Like many financial advisors, when Lee Fortenberry meets with prospective clients, he focuses on getting to know the person and understanding their unique needs.
But Fortenberry eventually steers those initial conversations toward an important, yet sometimes overlooked component of the advisor-client relationship: communication.
“We’re gonna do that so we can have that open flow of communication because I think that’s the most important part – them knowing that I’m going to be here to shift gears,” said Fortenberry, a veteran advisor and managing director of central Pennsylvania operations for Financial Growth Partners.
Fortenberry began using SmartAsset for lead generation in March 2023, and recently sat down with SmartAsset founder and CEO Michael Carvin to talk about his career in wealth management and his experiences using SmartAsset to grow his book of business.
Looking to grow your business? Learn more about how SmartAsset AMP helps advisors connect and communicate with leads.
Interview Transcript
Michael Carvin: Welcome to SmartAsset’s Advisor Success Series. I am Michael Carvin, the CEO and founder of SmartAsset. Very pleased to be joined today by Lee Fortenberry.
Lee Fortenberry: Michael, how are you doing today?
Michael Carvin: Doing great. Thanks so much for joining us. We can jump right in – I’d love to hear about how you got started in wealth management and how you got to where you are today.
Lee Fortenberry: Michael, I’m celebrating about 35 years in the industry now, and it’s been kind of a wild ride in some respects. When I started, I started with a stodgy old company called Northwestern Mutual back in late 1990. I was introduced to them by a respected friend and mentor from my military days, who had been with Northwestern for about two years up until that point. I never saw him as a sales guy. I saw him as a very respected, honorable person, so that made me more attracted to the industry.
I had not had good results working with the industry in general because it seemed like everybody was telling me something different. Coming from a math-based background with hard science degrees from college, I expected two plus two to equal four. But he proved to me that you could be different in the industry and helped facilitate my entrance into the industry.
Once I got started, of course, like a lot of people, I started with a list of names and was trying to call people so I could get some traction. There was a lot of cold calling back in 1990-91. People answered their phone back then – at least some of them did answer. But I found out quickly – back then anyway – referred leads were going to be my best source of action.
I worked slowly, especially being in a cold market, because I was not from where I was working at the time. I grew up in the Deep South, and I was working in Columbia and central Maryland. But I got a little bit of traction, built some stuff and wound up in the equivalent of a player-coach role, running a satellite office for Northwestern Mutual in Salisbury, Maryland. I was still producing personally, but I was also recruiting and starting to develop other people. For some reason, Northwestern Mutual seemed to think I was doing that pretty well, so they decided to make me a general agent and I went to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So I kind of slowed down the personal production or personal practice because they wanted me to focus on recruiting and developing people.
We did that pretty well, and they thought, “Well, you did such a good job there, let’s have you go down to Jackson, Mississippi.” So, we did that for three years. Then, the company started changing some things a little bit, and my wife and I over the next couple of years worked our way back to Pennsylvania because ultimately we wanted to live in Gettysburg and be close to some of our kids. Although we didn’t have any grandkids at the time, we were hoping to have some.
The problem in Gettysburg is that it’s not a big metropolitan area. I switched firms and hooked up with what is now known as Financial Growth Partners, which is an independent Mid-Atlantic firm affiliated with Guardian Life Insurance and Park Avenue Securities. I was still working on recruiting and developing some people, but also starting to fiddle around with what to do with these skills that I’ve [acquired] working in the personal marketplace.
So, my brain was kind of committed to that old school approach of getting referred leads but the problem was that I didn’t have a lot of networks in Gettysburg, now what was a retirement community, even though it is not officially a retirement community called the Links of Gettysburg.
Then, naturally enough, the pandemic came, and we were all trying to figure out our next steps and what not. Our firm leadership left in February of 2022, so we were in transition there, and I’m really just scratching my head, going, “Okay, now what?”
Interestingly enough, I got a phone call and I almost didn’t call him back. To show you how committed I was to this old-school thought that only referred leads [were valuable], that there was no other marketing. But also, I didn’t have a lot of referred leads because I wasn’t in a place where I was entrenched in strong networks and so forth.
While I’ve never been shy about investing in my business, I was about to commit to spending money that I really didn’t have at the time.
I said we’ve got to give it at least six months because you can’t predict results in the first 90 days. You’ve got to give it at least six months. So we did that, and my experience has been really good. ”
So, we did that, and my experience has been really good. I feel like I have an active team working with me. I had to do some things differently as a result because now I wasn’t dealing with people who really knew me, or who knew the person who had introduced us. So, we had to do some things a little different, as far as tweaking my process a little bit.
One thing I can say is that I’m very excited about this after 15 months because this gave me a way to rebrand.
