Scott Stewart’s preferred way of drumming up new business is a lot like Buckley’s Mixture: it tastes awful, but it works.

Scott, an investment advisor at ScotiaMcLeod Inc. ’s Winnipeg office — along with his team — takes the road less travelled and cold-calls thousands of prospects a year.

“It just works. It’s no fun — you’re getting told ‘No’ all the time,” Stewart says, adding that other advisors don’t do it “because it’s hard.”

The team record is owned by one of Stewart’s associates, Geoff Renouf, who dialled 13,000 numbers three years ago.

“We’ll see stories in the paper about business owners doing something exceptional and we’ll take down names and phone them,” he says. “We’ll phone anyone and everyone. We have no problem phoning some of the most prominent citizens in Winnipeg.”

Stewart says that for every 200 calls made, an average of 16 people say they are willing to hear from him; and about one of those 16 becomes a client the next year.

“We like to maintain a list of 800 to 1,000 interested prospects,” he says.

Perhaps in keeping with his preferred marketing method, Stewart is nothing if not persistent. He says that while some potential clients require five or six meetings before they decide to come on board, he recently landed a pair of multimillion-dollar additions that he had been pursuing for nine and 11 years, respectively.

While the impending implementation of a Do Not Call List may make Stewart’s methods all but illegal, he is taking steps to mitigate any effects the new rules might have on his business. (See page B15.) For example, he’s trying to get a greater number of prospects to grant him permission to talk to them before the list comes into being. He’s also concentrating on generating more business from referrals from existing clients.

“I’m not all that worried about the Do Not Call List. The people that absolutely don’t want to hear from us whatsoever are telling us to blast off right now, anyway,” he says. “We get a lot of comments from people saying they’re meeting with us because we’ve been politely and persistently in touch with them for a long time.”

Stewart joined ScotiaMcLeod eight years ago, after spending his first six years in the business at BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. Along the way, he has built up a book of $100 million in assets spread out over 125 households. His typical client has more than $500,000 in assets invested with him, and 87% of his clients are in some kind of managed-money vehicle.

“We target a lot of business owners, and we’ve found they typically don’t have a lot of time to devote to day-to-day trading of their portfolios,” Stewart says. “I have a very structured and disciplined approach to investment management. We’re really focused on risk management in our investment planning.”

In addition to full brokerage services, Stewart and his team offer financial planning services. They also try to determine early on if clients have gaps in their insurance coverage.

“We like to find out whether clients have a will,” he says, “and we do an insurance assessment to make sure they’re properly insured.”

Stewart, who already has the Canadian investment management and fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute designations, is planning to add a portfolio-management licence to his qualifications within the next year. He also has a bachelor of arts from the University of Winnipeg.

Stewart’s team is made up of Ruth Peddle and Renouf, both of whom are investment associates who can handle trades on behalf of clients. Peddle also provides ongoing customer service, including setting up annual client meetings and updating documentation, while Renouf spends the bulk of his time searching out potential clients and setting up appointments, seminars and presentations.

Valuable lessons learned from two older clients during Stewart’s early days at Nesbitt reaffirmed his decision to enter the financial advisory business. One client had made a lot of money during his career, but didn’t manage it terribly well. As a result, he wasn’t particularly well off when he died. The second client was a tradesman who didn’t make a large annual salary but was smart with his money. He died a millionaire and left a sizable amount of money to his children.

@page_break@“[These cases] showed to me the kind of value we can bring and how we can make a difference in an individual’s life,” he says.

While changing firms can be difficult, Stewart has no regrets about his move to ScotiaMcLeod. “There’s a real familial culture at ScotiaMcLeod,” he says. “You feel your input is valued. You can talk to anyone higher up at the firm and they’re interested to hear what you have to say.”

Stewart, 38, and his wife of nine years, Daryla, have three sons: Adam, six; Nathan, four; and James, six months. The family likes to spend as much time as possible at their cottage on Lake of the Woods, just across the Manitoba-Ontario border, where Stewart enjoys windsurfing. In the winter, the family likes to take a couple of vacations: one in the snow and one in the sand.

The other focus of Stewart’s travel plans involves an annual old-timers’ hockey tournament. Last year, his team went to Chicago; this year, it’s scheduled to play in the well-known hockey hotbed of Las Vegas. IE