Erin Scannell and I discuss:
- How Erin built out his events and marketing teams to pursue organic growth.
- Using geofencing, social media, AI, and other tech to reach more ideal prospects.
- Planning, executing, and following through on virtual and in-person prospecting events.
- Designing a marketing “drip” to keep prospects engaged with your firm long term.
- Key hires Erin made as he built up the business side of the firm.
- How Heritage complements its hybrid work policy with in-person team-building events.
- The tech stack Erin uses for all of the firm’s operations.
- How Erin let go of his advisory responsibilities and the tough conversations he had to have with many of his clients.
- Using Silicon Valley’s Rule of 40% to analyze a firm’s growth rate.
Quotes:
Erin Scannell on creating targeted prospecting events that deliver real value to attendees:
“You can do geofencing now where, traditionally, if you did advertising, you would just advertise to a very large market. And now you can get so narrow and target specific zip codes, specific neighborhoods, and then specific addresses as well, and get a lot of good demographic information on the areas and the people that you would want to target. So that’s part of it, the digital advertising. And then part of it is word of mouth. We’ve just been doing events long enough and we put a lot of time and effort into developing the content. Last year, the most-attended workshop was one on year-end tax strategies. We do a countdown in that workshop at 60 minutes of the top 10 tax strategies that we see high-net-worth consumers tend to miss. We go through it relatively quickly. We try to put together good and compelling visuals. And then the other aspect of it is we create a written version of those workshops as well. We are in the era of Zoom fatigue, where it can be harder to get people to show up to a 60-minute webinar. So we offer written recaps after the fact. That gets the reach to a wider place. Last I heard it was around 14,000 contacts on our list that have signed up to just be made aware of the workshops when they happen, what the topic is, and then if they can’t attend, again, they can get the written recap.”
Erin Scannell on attracting and retaining high-net-worth clients:
“Life events will come up. And then sometimes it’s an event with their financial advisor, or a non-event. Something that upsets the client, like they’re not getting a call back from their advisor in a timely fashion. Maybe there was a service mistake, maybe something that had just been a slow burn for them. And then something happens and it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back and they decide they want to talk to someone else. The stats we’re seeing are high-net-worth clients, one, want to have multiple advisors, and two, are more likely now than any time in history to seek out second opinions and move if they’re not really happy. So that ends up being part of our motivation to continue to elevate the client experience, the service that we’re providing, and then also stay on top of the marketing and events just so we hopefully then stay top of mind with consumers that have other advisors that they might not be perfectly happy with.”
Erin Scannell on climbing the value stack:
“We’ve surveyed our clients and heard back that many of the things that are keeping them up at night were not necessarily financial in nature. And based on that, we made the decision that we were going to offer more. So we’ve been looking at ways to go up the value stack. There was exhaustive research done by Bain where they created this visual about the ways we can add value to clients. (Editors note: Fidelity adapted Bain’s research and created The Advice Value Stack® for financial advisors.) And the visual they created is essentially a hierarchy of wants that clients would have. And it’s designed to look like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So if you pictured that in your mind’s eye, where the basics are at the bottom, those are the basic things clients want from us. But only once those basics are met do people look to satisfy the upper levels. So if we looked at the foundational wants that clients would have that the industry has tried to solve, it’s things like we try to reduce people’s effort, make it simpler for them. We try to inform them. We give them market updates and newsletters. We try to make them money. We try to make them profit. Those are foundational items. We have to do those things. But then once you go up the value stack, we leverage technology so we can do more. So it’s like things like wellness, reducing anxiety. And then you go to the third level, which would be things like motivation, where you’d think of life coaching, or self-actualization. And then self-transcendence is the very top. And that’s helping others or society more broadly. That’s where the industry is going. For those of us that don’t want to race to the bottom and play the Walmart game, we’ve got to provide a Ritz Carlton or Four Seasons experience. We’ve got to provide an experience that’s different because consumers, I believe, will always be willing to pay for a truly differentiated experience.”
. Resources Related to This Episode
- Erin Scannell on LinkedIn
- The Mindset Behind Moving from Public Assistance to $2 Billion in AUM In our previous conversation, Erin talked about the hard lessons in perseverance and resilience that he leaned on as he founded his firm.
