Build Rapport with Newly Connected Followers

Financial advisors are beginning to discover the powerful prospecting opportunities created via the strategic sequential deployment of LinkedIn’s newest features.

Early adopters report they are successful in converting between 5 and 10 ideal prospects into followers per day. Exposing their increasing inventory of interested followers to newsworthy content builds trust, making it progressively easier to schedule appointments. Appointments with optimal prospects result in high prospect-to-client conversion rates.

Invest your time with individuals who already know what you do, appreciate your educated insights into their specific needs, and are therefore primed to take advantage of the solutions you can deliver with confidence.

This article focuses on rapport-building messaging that will quickly deepen your relationship with new followers, making it much easier to schedule appointments with prospects.

In a prior article, we discussed why dentists make for such an ideal target market for financial advisors. We’ll continue with that theme to demonstrate the possibilities of our modern marketing strategy. It should be easy for financial advisors to translate examples optimized for dentists for use with their own target market, whether those are architects, car dealers, or restaurant owners.

Let's spend some time now on strategies that enable you to build rapid rapport with your new followers.

Affirm Your Prospect's Decision to Become a Follower

You’ve launched your modern prospecting strategy and suddenly find yourself in the wonderful position of connecting with several new prospects per day. These are extremely valuable prospects!

With their acceptance of your invitation to connect, they have confirmed that your ideas, messaging, and profile content are at least of some interest to them. They already believe that their association with you will turn out to be valuable. Let’s affirm their belief by expanding on the ideas you introduced with your original invitation to connect message. 

Benefits of Being Your Follower

Although your new followers find you interesting and potentially valuable, at this stage they are probably still a bit uncertain about what it is you do.

Let’s help them gain a better understanding of the many benefits they will realize via their association with you, both immediately, and over the long term. We can quickly and easily do this via a thoughtful semi-personalized follow-up message that addresses a problem they are probably experiencing right now.

It's also important to create a sense of urgency by hinting at an opportunity that might be lost forever - a tax deduction perhaps - unless they take advantage right now!

Know Your (Future) Customer

In order to increase your chance of building a meaningful relationship with a brand-new follower, invest some time to study their LinkedIn profile. Also, do a Google search for other public information, perhaps via their company or personal web sites. 

Pay particular attention to details that reveal what’s really important to them. Do they mention their family. Do they support a particular charity? Why might that be? What college did they attend? Did they serve in the military? Which sports teams do they follow. What hobbies or sports do they engage in? Incorporate that information into the first sentence of your semi-customized follow-up for maximum impact.

Build Trust based on Commonality

As you study your follower's profile, look for commonalities. People relate well to others with similar backgrounds and experiences.

Did you go to the same university? If so, does the recent performance of one of their athletic teams provide you with the opportunity to formulate a school spirit-based approach?

Did you serve in the same branch of the military? Where? When? What was that experience like?

Did you grow up in a similar area? Do you have a similar cultural or linguistic background? Do you enjoy similar hobbies or participate in the same sports?

Weave these commonalities into the first sentence of your introductory message. Doing so will immediately strengthen the bonds between the two of you.

Be Interesting, Different & Do the Unexpected

Many business owners and other professional prospects are super-busy and don’t spend time researching information that could help them build (or protect!) their business. Turn that into an opportunity for you!

Assuming you have specialized and immersed yourself in an industry or profession, it will be easy for you to position yourself as an intelligent information broker. As an insider, you can sort through the clutter of information, collect the best of it, and then deliver authoritative content exactly when needed.

Such an approach is different and unexpected. Your prospect’s prior experience with a financial advisor was likely sales oriented. You are different. You invest time to get to understand your prospects’ unique circumstances and needs. As a consultative seller, you put yourself into their shoes, help them solve their problems and take advantage of opportunities. Many recurrent opportunities to deploy your professional products or services will follow.

Know What’s Relevant

In earlier articles we discussed the benefits of becoming a reputable specialist who is totally immersed in an industry or profession. Assuming you have done your homework, you will be in-tune with the hot button topics of your target clientele. What keeps them up at night? Perhaps there is a change in a tax law that impacts their business. You can help identify the most tax-efficient strategies to help them minimize their tax burden. 

If you are working with employees of a large company, you could become familiar with their benefits package. It's probably excellent - but most likely you'll uncover areas where a supplementary solution makes sense. How many employers offer LTC funding opportunities?

If you've identified your target market's industry thought leaders, you can collect their best ideas to have them ready for delivery to a prospect exactly when it is needed. You can easily distribute intelligent content via your news feed - or to an individual as needed. These efforts build trust. Your followers quickly gain an appreciation of the unique value you and bring to the relationship.

Their Peers Already Benefit

Story telling is an effective strategy to engage prospects. Use brief stories to illustrate how your follower's peers have already benefited from working with you. "Many of your colleagues have supplemented their benefits package with..."

You have likely helped individuals in similar situations with insurance policy reviews, key-person strategies, buy-sell agreement reviews, retirement income projection updates, informal business valuations, or helped them maximize the value of their practice, prior to arranging for a tax-efficient business succession strategy. 

Incorporate several of these topics into your stories to increase the likelihood you are touching a topic that’s been on your follower's mind.

Core Elements of Your Follow-up Message

Increase the effectiveness of your follow-up message to a new connection by:

• Integrating a personalized comment based on what’s important to your follower
• Building trust based on scholastic, cultural, linguistic and other commonalities
• Outlining how their peers are already benefiting from their affiliation with you
• Positioning yourself as a consultative information broker
• Hinting at professional services you offer - without overtly selling a product or service

Call to Action

As with all marketing initiatives, we need to conclude our message with a call to action. Since this is your second engagement with your follower, the next logical step could be to recommend a 10-minute phone conversation. By limiting the call 10 minutes, you are proactively resolving a fear: “How long will this take?”

