Selling financial services with newsletters

Haven't posted for awhile because I was in Washington DC at the PrimeVest National Sales Conference. Merrill Anderson creates PrimeVest's client newsletter, and we do this with an unusual sales model. Each individual rep buys copies of the newsletter, for his or her clients (or other usage) and pays for the newsletter through commission reduction. Thus, Merrill Anderson has to sell each rep individually, for the most part.

Do the newsletters work? We didn't get any stories along the lines of "I distributed X copies of newsletters and received Y inquiries." We do have plenty of satisfied customers, and they did report getting comments on a fairly regular basis.

More important, usage of the newsletter is positively correlated with success as a PrimeVest registered rep. Overall, just 8% of PrimeVest reps have signed up for the newsletter. Among the "cream" of the brokers, those attending the National Sales Conference, we had a 27% market share. The top 25 reps constitute the "President's Club," and here we count 35% as our customers.

What do the newsletters do? Mostly, they put the face and contact information of the rep in front of the client. The content is polished and professional, good for the rep to associate with.

Drop me an email if you'd like to see a sample.