The WealthStack Podcast
00:31:05 · Shannon Rosic, Brad Johnson
[00:31:05] S0: do agree there. [00:31:07] S1: Okay, now, how do I adjust my sales process? I've been running the same way for twenty years if I've got this new tool. Now, if I've got a fact finder, I can speak the fact finder into existence through my words which are captured, and now that flows. This is one of the things in Triad AI, it's flowing into the CRM. Now we can start the build, but here's what's really cool, we can start to benchmark. Because now, firm a, firm b, following similar process, next gen advisor over here in firm a, 10% close rate. Next gen advisor in firm b, 40% close rate. What's the difference? Oh, interesting. In his first visit, he's missing bullet two and bullet three and he's talking 98% of the time. Coaching opportunity. Over here, and you can very quickly start to use that data to improve your process, better serve your clients, and now at Triad, we can coach better because we're coaching on real math, not imaginary math. And so it's just really cool how all of that stuff can start to work together. So long answer, but I would say the biggest disconnect I see, most advisors don't know to... How to transfer twenty, thirty years of knowledge, learn through the school of hard knocks into a repeatable, duplicatable sales process so they can add advisers to the firm and scale.
00:32:29 · Shannon Rosic, Brad Johnson
[00:32:29] S0: It certainly seems like we're on a massive learning curve in our industry right now, but it's also very exciting because it will continue to challenge folks to just reconsider their skill sets like you said. So I'm excited to see where it goes. And also to your point around the transcription and note takers, it's allowing folks to be a lot more proactive around their advice. So my hope is that when you have access to these types of tools, you're able to go deeper on those relationships because it's naturally catching things that you aren't able just to listen and write down and be able to retain all of it. So my hope is that the industry just gets much more proactive around around servicing their clients. So I appreciate your insights there, and I'm... Now I'm hungry, and I'm gonna have to DoorDash some chicken nuggets from Chick Oh, yeah. How did [00:33:15] S1: this episode? You deserve it. You've had a good week. [00:33:17] S0: Thank you. I agree. But it is time now, Brad, for segment two of this episode called ask us anything where I have gone out to the social universe and asked folks to submit their questions and... That they want answered by you. And we had a few folks slide into the DMs this week. If you're prepared to be put in the hot seat, I'm gonna throw a few questions. The hot seat. [00:33:36] S1: Let's go. [00:33:38] S0: Alright. First question we got, what's in your stack right now? What technology solutions are providing the greatest value for your business? What... What's working?
00:33:50 · Brad Johnson
[00:33:50] S1: I'll go with something that's unique to Triad because I think AI transcription, there's kind of the usual suspects out there that's not gonna be new news to anybody. I I think the biggest thing is what is the engine that drives everything, and we've invested a lot into Triad AI. And if I describe what that is, it's... I don't think saying it's a CRM does it justice, although it does that. It's really... If I look at most of our community, coming from the insurance space, one of the things that's unique is they're very good at direct response marketing. They've done dinner seminars. They've done educational events. They've done radio, TV, YouTube. Go down the proactive direct response marketing. The problem is if you look at those different slot machines. So you walk into the casino, put a dollar in this one, it pays out three. Put a dollar in this one, it pays out 5. Put a dollar in this one, it pays out 7. You would obviously put every amount of money into the $7 machine unless you could only pull that handle once every quarter because maybe that's a referral event and you can't you can't bleed that one dry. It's not as frequent. So the problem is most advisors when they show up to us, they don't know their spend, they don't know their ROI, they haven't tracked it, and they sure don't know what happens when it goes to different advisors, what's the closing rate. So what we wanna do is we wanna coach on math, not emotions. And so if we've got those feeding in an APIs so that they actually flow... The leads flow into the system where they're tracked, we know where they came from, we know how much they cost to get on the calendar, We now know they went to this advisor. This is the CRM part. And we're like, okay. They're following a process they've been coached on that is consistent, that's duplicatable. Okay. Now, what are the results? This one does twice as well as that one. There's obviously a reason for that. So now we can either level them up and get them to where they need to be benchmarking, or unfortunately, sometimes you have to coach them out because they're just not a fit for that role. So the the problem with all of that, it's so data intensive. Oh, yeah. I had this person. They were supposed to fill out a spreadsheet, but then they forgot to for a month. They got too busy. Now you're missing a month of data.
