Data Strategies That Transform Advisory Practices With Molly Pierce

Molly Pierce is the CEO of Track That Advisor, a firm that helps independent financial advisors turn complex business data into clear, actionable insights to grow and scale effectively. She joined Track That Advisor in 2017 and is passionate about helping advisory teams track their metrics and reach their full potential. Molly holds a Bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from Grand Canyon University.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:32] Molly Pierce discusses Track That Advisor’s mission to simplify data 

• [6:06] How to develop a customer-first mindset and its importance in company culture

• [8:31] Abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset in serving clients

• [10:32] The five key business metrics advisors should track

• [14:07] Why stick rate matters more than ROI as a leading indicator

• [16:38] Understanding average case size and its impact on growth

• [18:22] How firms can double assets by revisiting existing client relationships

• [28:29] Molly’s take on AI and why human connection still drives better insights

• [33:19] The mentors who shaped Molly’s leadership style and approach
  

In this episode…

Many advisory firms invest heavily in marketing and lead generation, yet still struggle to convert prospects or understand why their growth stalls. Without clear visibility into which processes work and which break down, teams often rely on guesswork instead of data-driven action. How can advisors simplify their metrics, cut through analysis paralysis, and focus on the numbers that actually drive growth?

Data expert Molly Pierce breaks down the core metrics that every advisor should track and explains why these leading indicators matter more than lagging ones, such as ROI. She explains how to measure stick rate, close rate, average case size, and cost per client while emphasizing the importance of serving existing clients to generate organic growth. Molly also encourages firms to compare their results with industry benchmarks, leverage pending leads, and use data as a spotlight to reveal hidden business opportunities.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Molly Pierce, CEO of Track That Advisor, about leveraging data to drive growth for advisory firms. Molly discusses the value of benchmark comparisons, the power of focusing on current clients, and why human connection still matters in an AI-driven world.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• Molly Pierce on LinkedIn

• Track That Advisor

• "How Advisor Enablement Drives Client Success With Michael Jeanfreau" on The Customer Wins

• "Humanizing Wealth Management Success With Shannon Rosic" on The Customer Wins

• "[AI Series] Revolutionizing Financial Meetings With AI With Parker Ence" on The Customer Wins

• Marie Loudin on LinkedIn

• Advintro

• Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara

• The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling

Quotable Moments:

• “So we're kind of the self-proclaimed nerds a bit that get to make data really easy.”

• “I always equate data similar to a black light with scorpions in Arizona.”

• “We always say get the black light out as scary as it is because you'll go.”

• “I think that there's kind of two different factors you can take or two different paths.”

• “Pending leads are a great indicator of yes my business is growing but if you have.”

  
  

Action Steps:

1. Track your stick rate consistently: Understanding how many prospects show up helps you identify breakdowns in your appointment process and adjust workflows to improve conversions.

2. Monitor your close rate by household: Measuring how many prospects become clients reveals the effectiveness of your sales conversations and helps refine training and follow-up strategy.

3. Calculate your average case size: Recognizing the typical asset amount per new client determines how many leads you need and prevents wasted marketing spend.

4. Review pending leads weekly: Unworked or stalled prospects often represent missed opportunities, and regular review helps teams re-engage them to drive organic growth.

5. Benchmark your metrics against industry standards: Comparing your numbers to national norms shows whether your performance is competitive and guides better strategic decisions.

   
   

Sponsor for this episode...

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Michael Jeanfreau of Mariner Wealth, Shannon Rosic of Informa Connect, and Parker Ence of Jump AI. Today I get to speak with Molly Pierce of Track That Advisor, and today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik! using Quik!.

You'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. Before I introduce today's guest in full, I want to give a big thank you to Marie Loudin from Advintro. Go check out their website at advintro.com.

And they because they specialize in fractional sales and business development especially for companies like mine. All right Molly joined the financial advisory industry in 2017. She is passionate about helping advisors and their teams find efficient ways to track their data metrics and grow to their maximum potential. She's deeply committed to building strong relationships and takes a genuine interest in the success of every firm she works with.

Her goal is for each team to feel supported and confident, knowing she is their trusted ally in all aspects of tracking. She resides in Arizona with her husband Connor and their two sons, their zealous outdoor people, and spend most of their time boating, hiking, running, riding in the sand dunes. Oh, we got to talk about that. Or just digging in the dirt outside with their boys. I got boys, too.

Molly. All right. Molly, welcome to The Customer Wins.

Molly Pierce: 02:03

Thank you for having me, Rich. I'm excited. I feel like we get along really well and have a lot in common, so this will be a fun one. And I hope to bring some education as well to the financial advisory world.

