Prospecting

In my last article, I showed you a safe and effective way to ask for referrals. As promised, here’s what you can do when you have a client who isn’t comfortable with your request—or just doesn’t want to have a referral conversation. I was coaching a top producer the other day, and he was frustrated, because one of his top …

One of the tenets of insurance law is that parties to an insurance policy are expected to deal with each other in utmost good faith. Applicants for insurance, or their brokers, must disclose all relevant underwriting information fully and accurately to prospective insurers. If the application contains any misrepresentation or omits information that could affect the underwriting decision of the …

In 1974, the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act (ERISA) became law and ushered in the tax-qualified savings plan (also known as the IRA, 401(k), Keogh, and others). Almost overnight, Wall Street advisors lost their biggest and best clients—pension fund managers and workers were cast into the unknown world of managing their own investment accounts. Wall Street shifted its model …

Most conversations start off with innocuous questions like, “What do you think of the weather?” If you want to build rapport and trust with clients, you need to have conversations that go deeper than that. The way you ask the questions will dramatically affect the quality and value of your conversation. Certain types of questions can expand the conversation, and …

Some estimates indicate that it costs between five and seven times as much to gain a new client than it does to retain one. This indicates that selling more to your current customer base is a wise priority. Since they have already conducted business with you to fill a need, your clients have shown trust in your company. To gain …

Planners of every persuasion are always looking for the new and interesting conversation to have with their best clients and strategic partners. This is called business development, and the differentiation point between the consultant and the salesperson is this: the consultant wants the conversation that fits the situation to lead to business development as opposed to the conversation built around …

As your plane taxis down the runway, the person beside you strikes up a conversation. The what-do-you-do-for-a-living question will usually come up. When it does, you know that they will inevitably follow it up with another question—perhaps something like: “My brother-in-law is really into gold stocks. Do you have any hot tips?” Many professions have these dreaded questions. In social …

Before embarking on a road trip, you need to know a few important facts: not only your point of origin and your desired destination, but also a detailed map of the route you want to take. Your prospects go on a similar journey on their way to finding financial services. Their point of origin is the realization that they need …

The success of many of the top-earning financial advisors hinges on their ability to simply get more clients. Although exceptions to this rule exist, the advisors who outlast their peers and are nearing retirement with a big book of business are usually those who did more prospecting (and more effective prospecting) earlier in their career. They are also more likely …

Friends, are you stuck in a “rut”? Have you found yourself sitting in your office and twiddling your thumbs wondering where your next piece of business will come from? If you are the type of advisor who spends most of his day on Facebook and LinkedIn wondering when the phone will ring, stop reading this article. For those of you …