Michael Carvin: Thank you for your partnership. We understand the investment that goes into being successful in the company and starting on the platform. It’s a significant financial investment and a significant time investment, too. It takes a lot of time and work and effort to be successful.
And you do need to take a bit of a leap of faith. At 90 days, you should at least have a sense, but your financial payoff isn’t going to come until six, nine or 12 months in, just given the nature of the sales cycle. So, we appreciate you betting on us, and I’m glad you’ve had a good experience working with your team.
I wanted to ask you a question. You’ve got deep military experience. Does your time in the military at all shape the way that you serve your clients or build relationships with your clients? Have you thought about that?
Lee Fortenberry: Well I’d like to think that they view me as being very dependable – that they view me as being reliable as a result. I try to be consistent. I think one of the challenges in this crazy world of financial services is the fact that it’s really mostly about relationship management. I think I heard a statistic one time where 20% of the marketplace were true do-it-yourselfers and the other 80% were almost equally split between delegating to someone like me for planning and advice and the others want to be educated. They didn’t want to just delegate, but they still wanted to use an advisor.
Michael Carvin: Yeah, absolutely. I’d imagine there are a lot of consumers that really value having an advisor that has a military background. Can you tell me a little bit more about your personal practice? What kind of clients are you looking to meet? How much AUM do you have? What can you share about your current business?
Lee Fortenberry: Although it’s not restricted to this group, my market seems to have evolved around the over-50 market, which fits me very well. I’m 60 years old, so they see someone who’s like-minded with them. They’re facing the same challenges that I’m facing. The interesting thing is that they are apprehensive about what’s going to happen in retirement. They know a lot’s going on in the world, and as I’ve said to them on occasion, “Hey, you’ve been busy climbing the mountain. We’re about to go down the mountain – the distribution phase.” Statistics show that more people die coming down off of Mt. Everest than they do trying to get to the top. So, we want to make sure you get down without changing your lifestyle – and how do we get down effectively? I think that’s one of the key things.
Also, while I’m doing a lot of wealth management now, I think my background from starting in the insurance industry has actually been pretty helpful because of the things that they have to be mindful of. The articles are overwhelming about what’s going to happen with medical costs and other healthcare costs in the 21st Century for retirees.
But a lot of my competition I see focused more strictly on assets under management. We’re obviously doing that with our clients, but having one eye on the protection front to make sure that nothing’s going to blindside us as we’re moving through the retirement phase is very, very important.
Michael Carvin: That’s a great callout. We see consumers coming to SmartAsset to find a financial advisor for all kinds of reasons. We’ve got lottery winners, celebrities, people who have just gone through a divorce, people who have just received an inheritance, and people who have just sold a small – or sometimes large – business.
But the No. 1 reason people come to us is that they’re looking for help as they navigate retirement. The anxiety that comes with how you’re going to manage healthcare expenses, other expenses and that deaccumulation phase. Your skillset lines up very neatly with what we see as the peak of the bell curve for why consumers are coming to us. I’m curious: have you tried other marketing strategies besides SmartAsset?
Lee Fortenberry: I wouldn’t say I’ve tried any digital strategies in the 21st century. Obviously, we’ve experimented in the past with leads. My junior partner went a different direction than SmartAsset with some sort of LinkedIn program. It had a much lower investment requirement, but I will tell you that his success rate has not been what mine has been with SmartAsset.
Cost is only relevant in the absence of value, and sometimes we like to say, “You get what you pay for.” I would agree. I don’t think that you always get what you pay for – some things are overpriced – but in the vetting process and what we get…
Michael Carvin: I think some people assume that to be really effective on our platform, you have to be extraordinary at sales – you call and you have a very forceful sale. Obviously, being good at sales is definitely helpful, but some of the most successful people on our platform are great listeners. They ask the right questions and let the consumer talk about what their pain points are; what their concerns are; what their financial needs are. They really listen. They spend the first 15 minutes just listening so they can form the best response and adapt their value proposition and their pitch to what the consumer really needs.
Through July 31, I had 332 leads since I started in March of 2023. Thirty-one of those have been invalidated, so that’s the 9.64%.
One hundred and ninety-eight have told me no. When I say “told me no,” that doesn’t mean I’ve talked to all of them. Some of them put “stop” on my text message or they unsubscribed. The nice thing about having the spreadsheet is that I can also attach it to my email marketing through Guardian and Park Avenue, where they send out pre-approved articles and so forth. They’ll mark “unsubscribe” or it will bounce
My first commander in the Army – he did not come into this industry – but he said it’s very hard to look another human being in the eye and just strictly say “no” or something worse. Most people can’t do it. That’s been my experience.
