve mapped your clients and said, “Yes, I
want these two clients,” it gives you a chance to check the data further just
to make sure that yes, indeed, this is the client and it maps to the correct
portal, just to double check. Then there’s a way to see which clients you’ve
already mapped and put into the system.
So that’s a brief overview of the integration with EZ-Data
and Personal
Client Portals. Again, if you’re interested to find out more, you can go
to our website – we have more information in a video – or please call Barry
Weinsten, VP of Sales.
Andrew Gluck: Steve, before you get off
this topic, I just want to cover two other points. One is, in all fairness to
EZ-Data, we did have a bullet point that said, “Lack of Client Portal.”
EZ-Data actually does offer a client portal of its own, in all fairness to
them, and I just want to mention that. They’re not doing with the client
portal what we’re doing. It’s just that all CRM systems, Financial Planning
systems, and Portfolio Reporting systems, they’re all creating their own client
portals.
What we’re doing is we’re dedicated to creating – that’s
all we do is create client communication systems – and we’re dedicated to a
client portal that pulls in data from all the different applications, plus
includes our content and a lot of the other things that we’re doing such as
turning content into videos and things of that sort. So, our client portal is
very elaborate, but I don’t want to give the impression that EZ-Data doesn’t
make a client portal. They actually do.
One other thing that I want to cover is that we also
integrated our content with the EZ-Data system so you can administer
distribution of an e-Newsletter from www.advisorproducts.com,
using www.advisorproducts.com
content. You can administer that through EZ-Data – I’m explaining that
awkwardly. Maybe you can just elaborate on how that works.
Steve Gordonson: Sure. EZ-Data has an email
distribution system so that you can group clients and communicate with clients
and prospects and what www.advisorproduct.com
has is an e-Newsletter system where you can take our content and create
customized e-Newsletters. So what we’ve done is basically tease our stories so
that when somebody clicks on them, it takes them to your website and shows the
articles.
What we’ve done is created a way to get those
e-Newsletters into EZ-Data so they can be distributed through the EZ-Data
system and it’s a really nice way to be able to leverage our content through
EZ-Data.
Andrew Gluck: Yeah, I mean, we have a
system for managing the distribution of email newsletters, and it’s really
good, but EZ-Data does that far better, quite honestly. That’s why these
integrations are so important because you want to get best of breed from all
the different vendors and that’s really what we’re facilitating there.
Steve, was there anything else? Do you want to finish up,
or are you going to hand it over?
Steve Gordonson: There’s just a couple of
other points. One thing I did skip around talking about EZ-Data – and let me
just go back to the slide here – If you notice, in this slide, you see there’s
an Assign To-Dos To My Advisor link here on this slide. What that
allows the client to do, is actually insert a task directly into EZ-Data. So,
if the client has something that he wants the advisor to do for him, he can do
that.
Now of course, you might say, “Well, I don’t want my
clients to just stick things in there. Maybe I want them to just tell me when
they want one, or maybe I don’t want that to happen at all,” we have a control
panel for that also in our BackOffice that lets you select either clients can
assign to-dos and they show up in SmartOffice tasks,, client can request
to-dos. Requests show up as alerts, or of course, you can turn that feature
altogether.
On another note, we have some other news. About two weeks
ago, we started upgrading our servers and I’m not sure if you noticed, but at
least we have here, that the speed of response on your websites in the BackOffice
has really remarkably improved.
The reason why we did that is we have a policy of
replacing our equipment on a regular basis. Some vendors don’t do that, but we
do now and so over the coming months, we’ll be going over all of our systems
and replacing servers, so you should see improvements in reliability and speed
across the board.
One of the nice things is by implementing this policy,
we’re always buying the latest technology, newest operating systems. So like
for example, in the case of our web server, for you tech heads, these servers
now have Dual x Quad Core Processors on them. That makes them really fast and
adds the amount of disk space that we have so that we can store more
information for you. So that’s something we hope you enjoy – this new policy that
we’ve instituted.
Andrew Gluck: Okay, thank you for that,
Steve. That’s great. I guess you’re going to turn it over to Jim Voss now,
and Jim is the Operations Director over at www.advisorproducts.com and he is
going to talk about Advisor
Products Alliance Builder. Jim has got the flu and he’s still here with us
today. He’s got two little boys and they’re Petri dishes, of course. So he’s
joining us – he’s actually at his house now, and he’s joining us to give us
this webinar even though he’s been under the weather, and we appreciate that.