Richard Walker: 02:13

Oh, definitely. I've been looking forward to this. So for the audience, if you haven't heard my podcast before, I just love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So, Molly, I want to understand your business a lot better. How does your company help people?

Molly Pierce: 02:32

Yeah, I mean, I love the heart of what you're asking, Rich, because I really feel that as a culture and as a team, it's really at the core of who we are and what we do, and we're very customer minded, focused, and a lot of that comes easily for our team because we do have such good customers. Truly, I feel like they are such a family when we see each other, and it's like a distant cousin that you have so much fun with, but also really get to just dive deep into life with. So it's so much more than just the customer. So I do feel truly lucky that we have such good clients and honestly shout out to all our clients. They're amazing.

I'm so thankful for them. I couldn't imagine being in a different industry because I just love who we serve and who we get to work with. So it's a little bit different what we do. And I feel like data in general gets a little bit of a bad rap, right? Like it's always boring or too complicated or convoluted.

So we're kind of the self-proclaimed nerds a bit that get to make data really easy. So really, the way we serve our clients is by taking data and really making it knowledgeable and useful. So it's not just this data lake where you think, okay, I have all of this information, but I don't really know what to do with it. We take it and mold it and craft it and personalize it. So it is a guide and it's a roadmap to say, great, you know my stick rates here, my clothes rates here, my average case sizes here you can see into your business which is huge.

I always equate data similar to a black light with scorpions. Where in Arizona. So it's very top of mind especially this time of year. But you don't know what's out there until you start looking. And with data it's the same way.

So if you don't shine that spotlight on a specific area of your business, you really have no idea what's happening there. So you don't know what you know. Maybe marketing channels you should avoid or what, you know, advisors are maybe producing or not producing until you shine that spotlight. So we always say get the black light out, as scary as it is, because you'll go and look for scorpions. And my sons love it.

They think it's like scorpion hunting. It's a whole thing. We have a competition. It's wildly inappropriate, but it's amazing and it's very much how we raise our kids. But you get the tongs, you get the scorpions.

It's really fun. But really, with data, it's you that shine that black light, you find what you're looking for, you really get a chance to understand a bit more about the business. And that's really how we help is just helping advisors know their data but also understand it, which is crucial.

Richard Walker: 04:52

Okay, so like I live in Austin, Texas, we have scorpions.

Molly Pierce: 04:54

There we go. Yes.

Richard Walker: 04:56

Moving from California five years ago. That was a new thing to me. I know they exist there, and the only times I've seen them are in my own house, which hasn't happened in quite some time. I just want everybody to understand the blacklight. They illuminate bright green, like neon green.

When they're lit up with a blacklight, they stand out so crystal clear. It is.

Molly Pierce: 05:15

Wild. It's wild. Have you been stung yet?

Richard Walker: 05:19

No. My mom.

Molly Pierce: 05:20

Has.

Richard Walker: 05:21

Said, but I have.

Molly Pierce: 05:22

Yes. Okay. There you go. They're always in the beds. I

It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

Richard Walker: 05:27

Yeah. We're going to scare everybody away from Arizona.

Molly Pierce: 05:29

I know no one's going to come to Scottsdale ever again. Even though it's like one of the best vacation places ever.

Richard Walker: 05:35

No. All right, let's talk about your business, though. I love this whole idea of scorpions. They're. They're like little tanks that just run around.

Molly Pierce: 05:41

They are. I think they can learn a lot from them, too. Just resiliency and adaptability. And even if you get crushed, you keep going.

Richard Walker: 05:49

So yeah. So I have a couple of things I'm curious about from your standpoint. First, I'm going to ask this one first, the customer first mindset. Are you born with it? Do you develop it?

How does your company have it?

Molly Pierce: 06:06

It's a great question. Yep. I think a lot of it comes from the top down, and it's what I've seen in advisor practices. Also, our founder Erica is always customer minded and it's really bled into our culture as a whole. I think you by nature will find people that certain, certain people will automatically think of others first and will automatically kind of put others before themselves, and whether that's from religion, whether that's from childhood.

Like I'm one of six children, so not often were we able to think about the individual. We always thought about the whole and the collective, and we were really taught, hey, you need to put others before the needs of the collective group. And I think when I think about customers, that really was founded into me, you know, from my childhood, but also from our founder. And it's been just a really cool, you know, Navigation piece of my life that it's been interesting to watch when you put the customer first what happens. And there's an amazing book out right now called Unreasonable Hospitality.

