Many financial advisors struggle with exclusively competing on price, but the industries top advisors focus on developing, and then mastering, their own distinctive selling method in order to avoid becoming a commodity. In this episode of Money Script Monday, Kevin explains four easy steps you can follow to create your own unique selling process.

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Video transcription

Hey, there. My name is Kevin Nuber and thank you so much for watching today's Money Script Monday video.

Today, what I want to talk about is why top advisors sell a process rather than a product.

Let me give you a quick story.

Let's say that you are going to go purchase a car. You know the exact make, model, the color, everything for this car that you want to purchase.

And when you go search for the dealers in your area, you find out that there's actually three dealers in your area to buy this car from.

The question I have for you is this, which of those three dealers are you going to buy that car from?

Well, common sense says that you're going to go and find out how much each dealer is willing to sell it for and buy it from the one that's offering you the cheapest price.

Now, the problem for the car salesman in this transaction is because now that they're competing on price, their product has become a commodity.

You do not want to be a salesperson selling a commodity and having to compete solely on price.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what many financial advisors do.

You see, when a client comes in to their office, their primary instinct is to sell a product.

And that client can go and find a dozen different advisors in your area to sell the exact same product that you are offering.

That client is conditioned to now go and search for alternatives and find the best price even if a best price doesn't exist.

In order to become a top advisor, you have to learn how to sell your own unique process rather than a product.

Advisor Growth Pyramid

To start off, what I want to do is I kinda want to show you the evolution of every advisor, from the time that they're new in the business to the time that they become a top advisor.

And I call it the Advisor Growth Pyramid.

You see, when every advisor comes into the business, they're taught, and they think, that the number one most important thing that they need in order to be successful is a wide range of products to offer to a client and to become an expert and have the most amount of knowledge.

And in that situation, you're going to be able to sell the most amount of product.

For five years, the advisor learns about every single product that's on the market.

They become an expert in their industry only to find out that if you don't have someone to talk to, then you're not going to be able to sell any of this product that you have become an expert on.

So, the next step in this evolution is now, what they focus on, is lead generation and marketing.

Their number one goal is now to get in front of as many people as they possibly can, and they become a marketing expert.

Well, let's say they do this. They've created a predictable process that brings clients into their office.

They're selling the same product to every single client that comes in, because that's what they still think is the most important thing to sell.

Well, they discover that their closing ratio isn't all that great.

You see, the clients still go back, they think about it, then they don't come back into the office.

Eventually, in order to get better at their practice, they somehow discover that the thing they need to focus on is not selling a product, but rather selling a unique process.

Once they sell a unique process that a client can only buy from them, then the advisor can move to the next phase, which is operating a profitable business.

So, the question that really comes up is okay, how do I come up with my own unique process?

Well, we've created this template that you can use that allows an advisor to go through and actually come up with their own unique process.

Create Your Unique Process

This is a guide that you can use in order to determine what process you're going to start using. But there are steps that you must follow in order to come up with this perfect process.

The first step that you should do is to create your own process, you first need to come up with a unique name.

You need to find out, make sure that this is not a name that somebody else is using. It is completely unique to you and if a person searches for it on the internet, it's going to go right to you.

Once you name it, then what you need to do is build out these subsequent steps that's going to be in your process.

The thing about this is that the step two can be income planning which you might sell an annuity.

Step three could be tax planning where you might use life insurance to avoid taxes.

Step four could be risk diversification where you're selling your asset-management platform that you have.

In this process, you're still selling a product. But what's different about you and what a client can't get anywhere else is the process that you wrap it within.

They can only get that from you.

Once you've created this, the next thing you need to do is you need to print it, you need to publish it, and you need to tell the world about it and make it public.

Once you've tested it and found out that it works, and that you have a winner, you have to go trademark it so that nobody else can copy the process that you've created.

So, this is a four-step process you can go through in order to create your own unique sales process.

Well, why is this important?

Well, if you want to be the top advisor that now can focus solely on running a profitable business, one of the things that you have to do is you're going to have a step away and allow other people in your office to do things that you once were responsible for.

Scale It

You see, most advisors who are new to the business, they do everything. They answer the phones, they do the marketing, they do the accounting, they pay the bills, they do the sales, they do absolutely everything.

In order to scale up and become more efficient, if you have your unique process, then you essentially can just clone yourself inside your office.

You can bring in different employees, you can bring in different junior advisors.

Instead of having those junior advisors go through this 10-year cycle that it takes most advisors to go through, you can plug them straight into your unique process that the clients can't get anywhere else, and you can make your junior advisors top advisors in no time.

I want to kind of tell you a personal story.

I have a friend and this friend, five years ago, he told me that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I was blown away when he told me, not just because it was a brain tumor, but because of how calm and collected he was when he was telling me this.

I asked him, "Aren't you nervous? Aren't you anxious? I mean, this is major brain surgery that you're going to have to have performed to have this removed."

He said, "You know what, Kevin? When I was told that I had a brain tumor, I was devastated. But the very next day, I went in to my surgeon's office, my surgeon sat me down, and he told me the exact step-by-step process that he was going to walk me through.”

“Not only did he tell me all the steps, but he said that this is the process that is unique to him that he has developed in his 25 years of being a surgeon, a brain surgeon.”

“And he told me what was going to happen today, tomorrow, and a year from today. And I walked out of that office completely comfortable allowing this surgeon to do brain surgery."

I remember thinking that this is exactly like the financial services industry.

You see, most financial advisors, when they get into the business, and they're down here, what they do is they expect a client to come into their office and allow them to perform brain surgery on their most important financial assets.

And then they're surprised when the client goes back and thinks about it and doesn't come back in.

If you want clients to trust you in order to allow you to perform brain surgery on their financial assets, you need to have your own process that you've developed through your years of experience.

And tell the clients the step-by-step process that you're going to be taking them through.

I hope you enjoyed this and thank you very much for watching. Thanks.