Ultimate Guide To The Financial Advisor Sales Funnel in 2024

As a financial advisor, it’s not that easy to land clients without being involved with an agency. In fact, achieving overnight success as a financial counselor is not something you can dream of.

However, if you devote enough time and effort to building a well-planned financial advisor sales funnel, you too can become a reputed financial advisor with 7-figure earnings.

Now, it’s not easy. The only things you are selling are your knowledge, excellence, and worth. Therefore, it’s not a short journey. You need to start with developing relationships with your prospects, and then with time, as you grow in reputation, you will start seeing more and more clients.

The question is, what is the perfect strategy to become the go-to financial advisor?

Well, in this article, you will get a detailed guide on how you can build up your reputation and go on to becoming a successful prodigy.

After reading this article, you will learn,

1. How to plan a funnel journey aimed at marketing financial advisors
2. The steps you need to follow to become a reputed entrepreneur in the field
3. How you can become that go-to financial advisor to your prospect

And eventually, start getting more and more high-ticket clients.

So let’s begin.

Becoming An Expert Financial Advisor

When we fall sick or think about having a body checkup for sustaining sound health, we call for a doctor. In a similar way, when we are concerned about our wealth or finances, we call for a financial advisor.

To become an expert financial advisor, you first need to gain knowledge in understanding specifically why clients need your services & how they will be benefitted in the long run.

And this can be done with three steps:

1. Identifying your field of expertise
2. Gaining experience with real clients
3. Pointing out the key pain points of potential clients

1. Identifying your field of expertise

Depending on your background or the certification you take, you can be,

• A wealth manager
  E.g. Protect client wealth from the IRS.

• Money Manager or investment advisor
  E.g. Help in taking investment decisions on brokerage business.

• Financial planner
  E.g. Helping with risk management, retirement planning, or other such long-term planning.

Your first task is to identify which type of service you want to offer. Once you know your field of expertise, it’s easy to identify what services you want to provide.

Simply put, whether you are a wealth manager, money manager, or financial planner, there are various types of services involved, and it’s not possible to be an expert in all of them.

For example, if you are a financial planner, the possible services you can offer are

• Risk management and insurance planning
• Education saving planning
• Tax planning
• Legacy or charitable planning
• Retirement planning
• Portfolio management
• Cash flow analysis
• Debt management
• Emergency funds management
• Estate planning
• Small business planning

You probably have a little knowledge of all of them. But, what you have to identify is the ones that are you an expert in.

The key here is to become fully focused on the services you are good at, rather than trying to offer a little bit of everything.

Once you know what you are an expert in, you will see that your confidence with clients and your ability to promote your own service will start getting better and better with time.

2. Gaining experience with real clients

According to the famous Albert Einstein, “Experience is the only source of knowledge.”

It is the perfect quote for financial advisors. The work you do is not easy. You are talented and you have the ability to excel at it. But, to become an expert, you need real experience. You need to work with real clients and help them with real problems. Only then you will know exactly where your shortcomings are and how you can overcome them.

The best approach here would be to start by getting associated with a financial advisory firm. Work with a few clients for a couple of years and grow your knowledge of those services.

But more importantly, try to identify the pain points of your clients that lead them to seek help from financial advisors.

Another way to gain experience would be to offer your services to a few clients for free. In this case, you will have to work on finding out the flaws in a client’s financial situation and determine the pain points associated with it. Since you are offering the service rather than clients reaching you on their own, they will probably not be straightforward with the issues they are facing. It will be your job to ask the right questions and find out what needs to be done.

Whichever way you choose, as long as you are able to learn the pain points of your clients, you are on the right track.

3. Brainstorm the key pain points and find the best solution

As you work with more clients or spend more time providing services, you will get a lot of pain points to focus on.

What you have to do is you have to keep notes of each of those pain points and their possible solutions, either on a notepad, online document, or in your diary.

You can then, find some time to brainstorm on your findings on a regular basis. This could be once or twice a week. The agenda here will be to deeply understand the problems and detect the best solution to them. Plus, you may try to identify the dos and don’ts when such a problem is in your hand to solve.

The brainstorming sessions will slowly build up your mind and help you realize what you have been doing wrong till now, and what can you do better in the future.

Most importantly, this will strengthen your knowledge in your field of expertise and change you into a confident financial advisor.

Additionally, it will enable you to write excellent copy for your intended audience and strategically pitch the right offer to the target audience at the appropriate time.

