1. Use multiple channels to reach your prospects.
Each prospect on your RIA list has a preferred channel for communication – it may be email, phone, text, or LinkedIn. Until you make a connection, you don’t know what it is. This is why using multiple communication channels is crucial. Some of your prospects may be very receptive on Linkedin or email, but not so much on the phone. Meet your prospects where they’re comfortable to have the best chance of success. If you focus on a single channel for engagement, you risk leaving significant opportunities on the table.
2. Be persistent and engage your prospects multiple times.
When it comes to making meaningful contact with advisors on your RIA lists, hearing “crickets” or “it’s not a good time” from a prospect doesn’t mean you throw in the towel. The reality is that your prospects are busy, catching them at a bad time is a high probability, and you need to give yourself multiple chances to catch them at the right time. “Email sequences with multiple attempts and multiple contacts boost response rates by 160%,” found one study conducted by a popular CRM. The study discovered that a single additional follow-up message from your team can lead to 65.8% more replies. Successful outreach means consistently engaging with prospects on your RIA list multiple times. There isn’t a magic number for how many times you should be following up and reaching out, but you can use your experience with past prospects to predict this ‘target touch number’. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
3. Stand out from the crowd.
The solution to getting a response from a cold email to an advisor is catching their attention. This means you can’t come off as formulaic, too wordy, or without a clear goal. Too many cold emails do exactly this and fail from the start – even sending the exact same message to every prospect. Your words matter. Create energy and showcase your strengths by tailoring the messaging to your prospects’ needs. You can do this at scale by segmenting your RIA lists. Group advisors by professional or personal interests to give yourself a better chance at catching their attention. AdvizorPro allows you to filter your RIA list and classify by advisors’ platforms, services, professional/personal interest, and more. Consider how you would want to be sold to. What would help drive your interest and build trust? In this same study, emails with personalized content boosted the response rate by 32.7%! Customizing your outreach channels takes some time and effort, but this extra effort will pay off with increased response rates from your broker-dealer and RIA lists.
4. Engage with multiple prospects at each target company.
The more prospects from your RIA list you can engage at a company, the higher your chances of getting your foot in the door. Consider different departments, titles, and roles to identify multiple leads who could be stakeholders. Of course you want to win over the decision-maker, but outreach to multiple stakeholders can help you get there. This is a way of bringing science to prospecting – you are simply giving yourself more chances for success. Ultimately it will be your name on your prospect’s mind when it comes to making a decision, rather than your competitors’ names.
5. Tailor your conversation to each prospect.
Add a personal touch to your emails, phone calls, or Linkedin outreaches, through quick research on both the prospect (such as his/her personal likes and hobbies) and on the company. Linkedin and website bio pages are great places to do this research. A good rule of thumb is to allocate one minute to researching your contact, one minute to researching the company, and one minute to explore what specific value you can offer the prospect. Though this takes some time, your response rates will improve as a result.
If you’re struggling with the quality of your RIA database or filling your pipeline with advisors, we’d love to chat and see if we can help. The help of a high-quality broker-dealer and RIA database like AdvizorPro will allow you to leverage fresh data and avoid any time drain on the part of your data, marketing, or sales teams.