It's getting kind of much more popular than it was when it initially launched, but I just think that it has so many great nuggets and it's just really. What values do you want your team to be known for? And I think a lot of times I always laugh because I always say I'm the worst salesperson on the planet because at the end of the day, if I can help someone but they can't afford it, we will find a way to make it affordable for you in in any regard, whether that's, you know, hey, like when you do, maybe it's like a loan, you know, quote unquote for, hey, we'll give you the business for a few months and like pay us back or whatever the case is like, we want to have an option for everybody. So we'll either give you a free option or a lite version or something, because I just think people need help and people want to succeed. And I think, honestly, rich, as weird as it sounds, it's almost more fun to watch others succeed and you have a little hand in it than succeed yourself.

Like, I love watching others thrive. And the gift of encouragement has always been something for me, and I think just having the client experience be good and be well and have our team helpful, and that is really critical.

Richard Walker: 08:01

I do think, I do think there's something to the giving mindset. Yeah, and I think there's some innate part to that where you're a giver more than a taker just in your psyche. And maybe your company culture attracts more givers than takers as a result. And I think mine does because we're very customer focused as well. And I think we tend to go overboard in certain ways without thinking about ourselves, our own needs, and that that has its own problems 100%.

Molly Pierce: 08:31

Because now you're all sitting here like, no, someone just made a stinking decision, you know what I mean? Like we are all just trying to give, like, yeah, you can do it. You decide. And I think too much. It really comes down to mindset.

Like I think that there's kind of two different factors you can take or two different paths you can take. And one is I thrive in the abundance mindset like what you do is very important and amazing and I don't need the whole pie. One, it's going to make you so sick. Two it's like there's really enough to go around. You know, it's like, if I can help you in some way and you can help me in some way, why would we not all work together as a collective unit?

And there's enough out there. So even we've had, I mean, several competitors, quite unquote, come up over the past couple years and it's like, gosh, we all really don't compete. It's not a competition. You really do well with these clients and you can serve them the best, you know. And so it really goes back to serving, like, who can you serve the best.

And there's an abundance there that you can take out of. There's no scarcity to helping others by any means.

Richard Walker: 09:29

Yeah. I do not have a scarcity mindset either. It doesn't work. The world is huge and innovation creates opportunity. And conversations and connections with people create different opportunities.

And so go out and have them go out and do those things. Let's get back to the data part. Yeah. So I have this analogy in my head that a consultant gave to me 15 years ago. He said, if you're flying an airplane, think about the cockpit of an airplane.

How many switches and knobs and things are there in there? There's like a thousand controls. He said, what are the five that matter? And those are the five when you think about it. Like airspeed, fuel, what altitude you're at, are you tipping or forward, all that kind of stuff?

I don't know the right terms. I'm not a pilot.

Molly Pierce: 10:10

No, I'm not an air. Pilot or extravagant in any nature. So.

Richard Walker: 10:16

So his point was that, you know, focus on those five things that drive your business. So I'm kind of curious from your standpoint, are you focusing, is that what you're doing, building the dashboard of the five things or ten things that drive the business? Or are you talking about the trim and the optimization or other things that help? Where do you guys fit?

Molly Pierce: 10:32

Yeah. Great question Rich. So a lot of times what I've found with advisors is I love advisors because they're very driven people, which I tend to align with. So it really makes it easy to work with others in that nature. They're very entrepreneurial.

And they definitely kind of know what they want in a lot of regards. But when it comes to data, I often find a lot of analysis paralysis. Advisors think they want the whole Thanksgiving buffet and the Thanksgiving feast. And oftentimes when they come to us, they'll have several spreadsheets going around or several pieces of, you know, Excel or Google Sheets or whatever. And they go, oh, you know, I'm tracking all of this.

Like, can you track this in addition to what you track? And it's been a fun learning curve to say no, like the reason we don't track that is because it's not useful information. So what we've really done is take, you know, the whole buffet and say, these are your meat, potatoes and vegetables. And that's actually what you need to take. Leave everything else kind of aside.

It's all fluff and it's amazing. But that's not going to be what you're using to make your business decisions. So our dashboards are all personalized in the sense it's to, you know, their sources and their advisors and what's happening in their business. But a lot of times we really stick with a templated version as far as, hey, this is what you need to look at. I mean, there's realistically hundreds of data pieces on there, but when we talk about data initially, like you mentioned, kind of we have a top five that we call the top five from Track That Advisor.

So we do a lot of coaching in their analytics. But I always say a lot of times when we come to analytics, people think it's this overwhelming thing, right? It's overwhelming. Oh my gosh, I don't know how to track. I don't know where to start.

