You're Prospecting All Wrong
Membership required
Membership is now required to use this feature. To learn more:
View Membership BenefitsAdvisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
If you’re struggling to get prospects to say “yes,” you may be too focused on what you can get from the meeting, not your prospect's needs.
You're doing it wrong if you meet with prospects to get new clients.
You see, you can’t control whether a prospect chooses to hire you. What you can control is how much value you deliver during that meeting.
Here’s the thing about prospecting that so many advisors miss: it’s an opportunity to transform someone's life in one hour.
That’s exciting!
You can meet with people who need help, show them where they’ve done well, and point out potential pitfalls they may not know.
You can add so much value to prospects during those 60 minutes – how could you not look forward to these meetings?
But too many advisors are so stressed about “winning” clients they blow up the entire thing.
Stop talking about your life
No prospect woke up one day and said, “Gee, you know what we need, honey? We need to find someone to tell us their life story and then sell us something expensive.”
Your mother worries more about her broken fingernail than she does about your life falling apart. This may sound cruel, even harsh, but advisors need to understand that prospect meetings shouldn’t be about you.
Your prospects came to you for help with a problem they’re facing. They don’t care what year you earned your CFP or score on the Series Seven exam; they want to know if you can help them.
If you can answer their questions and improve their situation, they’ll care a little bit about what’s going on in your life, and you can share your story in a limited capacity.
Cut out the sizzle
I love to barbeque, and my favorite thing when grilling hamburgers is to squash the patties so the grease hits the flames, causing a significant flare-up. It’s just the kid in me, and I can’t help myself.
But no one else cares about the flames I can make with the sizzling burgers. When I’m grilling, my kids aren’t asking for more fire – they want an actual hamburger cooked to perfection.
When a prospect comes to you, they have concerns they want addressed. They want to be served a sizzling steak. They don’t want to watch you feed the flames.
If you wax lyrical about the latest financial reports, read documents for 20 minutes, or do anything that doesn’t directly relate to answering their question, you’re serving up a whole lot of sizzle and no substance.
Ask questions
An advisor who has been in business for a while contacted me because he struggled with his prospect meetings.
He was anxious about meeting with prospects because he didn’t know what to say to impress them.
I told this advisor that he should be less concerned about what he should say and instead focus on what he should ask the prospects during the meeting.
Instead of opening the meeting by describing how qualified you are to give financial advice, focus on the prospects in front of you and meeting their needs.
My team always collects questions and concerns from prospects and clients before their appointments so we can add them to the meeting agenda.
With this in mind, I still ask for any extra concerns or questions before the meeting begins:
Hey, thank you very much for taking the time to submit your questions. I love them; we’ve reviewed them. I want to make sure we get to them. But before we address those, what else?
When you start asking questions like this, you’ll be amazed by everything the prospect didn’t put on the agenda they want to discuss now.
Een if a client or prospect gives you questions in advance, you must still ask, "What other questions or concerns do you have?” because they always have more.
Instead of handing them a Monte Carlo analysis or scaring them with your market predictions, use the prospect's questions as a framework for the rest of your meeting.
Do what works
After I ask prospects my opening questions, I set my expectations for the rest of the meeting. I blatantly explain that the next 60 minutes are about the prospect and their needs – I won’t swoop in for a sale.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’m not in that meeting to get hired.
Getting hired is a byproduct of the meeting. My sole goal is to deliver massive value, whether they hire me or not.
With that in mind, I’m not holding back my advice. I will outline everything the prospect needs to do – even if they hire someone else – because this is the best advice for them. Period.
I’m not going to act like a supervillain sitting in a wing-backed chair, threatening to share the secret code to the ticking time bomb hidden in their finances only if they hire me.
Nope. I’m completely transparent and give them all my ideas.
Again, I can’t control whether the prospect will hire me, but I can control how much value I deliver, so that’s what I do.
Delivering massive value
You’ve probably heard the phrase “delivering massive value.” But what does that even mean?
In my world, delivering massive value is process-driven. I have processes built into my practice to deliver as much value as I can to prospects and clients.
My team follows our proven process of success from the very first contact a prospective client makes with my firm. It doesn’t matter if the prospect is a referral, found us online, or is a friend who has my personal cell number.
We follow my process precisely as outlined without exceptions.
Why?
Because every time we don’t, we fail to deliver value.
My process is built out into three phases:
- Before the meeting
- During the meeting
- After the meeting
This may be painfully obvious, but you should have your process broken down for each step.
Having a process helps you answer the questions that need to be addressed before the meeting even starts, so you won’t waste twenty minutes explaining what a custodian is or how the paperwork will be handled.
Prospects and clients love to know what to expect before their appointment. This improves the flow of the meeting, allowing me to focus on what really matters: helping the client with their problems.
Action item
You need a templated process that can be applied to every prospect. This isn’t a cookie-cutter process or giving out a watered-down value-add.
Sometimes, advisors get a bit stupid and think we must customize everything to add value. That’s ridiculous.
You don’t want an electrical engineer to create a new and clever way to deliver electricity to your house. You want electricity to be run the expected way, so it won’t burn the house down.
The same thing applies to financial planning. You have to have that consistent process.
Micah Shilanski, CFP®, is a financial planner who achieves the impossible. Micah is recognized as a leader in the concept of lifestyle design for financial planners and has spoken at conferences across the country. Micah is an advisor with Shilanski and Associates, a founder of Plan Your Federal Retirement, and a co-founder of The Perfect RIA.
A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out our videos.
Membership required
Membership is now required to use this feature. To learn more:
View Membership BenefitsSponsored Content
Upcoming Webinars View All