00:36:02 · Brad Johnson, Shannon Rosic
So the goal is to automate all that through APIs, through data that now with AI enabled tools can flow to allow our members to make better choices in their business. Also, once that data's in there, if they spoke something in a first visit, hey, yeah, we went out to wine country in Oregon. Now you've got an AI tool inside of that CRM that's enabled that you could say, hey, give me a list of my top 20 wine lovers. I wanna do a wine event next quarter. A year ago, that would have taken somebody probably half a day, make sure they tagged the clients properly in there. They probably missed them. They probably put it in the wrong field. Now, in five seconds, they can have a list and they can be using that to grow their firm. So there's just an unlimited amount of potential with where this is going, which is what I get really excited about. But that's just one use case we're already working on and we see starting to bear fruit. [00:36:54] S0: Love it. I'm also dubbing you the king of analogies this episode. I'm thoroughly watched. Says I get a [00:37:00] S1: little carried away, so feel free to dial me back. [00:37:02] S0: Now I'll leave that to her for the podcast, though it's working. Alright. One more for you. We're a smaller RIA and don't have the budget to build out a huge operations team. If you had to prioritize one investment to create more capacity, where would you start?
00:37:21 · Brad Johnson
[00:37:21] S1: So let's just assume... Because that can mean a lot of different things. Let's just assume that there's a firm like that. There's probably one founder that's the primary revenue producer, like what we talked about. Let's just assume they have a a dialed in sales process that works for them. So if that's the case, and they're not at capacity where they're already redlining burned out, all go to marketing. So if the sales process is solid, if they actually have a distinct financial product, a plan that they are confident in and that works, now it is how do you create the line out the door. And I think one of the biggest things, on the RIA side of the house, is the benefit to do... Doing a podcast for twenty years is it's given me a really... I've got advisors that come in that grew up in insurance. I've got advisors that grew up that are fee only and wealth management. So I see the different pain points in different areas of finance. On the RIA side, typically, it is... We do really good financial planning, but we have... We basically work off referrals, so it's like we don't know when the next client's walking in, or it's maybe some center of influence if that's out of your control. So just like Apple wouldn't sell iPhones if they didn't know how to create customers, I feel like a lot of RIAs have that. They they have a good product, a good planning process, they have poor marketing. They don't know how to get people to walk through the door. So I would say the best way I've seen to do that are one to many marketing avenues, dinner seminars, educational events. And here's the thing, a lot of kind of wealth management side of the house gets stuck. I don't want to be a a steak dinner salesman. Are you confident in the process you do? Do you believe you can help people? If yes, why would you not want more people to take advantage of that? And so, if you don't wanna do a steak dinner, cool. Do an educational event. Do it at a local college. Maybe that's more of the financial planning approach.
00:39:19 · Brad Johnson, Shannon Rosic
But the bottom line, the one to many approach where I can spend one hour or two hours, speak to 20, 30, 40 potential prospects versus work a country club where I talk to one individual and it takes forever because it's the same conversation 40 times, I would recommend implementing a proven tracked one to many marketing, at least one marketing funnel because that will help them grow. [00:39:42] S0: I think that's great advice. And if you are a steakhouse salesman, I volunteer as tribute if if you'd like to woo me in that sense. But appreciate the advice, Brad. But we have made it to our final and probably my favorite segment of the podcast that I affectionately call stack it or whack it. So what does that mean? I'm gonna throw out a few ideas, trends, tech trends, whatever it may be, and you tell me if they are essentially worth the hype or not. Love it or lose it, essentially. [00:40:09] S1: Okay. [00:40:10] S0: This is certainly a safe space for hot takes. First one I've got for you. The best advisory firms of the future will manage significantly more assets with significantly fewer employees. Stack or WAC hybrid is also an acceptable answer. [00:40:26] S1: Stack. [00:40:27] S0: Oh, okay. Alright. No... With no hesitation. I like it.