Younger individuals might respond better to texts or messaging in short bursts on a platform they use. Either way, it's important to make it easy for your prospect to quickly tell you about their most urgent financial priority. By addressing that issue, even if it's just a small single ticket transaction, you'll build trust that might eventually earn you the opportunity to engage in more comprehensive financial planning.

Examples of Follow-up Messaging

In an earlier article we identified several messaging strategies optimized to capture the attention of dentists at different stages in their practice. We'll continue to use dentists to provide examples of our strategy.

Our original message inviting dentists to become our followers limited us to 300 characters. Now that we are connected, we can compose additional messages that address their pain points or hint at opportunities we can help them take advantage of.

We need to balance the need to be brief with the need to introduce several of our professional services. Following are a number of possibilities – each of these should easily translate for use in other industries or professions.

Follow-up Messaging with Brand New Dentists

If you are targeting a group of dentists fresh out of dental school, you are likely to capture their attention by offering to discuss cost-effective student loan repayment strategies - and appeal to some other common needs at the same time:

Dr. {Last Name}:

Thank you for connecting!

(Personalize your approach sentence with a brief comment about something unique in your prospect’s profile and/or comment on a common background or experience; demonstrate you have already invested in the relationship by personalizing your approach.)

Many of my dentist clients early in their careers have significant student loans. I review their loan programs to confirm they are taking advantage of the lowest possible interest rates and eliminate their debt as quickly as possible. 

I also confirm my clients benefit from available annual deductions for tax-efficient retirement savings. Once a deduction is missed, it can never be recaptured!

Let’s set aside 10 minutes for a quick phone call during which you can tell me about your most urgent financial priority. Perhaps I can share an easy solution your peers have found helpful.

I am available on Tuesday at 10AM or Friday at 2:30PM. What works best for you?

Your Name

Even if it is not immediately possible to schedule an appointment, you will have made significant progress in strengthening your brand as the provider of industry-specific relevant information. Combined with your strategic messaging – some of which will be seen by your prospects as part of their news feed – and you will have laid a strong foundation for a future appointment opportunity.

Let’s look at follow-up messaging that will be more effective in communicating with dentists who have established practices. To avoid redundancy, I have removed the personalized introduction and concluding request for a 10-minute phone call.

Follow-up Messaging Growth-Oriented Dentists

Growth oriented dentists often expand their practice by hiring one or more associate dentists, typically professionals fresh out of dental school. They may also want to add dental hygienists and other specialists. Your follow-up might include the following wording:

It’s a tight labor market. Many of my growth-oriented dental practitioners are experiencing difficulties in meeting staff requirements. How about you?

Some of my dentist have taken advantage of a unique tax-efficient solution that can be customized to attract, retain, and reward associate dentists, dental hygienists, and other specialists who commit to working with you for at least 10 years. 

Also, the recent changes in the tax laws have created both challenges and opportunities for high-income earners. It might make sense for us to review your current financial strategies to make sure they are structured to minimize the impact of the new taxes.

Follow-up Messaging Dentists Approaching Retirement

Another time you might decide to focus on capturing the attention of dentists near retirement. For that effort, your messaging would likely hint at your expertise in coming up with the funds required to structure a secure and tax-efficient lifetime retirement income stream:

I collaborate with dentists to maximize the value of their practice during their working years. When they are ready to retire, I assist them in transferring their practice to a successor. We convert the value of their practice into a secure, tax-efficient, guaranteed lifetime retirement income stream.

What strategies are you pursuing to optimize the value of your practice? Have you already found a successor with whom you have made financially binding agreements for the tax-efficient transfer of your practice? How certain and secure is that arrangement?

Many dentists in their 50s and up begin to realize they will eventually have to transition their practice to another dentist. You offer to help them maximize the value of their practice so they can retire with the peace of mind that they will have sufficient income for life. Which dentist considering the sale of their practice would not want to learn more about your ideas? A high percentage will agree to a 10-minute phone call to learn more!

Deepen Relationships with Your Followers

It should be obvious by now how our strategy works. You optimize your profile to speak to a narrowly defined target audience. You then deploy intelligent messaging to capture the attention of ideal prospects. You invite them to connect and become followers.

Now that they are followers, you demonstrate your commitment to the relationship by studying their profile and other publicly available information. You personalize your follow-up by addressing needs they likely have right now. You create a sense of urgency by hinting at opportunities they might miss out on. You offer to explain further via a quick, 10 minute phone call. The purpose of your initial call is to listen, to learn of their needs, and schedule subsequent in-depth conversations or appointments.

You capture the attention of additional prospects, and retain the attention of your new followers, via the regular posting of information that is newsworthy and relevant to them.

Confident, Effective Communication

The enjoyment of your daily tasks will increase. You can now approach your work with the confidence that you have indeed acquired unique skills to serve your specific target market.

In advance of any meeting, you already know that, no matter what questions you will encounter, you will have already thought through the issues by serving others in your client’s tribe. You will be effective in communicating optimized solutions using terminology that resonate with your prospect, making them receptive to your recommendations.

Technology Based Client Acquisition Strategy

Take the sting out of your prospecting routines by developing your own technology-based highly personalized client acquisition strategy. Concentrate your work on serving a specific market and your business will grow exponentially. Connect with me; let’s build a campaign that takes advantage of your unique background, experience, and interests. It’s fun, very exciting, and has the power to transform your practice.

Last revised 08/22/2019