Financial planners and fiduciary investment advisors are naturally suited to mentorship. Educating and advising clients about their options is your day-to-day business. Due to this knack for teaching, many advisors find that an educational marketing strategy can be highly effective.
However, there can be a real difference between a bit of webinar marketing and actually instructing sessions of structured, interactive financial education classes. Advisors who work with FMT often ask what it takes to lead a great financial planning course and convert new clients. Here are six of our go-to tips to get you ready for the front of the room!
1. “Show, don’t sell.”
This is the big one. It’s our twist on the “show, don’t tell” (a tip often given to creative writers).
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What it means is this: As the instructor, you’re already positioned as an authority on financial matters — a subject in which the self-selected attendees have a vested interest. There’s no need to include a sales pitch or discuss financial products. In fact, many course attendees aren’t interested in pushy sales tactics and will shut down if anything you say sounds like a commercial.
The course is your opportunity to showcase expertise and demonstrate your credibility while building valuable relationships with course attendees. Remember, these are already pre-qualified leads. Show them what you know and impressed prospects will follow up on their own if they’re interested in additional help.
2. Practice your delivery.
Financial jargon can be a real turn-off for an audience that doesn’t understand it as well as you do. An authentic, buzzword-free delivery that uses straightforward language, shares real-world stories and examples, and uses goal-oriented phrasing is often best. Instead of using terms like “risk management” or “time horizon,” focus on talking about how attendees can “prepare for the future” and make “safe, tax-smart choices” with their money.
A financial advisor who’s seen strong results with FMT’s financial education services had this advice to share: “Learn by getting one or two of these sessions under your belt. You need to raise your enthusiasm and have more interesting stories to keep these audiences engaged.”
3. Create opportunities for 1:1 connections.
The more chances you have to connect on a personal level, the more likely you’ll convert attendees into clients. A structure that allows you to coach individuals one-on-one is a great way to work this into your course. This is possible whether you’re teaching an online seminar or delivering a course in person in a classroom. Include a 1:1 “lab session” element where you can engage attendees in personal conversations one at a time to answer personalized questions.
Advisors and attendees alike often find that this sort of face-to-face opportunity helps to get a feel for one another, see if there’s chemistry or a good connection, and decide if you are someone they would enjoy working with. You might even use a pre-course survey to collect input from attendees about the sorts of topics they hope to learn more about. This also makes it possible to reference the individuals who brought up the topic once you get to it — a great way to personally connect with attendees in a group setting.
4. Share the good stuff.
Don’t worry about giving away “the good stuff” during your course. There’s always more for attendees to ask and learn. You’ll provide real value (and feel more relatable) by sharing real stories or examples from your professional experiences.
Past FMT course attendees have often remarked they left feeling like they knew even less than when they walked in — because there’s so much more to learn! Attendees are bound to discover a wealth of topics and nuances that they’ll want to investigate further, so give away that knowledge and resist the urge to “gatekeep.”
5. Know your audience.
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Cater the course to the talking points and concerns of the local area. A metropolitan region with professionals at the peak of their careers will have unique concerns compared to a greying population in an affluent countryside region. If your target audience is Gen Xers, you’ll know they’re likely to care about paying down debts (or helping their college-aged children with debts) and caring for aging parents while saving for their own retirement.
Acting as a consistent source of financial education for your local community also helps to build your reputation as a trusted resource. Even if your course attendees don't all choose to work with you as their advisor, they are being impacted by you. Anyone who has taken a course becomes a potential source of word-of-mouth for your business — There’s real value in being relevant and local!
6. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
You can hit the ground running with a turnkey educational marketing program that includes a variety of complete financial planning course packages, ready to launch. Our end-to-end platform gives you a cost-effective way to draw in pre-qualified prospects with quality financial education services. FMT handles the heavy lifting. You instruct the course. With our proven program, we do the heavy lifting:
- Fully compliant, FINRA-reviewed courses
- Course materials, attendee workbooks, speaker notes, and extra resources
- An exclusive marketing region reserved for you
- Instructor training to help you deliver a fantastic course that closes new business
- Assistance with marketing and delivery of both in-person and online course formats
The FMT program has helped advisors attract new business for more than 20 years. The average course brings in $4M in projected AUM! Learn more about our financial education services and get started today.
