Product Description

Use a 5-Step Process to Transform Your Business--and Your Life! If you've ever yearned for a business that would energize rather than drain you, if you've ever known and admired someone who made financial services look easy and fun, then you're ready to learn a new way to market. A way that doesn't require so much of your time and energy. A way that requires less effort. Effort-Less Marketing is based on author Steve Moeller's extensive research and refinement of the best strategies to build a financial advisory practice, as well as key marketing principles that work just as well for financial advisors as they do for such customer-savvy giants as Saturn and Nike. You'll toss aside conventional, exhausting sales techniques for a newer, easier way. With these 5 steps, you'll take the guesswork out of reaching the wealthiest and most enjoyable clients, make referral-gathering a no-brainer, and completely revitalize your business.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116619 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 395 pages

About the Author
For more than a decade, Steve Moeller has helped entrepreneurs build profitable and rewarding businesses. As president and CEO of American Business Visions, Steve is a sought-after speaker, consultant, business strategist, and writer for financial industry trade publications. Steve started his career in the advertising industry. In the early 1980s, he entered the investment industry and soon became an award-winning salesperson and eventually a successful marketing executive. Today he focuses his talents on American Business Visions, a publishing and training firm he founded in 1989. The company creates marketing tools and business development systems for financial advisors and investment companies. His unique business development process, best defined as relationship-based niche marketing, has become known as the "Moeller Method." This turnkey system enables advisors to identify and attract clients who are both profitable and fun to work with. Steve believes that evolving technologies and consumer expectations are creating huge opportunities and challenges in the retail investment industry. He is committed to helping financial advisors transform their businesses into highly competitive, client-centered organizations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
STEP 2: TARGET PROFITABLE MARKET NICHES Pretend for a moment that you're a prospector looking for gold. You could try your luck panning in the nearest riverbed. Or you might try to improve your odds by prospecting in a riverbed where others have discovered gold. But most rivers have been panned for more than 150 years. All the "easy" gold has already been found. You would be lucky to get even a modest monetary return for your efforts. A more sophisticated prospector would focus on discovering the source of gold. Once the veins of solid gold were located, gold nuggets could be mined efficiently all day long. Meanwhile, the other prospectors would be down in the riverbed panning for flakes. Discovering your source--rich niches--is what Step 2 is all about. Packed with valuable research data, chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 illustrate the power of niche marketing. Starting with a look at the big picture--the universe of everyone who could conceivably be a prospect--you'll learn how market segmentation can help you identify the specific community of individuals who will benefit most from your services. Because these individuals are in the same niche, by definition they have similar hopes, concerns, and needs. So keeping them happy is simple. By focusing on a single niche--or even a couple of niches--you'll quickly become an expert at identifying, attracting, and helping people in that group. Focusing and narrowing the scope of your business this way will help you master the effort-less marketing process. SECTION PREVIEW Take advantage of the five benefits of targeting. Identify the top 20 market segments for financial advisors. Apply the 80/20 rule to your current clients. Uncover the two to three niches that you'll make the most money in and have the most fun with. Profile your ideal client. Use the Ideal Prospect Profile to find high payoff prospects.

Customer Reviews

Not for Beginners
This is a book designed for financial advisors who have been in the business for more than 5 years. It talks about how to get into a niche market and divide your customers in A's, B's, C's, and D's. You want the A's and B's, not the C's and D's. This book is somewhat motivational and has a few good ideas on how to get your business going. This is good book for a financial advisor who has his OWN business, and not work for one of the major financial firms. As a beginning financial advisor, I got a few good marketing ideas from the book, but will have to reread it in a few years once my client base builds up. Do NOT think this book will have an immediate impact, the author even states that these marketing tools will take a few years to kick in. Overall, if you have been in the business for a few years and are feeling stale and need a jump start, then this book is for you. Good Luck.

Client Centred Focus All the Way!
I have read many of the "marketing" books available for financial advisors, and this one is at or near the top of my favourite list.

For advisors interested in a client-centred, non-transaction oriented approach, it will be a great resource. For "old style", transaction oriented brokers, save your money. This book is directed to those advisors who put their clients first, and benefit by taking the high road.

Much better than books like Ainsworth's - How to be a Successful Broker and Deena KAtz's Practice MAnagement. (which I do not particularly recommend).

Moeller's book is a good complement to Murray's Excellent Investment Advisor, as a section on mission statement (business and personal) sets the stage to incorporate your business beliefs with your values to your client's benefit.

Excellent book!
If you are interested in developing a fee-based financial planning practice and want to get away from traditional mass-marketing approaches, this book is for you. Steve Moeller presents a step-by-step approach on how you can develop this type of practice. The key is to develop a more client-centered approach to doing business whereby you attract the types of clients you want rather than "advertising" for them. Steve shows you how to do this. Steve's emphasis on building a better quality life for clients and advisors by focusing on what is really important in our lives struck a chord with me. Highly recommended!