Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

AdviserBlast – Quick Tips to Accelerate Your Practice

In this issue: Keep your "pipeline" of prospects full and flowing freely!

What are you doing to maintain your prospect pipeline? It can be easy to talk about the need to ensure we have a steady flow of quality potential clients, but are you actively doing anything about it? The quality of your business is going to be dependent on the quality of your pipeline.

Connect to the right source
Often advisers fool themselves by thinking they're increasing their odds of great future results by indiscriminately adding people to their prospect pipeline. While the number of people you are connecting with may increase, the results of those connections may not help, and even possibly hurt, your business.

Do you have a picture of your ideal client? What stage of life are they in? What amount of assets do they have? What is their view toward investing, and does it match yours? Are they willing to actually do something with their money? Are they someone you enjoy working with? Only after you clearly develop this picture can you effectively evaluate whether you are actually connecting to the right people.

If the people you're connecting with enjoy talking to you but really have no intention of doing business with you, don't have sufficient assets to invest, are using you for a second opinion to run against their current adviser, or even have a significantly different investing philosophy, they actually hurt your pipeline. They consume your time, effort and energy with no real possibility of becoming a client and growing your business, leaving you fewer resources to pursue quality prospects.

Ensure a free flow
Once you're connected to the right source and have quality prospects enter into your pipeline, you need a plan to move them along.

So you have someone's name and contact details and you know a little bit about them, but that's not enough. What next?

Do you have a communication plan that you consistently follow? Are you keeping them up to date with brief and relevant information that is truly useful to them? With the deluge of information coming at people today, it often takes 3 or 4 communication touches (emails or phone calls) to get through the clutter before you can even begin a dialogue. You must have a plan to consistently provide useful information so they see you as a knowledgeable expert – a true adviser – who is worth their time because you can help them, rather than being just a product pusher.

Turn on the spigot
It is great to have quality prospects in your pipeline, and it does take time to build relationships and for people to be ready to do business with someone new. Ultimately, though, you want people flowing out as genuine clients. A full pipeline might feel good, but it is ineffective if nothing is coming out at the tap!

You may have been communicating well with someone for months on end – sending them timely newsletters or reaching out with occasional phone calls or even coffee or lunch appointments. You like them and they seem to like you, but they never seem to specifically bring up the possibility of doing any business with you.

Are you talking with them about doing business with you? Are you politely, yet directly, asking for their business?

Don't shirk out of this step with the excuse, "They know what I do, so when they're ready they'll come to me." Ask for their business!

Then you can definitively know where you stand. Is it worth your resources to keep up the relationship even though might not yet be the right time for them to take action? Are they not interested but just enjoy your paying for lunch occasionally? Are there unspoken concerns or blocks to doing business that you can bring into the open and address?

Know the flow
Do you have clear, numeric goals for what you're wanting from your pipeline? Set specific, measurable goals, with a timeline, so that you can honestly evaluate if your prospecting efforts are effective.

If the flow is slower than you want, ask yourself:

• Do I need to connect to a different source of prospects?
   
• Are my communication and relationship building activities effective, or do I need to change how I'm communicating or what I'm saying?
   
• Am I confidently and specifically asking my prospects to do business with me?

Growing your business can be long work, requiring diligent effort. But if you properly and consistently maintain your pipeline, great prospects will eventually come out the other end as great clients!

Be tenacious,
Keep going,
Don't give up,
Paul

Copyright Paul Kingsman 2010

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As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Paul Kingsman helps financial services professionals successfully grow their businesses by connecting with quality prospects and turning them into loyal clients. Combining his experiences as an Olympic medalist and his background as an adviser, Paul understands how to stay focused over the long haul, as well as the unique business challenges faced by advisers. Through his professional speaking and executive coaching he equips them to overcome distractions so they can get the money they need, the clients they want, and the time to do what they love.

To find out more about how Paul can equip you or your team to achieve your own Split Second Success® visit paulkingsman.com/coaching or email him at Paul@PaulKingsman.com

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