By Thomas F. Levasseur, CLU, MS Ed.

One year, I heard something at an MDRT Annual Meeting that stuck with me.

I was in a Focus Session where the great 54-year MDRT member Bruce W. Etherington, CLU, CH.F.C., of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, was speaking. He said that to be successful in our business, we must see the people, love the people and ask the people for their business. What Etherington was saying is that prospecting is the lifeblood of building a financial services practice.

Another MDRT great, Dermot T. Healey Sr., CLU, ChFC, a former 44-year member from Jupiter, Florida, USA, said to me during my first year in this profession, “If you’re breathing, you should be prospecting.”

It’s about them

Prospecting, I have found, is a skill based on your personal awareness combined with the self-confidence to believe that you have a mission to help people get what they want. See, love and ask the people. When you walk into a room full of people at a networking event or when meeting someone one-on-one, you should be asking yourself, “How can I help?” And “What service can I offer?” This is your best approach to prospecting.

Most people easily see through the person who either starts by talking about himself or is selling right away. Start by asking about the other person. Get them to tell you their story. Keep questioning them by saying things such as, “Please tell me more about that.” These are the best scripts you can use. When attending events, I intentionally do not bring business cards with me. My goal is not to be handing out my card to as many people as possible, many of whom will never call me. I want to collect the cards of the people I had interesting interactions with that lead to mutually agreed-upon follow-ups.

Ideal client profile

As a prerequisite to great prospecting, you should have a clear idea of what kind of person makes a good client for you and then look for those qualities in others. These attributes could include open-mindedness, action-oriented, family-focused and having integrity. A strategy for doing this is scoring your current clients on a spreadsheet based on the most important qualities or virtues you desire for your practice. You can update the scores each year based on your interactions with them. As you do this, those key qualities become ingrained in your thinking.

So, as you prospect, you will start looking for those qualities in people. By using these measures, you can improve the quality of your prospects. The result is doing more business with people you like and who appreciate what you offer. It will make your work feel much less like work. Life is just too short to make this business an arm-wrestling contest.

Habits for successful interactions

Finally, your best prospecting script is your behavior, not your words. People do business with people they know, like and trust. This maxim has been true in business since the beginning of time. Show your values in your interactions with your clients and in your community. This leads to people knowing you for the things you do and then liking and trusting you for how you do them.

Showing up, finishing the job, following through, and doing so with a smile and a true attitude of helpfulness is the best prospecting strategy for success.

The ‘password’ to turn more referrals into meetings

By Jake Lim Wei Lun, AEPP

When I first started as a financial advisor, my agency gave me a standard script to use for making appointments with prospects. I soon realized that most people I called would quickly cut me off and end the call before I could finish the script.

To overcome this challenge, I made my script more dynamic by incorporating the idea of using a password. When I did that, most of the prospects became more interested and let me finish my speech. If they are willing to listen, then half the battle to make the appointment is won.

Here’s how the idea works:

When you log on to an online account, you need the correct password. Similarly, we need the right “password” to log in to our prospect’s schedule. Getting this password increases the chance that the prospect will meet with us.

Generally, when I ask for referrals from my client, in addition to their contact number and occupation, I also ask for the right password. I do so by asking, “Why do you think your friend would want to meet me?”

Depending on what my client says, I’ll incorporate that insight when I’m talking to the prospect. If their reply is “retirement” for example, I’ll say when calling the referral, “Out of genuine concern, your friend John felt that retirement is important to you. Hence, he would want you to have this meeting with me.”

In addition to mentioning the right password, I also leverage the relationship between my client and the prospect to make the meeting happen. 

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