And that is always my heart is to help those beginning in their tracking journey, because you don't have to do it all at once. Yes, Track That Advisor does that. We've built a system that does it all for you. But if you're not in that season where that's an availability to you, start with just the top five. So I can kind of walk through those if you want.

Richard Walker: 12:27

I want to hear.

Molly Pierce: 12:28

Because.

Richard Walker: 12:28

I want to know how similar they are to, yeah, a software company versus an advisory business or how different they are. So what are these five?

Molly Pierce: 12:35

Yeah. Yep. So the first one is stick rate. And when we talk about stick rate, it's going to be the number of first appointments that were kept versus divided by the number of set first appointments. So the stick rate does a couple of things.

One, it really shows up at your office. Are you getting people to come in? You've spent a lot of money on getting in front of them in any regards, whether it was a seminar, whether it was TV, radio, etc.. Do you have processes in place that are going to keep them, get them into the office to keep that appointment? So that's very process-driven.

One stick rate is huge for us because we want to say, okay, are you at least getting them in if you're not getting them in, doesn't really matter what your case size is, doesn't really matter what your clothes rate is if they're not there, that's the problem. So let's start there. So I also kind of laugh too, because when we talk about the top five people, people automatically think that the first one they think of is ROI, right? People are like, oh, I definitely have to track my ROI. ROI is not even in our top five richest.

Not even remotely close. It would not even be in my top ten, realistically, because ROI is the end result of what's happening from the 12 steps before that. So like, let's analyze all the other steps and then get to ROI. And that starts with stick rate. So that's number one.

Richard Walker: 13:45

Can I interrupt you then?

Molly Pierce: 13:46

Yeah, please.

Richard Walker: 13:47

Because one of the books I read is The Four Disciplines of Execution. Oh, cool. And they talk about leading versus lagging indicators. So I believe ROI is a lagging indicator. It's what's.

Molly Pierce: 13:58

100%.

Richard Walker: 13:59

Right. And getting people to come to a meeting with you is a leading indicator of whether you'll close business or grow revenue, etc., right? Am I missing something?

Molly Pierce: 14:07

It? 100%? Nope. Fully aligned, fully aligned. And we do talk a lot about that.

When we do a lot of our coaching, it's hey, what's the leading versus lagging? And you nailed it. Nope. You've got it. You should be a data analytics person rich in your next life.

So yep. So sticker number one secondarily we look at is close rate. And the close rate is going to be the number of closed households. I also make that clear. It is not the number of people.

People get that oftentimes wrong for the integrity of the data. It has to be the household versus how many kept their first appointment. So when you're looking at a close rate, that's going to be your close rate. Next, what we're going to look at is the average case size. When people look at this, it's going to be the total asset amount that they brought in per each household.

So what you're going to do is you're going to add up all of the assets that came in for the year starting from January 1st. Divide it by the number of households you have to serve. Some people say close. I love to say serve. It's the whole thing.

But how many households you got to serve that's going to be your average case size. So that will tell you great. If I have a low average case size, I know I'm going to need an exponential amount more leads versus if my case size is really high, I'm not going to need as many leads to be profitable, right? If I have $1 million case size on average, okay, I need ten to reach a $10 million goal for the year versus if I have $250,000 average case size, I'm going to need four times more leads. Right.

So that's really indicative of the people you serve. And neither is right nor wrong. I think a lot of people kind of mistake this as, oh, I have to have a high average case size. Some advisors don't work well with those people, and some advisors do work really well. I always say financial advising is a bit of a matchmaking process.

What sources do you align with? Are you more of a dinner seminar guy or gal? Are you more of a TV person? You know, I think that there's a lot that goes into that kind of matchmaking process there. So that's the average case size.

Again, neither is right nor wrong. Yeah. Let's talk about it.

Richard Walker: 16:08

So it's been a long time since I was an advisor. But I don't even know if this is a similar mindset today. I presume it is that an advisor might say, hey, I only work with clients who have a minimum of a million dollar investable assets as an example, and I don't know what the threshold is. I'm just kind of off the cuff. But let's say it is, let's say you're only going to want to work with people who have $1 million to invest.

What ends up being the case size in those instances? I mean, do they only get one component and they get one asset, or do they get it all? What are you finding?

Molly Pierce: 16:38

It's interesting. So typically right now most of the advisors that we work with, their qualifiers, the 250,000 of liquid assets to even get them in the office. That's the majority that we work with. There are, of course, some offices that are like, honestly, if I can help them, great. You know, like I can help my sister.

