Winning More Clients By Talking Less And Reducing Friction For Prospects: #FASuccess Ep 489 With Sara Grillo

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 489th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Sara Grillo, a digital marketing specialist for financial advisors.

What’s unique about Sara, though, is how she has identified several (perhaps counterintuitive) ways financial advisors can win more clients, including by talking less about their expertise and reducing ‘friction’ by asking less of prospects early on in the relationship.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Sara finds that financial advisors sometimes fail to connect with prospective clients because they put the focus on their services and capabilities (often using intimidating industry jargon in the process) rather than on what’s keeping the prospect up at night, why Sara thinks that common phrases used on advisor websites (for example, serving as a “household CFO” or being a “boutique advisory firm”) might confuse rather than attract potential clients, and how Sara finds that advisors can encourage prospects to take the next step (whether it’s scheduling an initial appointment or becoming a client) by reducing ‘friction’ points along the way (for example by offering simple, shorter lead magnets and by limiting the scope of information requests).

We also talk about Sara’s approach to content creation for financial advisors and how answering common questions for a firm’s ideal target client can be an effective place to start, how Sara finds that if an advisor receives the same question three times in a given week or month that it could be a good candidate for a piece of content, and how Sara is less concerned that writing high-value, targeted pieces of content will cannibalize an advisor’s business as prospects could likely access this information already (as many will be amenable to working with an advisor to save them time and hold them accountable on execution).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sara shares how being more targeted with content not only can attract attention from both search engines and AI platforms but also can increase the chances that it’s passed around members of the target community the advisor works with, how Sara’s involvement in the advisory industry (including her previous experiences as an advisor) has led her to help found a movement dedicated to greater transparency in the financial advice industry, and how Sara has found that building community (both amongst peers and with target client groups) offers rewards in its own right in addition to the business growth opportunities doing so can provide.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about the benefits for advisors of talking less and listening more when meeting with prospects and clients, generating productive content ideas by answering the questions an advisor’s ideal target is answering, or the benefits of building an advisor community, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Sara Grillo.