Welcome, Jim.
Jim Voss: Well thank you,
Andy. Before I get into my slides about Advisor
Products Alliance Builder, I’d like to give a big thank you to all the
veterans out there as well as all those currently serving in Armed Forces.
So today I’m going to be talking about a new type of page
that we have available for our website customers – both template websites and
custom websites – that allows you to post a list of links on your website for
various purposes. It’s called the Advisor
Products Alliance Builder.
This list is basically a categorized listing of links that
you’ve approved to appear on your website. You can more than one of these
pages if you so desire. The example I’m showing here is titled “Local Partners,”
so you can refer your clients to associated services within your area – CPAs,
Estate Planners, etc. By doing this, you’re adding more value to your services
by recommending trusted professionals in your vicinity. Advisor
Products Alliance Builder is an excellent way for financial advisors to
build a referral network.
On the page, as you see, below the list of links is a
button request a link. So if you have referral partners or even other
financial planners in different geographic regions that you want to list on
this page, you can click that button and then are presented with a form where
they fill in a Title and Description and URL of the link as well as selecting
the category (which you control as well), and they enter a reciprocal link for
you to check if you are using this for SEO purposes. With the contact name and
email, this person requesting a link will receive an email, as well as you,
when this form is submitted, and we have a captcha here at the bottom to
prevent spam bots from flooding you with requests.
Andrew Gluck: Jim.
Jim Voss: Yes.
Andrew Gluck: A couple of questions.
First of all, you used the term “SEO”. I just want to make sure that people
know that’s Search Engine Optimization.
Jim Voss: Yes, I was
going to get to that.
Andrew Gluck: I just want to make sure
that people know that, and then you called that a “captcha.” Do you want to just
explain what that is?
Jim Voss: Sure. You’ve
probably seen them on many websites – the little image towards the bottom of
the form here that has letters, numbers, and sometimes they’re obscured by some
image in the background. The technical term for that is “captcha,” and it’s
meant to prevent computer programs from automatically filling in these forms
with spam, basically, and flooding you with requests. It’s difficult for
programs to enter in the correct code for these captchas.
Once a link is submitted on your Advisor
Products Alliance Builder page, you have a BackOffice control of the text
at the top of the list of links, below it, as well as the text above and below
this form here, and there’s a confirmation message that appears when the form
is submitted – again, which you have control over.
We’ve provided some thoughtful defaults for these, but you
can go ahead and feel free to change those to suit your style and your firm.
You will see here the links that appeared on the page on
the website itself – and you’ll see another one, Weinstein & Company,
Attorneys at Law, which has not been approved – with an approve and reject
link in it. If you want to review it, you can click on the name of the link
and you can see the description as well as the reciprocal link for you to
check.
Once approved, the submitter will receive another email
indicating as such, and the link will appear on the site in the category
selected.
In addition to the controls shown here, this page type
works with our compliance engine for those of you working under a broker
dealer, for estate planners, or other attorneys. Another reason is, often
these types of financial advisor link exchanges are reciprocal, and he’ll have
links from other websites to yours, as further avenues for prospects to find
you.
The third reason is, as mentioned earlier, an external
link helps advisors in your search engine rankings. Your ranking is determined
by your relevant and importance to the search phrase used. Part of the
calculation of your importance and your relevance, is the number of sites that
link to your site using the keywords that are being searched for.
So if you have CPA firm with a similar type of link page
that says “Financial Planner” or “Wealth Manager” or whatnot, and has a link to
your website that will have some improvement on your search rank.
If you’d like to add the Advisor
Products Alliance Builder page to your www.advisorproducts.com website, you
can do so in the BackOffice by adding a page to your site map and selecting the
Alliance Links Page. If you have a custom website, you may need to contact the
Service Department, or you can contact our Service Department if you’d like
help or if you’d like for us to do it for you.
You can reach those folks at service@advisorproducts.com, or
by using the Service Request form in BackOffice. Thank you again.
Andrew Gluck: Jim, a couple of
questions for you.
Jim Voss: Yes.
Andrew Gluck: I just want to make sure
that everybody understands we were asked to do this, right? Because I think it
was a lot of NAPFA members were interested in linking with each other. Isn’t
that the origin of this?
