Interview on Social Media for Financial Services Struggles (and ways to overcome them)
20 min till #BBSradio, power packed show today with @MCProulx @RichLoPresti & @Stephcalahan http://t.co/CxSRyvum #blogchat you coming?
@prosperitygal
Michele Price
Social TV Which Screen Will Win: I am on after Mike Proulx Author of Social TV (I’m on roughly 1:20 or so in)
Full Unedited Transcript from the Interview:
Michelle:
……..to how all of this is even transmitting and coming up to having Rich on the show. And
that is, I gave a presentation to a local business group and you would think I’d get used to this, you really
would think, but I don’t. There was a financial planner in the group and they’re probably some of the
more difficult people to help them understand how social media can benefit their business. Granted I
totally did it because I work with attorneys in social media all the time, now I even have a few
accountants, I totally get that their industry is different. I totally get that they are regulated differently, I
totally get that they have different rules on them than just the everyday business owner who can open
up any kind of business whether it’s brick and mortar or online. One of the things I find a little
frustrating sometimes though is the limiting mind set that they do their thinking with. They think
because someone has said, “No you can’t do that,” that it means that there aren’t any options or
solutions which is just not so. So here’s what happened, I heard someone say, “Well no I can’t do that,
I’m a financial planner and we’re not allowed to.” Oh, me and my big mouth, I said, “Actually, you are
allowed to and there has been a lot of changes that’s happened on that just last year.” And of course
you never really want to challenge someone in the audience like that but I did, and we had a little bit of
back and forth. So I took the opportunity because I knew that this is something that happens over and
over and over, city after city. The same conversation happens and I said to myself, “Alright, that’s it,” if I
do this for clients when I’m doing like a social audit, or I go out and I look at what platforms that are on,
whether their [inaudible 00:01:57] are optimized, where are they missing opportunities, where are the
holes and what they are doing. Well and I always give them these really great reports where we sit down
and we go over, here’s where your opportunities are, here’s what you’re missing, here’s someone who’s
doing it really, really good, here’s someone who’s doing it and you really, really suck. But I find that
when people have visuals like that even after I help get them up to speed, it helps to keep them
motivated so they can kind of start following people who are doing things really well. And so what I did,
is I came back to my trusty computer to find that I know there’s someone out there who’s doing this and
who’s doing it for their industry and that’s what happened. I uncovered Rich in LinkedIn, who’s got a
really great optimized profile in LinkedIn. And he’s doing this for this whole industry, he is helping
financial planners or people in that whole industry understand how they can do and be in that space of
social and not use the typical excuses of well, we are not allowed. Do they have restrictions? Yes they
do. So please join me as we welcome Rich LoPresti and we are going to talk about, well I accidentally
just cut somebody off on the switchboard, so I apologize, I will call back in, I thought I was hitting on
Rich. So we are going to talk about what that looks like, and how they can actually maneuver in that
space to help build brand awareness. To help understand what are people’s challenges going on when it
comes to financial planning and how to serve them from a valued proposition. So welcome to the show
today Rich, how are you?
Rich:
I’m doing great, thank you so much Michelle, I’m really excited to be here and just to
echo your point, it’s simple if you look at it from a stand point that it’s really not a crime to let people
know what you do, who you help and how you help them. So yes, I think that’s a good basis for the
conversation today.
Michelle:
Well let’s start there, let’s discuss some where they are at. They don’t think that they
can do social media at all yet you and I know that’s not true. We are seeing people do it really
successfully from their industry, so how can we counter some of the limited thinking that they have on
that and start discussing some really good examples of how they can maneuver in that space. Where do
you usually start for people who are in that financial planning industry?
Rich:
Yes, a good place to start is to be there, if you are not on social media you can’t be
found out. And I’d like it if you had an advisor putting their business card on a [inaudible 00:04:43] or
the library, to putting themselves out there to be found. And the same thing with social media, to be
[inaudible 00:04:55] a little while back you made it clear that electronic communication via the internet
should be treated the same way as it was treated for electronic communication or email. So there are
services out there that do provide compliant social media access just for us or [inaudible 00:05:12] and
those types of things. But you need to be there Michelle.
Michelle:
So this is where I get probably my biggest amount of push-back though, Rich [inaudible
00:05:26] are saying, we’re not allowed to even open up an account. Now how accurate is that
statement?
