Real estate agents, insurance agents, financial and investment advisors, college consultants, and more have many unique challenges. It’s part of the reason why they need a marketing app that has basic customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.
One common issue is many times all of those roles are done by one person! Consultants these days wear many hats and provide a wide variety of expertise to help people. On the surface they may seem unrelated, but when you consider the roles, they have commonalities. Let’s take financial advisor and college consultant. With college costing anywhere from about 10,000 to 35,000 per year, it’s a big investment. Thus financial advisors may recommend ideas about assets as well as scholarship opportunities and financial aid. Same with real estate and financial advisors.
1. Manage and organize contacts, including know who they are
As a consultant, you’re out and about — for personal (such as a party or baseball game) or professional (such as a seminar) events. You’re making contacts and want to give people more information. You need a place to store them.
You want to know people’s:
- Names
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Interests, what they want from you
- How you met them
Knowing people’s interests is invaluable. For example, you wouldn’t want to send new houses to a high school junior who’s thinking about attending a Washington state university. Just as someone who’s searching for a two bedroom house in Scottsdale doesn’t need WSU college prep materials.
Enter a CRM. CRMs keep your contacts organized to make it easier to know who you’re interacting with and what they want from you. Some marketing apps, such as SwiftAgent, even include a CRM — doing double duty for your money.
2. Connect with your network
Every time you talk with a potential client or customer, you want to log that somewhere — what was said and what your follow-up is. You want to denote whether you spoke by phone or email, and when, for each contact.
Let’s say for example, you have a prospect who’s interested in life insurance. You’ve discussed it with them and they asked you to contact them back in December, when their current policy is about to expire. You want to make sure you have on your calendar to call them in December and what was already discussed as well as promised.
A CRM can help you do that as well. Taking notes and attaching them to your contacts is what it does well and easily. Again, SwiftAgent is both a CRM and a marketing tool.
3. Gather leads by providing relevant information and content
But you also need to reach out to people — you know, do marketing. You want to contact people proactively, including email them useful information.
Prospects and potential clients
Everyone needs something different. Just like Einstein’s theory, it’s all relative. Here are a few examples:
- Parents and sophomores should start planning for college now. They need information that helps them understand why that’s important and do that.
- Investors and those who may be seeking financial advice need info when the stock market is moody — as it is now. Bear or bull market predictions? Sell or hang in there?
- For people thinking of life insurance, they may need to know that premiums are increasing shortly.
- Real estate contacts, even those who haven’t agreed to have you represent them, need information about houses within their desired neighborhoods within their budget. If they’re selling they need ideas and tips that make their house more valuable or good times to sell.
You’re proving your value and trustworthiness through content. You’re showing who you are and why people should listen to you. You’ve also showcasing your own personal brand.
Information can come in a variety of ways — emails, phone calls, flyers and mailers, video, podcasts, blog posts, landing pages, and more. Even before someone agrees to have you represent them, you should be sending relevant content. Need content ideas? Contact us.
Customers
Customers need information, too. It’s more targeted and more relevant. This should be the easy group to contact.
While they’re a happy customer, considering asking for referrals. Some may do some purely because they love you. (Those are the best!) Consider offering money if you’re not getting referrals from your current customer group. And also, ask what you could be doing better. Customer service, as you know, is everything.
4. Keep up with opportunities to acquire new customers
The great thing about marketing is something called “organic traffic.” Those are people you’re not currently targeting that find you — through search or maybe social — and are interested in your services.
For example, many parents of children about to enter college start doing research. If they type in certain search terms, they may find your website or a landing page. They could request information and suddenly, they’re a lead! Leads move down a funnel:
- People merely aware of you
- Those evaluating what you’re offering
- People considering your specific services
- People who decide to hire you — a customer — who may bring in other customers
We probably don’t need to tell you that keeping up with these opportunities ensures sales. At the end of the day, sales — and good customer service — will sustain and grow your business. SwiftAgent, for example, makes it easy to track opportunities, including how much potential revenue you’ll receive from that prospect.
5. Grow your business by keep doing everything again
Over time, you’ll attend more events, interact with more people — prospects and customers — who move from leads to happy customers. At that point, you continue to grow your business.
Successful consultants use marketing apps with CRMs, such as SwiftAgent, to continue to grow their business.