With time, you will become a well-trained financial advisor with a high level of expertise. The moment you can call yourself an expert, you are ready to start the journey solo.

Starting The Sole Entrepreneurship Journey

Before we dive into details, there are a couple of things you need to consider.

1. This is not a short process. Just like becoming an expert, reaching the top of the ladder as a financial advisor also takes time.
2. You will need some monetary backup before leaving the employment field and approaching the entrepreneurship journey.

So basically, you need to prepare for this moment while you are honing your skills.

Now, when you start, your first intention should be to give more value, rather than earning a fortune. You need to invest time and money to gain authority in the industry. Since your clients will be sharing sensitive data regarding their financial situation, you will need to put extra effort into gaining their trust.

The most logical thing to do here is to plan a compelling marketing strategy for financial advisors that will give you an opportunity to prove yourself to potential clients while giving your clients more benefits.

Let us look at how you can plan a complete funnel strategy that is proven to work.

The Financial Advisor Sales Funnel

The sales funnel for financial advisors is a step-by-step journey where you strategically identify potential clients and convince them to take your service. Let’s dig deeper with an example.

Let’s assume you are a Business Investment Advisor. Following are steps you may consider using in your sales funnel.

Let us look into each of these steps in detail.

Step 1 – Create Your Own Website & Social Presence

The first thing you do when you start out is by creating a website. This site should be aimed at people who seek your services and the copy should be well-written.

You may choose to seek professional help or build a site yourself if you know how to write landing page copies and has moderate technical knowledge.

For professional help, you may look into the following firms:

• Code Rex
• Welldev

Or you may find one locally. (We do not encourage hiring freelancers at low costs as most often than not, it turns out to be more work than you’d want.)

And, if you want to build 1 yourself, we recommend you create it in WordPress.

Following are tools you may consider getting to set up your website:

• You may choose a good domain name and take hosting services from firms such as WPMUDev, Kinsta, Dollie, etc.
• Try using Astra, Porto, or maybe Blocksy as the theme. They have great teams and the themes are amazing.
• Maybe use Elementor or Divi as the page builder. (The default Gutenberg is good as well).
• For writing website content, you may write them on your own, or you can try using AI writers such as GetGenie, GoCharlie, Jasper, etc.
• Use WooCommerce to list down your paid services and set up payment options there.

As you read along, you will get to know how to use the form and the funnel builder. For the rest, you will find clear guides on their websites.

Besides the website, you should also set up your own Facebook profile and Twitter profile. Maybe you have one already, but what you need here is to set up social profiles to highlight your professional expertise, i.e., your cover photo and profile images should be well-polished, and you need to post or share a few contents about financial management from time to time. Normally, this is something you should prepare while working with the agency, but if you haven’t then it’s never too late to start.

Next, it’s time to build the sales funnel.

Step 2 – Collect Leads By Giving Away Valuable Resources

Lead generation is the very first step of any sales funnel for financial advisors. And this is crucial because this is a sensitive matter and not everyone will find it comfortable to seek help from you on a new website.

In this case, you may use a Squeeze Funnel.

The idea is to give away a valuable resource for free, that your target audience would love. It could be a checklist for investing in land, a recorded video to teach core fundamentals when it comes to investing in shares, a free session with you to get tips on investing in new ventures, a short book, etc.

Whichever you are willing to prepare and give away for free, make sure it is genuine and will offer real value to your prospects. In exchange, you will get their names and email addresses.

This funnel will include 2 steps:

1. The Landing step with an opt-in form
2. A thank you page with a request to follow you on social media

The landing page should have a copy focused on the free resource and why it is valuable, along with an opt-in form to collect the leads.

When a person signs up, he will be directed to a Thank you page where you may instruct him to check his email to get access to the free resource, while further suggesting to follow you on social media.

Next, set up automation to send an email to the prospect with access to the free resource.

To set up the funnel and the email automation you may use the following tools:

• To build the funnel, as you can tell, we recommend WPFunnels.
• For email automation, you may try using Mail Mint, FluentCRM, MailChimp, or ActiveCampaign.

WPFunnels not only allows you to create the funnel, but you can also send the leads to one of the supported CRMs via direct integration, where you may assign the leads specific tags and lists.

And finally, run Paid Ads (maybe for about a month or two) to bring people into your funnel and start collecting leads.

So, this step helps you to get potential leads and grow your social followers.

