Tim Parros • Ann Arbor, MI
Parros Financial Group • Parros College Planning • Sigma Financial Corporation
Our advisory firm has a unique model for building new client relationships. About eight years ago, I founded Parros Financial Group and created a division within that, Parros College Planning.
In meeting with financial-planning clients over the years, I kept seeing parents struggle to find a way to pay for a college education without taking on a great deal of debt or dipping into their retirement resources. We wanted to find a better way to advise clients for this important life event and became credentialed experts in the area.
We have done over 150 in-depth campus tours and have met with many admissions and financial aid deans. We have coached over 1,000 students and families through the processes of college selection and financial aid. We get into every part of the process, from college screening and application preparation to financial strategies. This is a stand-alone part of our firm, but it also introduces us to many families who eventually decide to use our financial-planning and investment-advisory services.
We market college planning in a number of ways, trying to keep everything very cost-effective. My wife, Kim, plays an important role in the college division and has helped create a multi-tiered marketing plan. For example, we work through local towns by offering community education classes that people can take at a nominal charge. Those who attend will often be interested enough in the workshop presentation to come aboard as clients.
We also place an emphasis on public relations—writing articles and doing interviews, or having others write articles for us. We try to get those in front of newspaper editors, and I occasionally have appeared on local television stations. We use direct-mail efforts to invite people to come to workshops with content similar to the community education classes.
The idea here is to present credible and useful information that shows people how serious planning for college needs to happen on several levels that should be considered together: finding the right school match, presenting the student in the best possible light, and finding advantageous financial packages. This approach works well and is now the primary way we are able to introduce potential clients to our broader advisory practice.
Disclosure: Securities offered through Sigma Financial Corporation, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Sigma Planning Corporation, a registered investment advisor. Branch address located at 2245 South State Street, Suite 2400, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Parros Financial Group LLC is independent of Sigma Financial Corporation and Sigma Planning Corporation.
Editor’s note: This article first published on July 16, 2016. Mr. Parros is affiliated with Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., as of this update (May 4, 2017).
Photography by Scott Stewart