Rich:
It’s not accurate at all, I mean there are firms right now that are practicing compliant
social media, smaller firms, smaller IRA registered investment advisor firms are out there on social
media right now, creating a niche. There are some bigger players like Raymond James and J P Morgan
and State Farm and New York Life that are starting to deploy social media for their distributed sales
force. Most firms are out there on social media at a brand level, they are also out there at a customer
service level. When it comes to their distributed sales force or their financial advisors, the people that
are keeping the lights on, a lot of these bigger corporations are a little bit more reluctant to let them do
that. And I don’t think it’s so much compliance, because again, there are solutions out there, firms such
as Actiance and Socialware and USA Social and Linked FA and some other social media monitoring
systems or management systems. So there are solutions that are out there but again I think it’s just an
understanding more on a brand reputation side, having these advisors going out and speaking their
mind as opposed to just having the brand speak for them. Does that make sense Michelle?
Michelle:
It does except what I’m finding is they are still using it as an excuse to not even be in the
space. And one of the things that I’d be curious because it’s advised that I give any industry not just the
ones who have to be considered a compliant issue. Like in any industry before you even go out there
and start discussing anything, doing anything, putting together a strategy, tweeting, posting any of that,
you really need to be listening. So I am going to tell many of them won’t set accounts up to just monitor
the conversation and be able to have their finger on the pulse of what’s bothering their ideal customers
right now. How are you using that?
Rich:
With all aspects, with the many aspects of a sales person stems from prospects,
presenting solutions and follow up. So you need to find new clients, be more [inaudible 00:08:07] from
your existing clients and then also retain your clients and from your point, listening helps. Because as an
advisor or any salesman, the first thing that they are taught, is that they have two ears and one mouth,
so they are supposed to listen twice as much as they speak. And a good advisor will ask good questions
or probing questions to uncover those answers. Social media is allowing those answers to be put out
there before you even ask the question. So you are going to find out a lot of information on a specific
group or a prospect where you’ll be able to leverage that information to close more business. Because
you’re automatically going to overcome their objections because you know the answers to those
questions because of social media.
Michelle:
Well let’s back up and come at this from a practical perspective. So you are a financial
planner and you think that you can’t be on the social space because they’re told that they are not
allowed to “Speak for the brand.” That doesn’t really prevent them from setting up personal Twitter or
Facebook accounts and be using hash tags to listen to what people are talking around topics. How had
you used that particular strategy and can you give us an example where that helped you close a deal?
Rich:
Sure, absolutely. And you know, personal and business always gets blurred, so there are
many advisors that do have accounts, personal accounts. But as an advisor you are always selling so
when you are going to different events, you are not just talking about yourself personally but you are
also including what you do as a business. Now, within Facebook, many people don’t realize within
Facebook, there real time life events streaming before you. So an example that just recently happened
to me is I attended a christening for a cousin and they were just in it in a 529 plan. They don’t know
what it is but they know they need one, right, and if you look at that specific demographic, it’s a
demographic that’s not really being touched by the big firms and wire houses. But the people in that
room celebrating that christening are expected parents and new parents and what happens is they took
that event that was offline and brought it online. So we continued the offline conversation online about
the 529 and closed additional business because other people who are friends, or friends of friends,
started to inquire about the 529 plan for themselves and their children. So that was a simple example of
a life event that’s happening in real time and its actionable information where you could close business.
Now 529 is not a big ticket for an advisor but the door is now opened for future business as well.
Michelle:
Well now let’s look at that for a second because I can hear the kind of questions that
would be going off in people’s heads. So if someone’s talking about a christening on Facebook, the last
thing they are going to want to do is have financial planners start jumping on the page going, “Have you
guys thought about getting a 529 plan?” (Laughter) so how did you bridge that conversation?
Rich:
Right, you need to get creative and you are not selling, you are building relationships. So
I took these relationships and just asked a simple question, do you want to talk more about the 529
plan? And we we’re going to take that offline conversation that went online offline again, but again,
people were monitoring that and they want to find out that same information as well. So it’s not really
being salesy, you are solving a solution for people that need that solution at that very moment. So it’s
not, again, going on Facebook and looking for christenings or life events and starting to pitch your
product. It’s not about that, you know, if I’ve established those relationships, and that’s what it’s about.
