Written by Marcus Roth, Senior Director of Email Marketing, Automation, and Content at Simplicity Lone Beacon.
We surveyed over 1,000 people between the ages of 50 and 70 with an average of $500k in net investable assets. One of our Founders, John Capuano, covered his three major takeaways from the survey, but given how extensive the survey is, there are still key insights to reveal that can help understand the opportunities you have to grow your business.
There are two “ranking” questions we will cover in this article. A “ranking question” asks respondents to compare options to each other and place them in order of their preference, otherwise known as “ranking.”
For this article, my conclusion is at the start:
What you should take away from the ranked survey responses data and this article, is how you treat your clients and prospects on an individual basis and “at scale”. Don’t reinvent the wheel each time you speak to a new prospect. This data reveals that people tend to filter into different baskets of priorities for what they’re looking for from your services and expertise. If you pay attention, you can custom tailor your approach to these baskets, and each client will filter into those baskets, allowing you to efficiently supply prospects and clients with relevant information and guidance that doesn’t require you to invent an approach for each prospect or client.
The first of the two ranking questions is as follows:
Rank the following financial planning services by order of importance to you:
- Tax Minimization
- Income Planning
- Investment Planning
- Estate Planning
- Healthcare Planning
Across clients’ and prospects’ responses, the top 5 most common rankings in order had either income planning or investment planning in the top two ranks. This means that those 2 topics are clearly top-of-mind for people. The most common ranking of all 5 choices was the following, with 61 entries matching:
- Income Planning
- Investment Planning
- Tax Minimization
- Estate Planning
- Healthcare Planning
In the rest of this article, I will be referring to the most common sets of rankings. As stated above, 61 entries matched the above ranking order, meaning many who took the survey had the same preference order as each other. However, other ranking orders were repeatedly found as well, suggesting there are certain trends prospects and clients align with.
The #1 most common ranking is a good indicator of the preference of an average prospect. This is a good benchmark to look to when conducting conversations with this ranking in mind. In other words, assume the #1 most common ranking is the preference order of your prospects until learning information that might change that understanding.
Curiously, the second most common set of rankings had tax minimization in the second slot but did not appear among the top 5 set of rankings in the second (or first slot) again until the 6th most common ranking set. The 6th through 9th most common sets had “tax minimization” in the second slot. This suggests that tax is a high priority for a significant percentage of individuals looking for financial advice. However, investment planning generally moves the needle for more people.
To an advisor reading this, this suggests that you will know quickly in conversation if a prospect is interested in tax minimization. If they aren’t interested in tax minimization, then it probably doesn’t have to be made a priority in further conversation.
Overall, this information suggests that tax planning is a very close 3rd in preference order for services offered by financial advisors, and as stated above, those contacts will likely hint toward their interest or indicate it quickly, if so. I don’t exactly believe that there are advisors out there who are skeptical about the effectiveness of talking to prospects about tax minimization, but if there are any, show them this study. Hopefully, they change their tune.
Income, investment, and tax planning have established themselves as a clear “big three” with “estate planning” and “healthcare planning” as less of a priority from a large majority of survey respondents. The “big three” topic preference is present in 43% of the most common ranking sets. The first time the big three do not all appear in the count of common ranking sets is rank 9, 10 and 11, where estate planning takes the 3rd place slot.
Similarly, but at the bottom of the ranking was estate planning and healthcare planning. Estate planning takes 4th place and healthcare planning takes 5th.
The second of the two ranked choice questions was sent to our client’s prospects only:
Rank the following items, by level of importance to you, when selecting a financial advisor:
- They have a convenient location near me
- They make planning my financial life easy
- They offer comprehensive retirement planning
- I have a high level of personal and professional trust in their organization
58% of prospects ranked “I have a high level of personal and professional trust in their organization” as their 1st preference.
The #1 most common ranking of these 4 statements is the following:
- I have a high level of personal and professional trust in their organization
- They offer comprehensive retirement planning
- They make planning my financial life easy
- They have a convenient location near me
Convenient location was ranked 4th, which is surprising to me because it is obvious that there is a certain distance away from an office that a prospect is unwilling to travel. However, it could also be true that the people surveyed assume that there will be a good amount of advisors in their area and that they have confidence they’d find options within their distance—leading them to rank distance as low, even though it would be top of mind if they had no options within their preferred distance.
As such, we must recognize the travel factor as an issue because in-person meetings were a very highly ranked preference for meetings. In addition, our paid social media data corroborates this as well. Only 2 people ranked “They have a convenient location near me” as their #1 rank. So, distance is a barrier for an advisor to land a client, but if the prospect’s home is within a reasonable distance, the barrier becomes extremely low.
Another interesting insight is that the average prospect is more likely to want a comprehensive plan than an “easy” one. As a digital marketer, ease is often one of the most priority elements of a digital marketing strategy, but for something as crucial as a retirement and life plan, then it seems like prospects are willing to “put in the work.”
Keep this in mind when you’re engaging with your prospects and clients. Make sure you truly invest your attention in them. Even if you have hundreds of leads, if you don’t give any of them the type of attention that communicates that you are dedicated to being a steward of their life’s savings, they’ll look to your competitors.
About the Author: Marcus Roth is Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Senior Director of Email, Data, Automation & Content. Marcus has a unique experience in B2B and B2C start-up companies ranging from enterprise-level market research of Artificial Intelligence to self-defense eCommerce products. His experience in AI market research brought him, and his research, to INTERPOL, The United Nations, and Harvard University.