P.S. If you have a good number of social followers that are not of your personal contact, you may consider opening a group and asking people to join it. This will help you share your next few funnels with the potential audience without any expense.

Step 3 – Set Up An Appointment Funnel

Now that you have leads and a growing number of followers on social media, it’s time to take the next step.

Immediately after signing up with you, in the following 2 weeks, send out 3 nurturing emails. These emails should simply include tips that extend the value you provided in the free resource. So, you may directly write the tips on the email body, or use a hook and then have them visit a blog you wrote. There should be no CTAs to take your service.

**Writing blogs on the same niche and publishing them on your site will help your website grow organically.

And then, on a 4th email, offer them a chance to book a call with you, with no obligations or fees to see if you can be helpful to them.

On the email body, you need to clearly mention that it’s a “free call” with “no obligations.” Try to give a vibe that you only intend to discuss and suggest solutions, and not sell anything.

To set the appointment, prepare a quick appointment funnel.

This will be a 3-step funnel where there will be:

1. A Landing page to highlight the benefit of this call
2. An appointment booking page to book the call
3. The thank you page with future instructions

On the landing page, the copy should be focused on why this call is important. You need to clearly highlight the key benefits of joining this call with you.

Apart from a good copy, include a survey form to collect important data such as

• Basic details such as phone number, email, name, occupation, etc.
• How much is the investment budget
• What current investment does he/she have
• Does she have any current loads or mortgages

and other such useful data.

After filling out the survey, the prospect will be directed to the appointment booking page where he/she will be able to book a call with you.

Next, he/she will be taken to the thank you page for confirmation and links to your social channels, while an email will be sent to the prospect from your booking tool.

• Use WPFunnels to create the funnel journey.
• Create the survey form using a form builder such as FluentForms, Forminator, WS Forms, etc., and embed it on the Landing page. In the action after submission option for your form, choose to redirect to the URL of the Appointment booking page.
• Use a booking tool such as Calendly or Bookly to embed the booking form on the appointment booking page. Remember to choose to redirect to a custom URL after the form is submitted, and set it up to redirect to the Thank page.

Also, set up re-targeting Ads for those who do not fill out the survey on the landing page to bring them back at a later time. (Adroll is a great tool to manage re-targeting Ads.)

**You may also share the funnel on your Facebook Group (if you have one by then).

So, what this step is doing is it is allowing you to collect valuable information from your prospects and set up a chance for you to pitch your service.

Step 4 – The Passive Hook To Increase Conversion

When you hear “the passive hook” it sounds quite interesting, isn’t it?

Well, because it is. This is rather a psychological tactic that will help you with conversion ahead of your call.

Let me explain the process.

What you do is, set up a 3-step funnel (using WPFunnels) where you have:

1. A Landing page highlighting your core services & expertise
2. Option to sign-up for your service by making a payment
3. The thank you page for confirmation.

On the landing page, you will highlight your expertise, past accolades or achievements, and the services you provide. At the bottom of this page, you may include a section with the price of your service, with a CTA to take your service.

If someone clicks on the CTA, they will be directed to the checkout page to pay for the service upfront, followed by the thank you page.

What you will do with this funnel is,

1. Place a thumbnail on the Thank you page of the Appointment Funnel with the text “Get more details on my expertise and services” and link it to this funnel.
2. At the same time, set up an auto-redirection after 15 seconds for the Thank you page of the Appointment Funnel to automatically direct the prospects to this funnel.
3. On the booking confirmation email, and on additional notes of your booking form, include a link to this funnel.

Now, here is the thing; you cannot expect any sign-ups from this funnel.

That’s right. You are simply bringing the prospects here to let them know who you are, what your achievements are, and what services you provide.

More importantly, anyone who visits the landing page of this funnel and will go through the content, will remember you and trust you more on the call that he booked with you earlier.

This is why I call it the passive hook. It is a hook for closing the deal, but indirectly.

**But yes, there could be a minor chance of getting a sign-up or two right here though the probability is less than 1%.

Step 5 – The Persuasive Call To Close The Deal

When you ran the appointment funnel, you also had them go through a survey form. Well, now is the time to use the information to close the deal.

For every appointment that is set up, check the respective survey form, and prepare a persuasive pitch and a list of solutions you can offer.

Take time to plan a complete pitch where you may

1. Introduce each other and cut any nervousness
   Initially, greet the prospect and talk casually to make him feel comfortable.
   This is where you use your experience from the agency to know exactly how to start the conversation with someone that needs financial advice.

