Frequently Asked Questions
Q I could book these appointments myself. Why should I pay you to do it for me?
A It depends on where you would most like to spend your time. Most of the financial advisers we work with would prefer to spend their time in front of clients and prospective clients rather than making lots of unfruitful telephone calls, and find that their time is most profitably used in this way.
Cold calling is a very time consuming process. Most of the time you are either not speaking to the right person or that person is not in the right frame of mind to respond positively to a cold call. We take all that hard slog and negativity away from you, leaving you simply with the appointments where the response was positive.
By all means do the cold calling yourself if that is where you feel you can most profitably spend your time. But if you would prefer to spend your time face to face with clients and prospective clients, then let us go through the hard grind of cold calling so you can concentrate on your core focus activities.
Q What guarantee do I have that the appointments will be any good?
A We cannot provide any guarantee about the quality of each appointment – especially as this is usually dependent on the sales skills of the adviser. We do guarantee that each appointment we make for you will be with a Company Director, a Business Owner, or a Senior Manager. We also guarantee that this person has agreed to meet with you.
It will always be a mixed bag. You are bound to get some appointments that are a complete waste of time (we would eliminate those if we could be sure beforehand this would be the case). However, our experience is that good advisers find worthwhile opportunities in enough of the appointments to make the overall experience very profitable – which is why they keep coming back to us month after month for more appointments.
Logic says that most business people who agree to set aside even only 20 or 30 minutes of their very valuable working time must believe it could be profitable for them to do so. In most cases a profitable opportunity for the prospect is also a profitable opportunity for you, the adviser. It is down to you to find that opportunity and to show the prospective clients how much you can help them.
Q Is there a minimum number of appointments I must buy?
A We would normally recommend you try to take five appointments a month, but this is not contractual.
The reason we suggest this is that it is easier to get up a “head of steam” if you sit a number of first appointments in a fairly short period, which makes it more likely you will get good results from those appointments. Experience has shown us that five appointments a month is the optimum. But we will discuss your requirement with you when you join the strategy, and will give you our opinion of how workable this requirement seems to be.
Q Do I have to use the appointment service for a minimum period?
A No. There is no minimum period.
Q I have used an appointment service in the past and ended up paying for appointments that did not take place through no fault of my own. Could this happen with your service?
A No. This is simply not possible. There is a cast iron guarantee that unless the appointment does not go ahead because of something that you do (for example, you do not turn up at the agreed date and time) it will always be replaced.
Q You have said all the appointments are with business people. Are these corporate or personal appointments?
A The answer is a little of both, but mainly personal. We always go in on a personal basis, usually talking about pension reviews, and this is therefore what the prospect is usually expecting.
But bear in mind the need to be on the lookout for all the opportunities that may be there. One reason we are calling business people, even though we are talking about personal financial reviews, is because of the other opportunities which may arise in their business.
Q How often do appointments you have booked into my diary get cancelled or rearranged?
A It is our experience that between 30% and 40% of cold booked appointments with prospects are likely to get moved or cancelled. We do everything we can to keep this to a minimum, but a cancellation rate around this level is more or less inevitable. Remember, the kind of prospects we will be putting you in front of will usually be very busy people, just as you are, and often need to change arrangements at the last minute.
We will try to speak with the prospect the working day before the appointment to confirm it is still going ahead, just in case the prospect is no longer able to make it but has not informed us. We will contact you immediately if there are likely to be any problems.
Bearing in mind this projected cancellation rate, we would normally recommend you ask us to book around 50% more appointments than you actually hope to sit in any one month. If you plan to sit five appointments in a month we would suggest booking eight. Three are very likely to get moved, leaving you with the five you wanted in the first place.
Q Isn’t it illegal to cold call in this way?
A No. What we are doing is completely legal. There are now strict controls on how and in what circumstances anyone can cold call in the financial services sector so we have worked closely with specialist financial services solicitors to ensure we are not inadvertently in breach of any of the regulations.
As well as following all the legal requirements we also adhere to the much stricter Direct Marketing Association Code of Practice, so you can be confident everything we do is legal, ethical and compliant.
Q How will I know what the prospect is expecting from me?
A In many cases there will be something specific, and we will advise you of this before the appointment. But in other cases the prospect is simply open minded enough to give you twenty or thirty minutes to impress – it is then up to you to take advantage of this opportunity. Our job is to open the door of opportunity for you – your job is to keep it open.
Q How long should I allow for the appointment?