Jim Voss: Yeah, we heard
through the grapevine through some of our customers that are NAPFA members,
there was a discussion on their forums about improving search rankings by
exchanging links in this manner, so we always like to listen to our customers’
feedback and provide what’s wanted. So we implemented this to make it easy to
facilitate that type of link exchange.
Andrew Gluck: And just to be really
clear, so anybody that’s going to your website who maybe is interesting in
exchanging a link with you, can request being linked to you. The benefit of
that is that having more links to your website. The more links you have going
to your website is called link popularity. That raises your search engine
rankings and that’s really what this is aimed at. This is really aimed at
helping you with our natural search ranking. It’s different from pay per
click. It’s really aimed at helping you with your natural search engine
ranking by having you link to other professionals that you work with, and they
link to you. And because they’re linking to you, that’s going to put your site
a little bit higher, hopefully, in the search engines.
Jim Voss: I just thought I’d
mention one more thing, if I could, Andy.
Andrew Gluck: Please.
Jim Voss: Some search engines
can view particular incarnations of this type of behavior as attempts to game
the system, so I’d encourage you not to name this page, Link Exchange. I’d
encourage you to name it something like “Local Partners” or “Helpful Resources”
or something to that effect, as doing this incorrectly can have a negative
impact on your rankings.
Andrew Gluck: Any other tips on
problems that you could get into by gaming the system, as you say? I think
specifically Google will penalize you if you don’t do this correctly, right?
Jim Voss: That’s right.
Google is very forthcoming about what not to do. If you search through their
help, they’ll point out no-nos in their eyes. Having a link exchange page in
the form that they view as gaming the system is really just one person creating
many websites that link to each other for no purpose other than improving
search engine rankings. Google is trying to present users with results
relevant to their search requests and that type of behavior is viewed as
undesirable.
Andrew Gluck: One thing I want to
mention is that I wrote a blog about the Advisor
Products Alliance Builder page and you can read that
Okay, I think you’re still the
presenter, if you want to turn it over to Barry. Barry Weinstein is our Vice
President of Sales and Marketing. Barry is going to be giving us some ideas
about creating brochures, one of our popular products.
I just want to mention that at the end of this
presentation, Barry’s going to be talking about an offer for brochures. We are
going to be providing a $100 discount for attendees of this webinar who mention
this webinar when they call us up about a brochure. Barry, take it away
please.
Barry Weinstein: Thank you, Andy. I’m
excited about being here today and being able to talk with everybody. In my
role at www.advisorproducts.com, I
speak with advisors every day and so often the requests that we get and the
conversations are always about the sexy products that we have in services and
it’s always in the web and our platforms and everything that Jim and Andy and
Steve have been talking about.
I’m going to focus today over here in this little corner
that we have in our Print Product Division with our brochures.
I have to say that even though the majority of conversations are about web, I’m
reminded every week by an advisor calling me, how important a professional
brochure is to his total marketing strategy at gaining new clients.
It really is important and it’s great when I get these
calls and they’re appreciative of how we’ve helped them and how we continue to
evolve this program. Advisors, you don’t in general speak with many, many new
prospects. There are a couple of conversations a week or a month, but they’re
important ones and you’re spending time with that new prospective client and
there are wonderful conversations when you’re sharing with them how you can
help that client, and the services you provide and your process. But it
shouldn’t end there.
When that meeting ends and you just give them a business
card, that’s not the way that meeting should end. A piece, a brochure, that
handout that reinforces the value proposition, that conversation you had, is a
great way to end that meeting.
What I’m going to be showing you are tools that when that
meeting ends, you can have a folder, you can place that brochure in the
folder. In there you can put supporting documents that you may have discussed
with your card. It closes up and they walk away with something that they would
expect at a much larger company or entity.
So the sure brochure does help to gain new clients. I get
calls that tell me they generate referrals because a client will walk away with
that and they’ll pass that piece on to a friend and so, as we say, it has legs
and able to generate other opportunities for you. In the end, that’s what it’s
about. It will increase the firm’s revenue opportunities for you.
Please keep in mind – I’m going to share pricing on this –
but often the investment in our brochure program is – if you gain one client,
two clients, it more than compensates and cost justifies, and that’s because of
how we created this, the economies scale and some of the innovations and
suggestions we’re making in this program.