And then she brings her, you know, a small amount of money. But then the aunt, you know, is very rich and hears about me. So it's a different mindset for each. And, when that million-dollar firm comes in, they have a couple of strategies to target those styles of offices. Like we found that TV tends to produce higher quality leads for that.

Now you have to have the person, the patients to get them for that million-dollar lead versus, okay, I could close for 250,000 in the meantime. But we do have offices that are successful and their average case size is over a million, oftentimes much more because they're very cutthroat. I will not serve less than this. And there's a little bit of an ego and a mindset strategy there as well, right? If someone's like, oh, you only work with the big guys.

I'm a big guy. I only want to work with you as well. You know, like there is. Yeah. And there's and that's again neither right nor wrong.

It's the cool kids club, right. Like, okay, I want to work with people similar in nature that I am. And it has been successful from what we've seen.

Richard Walker: 17:55

Yeah. I was just kind of thinking about it because one of the lessons that I had with my old partner was we only had a third to half of the assets of any one client. Yeah. And we ended up showing them that, hey, you don't do enough business with us to make this reasonable. In some cases and other ones, it was like, you must like having lots of statements and phone numbers to call because you spread out your money everywhere.

Yeah, and we ended up doubling assets under management in a year simply by having those kinds of conversations.

Molly Pierce: 18:22

Yes. And that's huge. And I'm glad you brought that up because what we've started really tracking also is investable assets versus assets that they have in-house. And it's going back through that book of business. And organic growth is what has been a huge topic this year if you don't actually need more leads, and even that's kind of Segways actually into the fourth thing that we track is pending leads.

You don't actually need more leads. You need to service the people that you already have in your book, like use a drip list, use I mean snappy kraken's amazing. Use any other drip marketing campaign, start your own email campaigns, just, you know, within your own office. If you can't necessarily afford something else, like use what you have because that's big. Pending leads are a great indicator of yes, my business is growing, but if you have a ton of pending leads that you can't service, you don't just need more people, you need to service those people.

Well, that's a big thing and the service you have.

Richard Walker: 19:18

So do you. Do you subscribe to the guerrilla marketing idea then? Yes. Well current customers?

Molly Pierce: 19:25

Yes. Actually it's funny. We do a big aggregate study every year. And you would be so shocked that so much comes from existing clients and referral at the end of the year versus new marketing. New marketing is only making 30 to 40% of your business.

The rest is by existing clients and referrals. So 60% of people spend, 60 to 70% of people. And I'm curious what to see. It is this year they can go. We have it all on our resource center if anyone's interested in looking at the studies.

But I'm curious what this year will be because, I mean, obviously the allocation year was massive. You know, the reallocations, that was a big year. But it's crazy. Focus on the people you have. You've already won them.

You've already spent money on them. And I think it goes back to your whole nature of, you know, even this show, the customer needs to win. The client needs to come first. That's going to make you win in turn. Also,

Richard Walker: 20:16

You know, I'm going to attest to this personally because in my company, even though we're software as a service, we're not financial services we work in. Obviously, with all the advisory firms out there, more than 50% of our growth is attributable to current customers. Yes, yes. And it's simply because their usage is going up. We keep innovating to increase the ability to use our products, so that happens.

They acquire firms, which happens because they built a better experience. They're now more attractive. There's all these things that kind of play into us working better with our current customers to see growth happen. So I firmly believe in giving back to the current customers.

Molly Pierce: 20:49

Yeah. And if you're not once a year looking at your current at least minimum, you know, when you do your annual planning. So this is a great time to talk about this, looking back at everything you did for the year, for your current customers, if you're not analyzing that and going, how can we do better every year? I don't know that you're going to be as successful as you could be, truthfully, like you need to service your book of business and they are the ones that built you. I think I also have a very loyal mindset.

So it's a bit of those are the people that built you and they built your business and you owe them in some regards for that. So yeah.

Richard Walker: 21:19

Yeah. So number five, number five.

Molly Pierce: 21:23

Yes. Cost per client. The, the always kind of a quote unquote yucky term is the cost. Right. You don't always want to equate cost to people. But at the end of the day you should look at it.

That should be important to you, especially if you can break it down by marketing source. If you have that ability is really good, because then you can kind of look at that and say, great, you know, maybe TV did cost me more, but did it bring me higher net worth clients? So it's really the combination of all five of these that come together. But the cost per client is that last one. And I just want to encourage anybody in the financial advisor office right now if you're sitting here going gosh that's a lot.

Pick one, pick one, pick stick rate, go back through your calendar for the year, count how many appointments were set, count how many appointments were kept, and then just do stick rate for this year or even this quarter. This last quarter, try it just for a quarter. And then next year try to implement maybe one more or two more or three more. And that's going to be a really helpful thing.

