If my body is a temple, it’s only in the sense that it’s a crumbling Mayan ruin, suffering at the hands of the elements over time. Rocks are falling from the roof, there’s ivy growing up the walls, and the WHO officially considers the foundations to be hazardous to human health.

Since I turned 25, I have not been able to run more than 10 kilometres without sustaining a serious injury to a bone, muscle, or tendon across my knees, hips, ankles, or any other part of my body. Simply, if it has the ability to chronically hurt, it does.

In an attempt to rectify this, I started going to the gym and, more recently, I’ve been working with a very friendly personal trainer called Dan.

Dan’s sessions and the routine he designed for me have been hugely effective. While nothing can truly repair the dilapidated façade of Temple Matthew, at the very least we’re sticking Polyfilla over some of the more egregious gaps and splashing on a tin of heavy-duty paint.

Crucially, working with Dan has reminded me of a crucial marketing lesson, and it’s one that I think really applies to financial planners.

The comparison of financial planner and personal trainer is a common one, as both relate to goals-oriented, bespoke plans that help clients achieve their goals.

However, it’s not Dan’s methodology of providing his service that’s of interest here. Rather, it’s the highly effective sales technique he used to get my attention.

Read on to find out why.

“Can I give you a quick bit of advice?”

Dan’s approach to selling me personal training was slow, steady, and, frankly, worked like a charm.

I’d seen him around the gym over the course of roughly a year, and we’d spoken a few times. Then, a couple of months ago, he told me he was offering free one-on-one sessions, and asked if I wanted to give it a go. I absolutely did, the session was great, and it practically converted me to a regular paying customer in an instant.

But actually, that isn’t entirely accurate, because Dan’s sale to me started long before that.

The first interaction Dan and I had was during one of my many courses of physiotherapy. He was doing his own workout while I was awkwardly carrying out some stretches to improve stability around my knees. Between his sets, completely out of the blue, Dan came up and asked me a simple question:

“Can I give you a quick bit of advice?”

He made a suggestion to improve my technique in whatever the stretch was, and I immediately felt the impact.

From there, every time I saw Dan around the gym, we would talk about routines, what we were doing that day, and he would also suggest new exercises or ways to improve my form.

So, by the time Dan offered me that free session, I was already hooked. In the old sales funnel model, I was already well on the way to “intent” before Dan went in for the “conversion”. By the time Dan explained the cost of sessions moving forward, I was practically begging him to take my money.

This might all sound like a nice little story about improving gym form and technique with the help of a friendly professional – and to be fair, it basically is that. I had a need that I was unaware of, and Dan was on hand to help me recognise and solve it.

But more importantly, whether consciously or not, Dan had actually employed a well-regarded and highly effective sales method for getting me to buy: advise for free, charge for implementation.

Showing your expertise to potential clients brings multiple benefits

Advising for free and charging for implementation very much does what it says on the tin: you offer prospective clients and customers free advice and information on what you know about, doing so over a period of time. Then, when they want support implementing that advice, you explain how you can help, and how much it will cost.

This is by no means exclusive to Dan and personal training. In fact, the concept is actually one of Yardstick’s core values: freely sharing our knowledge to help financial advisers and planners improve their marketing.

There are many reasons this technique works, such as the ones below:

• It’s an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and position yourself as a voice of authority, and create trust. By offering me advice each time I went to the gym, Dan could demonstrate himself to me as a knowledgeable professional. In turn, I now trust him to provide me with the best information that will help me achieve my fitness goals.
• You can build an organic relationship over time. Rather than starting from scratch and having to build a rapport, I already felt like I knew Dan before the first session, which helped make the training experience more comfortable.
• It helps clients identify a need they have, and connects them with an experienced professional. I thought I was doing okay with my home-brew workouts – at least until Dan designed a workout regime which I can only assume is purpose-built to push me to the brink of death but eventually make me stronger. Dan’s tips and tricks helped me realise that I was missing something from my routine, and offered me a willing professional who could help me improve.
• It sets off the “reciprocity nudge”. As the brilliant Phill Agnew explains, when we receive something for free, it makes us more likely to reciprocate and give back because we feel indebted. I don’t know whether Dan used this deliberately, but by giving me advice and offering me a free session, I might have been more likely to become a paying client because I subconsciously wanted to return the favour.

Whether it was one or all of these aspects, Dan’s willingness to freely share his knowledge ultimately ended up with him taking on a new client.

You can offer free, informative financial content to clients and prospects

Before I come back and relate all this to you as a financial professional, I am aware that you may have a specific concern here – the use of the word “advise”.

Unlike a personal trainer, any information you share freely needs to not be considered “advice” under the financial promotion rules.

That’s why for you, I think “inform for free, charge for implementation” is more appropriate to your profession.

Regardless of this distinction, the core principles are the same: offer up your knowledge, aim to inform, and then demonstrate how you can add value to clients’ lives.

There are so many ways that you could do this:

• Produce regular newsletters with financial insights and information, delivered directly to your connections’ inboxes. You could even send different information to varying mailing lists, whether that’s clients, prospects, or professional connections, to carefully nurture that specific relationship.
• Share news and insights on social media. If you’re distributing articles and blogs in a newsletter, then you already have a library of content you could post on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Host webinars on topics that might be relevant to your connections. A half-hour explanation of a significant news event, or even a Q&A session in which clients or prospects ask you some of their burning questions, gives you an opportunity to share your knowledge.

Whichever way you choose to do it, creating and sharing relevant, interesting financial content is an effective way to offer information for free to clients, prospects, professional connections, and anyone else you want to work with.

In doing so, you could:

1. Demonstrate your knowledge, expertise and experience
2. Build and nurture relationships over longer periods
3. Help a potential client see the value of financial advice
4. Set off the reciprocity nudge to make clients want to work with you.

Sound good? I think so too.

We can help you inform your clients and prospects freely

If you need someone to help you tackle persistent hamstring tendonitis, then trust me, I’m not your guy.

But what we can do is help you share your knowledge through informative, engaging content, and find the most effective channels to distribute it to your targets.

Email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300, and we’ll happily share our knowledge with you.