So, I’ve got 198 nos, which means everyone else is still actively being contacted. I still have a couple of people – actually just one now from March of last year. I’ve got 11 what I consider to be clients, where they have worked with me, signed contracts to pay me a fee or whatever. I currently have about eight cases still open.
Interestingly enough, going back to the contacting, one of those was on April 8 of last year and then literally reached out to me in March of this year – finally after all those contacts with not a response of any kind. We literally took possession of just under $500,000 in assets
Michael Carvin: That’s great. People are always shocked when I tell them this, but some of our larger partners get more than half of their clients after the six-month mark – so more than six months after we introduce them to the consumer. What happens a lot is something happens to the consumer that makes them want to speak to a financial advisor right now. They’ll speak to an advisor right now, but something will happen down the road – it could be six months, it could be a year later – when they say “Okay, I spoke to an advisor, but now I really need to work with a financial advisor.” If you can stay top of mind when that happens by staying in front of those consumers, you can really increase your overall conversion rate.
With 11 clients and eight opportunities in your pipeline, it sounds like you’ll end up with somewhere between 15 and 20 clients. Doing the math in my head, I think that’s about a 4-5% close rate, closing about one in 20. Does that sound about right?
Lee Fortenberry: Yeah, if I don’t count any of the open clients, I think I came up with a 3.6% or 3.7% close rate. Obviously I remember the old days when we were cold calling –
But about 3% to 5% would be the response rate. If you wrote at least one person, you would have probably paid for the thing. My goal was to write a client a month, so that’s how I set up my budget. I wanted to get at least one client to pay for the budget. Actually I’ve paid for the [SmartAsset] budget and pulled in a 100% return on that in the first year. I didn’t expect year one to be in the black actually. I was just kind of saying, “Okay, if I can just break even in year one.” I knew the residuals would be profit, but we actually did turn a profit in year one.
Michael Carvin: That’s great. I mean that’s just music to my ears. It makes me so happy. I know that when you were talking to your wife and making the decision to make the initial investment, it makes me really happy that we were able to help you grow your business in a way that was profitable for you in the first year.
Lee Fortenberry: And I’m sure I’m going to pick up some additional business, too. One client that I got last year – and this number hasn’t been factored into the ROI – will probably be doing an in-service distribution later this year and that will be another $200,000 to put under management.
Michael Carvin: You doubled your money in year one, and now you’ve got an income stream to come in forward years. I mean, you’re probably going to end up doing 10 to 20X your initial investment on that year-one marketing. That’s amazing. I always love hearing success stories like that.
It sounds like you’ve used outreach automation, texting and worked closely with your account manager. You serve that pre-retirement group as well. What do you think are some of the key ingredients that have gone into your success? And what advice do you have for advisors who might be new to SmartAsset and how they can be successful with the platform?
Lee Fortenberry: Well, you know, when I think about the years of doing this and even teaching new people the basics, one of the challenging things, I think, is remembering that this is a contact sport. After a while, the “no’s” can make you want to find that “yes” without getting the “no’s.” You know what I mean? It’s been my experience. And, you know, I mentioned my faith earlier, and I’ve tried to use this – it didn’t always work successfully when I was training new advisors – but I tried to get them to understand that you’ve got to be making the contacts. You never know who that “yes” is going to be.
There’s a parable in the Bible where Jesus was talking about the seeds of the sower. Without going through the whole story, he throws the seeds out on the ground. There’s several parts of ground where they don’t grow and there’s no harvest. But then one part, there’s good ground and there’s a huge harvest – 60- to 100-fold. This business, in my opinion, is like that.
In our business, the one question for that sower is: “How come you didn’t know the ground was good or not?” The sower sowed the seeds early in the morning when it was still dark – they couldn’t tell what was good ground and what wasn’t. They were just sowing seeds.
It’s the same thing for us. We never know who’s going to say “yes.” It’s going to sound crazy but as long as they’re not all “no,” I’m happy to get the “no’s” so I can strike them off my list.
The nice thing is, when it’s a “yes,” I enjoy the next step because it’s pretty easy after that.
The next step is we’re going to have a “get-acquainted” meeting. As a part of that meeting, if you’re acceptable to working this way, we’re going to get organized and I will get into my process.
The second meeting is a direction meeting after we get organized, and then the third meeting is plan design. Then we’re into implementation and picking a communications plan because I think one of the key things now is communication. Are we going to talk two times a year? Are we gonna talk three times? Are we gonna talk four? Are we gonna talk six? And how do those times work?
We’re gonna do that so we can have that open flow of communication because I think the most important part is them knowing that I’m going to be here to shift gears. If we need to handhold about the market, we can. But more importantly, making sure that their strategy is working no matter what the market is doing.
End of transcript.
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