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November 21, 2012 at 10:24 AM
It took me over 13 years to figure out the ultimate retirement plan advice prospecting process. I am happy to save you the same amount of time.
In a previous blog post on AdvisorOne, I wrote about how a simple phone conversation with a client over 13 years ago subsequently lead to the growth and development of a major part of my current investment advisory practice.
At the time I started to build an individual company retirement plan advice niche, I did not pay any attention to who I called or what I said. Years later I now realize that each of the three classic prospecting steps I followed can be replicated by any other advisor.
All three of my prospecting steps listed below take advantage of existing client relationships. Ask a selected group of your existing clients for their interest in your advice to help better manage their individual company retirement plan account. You will be amazed at the response!
The first step in the development of an individual company retirement plan advice niche begins with one of Bill Good’s greatest telephone-prospecting strategies. That strategy is to put together a prospecting list together “on which word of mouth can occur.”
I received exactly zero prospecting training from the local brokerage firm that first hired me in 1984. For that reason, I read every month the Bill Good prospecting column in Research Magazine. Neither of us knew it then, but Bill Good was my first sales manager in the securities business.
I began prospecting the law firms, doctor’s groups, and Fortune 500 companies where my existing clients worked 13 years ago. And I have kept doing it ever since. I now have dozens of individual company retirement plan advice clients at a small handful of private and public companies in my local market.
The second step in the development of a retirement plan advice business is to ask for the company retirement plan menus of your best clients.
I call this step the “misery loves company” part of my retirement plan advice telephone prospecting program. Non-performance over a long period of time in a company retirement plan offering will sooner-or-later be a topic of discussion and frustration within a company community.
What do people talk about at work? Kids, school, weather, vacations, losing money in their company retirement plan account….all the important life events, right?
A copy of a company retirement plan menu will elevate you as an expert source of independent, third-party information regarding the company retirement plan menu of options. Immediately, you become the best source of investment advice and analysis on the company retirement plan menu that an individual prospect at that company will ever talk to.