Richard Walker: 22:18

Okay. So I have a couple of things. The cost per client is the cost of acquisition or service ongoing. Both.

Molly Pierce: 22:24

Yes. Acquisition. Yep. So we don't really track necessarily the service side of things. It's more hey what did they actually get into?

What did it cost you to get them through the door closed? What did it cost you?

Richard Walker: 22:35

So a lot of what you're talking about is driving growth for the business.

Molly Pierce: 22:38

Then 100%. We are very only service growth-minded advisors truthfully, because that's the niche market that we're in. And I would say like if you're a family practice and you're like, hey, I just want to service existing clients and referrals. Amazing. Like I am rooting for you.

Also truthfully like that is awesome. Like do you, we just don't really have a product that fits that necessarily versus like the growth minded. That's like, I want to know my numbers. I want to grow. I want to continue to be big.

I want to serve as many people as possible. That's really more of our market.

Richard Walker: 23:08

Yeah. All right. So I want to ask a different question around pricing and really about metrics because like stick rate for example, you're looking at what percentage actually follow through on the meeting. Is there a metric that you say is the kind of golden rod of measurement? And I'll give you an example of my own in pricing.

Pricing is one of the most difficult situations in a company, I think. And so I've learned over the years that if you win 100% of the deals you propose, you're too low, right? The goal is like 80%. That's kind of like the golden area of like you should win about 80%, which, by the way, is in conflict with being a customer first, because I love to tell my customers I don't want price to be the reason we can't work together.

Molly Pierce: 23:51

Right? Is there? But then it's like, is there a light version you can give them? Is there something that you can offer a free resource until they get there? But yeah, totally aligned.

Richard Walker: 23:59

So is there a metric then that you're putting against these five to say this is an industry standard, or is it different by company type?

Molly Pierce: 24:06

No. There is a metric. So every year like I kind of mentioned briefly on this, we do an aggregate study and set industry standards for the nation. So a lot of times what I found too is there really is a glaring gap in this industry to say, hey, what's normal? What should I be looking at?

Not only as far as metrics, but what are industry standards? Am I aligned with others in my kind of same arena or my peers? Am I aligned with the industry as a whole? I think that really comes into play because there's a huge darkness there. Nobody really knows.

You know, an advisor will go to their office and or to a big event, and they'll sit next to their buddy from, you know, out of state, and they'll be like, yeah, I had an 80% close rate. And I'm just sitting here overhearing it, like rolling my eyes, like I've seen your data. You don't have an 80% close rate. Like, unless you're just serving referrals, you do not have an 80% close rate. So that really was our heart in building these industry standards.

And it's a free resource we give to everybody. So for stick rate specific we say 70%. Is that industry standard? You should be getting 70% of people that say yes to come into your office. So I also really feel like benchmarking is such a tool.

It's not a rule. Right? Like there are going to be certain instances that aren't going to align with these industry benchmarks. And maybe it's like your process is slightly different, but for the majority of offices and we look at quite a few now It's gosh, 70% is that stick rate. So that's kind of the industry benchmark for that one close rate is going to be 30%.

So that I hope is freeing to a lot of advisors hearing that we work with some of the most successful practices across the nation, 30% consistently is the close rate that we see. You are not going to close everybody. And your buddy that's at the conference saying he's 80% stick rate or close rate, you may need to find a new friend because that is not an honest person unless they're doing referrals. All that's a whole nother side gig. But that's really what we say are kind of the benchmarks.

And there's several others and we can. I don't know if we can link it in the show notes, but I'm happy to provide that kind of industry benchmarking guide. I mean, it even breaks it down to like, you know, ROI by seminars and kind of what you should be looking at for different benchmarks.

Richard Walker: 26:11

Yeah. Give me a URL to your site and we'll link to it in the show notes. The stick rate one's a really interesting one because I'm thinking about myself and our own sales process. So we had a customer meeting this week that didn't show. Yep.

But they've already rescheduled. Yeah. I mean, it's actually really, really rare that somebody schedules with us and doesn't show up or reschedule to actually show up. Yeah, and we're B2B, we're enterprise like they've identified a really core need and they're exploring. So I couldn't even equate to the stick rate challenge that the advisors.

Yeah.

Molly Pierce: 26:42

And it's crazy rich. I mean, honestly, what I think goes down to the principle of the person. I'm like, if you say you're going to be there, you need to be there. That is moral and that's somebody else's time. And that's that.