A When we book the appointment we tell the prospect the meeting is likely to be for thirty or forty minutes. Most prospects are not going to object if you exceed this time a little. But it would be inadvisable to allow the meeting to go beyond forty minutes, in case the prospect later complains they were pressurised. There might even be a case to answer that this is an example of not treating the client fairly, which could bring down the wrath of the Financial Services Authority.
Also bear in mind that we have assumed this maximum when booking other appointments for you if we are booking more than one per day, so if you go much beyond forty minutes you may not have enough time to get to the next appointment.
If the prospect keeps asking questions and it looks as though the meeting could exceed forty minutes unless you are careful, this is the time to get your diary out and treat those questions as a buying signal! If you continue the meeting at this point and answer all the prospect’s questions you may find it more difficult to get commitment to the next meeting – a case of talking past the point of sale.
Q I would like to sign the client up and begin arranging for the pension transfers on my first visit. Can you ensure he has all his pension documents to hand so I can get moving on this?
A I am afraid we cannot do this for you.
The purpose of the appointment is for you to introduce yourself and the services you offer, not to begin selling right away to the prospect. Bear in mind that a pension transfer may not even be best advice for this prospect, and there may be a completely different opportunity for you to explore.
You should also be aware that if you start the sales process itself in the appointments we book for you, you would be in breach of FSA regulations. We are allowed to cold call for you simply to introduce yourself to the prospect, but not in order for you to begin selling during that appointment.
Q Your Terms of Business say I cannot conduct a fact find or conduct any business in a first appointment. Does this apply if I discover an urgent need during that appointment?
A FSA rules are very clear that the purpose of the appointment must be for you to introduce yourself and the services you offer, not to begin selling right away to the prospect. If, however, you discover an urgent need during that appointment, and the prospect is happy for you to do so, you should deal with that need just as you would in any other circumstance.
For example, if the prospect mentions he has young children and no life insurance it would be entirely reasonable for you to suggest this is dealt with immediately. Likewise, if the prospect is about to reach normal retirement age and needs advice urgently on retirement options it would not be unreasonable to address this in the first meeting.
Clearly it is important to consider such exceptions on a case by case basis and to be very sensitive about this. If a pattern developed where most of your first appointments were “exceptions” of this kind there would be problems for you if the FSA investigated.
Q What happens if I need to change the date or time of the appointment?
A Once we have booked an appointment into a date and time you have given us we would ask you not to try changing this, as it is very likely that the prospect will cancel completely if you do so.
Sometimes you will have no choice but to change the appointment. If, for example, one of your best clients needed to meet with you on that day and time you would no doubt wish to give them the priority. Where this is necessary we ask that you take responsibility for moving the appointment we have booked – in our experience it is less likely the prospective client will cancel if telephoned directly by the financial adviser who then gives a good reason for the change.
Regrettably, if the appointment is lost because you tried to change it we will still need to be paid for booking it for you.
Q Will I need to e-mail or write to the prospect before the appointment?
A Usually not. When we book an appointment for you we will send a confirmation letter on your behalf using your letterhead. All you need do is turn up at the prospect’s office at the agreed date and time.
We will even give the prospect a freephone number to call if they need to change the appointment for any reason, and this phone will ring in our office. Most prospects will ring this number rather than the number on your letterhead as the call is then free, which means you do not have to get involved in re-selling the benefits of the appointment – our team will handle this for you as part of the service. Very occasionally a prospect will choose to ring you direct and change the date or time of the appointment. Obviously it is important where the prospect does contact you direct that you keep us fully informed – it would not look very professional if we rang the prospect to confirm an appointment which had already been changed directly with you.
Very occasionally a prospect will ask to see something in writing before committing to an appointment. We are very experienced in marketing, and know the difference between a request for written information as another way of saying no, and a request for information by a prospect who is genuinely interested but very cautious about arranging an appointment simply on the basis of a cold call. We will only pass you requests for e-mails or letters to be sent when we are confident the request is genuine.
Q I don’t want to have to keep phoning you or e-mailing you every time there is a change in my diary.
A When you tell us how many appointments you would like to sit, we will tell you how many days we need you to reserve in your diary. You will then let us know which days you have allocated to us. You should mark those days as reserved for us, and try to book any other appointments into days and times you have not given us. We do not need to know anything about diary changes unless they affect the dates you have given us. As long as you do not book any appointments yourself on one of our allocated days there is no need to contact us at all about any diary changes.
You will probably occasionally need to use up a slot you have already given to us to fill. This is not a problem as long as you let us know immediately, otherwise you could end up with a double booking. But as you will generally try to avoid booking anything yourself on these days, there should be very few occasions when you need to advise us of diary changes.