2. Confirm the data he provided in the survey
   Once you are ready to talk business, start by confirming the details he already provided in the survey.

3. Ask for more details to make him feel important
   So, while confirming the data, ask him for details such as why he choose to invest at a certain place in the past, what was the profit margin, etc. The idea here is to get more details for your own convenience while making the prospect feel important.

4. Assess and explain his current situation to him (and show off your expertise)
   Based on the details, tell him exactly what you think his situation is with the problem at hand. If the person is unaware of his own problems or situation, then this will make him trust you even more.

5. Propose a few solutions that he needs
   After pointing out the problems, you suggest the possible solutions overcome the problems, or the steps needed to achieve what the prospect wants. Suggest genuine solutions in theory, rather than offering your services right away.

6. And finally, pitch yourself as the solution
   Now that the prospect knows about the required solutions, offer your service. Pitch the things you can do for him in detail so that he understands how he can benefit from taking your service.

7. Make an irresistible offer
   Besides pitching your service, it is important to add some sort of trigger to push a decision. In this case, you can offer a discount. In your pitch, you can state that if he signs up for your service in the next 7 days, he will get a 30% off on your fees. (You may decide on the discount rate based on your profit margin.)

The challenge here is to prepare a personalized pitch for every prospect. Since everyone has different types of situations, your “questions and solutions” pitch will vary with every client.

This pitch will make the person trust you more because, you will point out the problems and required solutions, which he may or may not take from you.

But if you can successfully plan these things ahead, at least to some extent, it will help you confidently go through the call and convince your potential clients.

**You can see, this call will be more successful if you can collect the right data from your prospects in the survey form. So you have to put some thought into deciding the questions on the survey.

Some will take an instant decision to take your service; especially the ones who are desperately looking for a solution. Others will ask for more time to think about it.

Since you have a threshold of 7 days (or more as per your decision), your clients will take that as a deadline to inform you of their decisions.

Step 6 – Closing The Deals With A Nurturing Campaign

Let’s say you got 20 bookings and managed to close 3 of them while on the call.

What about the other 17? Should you wait for 7 days?

The answer is no.

The world is very distracting nowadays and after the call with you, chances are, most will forget about it. So you have to give a slight push towards taking decisions.

So, here’s what you do.

Immediately after the call, add the clients who didn’t sign-up to a unique list in your automation tool.

Then, for the next 6 days, set up an email series where you can give valuable tips while adding a short paragraph to let him know that you are waiting for him to get back to you via email or phone.

This will keep them from forgetting you and your offer.

On the 7th day, send an email with a direct approach. Remind him that you guys had a conversation and that today is the last day to get the 30% off on the survey.

Then add a CTA to either reply to this email, give you a call directly, or book a call with you.
Here, you can state that he can still hold onto the discount if he books the call with you on that day.

Within these emails, those who need your service will convert. Others will simply move on.

During this period, you can further try to build a relationship with your potential clients through extra activities such as

• Buying products from their business
• Sending a thank you gift for attending the appointment call
• Send them any gift that’s related to their hobby, etc.

With some effort and dedication, if you can set up until this step, you will start getting more and more clients over time.

Step 7 – Preparing For The Future

The process will be repetitive to keep on getting clients in the coming years. But with time, you have to prepare to become a pioneer so that you no longer have to home for high conversions.

Hence, the first thing you need to do is collect real testimonials from your clients and prepare case studies.

These, you have to use in your website, and your funnels throughout the process. Pretty soon, people will trust you more just by researching you online.

Down the line, you may switch from using a survey funnel to using a webinar series or a boot camp, which is the next stage of your solopreneurship. These events will help to land larger clients.

Meanwhile, you also need to focus on creating and growing a Facebook Group so that you can get an instant response when you host these events.

Final Thoughts

As you can tell, becoming a solopreneur as a financial advisor is not a short journey. You need to be patient and work hard to build up your own expertise and reputation.

You will need some technical skills and some marketing skills to get better results, which you can develop with time.

The difficult part is to take the big step of leaving your career and becoming an entrepreneur. But once you manage to take the leap with the right mindset, there is no looking back.

So go ahead and plan the complete journey and become a prominent financial advisor.

Use WPFunnels to build the financial advisor sales funnel and aim to become a 7-figure entrepreneur.