Interview with
Stephan Quinn Cassaday, CFP, CFS
How did you first become aware of Sandler?
It's a funny story. The first person I met was Margery. I'm normally very reluctant to have sales people come in my office. I can't remember how she did it, but there was some compelling thing that caused me to agree to meet with her. When she got here I was, frankly, trying to blow her off—trying to get it over with as soon as possible. She started by asking me what I liked about our business, so I told her and was happy to brag about our business. Then she asked me what could be better, and used 'the pain funnel.' At the time, of course, I didn't know that's what it was, but it was so effective that I took some actions the very next day as a result. Part of that action was that we began working with you guys.
Typically there's a combination of success and failure when you try something new. Let's talk about both.
Successes?
One of the first things we got was from sitting down with you to intensely scrutinize our initial engagement meeting with a client. The ultimate goal was to close more business, of course, but we also wanted to close the right kind of business. We were working hard, flailing to get money under management. You helped us figure out exactly what it was we wanted and why it wasn't happening in some cases.
The details that were the real value add for us were about how we handled our fees and 'going negative' very early in the conversation with the client.
You helped us realize that we were timid when we talked about our fees. For a client to be comfortable with our fee, we have to seem comfortable and we have to set our fee with authority, which we do now.
We also found that 'going negative' in the initial meeting with a client, trying to talk them out of being a client. What happens is that we position ourselves so that the client is convincing us to let them become a client. We say things like, "We are very expensive." "We have discretion and don't try to work with everyone." "You may be very comfortable doing it yourself, and that may be best for you." So the things that were previously tripping us up late in the selling cycle, after we had wasted a bunch of time, we now get out of the way at the beginning. One of two things tend to happen. Either they are working with us to become a client, not against us—or we eliminate a bad prospect early, before we invest a lot of time and effort in them.
Here's a specific example. We had a man in here just the other day. He was a tough guy, and when we asked him questions he tended to say things like, "Well you invited me!" It's natural to go into your pitch and try to convince someone you can help them, especially under that kind of pressure from the client. But we've learned that you will never make progress that way. You have to have the sort of dynamic where they are willing to open up to you. I finally said to him, "I think we have a problem." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Maybe we're not the firm for you. You are clearly comfortable doing this yourself. You seem like you enjoy it. Maybe it doesn't make sense for us to work together." It's hard, at first, to say something like that. But it turns the entire dynamic around. That was the turning point in our conversation. He began working with us. He's a client now.
Also, with your help, we were able to identify the components of the client's decision-making process. We all have a tendency to think that we know what someone should consider when they choose an advisor. However, everyone decides differently and we are much more effective when we co-build the due diligence process, and then give them what they need to see to be comfortable with us. It seems obvious now, in hindsight, but most of us don't know how we will decide until we decide. Everyone needs help figuring out a process for significant decisions. If you don't help them decide how to decide, then they may not.
Our work with you has been especially helpful in the area of prospecting for them. The analogy of martial arts is really useful here. In martial arts you learn what are the most common attacks and when you learn defenses to the most common attacks and you learn to protect against them—then you are a black belt. Our attacks are, "Not now." "We already have an advisor." "I'm really interested, but I'm really busy now." So you basically learn to parry and repost against those things. When you get to be really good at it, people don't have a defense against you. Some key work we did with you was to systematically identify all of the putoff's and learn how to effectively get rid of them.
Bloody noses?
None. Like martial arts you do not become a Sandler black belt over night. It takes work and discipline over time. But I can't say there is anything I could call a problem related to using Sandler in our profession.
Is there any way to quantify the impact of using the SSS?
Absolutely. Before we started with you we would do a seminar, then invite people in for a meeting. Then I had you come to my seminar and critique it. We made some changes you recommended and the number of people who agreed to meet after the seminar went up dramatically. So instead of getting five meetings from a seminar we now get ten. That's a 100% improvement. Of the ten that come in, we end up working with six or seven, which is again twice what we were doing before. So if we invest $10,000-$15,000 in a seminar, which is not unusual, we were happy if we got two or three accounts out of that. Now we are consistently getting 6-7 and they are larger accounts. It's no question it's one of the best investments I've ever made.
Would you recommend Sandler to others in your profession?
Yes. It's a golden goose. The hardest part of this business, for most advisors, isn't doing a good job of financial planning. I think we are one of the best in the country, but almost everyone would benefit from the sort of service a good, independent financial advisor can provide. It's a full time job to keep up with what you need to know to do it right, and the impact of a mistake can be devastating to a family. The hardest part of this profession is convincing people to take the step and become a client in the first place.
You can contact Steve at:
www.cassaday.com
Stephan Quinn Cassaday, CFP, CFS
Cassaday & Company, Inc., is an independent investment advisory and
financial planning firm.
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