Social media makes sales or makes life a full circle. You’ve got to add all of the other modes of
communication to combine social media to help distribute those messages.
Michelle:
So what you are saying is you guys were already in that conversation, you just happened
to be talking to each other at that particular time on Facebook and it kind of opened the door for other
people to see the conversation?
Rich:
Right, right. That’s where personal gets blurred with business and business gets blurred
with personal because you are only one person. You have an occupation and then you also have the
personality of who and what you do on your own time, but they are crossed.
Michelle:
And that brings up a question that I hear a lot of times from people in these industries
as well. And that is, they want to know, do you set up a twitter account that’s just specific to your
industry or do you use that one up to your own personal name. What is your take on that and why did
you make the choice that you made?
Rich:
Well earlier on in my career I was handcuffed by these rues, not so much regulations
from the institution that I did work for and I could not have my personal name out there. There’s also
firms that allow you to put your personal name and then also put the company’s name like Morgan
Stanley, Smith Barney does this, they will let you put your name and then put an MSSB after your name,
which I think doesn’t really make too much sense. But for me, I think you need to build up your own
personal brand for a number of reasons. One of the reasons being that as a salesman you’re in a
commoditized industry, right, everybody’s selling the same thing. The products are pretty much the
same, the solutions are pretty much the same. So you need to differentiate yourself and the only way
you really can do that is yourself. And what I say to big corporations that don’t allow you to do that is
that they’re still selling for you and you are going to wind up getting the business anyway even though
they know Rich LoPresti’s name over Morgan Stanley’s name. And interesting thing happened to me a
little while back when I was doing some research for a paper. I spoke to an advisor that worked for
Merrill Lynch for about 40 years. And when he answered the phone or he made phone calls, he never
ever mentioned Merrill Lynch, he always mentioned his name. And one day one of his good clients
referred someone to him and said, Tim’s friend that he was referring is like, “I don’t remember what
firm he works for, but here’s his name and you need to give him a call.” And he got the business and
Merrill Lynch still got the business, even though he didn’t know the firm that he worked for. So using
that example as a reason for financial institutions to not worry so much about individuals being
individuals. Because they are still working for the company and, yes, they believe in the company and
that’s why they are working for them.
Michelle:
Well and the interesting thing about that though is that that’s still leaving people
wondering, there’s still a lot of dialogue around, do you brand yourself personally or do you brand
yourself with the company that you work for? How did you end up making that decision for yourself?
Because I can see from a business owner’s perspective, I know that I might not always be with the same
brand ten or fifteen years from now but I still want all of the people I’ve spent time building up my
clientele with to be thinking of me. Did you take that same perspective?
Rich:
I certainly did, and I mean it’s, you are doing a lot of work, the firm’s doing a lot of work
as well, you can’t really worry about that, you only can take care of the things that you can control. So I
find people are more successful when they are more authentic, so when you take the authenticity out of
it, it affects sales and affects numbers. In addition to that, if you are employees are not happy because
of some of the restrictions that you put in place on them being themselves, they’re going to move to
different firms. There’re some statistics that are showing that, that bodies are moving to firms that allow
them to practice more freely.
Michelle:
Well then that was the question that I wanted to ask you today, now that some of the
bigger brands in the financial planning stage are starting to kind of loosen things up and they’re giving
people guidelines and they are giving them opportunity to do what they do face to face anyway, in the
social space. What’s the fall out starting to look like? How long has that allowed people to even see an
effect or is it just now starting to come to head?
Rich:
Well it certainly come to a head now for the simple fact that everybody realizes that
social media is just really at the beginning stages again as a different form of communication but you
can leverage it in so many different ways that it’s very powerful. And you’ll be at a disadvantage if you
are not allowed to utilize it. So most firms and most individuals do realize now that there’s education on
how to use it correctly but people want to utilize it because individuals meaning clients and prospects,
they want to be communicated to the way they want to be communicated to which being simply picking
up a phone and interrupting, right now you are on a radio show so if I gave you a call, I’m just going to
get a voicemail. And you might not return my voicemail, but if I sent you message via social media, you
are going to get that message and you are going to respond to it. Right, so social media is alleviating not
only a gate keeper, but it’s making my message more timely to you, right so I’m not interrupting you life.
So it’s a necessity is what I’m saying so it’s changing.
