Coach & Close

Transcript: I am Shauna Mace, head of Practice Management at SEI. Our mission is simple. It's to help you and your team grow. At SEI, we're focused on creating better and braver futures together. How can we help you do what you do best to scale in your business and impact? We offer curated investment solutions, custody and technology solutions, and of course practice management advice. Very rarely do I talk to an advisor who loves their messaging. Many don't have messaging at all besides what's on their website yet. We know from the 2019 Y charts investor study that 85% of the 650 respondents reported that their advisor's frequency and style of communications impacted their willingness to refer and stay with their financial advisor. What and how you communicate impacts retention and referrals. If you're watching this video, you've likely done the work to develop your value messaging. Now it's time to activate it across your business.

No, many firms work on their messaging, but the final step of activating it in the business is often not taken. Remember, the majority of organic growth comes from referrals according to investment news 2020 pricing and profitability study. We know from our own research that highly referable firms discuss their ideal clients, their needs and their differentiators often and with their teams. To help ensure you're thinking about all the places your value messaging may need to be added or updated. Use the value messaging activation checklist available on the value messaging course in the Growth lab. The activation checklist includes a fillable blank checklist as well as best practices on the second page. If you're updating your website or marketing materials, make sure you're following your firm's compliance review and filing requirements. You can get started with a checklist, but I want to highlight a few best practices.

If you haven't practiced your messaging in at least a few conversations, do that first before you make any updates. What sounds good on paper doesn't always work in conversation. Before you spend too much effort making updates, make sure what you're saying and what shows up on your website and in your marketing are aligned. In my opinion, the two most impactful places to implement your messaging for growth are in conversations and on your website. Get the whole team comfortable using messaging and conversations by introducing and training them with the value messaging framework. Think about it. The more you and your team, your professional partners and clients are talking about you, what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, and why it matters, the more chances you have to attract right fit clients and the more you're reinforcing your value to existing clients.

Here's how you can get your team partners and clients talking about you. First, give everyone on your team a copy of your value messaging framework. Second, explain why it matters. Referable firms talk about their ideal clients, their needs. In differentiators, often, I like to call this planting referral seeds, no matter their role. If someone on your team is interacting with your clients or the outside world, then they have the ability to help the firm grow. Empower your team to help by teaching them how to talk about your firm and the value you provide. Show them how it's done. Give an example of how you would use the framework and messaging. Fourth, ask them to practice using it. Depending on your team, you could ask all or some of them to role play or give a mock answer to the question, what does Vested Financial do at your next team meeting? Especially those team members that represent the firm, either as a speaker or in prospecting client meetings, it's important that they're consistently and confidently highlighting your key messages and finally, challenge yourself and your team to consistently talk about the firm, your who, what, why, and how. As much as possible, great job learning, building and activating your value messaging. I challenge you to continue to explore the SEI Growth Lab for more practice management content and tools.