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How to improve the quality of people you're onboarding as a financial advisor. In this short video, I'm going to cover our five key tips that will help you straight away to improve the quality of people coming into your business. Hi, I'm Paul from Thompson Consulting. Let me tell you about John. He's a financial advisor and he's running a practice that is barely profitable and what I mean by that is he's taking leads from accountants or other solicitors, he's buying the occasional lead. He takes every referral that comes his way, but his practice really isn't thriving the way he wants it to. He works 12 hours per day, sometimes six days per week. And he can't understand why things aren't driving forward that little bit more. In fact, he's got a young family and a young wife and he wants to spend more time with them. But even on the weekends he's worrying about how his practice is actually performing. Now, this is a very difficult way to be and a tough situation to be in as a financial advisor, but it is all too common. We see it day in, day out within our business as well. The problem that John is facing here is very, very real, and it comes down to one key question, "How can I improve the quality of prospects and clients that I'm onboarding into my practice?" I want to give you five key tips to deal with this within your advisory practice. Number one, have a 15 minute discovery call as part of your lead generation process. And what do I mean by this? I mean before you may meet them face-to-face or do a more detailed Zoom call, just jump on a quick 15 minute call and be very clear about what you want to get out of it. You're really trying to see if there's a good fit between you and the prospect, to see if their asset size make sense for you and to see if they have the potential to be a good asset to your business and to your book. We've tested a lot of different methods around this, we found that using a short 15 minute discovery call is one of the best ways of pre-vetting your prospects as they're coming through your pipeline. If there's a good fit, you then take them forward for a more detailed call or a face-to-face meeting. Number two, sharpen up your targeting and messaging to the market. Be clear about who you deal with and who you don't deal with and start to show the market a consistency of message. So if someone goes to your website or your profile or any content that you put out, or when they eventually maybe get on a call with you, they're seeing that consistent message coming from you. What I see from a lot of advisors is different messages, talking to different people without a lot of coherence, so start to sharpen that up, get it a lot clearer so it's very clear to your prospect who you are and what you stand for. Number three, be very clear about who you work with and who you don't work with. So this leads on from number two, but you need little bit of clarity around this. Don't assume that everybody knows that you work with everybody. And in fact, in the market, you'll find that when you say you work with everybody, the truth actually is you work with nobody. So nobody feels like you specialize in their problems and challenges. And that's really the key. If you can demonstrate you understand the problems and challenges of your target audience, that's when they really start to convert. And that's when you really start to get fantastic results. Number four, be wary of local accountants and solicitors as introducers. I'm not saying introducers don't have value, they absolutely do. But one of the difficulties is as they refer to you, they're going to refer clients that are all over the map. So not necessarily in your target sector or segment with different types of asset size, from very small to much larger, which makes it a little bit difficult to control how your practice grows. And the difficulty is when you're in a relationship with an accountant or a solicitor you feel the need to accept every referral that they send your way, and that's really going to affect your lead pipeline and your client book as you build it, okay. So don't accept every single referral you get from an accountant or a solicitor, they can have value, I would also consider looking at people like business coaches and business brokers who sometimes have a better and perhaps more strategic relationship with the potential client and therefore can actually work out a huge amount better. Number five, don't take every referral you get. Again, this leads on to point number four, but just because a client has referred somebody to you does not mean you have to accept them as a client. If they don't fit in with your targeting, your segmentation and the way you're looking to build your book, if they don't have the asset size or what you're really looking for just don't accept them as a client, maybe refer them off to a more junior advisor who'd be delighted to get that little bit of new business. It's when you're actually able to start saying no like that, that you start to control how the growth of your business actually works. With these five key tips in mind the key thing really is to make your life a bit easier running your business is to have a bigger lead pipeline. When you have more prospects actually coming through, whether it's on the phone or by email, and you've got regular calls and regular meetings being set up, you can afford to be a lot more choosy with the type of clients that you take on. You can be more choosy about the asset size that you're accepting. So have a stronger lead pipeline. So don't be like John, don't build and run a practice based on low value clients that you don't enjoy actually working with. And that are taking you towards the goals that you have in the next three, five or 10 years. So if I can give you three key takeaways to really look at within this business, one, just say no. Don't accept every referral or introduction that comes your way. Make sure the clients that you're bringing and onboarding are a great fit and then you're clear that they are a great fit. It will make running your business so much more enjoyable. Finally, have a clarity of message. Be clear with your audience about who you serve and who you can help, but equally who you don't serve and who you can't help. If you can get this right in your business, it'll be enjoyable, your business will thrive and you'll have a much bigger smile on your face and more time to spend with your family. Thanks for checking out the video today, check out the link in the description below to our free Facebook group which you can join. And also please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you're kept up to date with all of our content.