Developing Trust With Your Ideal Clients

As President and Managing Partner of Barberio and McClelland Financial Services, Lou brought nearly thirty years of financial services experience to his discussion with FMT CEO Nick Schilling. He shared valuable insights from his time in the industry and great context about how he leads with education to drive growth for his practice. Here’s a few highlights, and the entire conversation is available above.

Unlocking Trust Acceleration

One of Lou’s main themes was the way that the classroom provides the ideal environment to demonstrate expertise and develop mutual understanding with a highly-qualified audience eager to learn. Facilitating an educational experience unique to the people in the class, with room to share stories, ask questions, and create meaningful dialogue develops a level of trust that’s difficult to replicate with other prospecting approaches.

“Education for sure is key. Getting these individuals into a classroom setting and educating them on all the aspects of planning for retirement, not only we find makes the client the prospect feel comfortable, but it enables us to be able to demonstrate to the client that there's a lot that needs to get done. They haven't gotten the work done, they need to get it done, and we are competent at educating them with regard to the tools that they need to consider. So it's been an absolute game changer.”

Make It Your Own

While FMT provides a comprehensive, FINRA-approved course curriculum, Lou argues that true power is unlocked when our educators start to make the classes their own. Providing additional insights in your firm’s areas of specialization, shifting topic coverage to respond to class attendee priorities, and engaging other local experts with complementary expertise can all provide tremendous value to your prospects. It’s not about sticking to a script - it’s about working to showcase strengths and develop meaningful relationships.

“[W]e kind of cherry pick the pages in that course material that we want to showcase...I want to save time in that classroom to tell stories, quite frankly. I like to tell stories, I like to tell emotional stories. I like to tell real life stories that we've encountered both personally in our personal lives as well as with clients over the years. I find that people can relate to that. I feel as though emotion is what ultimately sells and we want to save room for that…I like to take those questions as well along the way in the classroom setting depending upon the size of the class. So as you might imagine with all that information, six hours is a long time, but it really isn't.”

Keep At It

Lou also emphasizes that continuous improvement is key to success with education-based marketing. Every class held is an opportunity for an instructor to refine their teaching style, to organize content in a way that works better for their audience, and to collect new concerns and points of view from students that will inform future sessions. With every campaign, your instructors improve, your brand becomes more established, your network broadens, and your knowledge base grows.

“We just finished a class last night, I think we had 30 [attendees], and one said no to the follow-up meeting. Now anybody would be very happy with that. And I think quite frankly it's because we've been doing them for a long time. We don't do them for a year and say, boy, this doesn't work. One key to success in doing this is to keep doing it, and you'll find that the devil is in the details. And you get better, you become a better speaker, you become better at telling your stories, you become better at...trying on solutions within the class, and that leads to a good appointment ratio.”