More Client Success With Rixtrema

• What got you interested in the Accelerator Program? 
• Ok, let’s move on to prospects. Can you talk to us about the importance of the follow-up?
• Now onto advisors, can you give us a couple of crucial things financial advisors need to be paying attention to?

This year we ran another great Challenge, with 100’s of financial advisors from across the U.S. We covered everything from email campaigns, effective marketing frameworks, to how financial advisors can run their own challenges with other advisors. 

Part of the proceedings included an in depth interview with a past participant, who had found success applying the tips and education from one of our challenges. Perhaps more importantly he discussed implementing Rixtrema’s software to secure more business. 

Gerald Wernette from Rehmann Financial has had quite an illustrious career in finance. He holds a number of designations including C(k)P Designation, Accredited Investment, Fiduciary Analysts and Certified Employee Benefit Specialist. He has done extensive work on corporate taxes, and works with several different plan sponsors.

Although Gerald is by no means a novice when it comes to marketing his business, he was looking for ways to reach more prospects and grow his business. By working with Rixtrema he was able to achieve this with great results, as you’ll see.

What got you interested in the Accelerator Program? 

We really wanted to do more. When it came to brand recognition, we were looking for an easy way to to build trust, especially with people that were just trying to get their attention out in the marketplace, finding opportunities and showing value. Those were the keys for us. I’m very fortunate at Raymond. I’ve got a lot of resources around me, but still, at the end of the day, that doesn’t mean we have it all figured out, and that also doesn’t mean we want to reinvent the wheel. So being able to partner up with somebody like Rixtrema and have you guys just cut to the chase, get a lot of the legwork out of the way for us was huge. You know, we. If you’re really going to be successful in this area, building a good pipeline is really going to be key and doing it in a meaningful way.

I’ll emphasize one key thing for everybody, this isn’t, hit the easy button. You need to invest your own energy in this. You have to do that. If you’re not going to do that, you’re going to be disappointed and this won’t be anywhere near as successful. But if you’re willing to really invest the energy in it and we were and this was all part of what drove our success this year. We brought in 50 plans this year, 50 plans and drove $1.1million of new revenue to the bottom line. That’s huge. That’s success in my world.

Ok, let’s move on to prospects. Can you talk to us about the importance of the follow-up?

You know, when somebody is really developing an interest in what you have. You’ve got to follow up. I’ve seen too many situations where people have a great email campaign and then they drop the ball when it comes to follow up. And that’s the worst thing you can do. That’s like ordering a beautiful meal and then you’re sitting there yacking. You forget to even enjoy the beautiful meal. You’ve got to partake in the thing. And I would say the other thing is just paying attention to the process. The way Rixtrema has laid everything out, like you’ve been emphasizing a lot in your educational materials. There’s a lot of thought behind this. It’s not there just for color, everything you share has some real substance to it. It took a little learning on our part to realize that. It’s like putting a puzzle together. The pieces have got to fit right.

 “Don’t just make stuff up. Take data from [a] plan and you can come up with some reasonable numbers and Rixtrema is really good about helping us pull that information together.”

Now onto advisors, can you give us a couple of crucial things financial advisors need to be paying attention to?

It really came down to developing a message.

You know, it certainly is about focusing on pain points that the client has. But before you go there, you’ve got to deliver something to really kind of get you to stand out of the crowd, show your value and then focus on the pain that the prospect is potentially dealing with and how you can help them address that pain. And, you know, what we did for us is use that as a launch board to then take them into something we call a planned health review. And once they kind of, you know, bit at what we were putting out, you’ve got to be able to springboard right into, you know, here’s my big value proposition. I’ve set up all these things I’ve shown you. And here’s the other thing about a good email campaign. Make it about them. You know, it’s one thing to send them an email about financial wellness. It’s another thing if you can show them some specific stats on their plan. You pulled off the 5500 and talked about financial wellness as to how it relates to them. That’s a whole different world now. You’re really it’s got to be about them. If you’re not doing that, yeah, you’re providing some good education, but the average person isn’t going to pay attention to it because they’re dealing with a million other things.

The other thing is, you know, woven in that email campaign are things like. You know, this is what it could cost you. This is the value that it could add to your employees. So those numbers that equate to something don’t just make stuff up. Take data from their plan and you can come up with some reasonable numbers and Rixtrema is really good about helping us pull that information together. That I think is huge. That in our mind is what really grabbed people’s attention. And then it kind of springboarded them into being interested in the next step with us, which was doing what we call a Plan Health review, where we really took a deeper dive. And our closing ratio on those plant health reviews was probably double this year when it normally was because of the way we teed them up. So I guess that’s the other big kudos to your process.

If you, like Gerald, are interested in taking your marketing, and business, to the next level. Why not book a Larkspur Executive demo today, and supercharge your prospecting.