Formula for Success in Prospecting for Financial Advisors – Revealed
To succeed as a financial advisor, you must have plenty of prospective clients in the pipeline. Ideally your appointment book should be full to bursting. This means you need to prospect as many people as possible.
However, reaching out indiscriminately is unlikely to get you many appointments or win you profitable new clients. To ensure your prospecting activity pays off you need to refine your approach and target prospects who meet your criteria and are therefore more likely to convert.
Your formula for success in prospecting lies between calling everyone and being too discerning (spending endless amount of time sourcing leads that are a ‘perfect fit’ is unlikely to be productive either).
Quality and quantity are equally important when it comes to prospecting. This post outlines a few ways to help you achieve this delicate balancing act.
Create an ideal client profile
The quality of your leads is vitally important to your prospecting success, so it’s essential to have a clear target market in mind before you prospect. Identify your ideal client. What are their characteristics and why would you be their ideal advisor? What kind of affinity do you have with them and why should they be keen to do business with you?
To help pinpoint your ideal client look back at clients who turned out to be a good fit – what were their characteristics? Why do you enjoy working with them? Then use this as a base for your profile.
Draw up an ideal client sheet to remind you who you should be prospecting to. You can also use this sheet as a marketing tool to hand out, letting people know exactly the kind of people you would love to have as clients.
To help work out your ideal client profile you can also look back at clients who didn’t work out – what traits did they have? Going forward use this information to avoid targeting people with these qualities.
Set measurable goals to determine the numbers
Set measurable goals. For example, how many face-to-face appointments do you need to have over the course of an year in order to hit your goals.
Work out how many prospects you need to contact to achieve this goal. Be very specific and determine how much prospecting activity you need to undertake every day to achieve this. Take a look at your recent appointment setting activity: How many calls, meetings or presentations resulted in a new account? How many prospects did you need to contact to book the needed number of meetings? Of those meetings how many converted into clients?
Use this past information to work out how many people you will need to call every day in order to generate enough appointments to achieve your annual goal. Then stick to the plan without fail.
Determine your prospecting approach
Work out how you are going to approach prospecting. Don’t see prospecting as a chore, see it as the first step in what could become a mutually beneficial relationship.
Make your prospecting activity a structured time. Make it a priority to call people every day. Always follow up leads, return calls and don’t overlook opportunities.
Be persistent without being overbearing, and always remember that you are doing your job so that you can help people achieve their financial goals. Your advice can enable them to get their children through college or look forward to a secure retirement.
You have sound financial advice to offer. When prospecting, never forget that you are important. Let this instill you with confidence as you pick up the phone.
The formula of success in prospecting is in the balance and persistence.
Your appointment book might be full today but this could quickly turn around, so you need to keep prospecting and setting appointments to keep the pipeline full. That means approaching a large number of people. But no matter how good your prospecting skills, if you aren’t approaching the right prospects you are unlikely to see significant success.
Prospecting is a numbers game, but to stack the odds in your favor you must first focus on identifying a clear target market.
Join Don Connelly 24/7 to become a better prospector and open more accounts this year.
