Getting New Clients and Boosting Sales

Here are tips on how to enhance client appreciation and fund higher education.

By Karl Lueders

Client appreciation can take many forms—parties, seminars and personalized notes. But though you may be genuine in your thanks, it pays to be ahead of the curve if you want to make a lasting impression on your clients and prospects. Besides, birthday cards alone won’t persuade your clients to introduce you to their friends as much as a free meal or a party.

However, before you start picking up the lunch tab for every client and their bridge club, start by making a list of your best clients, advises NAIFA-Long Beach member Lynn Frehner, of Frehner Financial in Seal Beach, Calif. Assume that your best clients have like-minded friends who would appreciate your services. Ask those select clients if you can take them out for their birthday, along with a handful of their friends. (Ten is about as civilized as you should make it.) Ask your client for a list of friends he would like to have attend and send them personalized invitations based on your client’s referral. Of course, your client will also tell them they’re going to be invited to lunch, so your acceptance rate will be pretty high.

Don’t initiate any business discussion; you’ll be amazed at how eager your client will be to do that for you. And remember to take something to write with to take down phone numbers if they don’t have business cards.

If you really want to make your event stand out, consider renting a movie theater in your area for an early matinee, adds Frehner. This idea may work only for older clients who can take advantage of a midweek movie, but it’s a fun way to bring all of your clients together, with their friends, under one roof. Your invitations will include the tickets you pre-buy, so your clients know that no R.S.V.P. is required and that they are encouraged to bring people with them.

Depending on how generous you want to be, talk with your local theaters about private screenings and seating capacities, she adds. Most multiscreen theaters have rooms of varying sizes to fit your clientele.

College financial aid
Sending kids to college isn’t so much a right for parents these days as it is a life goal, but tuition costs are increasing nationally at a rate of 6 percent annually. To help solve this problem, many advisors are using 529 plans as options to fund tuition nest eggs at early ages.

Life insurance is becoming a viable option to increase the financial aid opportunities for students who need to declare the income and assets they and their parents have, according to NAIFA-Sacramento member Ron Adams with Financial Management Seminars in Fair Oaks, Calif.

Once a school has had a chance to calculate the amount a family can pay, it will offer anywhere between 0 percent and 100 percent of the cost of tuition. While 401(k) plans cannot be used as assets to count against the parents, liquid assets such as brokerage accounts and nonqualified tax plans and gifts can be used to decrease the amount of aid a child may qualify for.

Say a grandparent wants to gift a child $11,000 a year to attend college. While that money passes tax-free to the child, the $11,000 counts against the child when determining financial aid. A better solution, he adds, is to fund a life insurance policy for the parents, with the children as beneficiaries. This way, neither generation has to expose this gift as assets.

True, the amount of financial aid may increase by only $1,000 for that year. But consider for a moment parents who have three kids going to college for five years each. (The national average is now 4.5 years of college per student.) They are looking at saving $15,000. They also get all the benefits of a life insurance policy.

The National Association of College Funding Advisors has details on this strategy. You can reach it at 800-794-8331.

Karl Lueders is a contributor to Advisor Today.