Product Description

In The Million-Dollar Financial Services Practice, author David J. Mullen, Jr. reveals how to become a top-producing financial advisor using the method he has taught at Merrill Lynch and is famous for in the industry. This comprehensive book combines marketing, prospecting, sales, and time management techniques into a system that will help readers build a successful and lucrative practice. Mullen gives financial advisors all the tools and guidance they need to:

* get the appointment * build relationships * convert prospects to client * retain clients * use niche marketing successfully * balance current clients and prospects * increase the products and services each client uses * attract millionaire clients

Containing templates, scripts, letters, and 15 tried-and-true Market Action Plans, this indispensable guide shows readers how to take their financial services practice to the million-dollar level and beyond.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23793 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780814480526
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

“…information on marketing, prospecting, sales and time management techniques are presented clearly and in great detail. The book is one advisors will refer to often. "

-- Research Magazine

“…filled with valuable information from a smart manager who has been there and done that successfully.”

-- On Wall Street

"...a helpful resource for financial professionals who have the motivation and desire to build and maintain a solid business model.”

-- Agent’s Sales Journal

“…providing clear…processes for defining and implementing proven marketing tactics for financial practices to use as a guideline… give[s] new and existing owners some food for thought.”

Broker Dealer Journal

“… an easy read…providing clear and methodical processes for defining and implementing proven marketing tactics for financial practices…” -- Broker Dealer Journal

About the Author
David J. Mullen, Jr. (Englewood, CO) recently retired as a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch, where he trained over 500 advisors. His advisor training program has had a consistent success rate of twice the industry average. His methods have been adopted by many managers and advisors firm-wide.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

C H A P T E R 1

Overview

You are about to read a book that can change your career.

Building a million-dollar financial services practice is not complicated,

but I’m not going to pretend that it is easy. If it were, there would

be a lot more financial advisors making millions. In the twenty-six years

that I have been in the business, I have seen hundreds of people fail to

make it past the first two years and few who reached the million-dollar

level. Yet those who reach or exceed $1 million in business have one of the

best jobs imaginable. The autonomy and income of, and the excitement

experienced by, million-dollar and multimillion-dollar producers are unparalleled.

• This book will give you every tool you need to build your financial

services practice to a million dollars and beyond, no matter where

you are in your career—and show you when to use each tool, how to

use it, and how often to use it.

• There are many books and training programs that claim to help you

build your financial services practice. However, this book is different

because it gives you step-by-step instructions for carrying out a comprehensive,

tactical process that has been proven to make your practice

more successful.

• The process I present here has for twenty-one years been able to

double, in many cases, the income of financial advisors at any stage

of their career. It has been refined hundreds of times to be sure it is

as effective as it can possibly be.

• This book is tactical; it contains specific templates, scripts, contact

plans, lists, tasks, marketing plans, letters, and resources, and all

these tools are integrated into the overall process.

• This book covers every aspect of a financial advisor’s job, from prospecting

to client service.

• This book addresses every stage of an advisor’s career, from the first

day on the job to becoming a multimillion-dollar producer.

There are three distinct stages of an advisor’s career:

Stage one is building the foundation. This is done during the first two

years of the advisor’s career. During this stage, the advisor should

spend the majority of his time on marketing, with the objective of

building a ‘‘book’’ of fifty client relationships and a prospect pipeline

of one hundred. About 70 percent of the new advisor’s time should

be spent on marketing, with the objective of getting eight new appointments

a week.

Stage two runs from the third year through the fifth year of service. Now

the advisor must balance client service with marketing. The number

of client relationships should be increased to one hundred, and the

client relationships and the one hundred prospects should be upgraded.

The advisor needs to spend at least 50 percent of her time

on marketing—on client-leveraging activities, on natural marketing

techniques, and on attempting to identify and get all her existing

clients’ assets. The advisor should have four appointments per week

with new prospects.

Stage three is beyond five years. The advisor should continue to upgrade

the one hundred client relationships throughout his career. A minimum

of fifty prospects should be in the active pipeline, and they

should continue to be upgraded. The advisor should spend a minimum

of 25 percent of his time marketing, and he needs to see at

least one new prospect per week.

The road to a million-dollar practice is a series of steps that build on

one another, and you must take the first ones first. The new advisor needs

to understand that building the right foundation greatly increases the

chances of building a million-dollar practice and greatly reduces the time

required to get there. An advisor can commit to the million-dollar road

at any stage of her career, but the fastest and easiest way is to take the

proper steps at the beginning. As your practice grows, the fundamentals

remain the same, but how you allocate your time to each one changes.

In this chapter, I will give you a brief overview of the journey to building

a million-dollar practice; in subsequent chapters, I will go into greater

detail about every aspect of building a million-dollar practice and beyond.

Book Outline

This book is divided into three parts.

Part 1: The Foundation

Chapters 1 through 9 make up this part. It will be of particular interest

to new advisors. It outlines the first things you need to do on the pathway

to building a million-dollar practice; it shows you how to build the foundation

you need for a million-dollar business. However, I encourage any

advisor no matter how much experience she has, to review the information

in this section. The importance of motivation (Chapter 2) and the

marketing process (Chapters 3–7) outlined in this part of the book applies

to experienced advisors as well as new ones.