To me, it's just rude. If you don't show up or show up on time, like you're equating that yourself is greater than the other person and their time and their energy. But realistically, these offices do. They have a lot of people that don't. I mean, think about it.

70% is the goal. Three out of ten do not show up or do not reschedule. If they reschedule and then come in, that's still counted as a kept. So these are three out of ten who say they want to come in and don't show up. And it is mind boggling to me.

It's mind boggling.

Richard Walker: 27:18

Realizing.

Molly Pierce: 27:19

No 100%. And then it's like a defeat because you're like I'm doing this conference, I'm doing this seminar, I'm doing all these things. And people are saying that they need me, and then they don't show up or even like it's 2025. Get on zoom. If you're not able to drive or something or, you know, you should have some type of technology solution, and if the office doesn't, that's on them.

You know what I mean? Any meeting is a meeting, whether it's in person or in zoom. And even the stats show, I mean, people do close on zoom. Some people find it much more convenient. After 2020, the rules changed.

It's not only for in person. And we've had several advisors so successful on zoom. So yeah, it blows my mind.

Richard Walker: 27:59

Yeah. This might be a strange segue to another type of question, because I think there's a lot of humans competing with using AI to solve their problems. Right. Like I might say, I'm not going to talk to that advisor because I talk to ChatGPT. Bad advice.

Right? But nonetheless, people are doing those types of things. So for your business, how many advisors are saying, Molly, come on, we just use whatever AI we want to get this data or insights or whatever. And I think I've already demonstrated the answer to this, but I want to pose it to you. Yeah.

Molly Pierce: 28:29

Yeah I'm interested. I love this question because I am always AI. I feel like I was born in the wrong generation, because I'm probably the only one in my generation that does not like AI, and that's that's bad. And I really have struggled to learn it even because I'm just like, man, this is just not human. Because I always think human connection is going to be our new source of currency. It really is.

I mean, it's going to be the dollar for dollar what people will exchange for, because whether you know, it's service or time or anything of that need, because it's going to be so lacking. And I've already seen it in social media and we are more connected, quote unquote, than ever before, and we are the most disconnected than ever before. And it makes me it really breaks my heart. So I know my poor kids are never going to have social media and it's going to be a whole thing. But it's also AI is an end to a mean.

It can be hugely beneficial to all to your business. I am not saying don't use AI. AI is very beneficial, but having that human element is absolutely key. And that's what we do is we take yes, we look at all of the data, but we have the human element to it to say, okay, AI is not going to understand your office. I'm not going to understand the dynamics.

It's not going to understand really what where you're struggling, it will point it out, but it's that no. And it's that understanding piece where Track That Advisor really fills. And again use AI. I love when people are like, okay, I got my data from AI and I'm like, did you clean it? Is it integral?

How do you know? Because we do scrubs every single month on every advisory firm that we work with, platform. Every single month we go through it, tell them what's missing, tell them, hey, and Rich, to this day, I've had one firm in how many years now? Almost ten years. That was clean in their data one time.

And it's like, because it's human error, it's human nature. It's. Hey, you need to fill this in. Go back and fill this in. And is AA going to catch that?

No, they're just going to look at the data you provided and say great. Like that's cool. But what is it? And I love when we are very like teachers. We're very teaching and education driven and saying, great, like, I want to teach you how to track your own data.

I do, but once they get on the software Track That Advisor in the platform, they're like, I'm never leaving. We have the highest retention rate, I would guess to say among these, a lot of the businesses here, because people love data and they like it, they want it, they need it.

Richard Walker: 30:53

I hundred percent agree with you on the connection thing. In fact, I was emailing somebody today about that. Like, AI cannot give me connection. It can give me coaching, it can give me analysis, it cannot give me connection. And here's the real proof to it.

So first of all, one of my greatest lessons in AI is that it's limited to your own ability to ask good questions.

Molly Pierce: 31:13

Yep.

Richard Walker: 31:13

Right. So here's the premise. I have a problem with who thought to ask about these five things that you learned? Who thought, oh, what's my stick rate? What's my conversions? What's my close rate?

Right. You had to do this analysis in your company to figure these things out. No AI is doing that.

Molly Pierce: 31:32

No, no.

Richard Walker: 31:33

Somebody had somebody who could work with AI to say, help me find patterns and come to some conclusion and then say, here are my metrics. But that's the thing. Like you have found these five drivers of people's business growth, and you're not going to get that with AI. You can't just say, hey, what are my five drivers of business? It's not going to come up with the same conclusion or not.