Michelle:
What are you noticing in your own strategy, have you being able to maybe execute on differently in 2012 than you did in 2011 in the social space?
Rich:
Yes, absolutely, I’m learning a lot more and there’s a lot you can do with social media,
tons of different ways that you can prospect. Even over the last couple of weeks, I think I might have
mentioned this to you, there was an individual advisor who started a movement right, via Twitter. He
went back to his old college and did a talk for graduating seniors and asked them about retirement
savings and how educated they were in reference to that. And they didn’t even think about that. And he
asked the question, are you familiar with the Roth IRA and not one of them mentioned that they knew
what it was. So he basically took to Twitter and used the hash tag like you were talking about in your
previous conversation, and branded the Roth IRA movement. And with a little work he caught a buzz
and about 150 bloggers and financial institutions started writing about that and tweeting that and
creating a lot of buzz and movement for this gentleman whose name is Jeff Rose who is an individual
advisor in Illinois. And now he’s actually going to be branded and associated with the Roth IRA so this is
why based upon all of this buzz that’s created. His name’s even in Wikipedia now under The Roth IRA, so
the point is he took, the Roth, which has been around since 1997, but it was only marketed towards the
rich, never marketed towards younger generations and he kind of took that same vehicle and now has
created a separate business from it educating people on Roth IRAs and opening different accounts for
new clients.
Michelle:
Well and that’s the thing that I’ve often wondered, to me, if I’m sitting there and I’m
having to make a decision, say I’m going through a divorce and I’m having to make a lot of decisions on
what to do with certain things that might have been together, I’m definitely going to be looking for
who’s actually writing blog posts around the topics that I’m having to make decisions on. Because it
allows me to get a feel for who you are and how helpful you are before I ever pick up the phone. And I
was always kind of perplexed why people didn’t see from the financial industry, why they didn’t see how
helpful that was. Are you using blogging in your strategy?
Rich:
Absolutely, and I think you hit the nail on the head. To blog being in a specific niche,
because if you are the thought leader in that specific space, you are going to get more attraction. So the
bigger firms are more focused on, “hey, we’re the best in retirement planning,” but really what does
that mean? There’re many phases of retirement planning from accumulation, from the transition stage
between generating and retiring and then being in retirement. And then are you talking about someone
who’s divorced, someone who’s not, someone who has kids? Everybody has different needs and if you
could become an expert in your specific niche you are going to get more business. And to your point
there are a lot of, well not that many, individual advisors that do focus on divorce or businesswomen or
college planning. They are taking a specific niche and they are becoming the expert in it and as a result
they are getting a lot more business from that. They’re actually having people come to them instead of
them reaching out prospecting.
Michelle:
What would be a piece of advice you would give to financial planners who might be
listening to this segment today that they feel like their hands are tied. What would be the top three
things that you would suggest for them to do?
Rich: Well the first thing is you need to be there. So if it’s even on a personal level you’re allowed
again to tell people what you do for a living. And if you are not doing that, you are doing yourself an
injustice, so the first thing is being there. The second thing is, as you said, you have to crawl before you
walk, so take a look around, what’s going on. Do some searches, I could give you some names of some
different advisors that are out there that are doing some really good thing with social media, but just get
started. And then, I would say the last thing is you say that, your compliance department is not allowing
you to do so, believe me, your compliance department is thinking about social media. It’s actually a gift
to them because of all other modes of communication aren’t traceable and trackable and measurable
like social media is. So it’s actually a gift to your compliance department so I would say if you craft them
a message to start a pilot program that you start out social media within the firm I think your initiative
will allow you to be in the first pilot program for your specific firm. So, yes, I would definitely, definitely
do that.
Michelle:
Now that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought of, be the one who’s willing to go sit down and
talk to compliance and go, “here are some ideas, here are some people that are doing it well in other
states or in another channel,” and be part of the solution instead of just sit back and waiting for them to
deliver it to you.
Rich:
Absolutely, and I’d be more than happy to speak with you and help your craft. You know
my message to them, because you know that last piece, the blogging piece is difficult for some firms to
take. But again if you do a pilot program, there’s really no harm in that because it’ll be closely watched,
monitored and you’d be pleasantly surprised with the results that you see with the effort you put in,
because it still is work.
