Quit the waiting game

From the October 2009 Issue of Senior Market Advisor Magazine

Many advisors envision a perfect sales world, a world in which your phone constantly rings with interested and qualified sales prospects just waiting to work with you. In this perfect world, you don’t have to develop sales prospects, follow leads, conduct seminars or cold call. (Well, in my perfect and real world, cold calls never exist!) These perfect-world clients just appear, “flying in” at any time to boost your business.

In sales, we call these perfect-world clients “bluebirds.” They arrive unexpectedly and land exactly where we want. The inquiring client may have read about you, read an article in which you were mentioned or you wrote, or came from a referral. All wonderful, but unexpected and undependable.

Counting on bluebirds traps many advisors. Bluebirds shift the sales activity from proactive to passive. You’re waiting, waiting, waiting for the phone to ring. It’s wonderful when it does, but you can’t run a business on “waiting for wonderful.”

No more waiting

Advisors ask me: Joanne, when can I stop prospecting and make my phone ring all the time?

My answer: When you find out, let me know.

I count on what I bring about. Period. When the occasional in-bound “bluebird” phone call arrives, I count it as a sales bonus. When you work your referrals proactively, the phone rings because you make it ring.
That counts. Bluebirds don’t.