Q I am particularly interested in taking on clients with big pension funds. Do you qualify the appointments so that I will only see the type of prospects I want?
A We do not qualify the appointments. We are not allowed under FSA regulations to do so. If a prospect volunteers useful information, including the approximate size of pension funds, we will note this and pass the information on to you before the appointment, but the regulations forbid us to ask for information of this kind during the prospecting call.
You should be prepared to look for the opportunities that are there rather than attempt to fit the prospect into a preconceived idea of an ideal client. If your assessment is that a prospect you have met will not be profitable you will presumably decide not to take him or her on – but please make this decision after an open minded review of all the available opportunities rather than just looking for one “product sale”. Whether or not you decide to take the client on you will still have to pay for the appointment.
Despite the above comments, as the “hook” we use to get the appointment is often the prospect’s dissatisfaction with the performance of his or her existing pensions it is our experience that many appointments are likely to expose a need for pension transfers of a reasonable size. But please do not make the mistake of so focusing on this that other, possible greater, opportunities are missed.
Q I am not authorised to advise on mortgages. Will that be a problem?
A We would not book an appointment where we knew the prospect wished to discuss mortgages without checking with you first whether you were authorised in this area and wished to take an appointment on this basis. The same applies to any other areas where special authorisation is required, such as Long Term Care. It is actually quite rare for us to get requests of this kind from a prospect. Anything that comes within the core business of a normal financial adviser practice, however, is regarded as an acceptable basis for an appointment – whether it is pension reviews, general investment, life assurance reviews, or a full personal financial review.
Q I have heard you sometimes book appointments with prospects who wish to discuss commercial property investment. I am not an estate agent, so what advantage is an appointment like that to me?
A Sometimes we may get you an appointment with a property investor who is interested in finding out how to invest in commercial property in a more tax efficient manner.
This is your opportunity to show a prospect the benefits of property investment through a SIPP or SSAS. This may lead to opportunities for pension transfers, collecting all the little “pots” of pension money a client has accumulated onto one platform, and quite probably to opportunities for new lump sum or regular investment as the client tries to amass the 50% deposit required under HM Revenue & Customs rules.
We will certainly not have made the appointment on the basis that you can advise on suitable properties in which to invest, so do not allow the prospect to sidetrack you in this way unless that is an area in which you can and want to give advice. This type of appointment will have been made with an eye to SIPP or SSAS investment and tax efficiency, so keep the prospect focused on this if you feel the meeting is being hijacked in some way.
We will always advise you beforehand if this is the “hook” that was used to book the appointment.
Q Can I speak to someone who uses your service?
A We would be delighted to give you the contact details of a number of financial advisers in different parts of the country who use our service. Please telephone us on 023 8089 2444 to arrange this.
Q How profitable will these appointments be?
A This will depend in the main on what happens when you get through the door we have opened for you. Clearly we have no control over what happens from that point on. Our responsibility is simply to open the door for you.
However, we have many financial advisers who continue using the appointment service month after month. They only do so because they find it is very profitable for them. We hope you will have the same experience.
From time to time we run seminars designed to help you get the very best out of your appointments. Keep your eye on your inbox for information from us or other companies in the Adviser Breakthrough Solutions group, and take advantage of any such opportunities to maximise the benefits from your appointments.
Q I know you cannot guarantee the quality of any one appointment, and that I must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth with any cold marketing strategy to take on new clients, but do you have any overall statistics to give me an indication of what I might expect?
A Clearly there are wide statistical variations here. Some financial advisers have found that every single one of the first five or six appointments we have sent them on have been highly profitable. Typically, in a run of five appointments we would normally expect that at least one will present no opportunities at all, at least one should present opportunities that should pay for all five, and the remainder should present a reasonable range of opportunities. Overall, therefore, we would normally expect five or six appointments to be very profitable to you in total. As we encourage you to take five appointments a month, this means we would hope you will see the profit potential within a month of sitting your first appointment, although we recognise it will naturally normally take longer than this for the profit and cash flow actually to hit your books.
Obviously this does depend, of course, on your both spotting the opportunities and exciting or disturbing the prospects enough to ensure they take advantage of the services you offer. We will do everything we can to help you, but in the final analysis it is you sitting in front of the prospect, not us.
Q Once I have given you a geographical area to find new prospective clients for me can I change this if I find it is not working out for me?
A Most certainly you can, subject to there being enough leads for us to work in the new area you choose.