Part 2: Taking It to the Next Level: Building a Million-Dollar

Practice

This part includes Chapters 10 through 19. More experienced advisors

will find it particularly useful—you will find everything you need to do

once you have built the proper foundation. It will also be useful for new

advisors to read these chapters because they provide a vision for how to

reach a million-dollar practice once the new advisor has built the foundation.

Part 3: Market Action Plans

This part, Chapters 20 through 34, includes over fifty approaches to fifteen

different markets. Each market action plan gives you all the tools

you need to succeed in that market, including when the action plan is

appropriate, case studies, how to implement the plan, and sample phone

scripts and letters.

Appendix

At the end of the book, the appendix gives you resources for finding

names and directories for each market.

The Concept Behind the Process

As you can see from these descriptions, each chapter will guide you

through a comprehensive, tactical process for improving your practice.

Before you begin, however, it is important that you understand the five

characteristics of million-dollar producers and the five fundamentals of

growth, which together are the foundation on which the million-dollar

practice is built.

The Five Characteristics of Million-Dollar Producers

1. They set business and activity goals and track their progress.

2. They are motivated.

3. They market relentlessly.

4. They manage their time effectively.

5. They make establishing relationships with affluent individuals their first

priority.

My observations of successes and failures in this business have led

me to the conclusion that million-dollar producers do not possess any

extraordinary skills; however, they have different characteristics from advisors

who do not reach the million-dollar level. These are the five characteristics,

and they show you what multimillion-dollar producers are like,

their basic approach, and how they work day to day. These characteristics

apply to any advisor who wants to build a million-dollar practice, no

matter where he is in his career.

Characteristic 1: They Set Business and Activity Goals and Track

Their Progress

Studies done on the differences between more successful and less successful

people indicate that the most successful people set goals. To reach

a million dollars in business, you must set goals and measure your progress.

The first step is to understand that your business corresponds to the

number of affluent households (households with more than $250,000 in

investable assets) you have and the total amount of assets you manage.

The average million-dollar producer I have worked with manages at least

$120 million in assets for about one hundred affluent households.

Take the number of affluent households (100) and the amount of

assets ($120 million). Subtract from that the amount of assets and the

number of households you have now, if any. The result is the amount of

assets and number of households that you need to add in order to reach

$1 million. If you divide that number by the number of years within which

you want to reach $1 million, you will see the number of households and

the amount of assets that you need to add to your practice each year in

order to reach your goal by that time.

I tell new advisors that building a million-dollar practice in ten years

is a challenging but realistic time frame. Certainly, advisors can do this

in less time, but I have seen very few do so—most advisors who reach $1

million take at least twenty years. However, if a new advisor is trained to

develop the five characteristics described here from the beginning and to

understand and execute the five fundamentals introduced later in this

chapter, she can realistically expect to reach $1 million in ten years.

Those advisors who want to reach $1 million and who have been in

the business ...

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Customer Reviews

Just what I needed
As a new financial planner working on an independent platform, I was seeking help to develop a marketing plan to get my business ramped up as quickly as possible. This book exceeded my expectations. Dave shares what your goals should be depending on what stage in the business you are, then proceeds to explain how to go about achieving them. I appreciate that he spends little time covering motivation, other than to recognize that to work as hard as one needs to build a million dollar practice, you've got to have your own deep motivation to do the marketing required. The most value is in the "how to" go to market which sets this book apart for most others.

My only regret is that the book was not published prior to my start date. If you are new to the financial services business or looking to make a career change, this is a must read book. If you are a seasoned pro, but not a million dollar producer and want to break through to the next level, this book will be of great assistance.

I must have read a different book!
I must not have read the same book as the other reviewers or I did not work with Mr. Mullen. I ordered this book looking for great things after reading the other reviews. I was sadly disaapointed. This book could be summmed up on one page.

The what: have 20 years to chase people with at least $250,000 to invest in modern portfolio theory. The How: You accomplish this by contacting 100 prospects (people you have met and would be open to meeting with you again) at least twice a month. Once via a phone call, letter or email. Once via a drop by in person. Raise at least $120 million with an ROA of .8% and you have a $1 million dollar practice. His scripts are very different than the ones on his website and the 15 marketing plans are a joke. For example, Mr. Mullen states that 52% of the millionaires in the US are business owners and he spends 5 pages on a marketing plan with three of the pages scripts. Where is the detailed step by step plan.

Great promise, not much substance.

Save your money and DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!!! I would be curious why Mr. Mullen is retired and why Merrill Lynch would let him if he has worked and produced so many great advisors.

BooYah! Finally there's a credible roadmap.
I have been in the business for over 20 years and have continued to refine and grow my practice by applying successful techniques and processes aleady designed by other successful Advisors. This book by Dave Mullen is in a class of its own. Through the countless books, seminars and weekend training retreats that I have utilized to improve my practice..."The Million Dollar Financial Services Practice: A Proven System for Becoming a Top Producer" cuts to the heart of the matter and addresses "Doing the Right things everyday...providing clearity of vision, process and discipline." It's the "Best" I've ever read!