Molly Pierce: 31:51

And and it's like you said, it kind of can scratch the surface, but it can't go deep. It doesn't. As much as we think that it knows us and knows our businesses, it doesn't know the ins and outs. It cannot go deeper than what it's been taught. And that's the human side.

And I think that's how we were made. We were created for connection. We were created to utilize each other and in business and in friendships and everything and any connection, we were made for each other. So yeah.

Richard Walker: 32:14

Yeah, Look, we're getting to the end. In fact, over time, from how I normally do this. Oh, man. Sorry. No, I love this.

We could keep talking. Before I get to my very last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?

Molly Pierce: 32:27

Yeah, so I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. If people want to find me, it's Molly Pierce on LinkedIn. If they are interested in Track That Advisor Services, you're welcome to go to our website at trackthatadvisor.com or email us hello at trackthatadvisor.com. We have a lot of resources too and that's all housed on our website as well through the resource center.

So if you sign up for that there's a lot of amazing resources that you can get in. You know, things from TV studies, what works, commercials, segments, you know, all of the things radio studies, aggregate studies. There's tons of things on that. But if you're just interested in and maybe having the benchmarking guide, feel free to email hello@trackthatadvisor.com and we'll get that over to you also.

Richard Walker: 33:08

Oh that is awesome. Yeah.

Molly Pierce: 33:09

All right. Good resource.

Richard Walker: 33:11

I love asking this question and I ask it of most of my guests. I guess so. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?

Molly Pierce: 33:19

Yeah, you know, it's kind of a dual question because I would say there's kind of a part one and then a part two of my leadership style, and one was I had an amazing mentor, Randall Miller, in my first job out of college, and it was this amazing, amazing job. We were setting pricing for electricity, utilities out, out of college, and I had no business being there. I was like, he totally took a shot on me and it was amazing. And I worked really hard at it. And we, you know, we he but his mindset was always to teach first.

He was very much a teacher. So not even just about energy. I mean energy as a whole was really cool. But he was very intentional about your young. What are you doing with this in your life?

Are you, you know, thinking about this and are you doing this? And I even remember I had gotten engaged and I went and told him and he was like, sit down. This is the biggest business decision of your life. And I was like, did you say you could start with congratulations? Thank you.

Yes, I'm in love. And it was just. But it was so good because he cared for his people. And where you were going to go in life beyond your job. And I think when I, when it comes to leadership, that's really important to me is don't just care about the person sitting in the chair for who you're serving today, care about that, who that person's going to be years down the road.

And so his impact was massive in the teaching. And then today, honestly, Erica, our founder is one, I would say genuinely one of my closest friends in this business for certain, not just because she's the founder, but she's an amazing leader because she knows what she wants to do and when to let go. And even allowing me to be the CEO of her company. To me, that just is such a selfless act and she'll even say it. She's done several podcasts and said it to where she goes, I didn't want to run the company.

I want to do data analytics. I want to coach. I want to serve advisors. I didn't want to run a company. Yes, I started it, but I knew you would do a good job of running it.

I trusted you. So I think leadership in that regard of trust and knowing what you want and what you don't want has been massive. And you, you just impact. She just has impacted so many people with those decisions. Not only my life, my life, but our whole team.

You know, to just have that trust and go, great, go. You guys. Like I'm going to do this aspect of the business, which is a hugely important aspect of the business, but it's what I like to do and I trust you guys to do the rest. And so it's been a really cool, cool thing to see for sure. So she's honestly just an amazing person.

You know, I always laugh like she's not much older than me at all, but I'm like, when I grow up, I want to be Erica Bailey. So. And she's like the same age, but it's fine.

Richard Walker: 35:47

This is why I love asking this question. I love hearing these types of stories and inspiration. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Molly Pierce: 35:52

Of course, I think people are important too. And I would say too, for anyone listening like, go tell those people that they matter. You know, I think there's a lot of art in telling people that they matter. I think we get too much in a society of what do I want? Where am I going?

It's about me, me, me. And it's like, gosh, if you just encourage someone today, like, that's my challenge to everybody, go everybody. Go find one person to encourage today because it's important. It's how we're designed and it's how you can really impact the world.

Richard Walker: 36:17

You know, there's another side to that. When you build up others, you build up yourself.

Molly Pierce: 36:20

Yes, yes, I love it.

Richard Walker: 36:23

So all right. I want to give a huge thank you to Molly Pierce, CEO of Track That Advisor, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Molly's website at trackthatadvisor.com, and don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins.

Molly, thank you so much for joining me today.

Molly Pierce: 36:48

It's been a pleasure. This has been so fun. Thanks for having me.

Outro: 36:52

Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.