Mining LinkedIn for rollover assets

There are very few financial advisers who aren’t looking to capture additional assets. One of the quickest ways…

There are very few financial advisers who aren’t looking to capture additional assets. One of the quickest ways to identify some of these assets is, quite literally, at your fingertips.

Employees don’t tend to stay in one place as they did in the past, with many changing jobs and companies several times throughout their working lives. With each change to a new firm comes the opportunity for advisers to capture rollover dollars.

The challenge has been that advisers don’t always know that a client has made such a move until many months later. If an advisory business is built on relationships, as it truly should be, advisers need to be on top of these things. Advisers should know about clients’ moves much sooner than several months down the road.

And advisers should offer to be a resource to them in moving their retirement assets from their old firm and in helping them make wise investment choices with their new company plan.

STAYING INFORMED

How can an adviser stay on top of client moves?

Here are three online resources to help:

LinkedIn Labs. Built by the employees of LinkedIn Corp., LinkedIn Labs (linkedinlabs.com) shares a number of experimental features that are being tested in the hope of soliciting feedback. These features dive into LinkedIn connections and, when used strategically, can help identify opportunities.

We use the Year in Review feature with a number of our adviser clients to help them stay abreast of changes in their connections’ professional lives. The feature sifts through LinkedIn connections and lists anyone who has changed jobs in the past year. Sometimes the connection simply has changed positions within his or her firm, offering no rollover opportunity, but often a connection has changed companies.

The Year in Review results are sorted by year, with the prior three years available, and requires users to go to the site to explore the connection’s recent job changes. We recommend a monthly check of the most recent additions to this list to keep up-to-date.

SalesLoft. Advisers who want to keep closer tabs on their connections or prefer a somewhat more passive approach will want to explore the Job Change Alerts tool offered by SalesLoft (salesloft.com). Note: Users will need Google Chrome to download SalesLoft.

Similar to LinkedIn Labs, the tool scours LinkedIn connections and compiles a list of those with recent job changes. It then provides a list of both their current and former positions, and will indicate whether it was a job change or simply a title change.

An added bonus is that users can set up an account to receive e-mails notifying them of any job changes, thus keeping them from continually having to check the site.

Ted Jenkin, co-chief executive at oXYGen Financial Inc., has used SalesLoft to identify clients who have undergone recent changes professionally, and said it has resulted in some excellent rollover opportunities.

The e-mails he receives from SalesLoft notifying him of his connections’ job changes give him an opportunity to reach out to his connections to congratulate them, as well as to see how he can be a resource to them in their new role, he said.

Advanced Search. LinkedIn’s advanced search feature can also be used to help identify first-degree connections and second-degree connections who have recently left their jobs. Perform an advanced search using the keywords “seeking” or “in transition” in the job title section, being sure to search only first- and second-degree connections. This will pull a list of those in the network who recently have left their jobs and are seeking new employment. Not only will this present an excellent opportunity to offer to be a resource to them in their job hunt, it can also lead to a discussion about what to do with their retirement plan from their former employer.

Whatever tool you use to stay on top of your connections’ changing professional lives, we recommend that advisers reach out to congratulate them, inquire about their new position and see how to be a resource. Doing this will go a long way to strengthen the relationship with clients or contacts.

In our experience working with advisers, those strengthened relationships usually result in new business.

Kristin Andree (kristin @andreemedia.com) is president of Andree Media & Consulting.