The Sweeney Agency

About Duncan MacPherson - Speaker on Business Development & Marketing:

Duncan MacPherson travels extensively as a keynote speaker throughout North America, conveying dynamic and fact-rich presentations that have made him a popular spokesperson for the financial services industry. Duncan’s expertise in demystifying business development and marketing in the financial world has universal appeal; from the high-level advisor to the successful wholesaler, to corporate financial institutions. Duncan’s primary goal is to help Financial Services Professionals achieve liberation and order in their businesses through step-by-step methodology and execution.

As co-founder and co-CEO of Pareto Systems and Pareto Platform, an industry leading business development firm and ASP (Application Service Provider) dedicated to the elite professionals and companies within the financial services sector, Duncan and his team of consultants are in constant demand for speaking engagements and for assisting Financial Services Professionals create predictable, sustainable, and duplicable businesses. Pareto Systems is well known for its approach, which is based on best practices and for its focus on implementation. Pareto Platform has now taken that expertise to a whole new level by combining practice management strategies with a powerful web-based client relationship management system.

Duncan is an industry author and has written the best-selling books: Breakthrough Business Development, Take Your Business to THE NEXT LEVEL and The Promise of the Future: A Financial Advisor’s Guide to Effective Marketing. He is also co-creator of the Pareto Platform, which combines the essential CRM tools with an all-encompassing array of time-tested practice management and business development processes that ensures Pareto Platforms’ revolutionary BDRM platform will take one’s business to the next level.

What Duncan MacPherson Talks About:

The Three Pillars of Success
This presentation focuses on actionable, proven strategies that help advisors:

• Maximize client relationships
• Engage strategic partners such as accountants and lawyers
• Deploy a predictable target marketing process

One Way Street: Generating Steady Referrals from Accountants, Lawyers and Affluent Clients
Are you one of the many financial advisors who have referred clients to accountants or lawyers over the years but have gotten virtually nothing in return? You would think that – based on the law of reciprocity – that giving would start the receiving process. But that is often not the case. Often it’s a one way street.

This presentation will examine why strategic partners don’t refer and will guide you through a 13-step process on how to turn them into flag-waving advocates.

Breakthrough Business Development
There is a big difference between a customer and a client. A customer is someone who has a portion of their business with you while a client is someone who has empowered you with their entire range of needs. Never before has it been more important for advisors to view their customers as their most valued prospects and develop a plan that enables them to position themselves as their clients’ sole solution provider.

Participants will develop an actionable plan for converting their occasional customers into loyal clients and referral generating advocates by learning how to:

• Turn your ‘book’ into a sustainable, predictable and duplicable business
• Competitor-proof your best clients
• Develop and implement a professional Recommendation Process
• Learn the crucial difference between growth and progress
• The art of client ‘right-sizing’

Advisor of the Future: An Advisor’s Guide to The Pareto System Recommendation Process
Today’s financial advisor understands that it costs far more time and effort to convert a prospect into a client than it does to convert an existing client into a flag waving advocate. But consider the personal fulfillment involved as well. It can be draining and anticlimactic to be perpetually convincing new people to work with you. Why not work more effectively with the people who are already convinced and let them do the convincing on your behalf? The real value in a client relationship is not in the initial commissions you earn, it’s in the commitment the client demonstrates to you over the lifetime of your relationship.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to referrals. They are not realized because of clever phrases or by asking your clients well timed questions. Most referral approaches are transparent and make the advisor look needy and put the clients on the spot. Top advisors attract a steady stream of referrals because of reciprocation felt by their clients, not because of obligation.

In this presentation you will learn how to:

• Address the unspoken resistance that prevents your clients from referring
• Survey your clients for their referral awareness and predisposition
• Install a consistent and congruent process that earns trust
• Project a degree of scarcity that enhances your perceived value
• Train your clients why, to whom and how they should be referring to you
• Position referrals as a service to your clients rather than a benefit to you
• Attract referrals like a consultant rather than chase them like a salesperson