A Blueprint for Aspiring Million Dollar Producers to Follow
A while ago I received an email from Guy Steele who is a friend and an advisor in Hawaii. He said:
“Give me an idea of how a million dollar producer works. How many calls a day do they make? How many hours a day do they work? Mentally what’s their mindset each day when they go to the office? Do you have a blueprint for aspiring million dollar producers to follow?”
Listen to Don’s answer or read the transcript below to learn more about the suggested blueprint for aspiring million dollar producers.
This is a great question. The answer is going to be ongoing. I can’t answer it in one session, but it is the theme of Don Connelly 24/7.
Let me start by saying this: I watched a video tape of professional golfer, Davis Love. He was talking about the fact that amateur golfers have a job and go to work at their jobs somewhere else. And we have a job as professional golfers and we go to work.
We don’t play tournaments every day. Our work during the week is to practice our golf.
He said, “When I practice, I practice the basics 75% of the time. The basics never change.” And he equated the basics to being grip, stance and alignment.
So if we teach at a golf school, we’re going to teach grip, stance and alignment. We may alter the swing for a person’s physicality, but essentially, the basics again always remain the same.
Then he said: “I’ll give you an example, just on alignment alone. My caddy is my brother. I’ve been playing golf for 40 years, day in and day out for 40 years. To this day when we go to the driving range, my caddy has to line me up, I still don’t get it right after 40 years of practice.”
Remember that this is one of the top golfers in the world. If you go to any professional tournament, and go to the driving range, you’ll see spray paint on the ground, tees on the ground, clubs strewn around, all having to do with alignment.
I talked to a friend of mine, he’s a coach, a golf teacher, he’s a PGA professional. He said he spends 90% of his lesson time on alignment.
So Davis Love said that you, as an amateur pull up in the parking lot, change your shoes and hit 5 balls, and go out and wonder why you’re not any good.
You have to master the basics. That’s what these million dollar producers have done.
The holy grail in golf is a repeatable swing. Tiger Woods, at one point in his career, was literally the best in the world at doing the same thing over and over and over again. His swing was so close every single time to the previous swing. That allowed him more predictable results, and the predictable results related into winnings in dollars.
That’s true with a financial advisor. You need a repeatable process.
You need to do what you do over and over and over again, despite the markets.
As an Advisor, you have to get your method down and never change it based on the markets. Bull market, bear market, recession, high rates, low rates, President Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t matter. The basics never change.
You have to get a repeatable swing for financial advising.
That repeatable swing basically consists of prospecting skills; client acquisition skills; communication skills – you have to be able to get your point across. If everybody understood every single word you’re saying, you’d be richer than Bill Gates.
You have to sell well.
You have to be very organized.
And the last thing you need is the character. The wherewithal to get to the higher level.
That’s what our ongoing answer is going to be, it’s just a repeatable process.
A few years ago we had Jeff Gebauer on Don Connelly 24/7, as a guest, talking about his production. He works with doctors on their Qualified Plans. Jeff said when he was a young guy in the business and doing about $200,000 a year, he saw a million dollar producer sitting next to him. He said: “This guy is not working 5 times harder than I am, he’s not 5 times smarter than I am, how is this guy doing 5 times the business?”
The answer is recurring fees.
When I started in the business, it was transactional. You could make a living on transactions. Today, commissions are much smaller than they used to be, so you have to build up fees that recur over and over and over again.
So the quick answer which we will flesh out is: You’re going to look at your book and identify your top prospects. And remember Jerry Maguire – fewer clients, larger clients, more personal service.
Identify those top prospects as you segment, then use your repeatable process to go get more just like them. And eventually all you need is 60 or 80 clients, or maybe a 100 clients. I think after 150 clients our service begins to slip. We sell too many products, there’s too many things pulling at us. Less than 150 clients, is ideal, a hundred or 80 really ideal.
So again: sum up, get a repeatable process, clone your top clients, have a plan to go get more and never ever change the basics despite market conditions.
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