Michelle:
Well thank you for bringing that up, because people are amazing in the way that they’ll
use hurdles to prevent themselves from really growing. Let’s address that really quickly, the time that it
takes to do that, a lot of people will just go, “well that’s just going to take too much time and too much
trouble, I don’t know how to do it, I’m not even going to go there.” What kind of advice would you give
them?
Rich:
I would say social isn’t a goal in itself, I mean you as an advisor have your own specific
goals. Social is a metric similar to you saying, “I make 100 dials, I speak to 20 people, I land 5
appointments, I close 2 new deals.” There is a return on the investment that you put in to it. So again, if
you set up a specific strategy and we didn’t go through any of those strategies on this call, it doesn’t
take a lot, maybe 10,20,30 minutes to set something up and then maybe another 5,10,15 minutes daily
or weekly to kind of review some of the things that you put into play. Because it’s repetition, you need
to be organized, the internet is chaos and you need to organize it. But again the infrastructure that is
different that works are put in place, you need to organize it, if you know how to organize it. If you know
what to look for so it’s really not that much time compared to some of the activities that you do.
Michelle:
Well, and you bring up a really good point that I think a lot of times people don’t talk
about and that is where they waste time with other activities that they wont be able to monitor closely.
Rich:
Right, yes, I mean it’s activity, it’s really all about activity and doing the right activities.
The skills and the knowledge come later but as long as you are being active and trying different things
there’s a lot of different things you can do with the tools you now have and the access you now have
with social networks.
Michelle:
So you had an opportunity to hear how Mike and Stacy answered the Brian download
question earlier, so you’ve had a huge jump start (laughter) that so wasn’t fair. But I’ll just go ahead and
ask you, so Rich if you had the opportunity to have a Brian download like we talked about earlier, from
anyone, whether it’s someone from the past, the present or maybe even from the future. Who would
you like to have one from and why?
Rich:
Well, I did like Steve Jobs, that was the one I was originally thinking of but, yes, I was
thinking of leaders of the world. For example if I may choose one or two, it’ll be like Gandhi or Martin
Luther King or Abraham Lincoln or someone who influenced millions of people without actually using
social media. Because the point I want to make there is that it’s communication. Social media is
communication and irrespective of power of social media, if you are a great communicator, you are
going to do really well and if you take that same tact into social media, you are going to be very, very
powerful as far as, very successful. So I would choose someone like Gandhi for that specific reason.
Michelle:
No one’s ever given that answer from that perspective, I like that Rich, that’s really good.
Rich:
Well I did have time to think about it, (laughter) a little bit of time. Well I thought about
that before, so.
Michelle:
Well I want to thank you for coming on the show today and allowing us to just get inside
your head from your own industry and start helping people to have different kind of conversations
around the use of social media for financial planners.
Rich:
Well I appreciate it, I definitely like the opportunity and I could talk to you for hours and
hours on this subject so I do thank you.
Michelle:
So one of the things I want to remind everyone is please make sure that you do go to the
radio show blog and connect with each of the guests that we’ve had on the show today. Whether it was
Stephanie Calahan at the beginning, whether it was Mike and Stacy in our featured topic around social
TV or whether it was Rich LoPresti as we talked about how can one of the more compliant constrained
industries use social media. Because I’ve given you a way to connect with him, whether it’s on Twitter,
LinkedIn, Facebook, talk to them. You’ve got such a great opportunity to actually talk to specific people
around specific topics so that you can get a much deeper understanding of how to do better in each of
those areas. They’re happy to talk to you, and you’ve heard each one of them talk about, “I want to hear
what are your challenges,” because that helps them too. So I bring that up because I want you to think
about this from this perspective. If you are one of those go-givers who like to help a lot of people all the
time and you tend to don’t think about how to help yourself, right, so here’s the spin on this. When you
have conversations with them and you share with them what your challenges and problems are, guess
what, you give Stephanie more content to understand in what direction she needs to have her
conversations with her clients around productivity and organization. You give Mike and Stacy more
content to write on that extended chapter in their book that you can get a hold of. And you give Rich
more content for him to know, “oh, these are some things that I could be blogging about because here
were the questions that you had and took the time to bring to the table for them. So that’s what I want
to leave you with today, how are you reaching out to someone that’s going to help educate you and you
have a conversation with them around your problem that also benefits them because you just given
them another way to have a meaningful conversation.