So what happens is, I get a call and we talk about a
brochure need for a firm. It’s always daunting because you’re like, “Where do
I start? What do I have to do? There are so many pieces. I don’t have time
for this. Barry, help me,” and that’s what we do. We’ll set up a call and
we’ll begin to walk you through that process.
The first two things that I always talk about are first of
all, the logo. These are the building blocks to start any of your marketing
materials, really: The logo, your brand, your identity. Do you have it? Are
you happy with it? What condition is it in? We need to discuss where it’s
at.
And then your copy – who you are, what you do, your
services – the text of the piece and the message that we’re going to put out
there.
So we developed a number of years ago, our logo design
program. It’s been very successful. Advisors really love the process and it
has some really unique pieces to it that we design that really help to create a
logo. When we talk about a logo, it could be the name of your firm in the type
that is created, any kind of graphic element, as well as a tag line. We work
with you to pull all this together and our process is really good.
You work with a project manager that is on our team and we
conduct with you a discovery interview. We talk about the firm. We talk about
your clients. Who are you trying to appeal to? The culture of your firm,
maybe. We talk about colors and graphic elements that could play into the
logo— A whole series of questions in this interview process.
And then what we do that is totally unique, is that we
give it to two different artists – two different designers that are on our
team. In fact, we’ve even expanded. You can choose between two or three
artist’s programs. It’s kind of like the theory, “two hears are better than
one.” Three heads are better than two. If you’re the type of individual that
likes more choices, that’s what it plays to.
So each artist will create two different composites – two
different visions of that logo for you. What we see happening is that either
one of those artists really hit it on the head for you and they’ve created
something that’s really close and it needs some tuning, tweaking – green that
needs to be a little richer, this type smaller, move this over.
But the other opportunity that comes about is that maybe
one of those artists created a graphic element that was just spectacular, but
you like the coloring and the layout from another. We take that through a
couple of revisions for you so that we have the final product. You’re working
with your Project Manager through the whole step-by-step process.
The logo that we create is yours. We retain no rights to
it. We provide you with all the electronic files that you may needs so that
you can use them, integrate them into other materials for your website,
whatever marketing needs you may have. So it’s a full logo design program and
any of you who would like more information and talk about it further, I’d be
happy to arrange a call for that.
The next building block is the brochure copy and we offer
four different ways to bring your copy into any of our marketing pieces.
Number one, you can write your own copy. You can supply it to us and then
we’ll work with you on the way out and bring it into the piece that you desire.
Number two, we have FINRA review copy already. We have
nine (9) different pre-written FINRA-reviewed copy sets, and I’ll show that to
you. We also have our EZ Copy
Catalog, which is tremendously successful. Advisors love that; and we do
custom writing, so that’s available as well.
Over here what we’re looking at is the inside of one of
our Choice
Brochures and this copy was prepared by us, written by us, and FINRA reviewed.
So as is, it is FINRA-reviewed copy and you can see this is how we layout all
of our copy so that it’s clean, easy to read for your clients. A lot of white
space on the page hits the eye really well, and then we’re always using your
colors within our pieces.
So we have headlines, subheadings, paragraph and/or
bullets in different combinations. It’s clean and it really works well. The
program comes with the FINRA-reviewed copy, so if you go through and read any
of those nine (9) sets and they really work for you, you can just plug that in
and you’re ready to go. So it’s a great plug-and-play program.
The next step would be to look at our EZ Copy Catalog.
What we’ve done, and it’s now grown. I think it’s up to almost 75 pages of
copy that has a table of contents that labels all of the different paragraph
options for you to choose from: Introductory paragraphs, Financial Planning,
Insurance, if there’s a need there, Investment Management, Monte Carlo, all the
different aspects – Fee-Only Advisory Firms, that you may want to touch in a
brochure.
What you do is, you go through the pages of this book and
you can read this copy. You can clip it out of there – It’s an electronic Word
doc – and then you can edit it. So if there are certain bullet points that
don’t quite speak to you, or a line that you want to change, or a service you
don’t get into, but you want to add or change, you have that control to edit it
and make it your own.
I hear from advisors so many times. They come to me and
say, “You know what, I need my copy. I’m going to sit down and write and it’s
a blank page.” Unless you’re like an Andy Gluck that’s used
to doing that, it’s a difficult task. So what this does is, it gives you a
foundation. It gives you a starting point that you can begin and then you can
just go through and edit it, and believe me, ideas start coming to you. It’s
really well-written copy that will stir through it and it becomes your own at
the end. We’re always amazed when we look at it, how the changes are, and what
comes about.
