What to talk about with clients in January

If in January you contact your clients in their 30s to discuss the best way to take withdrawals from their retirement funds, you may find yourself with very few meetings scheduled.

Communication and marketing are about more than randomly contacting your clients and prospects about any topic. For it to work well, it should be targeted to the right people, about their specific needs and at the right time. It makes a difference in how successful you are.

“I noticed that some people out there build a book of business and lose 85% of it the same year they wrote it,” said Rick B. Stanzione, RFC, CSA, an MDRT member since 2003 from Washington Terrace, Utah, USA. “We have to be able to retain our clients.” By organizing natural touchpoints with clients, Stanzione has a 97% retention rate.

For example, with the holidays winding down and expenses piling up on credit cards, January can be a slow time of the year for financial advisors. Most clients would rather run the other way than talk about becoming critically ill, dying too soon or retiring.

Some clients, though, may be able to save significant amounts of money in taxes if they talk to a financial advisor in January. And it’s a rare client who isn’t interested in saving money on taxes.

“January is the perfect time for clients to be coming in when they’re starting to file taxes and saying, ‘Gee, I have this required minimum distribution I need to take. Do I take it now or do I take it later?’” Stanzione said.

Starting with momentum

Stanzione fills his January calendar with his clients who are required to withdraw from retirement funds but don’t need the additional income. By talking with those clients about other options, Stanzione can place that income in other investments. It saves his clients money, and it allows Stanzione to start his year with enough momentum to easily qualify for MDRT’s highest level, Top of the Table.

Unless an advisor’s memory is sharp enough to easily keep track of hundreds to thousands of clients, however, this method of targeting and time-sensitive touchpoints requires a good process behind it to work. For Stanzione, he calls his process a list book. For him, it’s a spreadsheet of his clients, their ages, products they have and when to contact them based on their demographics for when they may need additional financial planning products and advice.

This way, Stanzione knows in January to not focus on his younger clients who are not eligible for required distributions from retirement accounts. Instead, he contacts those clients who need him most at that moment and most receptive to hearing from him.

You can organize these touchpoints throughout the year to see clients based on their life events. One financial advisor in Stanzione’s office doubled his production in 12 months after using this process.

Watch more in Rick Stanzione’s video below.