7 Questions to Ask Before Signing With Any Advisor Marketing Company
- Jim Fisher
- Practice Building
Key Takeaways (Tattoo These On Your Brain)
Key Takeaways (Tattoo These On Your Brain)
- Every question is really asking the same thing: does their success depend on YOUR success? If the answer is no, you have all the information you need.
- A company that sells to their own leads has skin in the game. If they’ve never had to convert what they’re selling you, how would they know if it works?
- Protected geography is the gold standard for lead exclusivity. If another advisor is running the same campaign in your market, your leads aren’t really yours.
- “If you don’t close, you don’t pay” is a cancellation policy, not a guarantee. Listen for guarantees tied to results and behavior, not volume metrics.
- If you can’t evaluate who’s behind the company, you’re signing blind. Transparent leadership with content you can assess before the sales call is a strong signal.
1. Why You Need This Framework
1. Why You Need This Framework
After enough bad experiences with marketing companies, you stop questioning your own ability. You start questioning the whole game. And you should. Because the problem isn’t that you can’t close. The problem is that most companies in this space are only solving one piece of the puzzle, and they’re charging you like they’ve solved the whole thing.
Instead of telling you who to work with, here are seven questions you can ask on your next sales call with any company, including ours. The answers will tell you everything you need to know.
2. Do They Sell to the Leads, or Just Sell the Leads?
2. Do They Sell to the Leads, or Just Sell the Leads?
This might be the most revealing question on the list, and most companies stumble on it.
There’s a big difference between a company that generates leads and a company that actually sells to the prospects using their own system. One of them has skin in the game. The other one is just selling access.
What to Listen For
Red flag: “We’re a marketing company, not advisors” or “That’s a different business model.” That tells you they’ve never had to convert the leads they’re selling you. If they’ve never had to convert them, how would they know what it takes for you to do it, or if these leads are even closable at all?
Good answer: “We have advisors on our team actively using this system right now.” That means they’re evolving the system in real time, because they’re living it.
3. Are Your Leads Exclusive?
3. Are Your Leads Exclusive?
Here’s what happens when your leads aren’t exclusive. You pay for a lead. But so did several other advisors. Now you’re in a race to the phone, and the prospect doesn’t even know they signed up to talk to five different people.
Exclusivity Plus Protected Geography
Red flag: You’re presented alongside multiple other advisors in the same marketing, or multiple advisors receive the same lead. You’re already behind before the first call is even made.
Good answer: “Your leads are exclusive to you. No other advisor receives the same prospect.”
But here’s the next-level question most people don’t know to ask: “Do I have a protected geography? Is any other advisor running the same campaign in my market?” Most lead vendors can’t offer this, because their model depends on selling the same system to as many advisors as possible. A protected geography is the gold standard. It means the company’s success is tied to your success in your market, not to how many advisors they can sell to.
4. What's Their System From Interested to Issued?
4. What's Their System From Interested to Issued?
Most advisors don’t think they have a closing problem. And they’re probably right. But here’s what nobody tells you. Leads don’t convert themselves. Even a great lead, someone who’s problem-aware and has some desire to solve, still needs a systematic way of going from interested to issued.
That’s not a you problem. That’s a system problem.
If the company selling you leads doesn’t have a system that connects to how those prospects were generated, you’re left improvising every call. And when those calls don’t convert, you’ll blame the leads. They’ll blame you. And neither of you will be wrong, because the system that connects you was never there.
What to Listen For
Red flag: “We generate the leads, you handle the sales.” Or they can’t articulate what happens between appointment booked and policy issued. If there’s a gap there, that’s the gap you’re going to fall into.
Good answer: “Here’s our conversion process. Here’s how it connects to the marketing. Here’s the coaching. Here’s who you’ll work with when you’re stuck.”
If all they’ve built is the front end, you’re still missing everything that happens after the appointment books. The question isn’t whether you can close. The question is whether they’ve built a system that takes a prospect from interested to issued. If they haven’t, you’re not buying a solution. You’re buying more at-bats with no batting coach.
5. How Is the Guarantee Structured?
5. How Is the Guarantee Structured?
This one sounds straightforward, but listen carefully to how they answer it.