Finally, for the firm that really has a story to tell,
that has well-documented processes that have worked with clients in particular
ways and differentiators, and a team, that really is deserving of custom
writing. You’re not going to get that type of copy in a pre-written book
anywhere. We have financial writers who know the market, who understand this
industry, and we have, again, a process that works for you. We sit down, there’s
initial research that is done because we do ask questions up front during our
discussions and meetings, and we know what you’re looking for and we get the
preliminary aspects. We then conduct interviews, and sometimes it’s two, three
interviews – four if needed – with the principles and management team of the
firm.
What we do is we give you those interview notes. We
compile them, we present them. We want to make sure, are we listening right?
Do we have the right information? Are we on the right track? And then we go
through a draft and edit and rewrite process until we bring you that final
presentation. And please, copy, like a website, is not something that ends.
It evolves over time just like your practice does. One of the nice things about
our pieces is that they always can be updated and changed and edited.
So now you’ve got your own branding. You have your
identity. You have your copy. What do you want to present? What is the
perfect piece for you? Well, we offer two main brochure types. One is called
our Choice Brochure. It’s an 8 ½ x 11 piece, full color, 4-panel brochure. So
there’s that front cover. When you open it up, it has two facing pages, and
then there’s a back cover. It’s printed on 80-lb. gloss stock so it’s a really
nice weight. We have nine (9) different designs to choose from. So what we’re
doing is we’re not starting from a blank sheet of paper where we’re creating a
design. You’ve got something again to kind of start with and go from there.
I’ll show you some of that.
They’re all customizable to include your logo, your
colors, photo and bios. We do PMS matching for your colors in your brand so
that we’re insuring accurate representation. And you can print as little as
$200 copies and that’s a key point because how many advisory firms I speak to
that say, “I had a brochure. I did it five (5) years ago, six (6) years ago.
It’s out of date. I still have 1800 copies because we ran 2000.
Advisory firms don’t use a lot of brochures, so just to
get a price point, print 2000 doesn’t make since today when we can do them
digitally. Also, if you do 200, they last you maybe six (6) months, (7)
months, whatever time period – and then you can go back to it and change it,
update it, maybe make corrections. “You know, there was a line in that piece
that always bothered me.” You can go back in and edit it, change it, and then
print another 200. So it works well, and if you do need more copies, of course
we do 300 and 500 and whatever the need is for your firm.
This is one of our Choice designs and as you can imagine
here, this firm has the blue and the light blue coloring, their nautical logo
is here and is a graphic picture. So what we can do, depending on how far you
want to take this, if you’re colors are green and cold, we can put that green
border on the top and bottom, the gold inlay over here, your logo down here.
You can even change the picture and customize it to that point. You have many
different designs to choose from. This way you can make the piece yours.
Again, the inside of the Choice brochure, left panel,
right panel, change the copy, change the pictures. Make it your piece. Here’s
another one. Each one of the nine has a little different look, a little
different feel, different options that kind of work with different firms.
Our next piece is the Elite
Brochure, full color, twelve (12) panel piece. Again, this one has a
heavier 100-lb. stock cover and then the 80-lb. gloss quality stock inside.
It’s bound and all the same type of features with your branding and bios and be
able to print as few as 200 copies for your use. But in this piece, because
you have more room, you can now add sections. You can open it up with a letter
from the principle or the CEO or the firm, and you can lay down a mission
statement.
You have more room inside to talk about client services
and needs and processes and how you work with your clients. And of course, in
the back we can put multiple bios and pictures – team pictures even have been
done. And our team, we love when people get creative and give us different
ideas. That’s when graphic artists and our creative teams like to do different
things all the time, so we’re always looking for that.
Those two pieces, your Choice and Elite, fit wonderfully
within our Flex Folder. It’s a standard 2-pocket folder. It will match your
brochure. So you’re not going to Staples with a green folder and putting in
your brochure and giving it to a client – a high net-worth individual who’s
looking for you and expecting more. You’re giving them a matching set – very
professional. It has business cards cut out, places to put other supporting
documents, and in fact, we could create other inserts and have other options –
special services that you may provide for clients – and put that in there.
They’re walking away with that complete kit.
