Six advisors reveal best practices and secrets to success.
Before becoming an advisor, Matthew Eickman served as legal counsel for plan committees. “So, I had the luxury of being in the room after all the finalist presentations had ended,” Eickman, an attorney who is now national retirement practice leader at Overland Park, Kansas-based Qualified Plan Advisors, said.
“It never failed that once the presentations ended, the committee members looked around the room and said, ‘Well, they all seem pretty much the same to me,’” he said.
Advisors really need to think through that other advisor finalists likely focus on the same handful of plan and participant service areas and figure out a way to differentiate themselves.
“Then it becomes more of an art and less of a science,” he added.
Amid intense competition, it’s natural for advisors to wonder: What’s the secret to a winning finalist presentation?
“People always want to know, ‘What works?’” Matt Leeper, Wayne, Pennsylvania-based senior vice president and retirement plan counselor at Capital Group, said. “I believe a plan’s business is won or lost before you get in the room. You’ve got to prepare and then do dry runs before the meeting. The days of preparing for a finalist presentation on your way to the meeting are done: The stakes are too high for fiduciaries not to pick an expert. You need to make that connection quickly, and you’ve got strong competition.”
Six experts talked with NAPA Net and shared these tips for a winning finalist presentation.
Focus on Them, Not You
“The number-one thing is definitely to make the presentation about the potential client, not about you,” Dan Peluse, Chicago-based executive director of the Retirement Benefits Advisors division at Wintrust Wealth Management, said. “While presenting, you are providing a service for that plan committee. You are making it about the client’s need and how you can fulfill it. We spent too much time in the past talking about, ‘Here is our service approach, and here are samples of our reporting.’”
The presentation’s content should be based on the input an advisory firm gets from the employer while doing its research before the presentation, Leeper suggested.
“Focus in the meeting on what’s most important to them. You’ll find that if you’re just talking about your firm, it won’t resonate as much with them as it will if you focus on them,” he said. “The differentiators for advisors now are more about how you understand the issues that employer has.”
Leeper says advisors should clearly articulate their value to that employer and committee during the presentation.
“You need to be able to give people a visualization of how their experience, governance, and confidence (as plan sponsors) will improve by hiring you,” he added.
Read more about “You’re Hired” from the Winter issue of NAPA-Net the Magazine at: https://issuu.com/usaretirement/docs/_nntm_win23_complete_issuu/36.