Two Red Flags
Red flag #1: “If you don’t close, you don’t pay.” Sounds great. But think about what that actually means. If you’re not successful, they stop billing you. They’re not guaranteeing your success. They’re guaranteeing that they’ll stop charging you when it doesn’t work. That’s a cancellation policy, not a guarantee.
Red flag #2: Guaranteeing appointment counts. “We’ll deliver twenty appointments a month.” But what if they deliver fifteen? What if they deliver thirty but none of them close? Either way, you’re still not producing. The volume metric doesn’t correlate with the result you actually care about.
Good answer: “We guarantee results when you follow our proven process.” That tells you the guarantee is tied to your behavior and their system, not to a volume metric that doesn’t correlate with production.
6. What Does Success Look Like to Them?
6. What Does Success Look Like to Them?
This is where you find out if they measure what actually matters.
Red flag: They show you screenshots of appointment volume, pipeline size, lead counts. All leading indicators. That’s like a coach showing you how many practices the team attended instead of their win-loss record.
Good answer: “We measure issued policies and paid business.”
And here’s the deeper question. Where are the carriers? Where are the checks? If their clients were consistently closing, you’d see production numbers. You’d see issued business. You’d see paid cases. Not pipeline screenshots. Not appointment counts. If all they can show you is leading indicators, ask yourself why they can’t show you the result.
7. Have They Built for Virtual Selling?
7. Have They Built for Virtual Selling?
Most advisors don’t realize that virtual selling requires a completely different approach. If you’ve sold face-to-face, you had what Jim calls tokens of trust. The office. The handshake. Sitting across from someone. Being physically present. Those tokens did a lot of the trust-building for you.
On Zoom, all of that is gone. You’re a face in a box competing with their email notifications. And the approach that worked in a conference room doesn’t automatically translate to a screen.
What to Listen For
Red flag: They can’t articulate a difference between selling virtually and selling in person. Or their answer is “we provide a script” or “watch this training.” And if their successful producers or coaches built their track record offline, ask yourself whether that experience actually translates to the virtual environment you’re operating in. Being great in a conference room versus being great on Zoom are two different skillsets.
Good answer: “Here’s what’s different about virtual, and here’s how we’ve built our system to address it. Camera setup, Zoom credibility, presentation tools, the discovery process, all designed for how prospects experience you on a screen.”
If they can’t tell you what’s different, their system wasn’t built for how you’re actually going to sell. You need a partner who respects that virtual selling is its own discipline, not just the same meeting on a different screen.
8. Can You Evaluate Who's Behind It?
8. Can You Evaluate Who's Behind It?
There are so many companies out there where you go to the website and there’s no people on it, let alone who’s leading the company. In many cases, they don’t even really have a website. It’s just a landing page with a pitch, an opt-in, and a disclaimer. You go on YouTube or Instagram and there’s no presence. Or if there is, it’s about something completely different from what they’re selling you.
Red flag: A faceless company. No content. You can’t find the person or team behind it. Or what you do find doesn’t align with what they’re selling you. If they’re selling you an annuity marketing system but their own content is about something else entirely, where is their focus really?
Good answer: This isn’t even something they say. It’s something you can verify yourself. Transparent leadership with content you can evaluate. You can form an opinion about who they are and what they stand for before you ever get on a sales call.
The culture of any company starts at the top. If you can see who’s leading it and you respect how they operate, that’s a strong signal. If you can’t find them at all, that’s a stronger one. If you can’t evaluate who’s behind the company, you’re signing blind.
The Bottom Line
The Bottom Line
Every single question is really asking the same thing: does their success depend on YOUR success? If they’re not in the arena, if your leads aren’t exclusive, if there’s no conversion system, if the guarantee is just a cancellation policy, if they measure pipeline instead of production, if they haven’t built for virtual, and if you can’t evaluate who’s behind it, then you have your answer. Save these seven questions. Use them on your next call with any company. The answers will tell you everything you need to know.
Keep Watching
Keep Watching
The framework behind how the best advisors let math close cases instead of sales techniques. If you want to see what the system looks like when it’s built right, start here.
Jim Fisher
Jim is an award-winning marketer and licensed producer. He has helped over 1000 agents and advisors scale their life and annuity production to become top 1% producers.
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