How to 'Attract & Grow' assets through smarter sales techniques

The key to growing a financial advisory practice is not simply increasing current assets under management. It’s the ability to consistently attract new AUM.

And that’s where David Scranton comes in.

Scranton is the author of the new book “Attract & Grow: The Financial Advisor’s Blueprint for Attracting $50 Million in Annual Assets” in which he offers methods to wealth managers seeking to improve their marketing and sales skills. He is also the founder of Sound Income Group, a wealth management and financial advisory business, as well as the proving ground for the lessons he shares in the book.

Sound Income Group is comprised of three affiliated companies: Sound Income Academy, a recruiting and marketing firm founded in 2006; Sound Income Strategies, an RIA founded in 2014; and Retirement Income Source, a national network of specialists who help clients establish steady streams of income founded in 2019.

“Wealth management is the worst business in the world when you're struggling, but there's no better business when you're doing well and hitting your goals each and every year. And that's why I wrote the book, because my life mission is to help people either get out of the business or to enjoy the business and have it be as much fun for them as it is for me and our advisors,” Scranton said.

The “AIDA” advantage

"Attract & Grow" offers insights for wealth managers at any stage of their careers, providing the tools and strategies needed to achieve long-term success. The book builds on Scranton’s AIDA strategy―Attention, Interest, Desire, Action― and presents a roadmap for financial advisors to transform the way they do business and attract $50 million in new assets each year.

That strategy is designed around attracting assets instead of chasing them, a sales activity that only grows harder with age, Scranton said. Early in his career he saw the most successful people in the industry make asset-gathering look effortless, he wrote in the book. Soon after, he made it his goal to not only emulate their methods, but codify them so other advisors could enjoy similar success.

“When you're young in the business, maybe you're okay chasing business. Maybe you're okay cold calling and cold canvassing industrial parks and trying to talk to business owners. I did all these things in my twenties but as you get older chasing becomes more strenuous and becomes more distasteful and you want to learn how to attract prospects,” he said.

Outdated sales techniques can scare people away. Once a prospect feels uncomfortable with a pitch, the advisor will find himself or herself in “full-on chase mode,” he said.

“You got to keep that attraction process going throughout the entirety of the process, between getting their attention growing, the attention to interest growing, the interest to desire, and finally getting them to take action and wanting to become a client,” he said.

As to where most advisors get stuck in the process, it’s generally the “bookends” of attention and action that cause the most consternation, he said. Moreover, wealth managers without a niche tend to struggle due to their inability to separate themselves from the pack, he said.

“Everyone says they're good at service, but that's not a point of differentiation,” he said.

Owning the income niche

Scranton says he has long differentiated his own practice by focusing on income products and, more specifically annuities, rather than growth stocks. The idea came to him when he was starting out as a broker during the waning days of the dot-com stock bubble.

“I was a broker, and you can't make a living building bond ladders as a broker. You go broke,” he said. “That's when I discovered annuities as part of the practice. And I realized that annuities are an income tool like bonds, or preferred stocks, or REITs. And I said, ‘Gee, if I put just a little bit of people's money in annuities where appropriate then I can take people out of the market.’”

By focusing on income and annuities, business went up tenfold in the years following the dot-com crash, even as his competitors were still licking their market wounds and struggling to retain clients, he said.

“I went from bringing in $300,000 a year of revenue to over $3 million a year of revenue, and it was because I became known as the income guy in my area around my practice in Connecticut,” said Scranton, who admits that growth stocks are the “sexier” part of the business, but he is “quite happy owning his own little niche.”

And as for all those “market gurus” who preach against annuities due to their often high and upfront costs?

Scranton tells his readers to ignore them and enjoy the guaranteed income.

“They've just been conditioned by folks like Ken Fisher, Suze Orman to not like the word 'annuity.' So if we take all that conditioning away and just educate people about the different tools, a good number of people will pick an annuity for at least some portion of their assets.”

Sharing the wealth

Scranton sees his new book “Attract & Grow” as a way to give back to an industry that has given him so much. And while some might wonder why he is giving away his sales secrets to competitors, the entire industry will be better off because of it, he said.

“Our advisors, generally speaking, have a great culture. They tend to be very abundance based, and frankly they pushed me. They brought this idea up three or four years ago to write this book, to educate other advisors, because they felt like they had an unfair advantage in the field,” he said.

And while the book is intended help wealth managers of all ages, the information inside often skews towards older business owners who are seeking to hire and educate younger financial advisors who may one day take over their practices, he said.   

“That senior advisor can now step back and maybe work 10 to 15 hours a week, and still have a functioning and thriving business,” he said.  

“You're doing it in a way that helps that senior advisor, also financially, and with an exit strategy.”