Prospecting Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

In the Prospecting blog category you will find blog posts about prospecting. Don’s tips would include but may not limited to prospecting for new clients, leaning on your clients, researching for clients, how to ask for referrals, and more.

Nail the First Meeting with a Prospective Client: Address What Your Prospects Want to Know

July 18, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments

It takes a lot of time, patience, and effort to move a prospect through the funnel to the point when they finally agree to meet with you. For every prospect that makes it that far probably six to nine fall by the wayside. That makes that first meeting ever so crucial. There’s a lot that must be accomplished. It has to go perfectly. There’s a minimal margin for error.

Every advisor has their own formula for constructing a perfect prospect meeting. It invariably includes a polished presentation and ample opportunities to present oneself as a likable, competent professional.

However, ensuring that first meeting is a success comes down to how you structure it to address all the prospect’s questions and concerns. They’re meeting with you to find out who you are and why they should work with you. They need the answers to very specific questions on their mind even though they may not ask them. So, why not structure the meeting around what your prospects really want to know?

Here are a few such questions they are asking themselves.

How to Tell When a Prospect Is Ready to Become a Client

May 30, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

In their interactions with prospects, financial advisors reach a critical juncture when they must determine when or if a prospect is ready to become a client. If they make the wrong determination, it will likely result in a missed opportunity. Trying to close prospects before they are ready can push them away, while waiting too long can cause them to lose interest.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, when they are ready to buy, prospects would just pipe up and say, “I’d like to get started?” Unfortunately, it rarely happens that way. Your prospects are just as apprehensive about making a buying decision as you are asking them to buy. Most people need to be held by the hand and reassured that they’re making the right decision. Some may need a stronger nudge. But in almost every instance, financial advisors must know when the time is right and take the appropriate action.

If you bring a prospect far enough along in the process, it means you’ve probably done a lot of things right—built rapport, discovered their pain, explained your process and how you bring value, etc. Then it becomes a dance. Like that girl or boy you’ve been staring at across the dance floor, they will provide clues or buying signals when they’re ready to be asked. Here are a few such signals or clues.

Mapping Out the Client Acquisition Timeline—How Long It Takes to Get a New Client

March 14, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments

New clients are the lifeblood of a financial advisory practice, without which it could go into cardiac arrest. For newer financial advisors, acquiring new clients can’t happen fast enough. However, if obtaining clients was easy, anyone could be a successful financial advisor. Starting out, it’s an uphill battle that only the most determined can eventually win.

It also helps to have a systematic process for capturing leads, nurturing them through the sales funnel, and converting them into prospects, out of which a certain percentage become clients. That’s all laid out on a timeline that can vary significantly depending on the type of lead, where it came from, and how effective your process is for cultivating the lead. It could take anywhere from one month to a year for a lead to complete the journey through the funnel to becoming a new client.

Nothing Happens without an Appointment

January 3, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Would you like to have $50,000,000 in assets under management? How about a $100,000,000? How about $500,000,000? It’s simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple. Go get an appointment. It all starts with getting an appointment. Nothing happens without an appointment in this business. Go on the appointment, get your nose bloody, come back and get another appointment. Then get another one. Then get another one. Building a career is a series of many steps. Success is not part time. Get in the habit of getting appointments.

Watch this video or read the transcript to learn how to get in the habit of getting appointments.

Your Biggest Prospecting Mistake: Calling Prospects Before They’re Ready

December 13, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

If you’ve been in this business for any length of time—one day to ten years or more—you know one thing to be an absolute certainty, that prospecting is your lifeblood. You understand the critical importance of filling up your pipeline and keeping it full of qualified leads that can be continuously converted into qualified prospects. But to identify someone as a qualified prospect, you have to contact them. So, you make the phone call.

If you don’t reach them the first time, you call back in a few days. After a third and fourth try, you dare to leave a voice message. Nothing. So, you recycle them in your CRM for a call two or three months from now. Meanwhile, your potential prospect has blocked future calls. Your CRM is now full of candidates who have refused and will continue to refuse to take your call. Where does that leave you?

If you are still counting them as potential qualified prospects, you are probably deluding yourself and diluting your pipeline with people who have no desire to talk with you. But what was your big mistake?

Here’s a Four-Pronged Plan to Become a Highly Referable Advisor

October 25, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Most financial advisors find it difficult to ask for referrals. That we know because less than 11 percent even bother to ask. Maybe that small cadre of advisors knows something the other 89 percent don’t—that nearly three-quarters of high-net-worth clients say they would refer friends or colleagues if their advisors asked. That’s quite a disconnect, so I’m wondering if there is something else going on that’s preventing advisors from tapping this precious and obvious source of new clients.

5 Cold Calling Mistakes Financial Advisors Must Avoid to Improve Results

October 11, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

For many financial advisors, cold calling does not play a dominant part in their marketing plans. Many feel it can be replaced by other prospecting methods, such as email campaigns, social media networking, or trade shows. But would it surprise you to know that cold calling still generates better results than those other methods? When you ask advisors why they avoid cold calling, you often get responses like, “It’s not working for me,” or “It’s a waste of time,” or “no one wants to talk to me on the phone.”

No one ever said cold calling is easy. But if your efforts aren’t producing results, have you ever considered it’s not the method, but how you’re executing it that’s not working?

3 Situations When Financial Advisors Should Use a Prospecting Script

October 4, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

If you’re like most financial advisors, you probably started out with a phone script, whether calling strangers, LinkedIn contacts or referrals. Prospecting scripts are critical for new advisors because they help them keep organized and stay on track for the brief time they have in that first interaction. No doubt, using phone scripts can serve inexperienced advisors well if they work at it. They can also make experienced advisors even more effective when used in certain circumstances.

8 Client Event Ideas for Financial Advisors

August 16, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments

Client events have always been the most effective way to increase client and prospect engagement, providing the opportunity to express appreciation while strengthening personal connections. It has always been a challenge for financial advisors to keep their clients engaged and their prospects enthusiastic, more so during the pandemic, keeping everyone at a virtual distance. Now, with the pandemic waning, client events should once again stand as a key pillar in advisors’ marketing plans.

Prospect Objections Are Often a Cry for Help. Your Job Is to Help Them.

May 31, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

As a financial advisor, you are valued for your expert knowledge, but you are only as effective as your ability to get your prospects and clients to act on your recommendations. If you can’t, their situations won’t improve, and neither will yours. Many financial advisors in that situation might chalk it up to them being “bad” prospects and move on, but aren’t they abdicating their role as an advisor?

Certainly, advisors shouldn’t use strongarm tactics to turn their prospects around, but shouldn’t they at least understand the reason behind the objection? Could they learn some valuable insights that would help resolve the issue, if not for the prospect in front of them, but for similar situations they encounter in the future?

In the financial advisory business, objections come with the territory. They’re often just knee-jerk reactions from clients hesitant to make a change. Prospects often don’t understand the real reason behind their objection—they’re just not comfortable moving forward. As an advisor, your job is to help them acknowledge the real reason so they can place it in the context of what you have offered them.

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