So here we’ve got our complete brochure selection. We
have the Choice Brochure starting at $1,500. Two hundred copies and $1,500 and
you’re out the door, set up and complete. Again, if you do more customization
of certain things, it would go up from there a little bit. The Elite Brochure
starts at $4,100. The FlexFolders, you can start at $1,650, and our FlexInserts,
from $400 a sheet.
It’s a great, well-rounded program and we really would
love to work it and customize it. As Andy said – I was saving this and it was
my ending, but I will repeat, “Anybody who comes to us and makes an API www.advisorproducts.com brochure
purchase this month, will receive $100 off on your purchase if you mention my
webinar. If you said I do a good job, I might give $150. So that’s it for me,
Andy. I thank you and I look forward to any questions and talking with you
advisors out there individually.
Andrew Gluck: Okay, Barry, thank you
for that. If you have any questions, please chat them into us. We did have
one question from somebody. Something was written in a publication saying that
the Client Portal System, somebody wrote it up that there was a problem with
working with outside professionals. If that’s the case, then we were never
interviewed by any publications and we have not heard of any problems with that
feature. The collaboration feature with outside professionals where you can
assign to-dos to outside professionals and they can assign to-dos to you, that
works just fine. It has not been integrated by any of the CRM systems yet –
that feature – and I’m hoping that one of the CRM systems will want to take
things to that next level and do that, but it’s pretty complicated. We do it
on the portal system ourselves, but the collaboration with outside
professionals is not integrated. I don’t know if that’s maybe what you’re referring
to, Steve, but if you have any other questions about that, please let me know.
Question: We had a question
about the cost of any prints beyond the first $200. I think that’s important,
so I appreciate, Lynn, that question.
Answer: The cost changes
after you print the first $200, you don’t have to do the setup all over again,
so it’s a lot cheaper to do reprints, isn’t it?
Barry Weinstein: Absolutely. As an
example, on the Choice Brochure, you can do an additional 200 for $600.
They’re $3 apiece at that point. So you’ve paid all the setup fees, and if you
do want to make some changes, usually those are minor. It goes by time, so if
it takes up half an hour or an hour, it could be $75 or $100 to make edits.
Andrew Gluck: And Barry, how about for
a logo makeover? Somebody’s asking about what the cost is on that.
Barry Weinstein: They’re flat rate
programs. The two-designer program is $1,200 complete, and to work with three
graphic designers is $1,500.
Andrew Gluck: And I want to point out
that when you work with us, one of the real benefits is that we have Project
Managers that you work with and the Project Managers are really good at keeping
things moving, so when you work with us, you’re going to get called. You’re
going to be asked to make decisions, and be prepared for that. But we will
keep the project moving because we know that independent advisors are busy.
You’re usually swamped because you own your own business. You’re an
entrepreneur; you’re running your own company, and there’s just always a lot to
do. There’s never enough hours in the day. So we have Project Managers who
are really professional, great to work with, and they’ve got a lot of
experience in graphic design. They understand web design and they understand
deadlines. That’s how things happen. I just want to say how proud we are of
that.
Lynn followed up with asking about Elite reprints. What
does it cost for reprints of the Elite Brochure?
Barry Weinstein: An additional 200 would be
$2,000. They’re $10 apiece, and then they go down with quantity also.
Andrew Gluck: Yeah, so that initial
setup is basically half the $4,000 of the initial 200. Once you do that, you
can modify it. We charge you by the hour to make any modifications of text. A
brochure with design values like this and customization like this – especially
when you add up the benefit of getting the EZ Copy, you’re really talking about
spending $15,000 or $20,000 to get a similar brochure, and then you probably
wind up having to print 1,000 or 2,000 of them. Many advisors have told us
that they do that and then they wind up tossing a bunch
I just want to repeat that this week, Jo Day will be on
speaking about going paperless. Please join us. Please check out www.advisorsforadvisors.com.
We’re about out of time.
Thank you for joining us on this session of the MarketingSmark
Webinar Series, http://www.advisorproducts.com/mswebinars.aspx,
with www.advisorsproducts.com.
To my colleagues here at www.advisorproducts.com,
Steve Gordonson, Jim Voss, Barry Weinstein, I just want to thank you all again
for doing a great job today on that presentation and letting people know what
we do here at www.advisorproducts.com,
and thank you all for being with us. Take care.
See you on Friday at the Financial Advisor Webinar Series,
http://www.advisorproducts.com/webinars.aspx.
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