Philip C. Gallant, CLTC

In my previous articles I have focused on how to use generic lead generation to build your practice. That approach is still my firm’s number one way to find qualified prospects and develop our client base. Many of the calls and emails I have received have focused on the mailer we use. I have addressed this in previous articles and want to affirm in this one that while the mailer that you send is important, it is not what will lead you to success (we’ve used the same one for more than two years).

Recently, I broke one of my own rules and changed my list criteria—the response rate suffered and, therefore, so has my activity for the last quarter. I raised my minimum income level, hoping for the same response rate and better prospects. I got the latter result but not the former. In this article we will discuss a difficult concept which I call hugging the cactus.

As we all know, a cactus is a plant that is native to the great American Southwest. It’s most distinctive characteristic is the sharp spines that grow on its surface—making it beautiful, but dangerous to the touch. While lovely when seen from a distance, we approach cacti cautiously, since we don’t want to get stuck with one of those spines.

Success in this business is achieved to the degree that we must be willing to do things we don’t like to do—when we are supposed to do them and whether we like it or not. Kind of like hugging a cactus.

I am solicited all the time by organizations and marketing companies that promise me that I will no longer need to hug my cactus. They tell me that I can make more income with less effort if I will only succumb to their marketing system, buy their leads, go to their symposium, talk to their guru, etc. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t buy any of it. The only truth that I know is that to achieve success in any business there are just a few key elements necessary for success.

First, you must be clear about your passion. In other words, if you like to simply sell a specific product such as long term care insurance, final expense or Medicare supplement plans, then that is exactly what you should do.

In fact, I often wish that I could develop such a narrow focus for my own practice. It would simplify my life to be honest with you. However, in my case, I have accepted the fact that this is just not how I am wired. My passion is retirement income planning; thus, I have a very large cactus to hug, since it requires that I know about Social Security, Medicare, long term care, investing, annuities, life insurance, wills and trusts, taxes, etc. In other words, it requires constant study.

Second, you must have a system to get your message out to your prospects and clients. Nothing is more important than having a system. If you don’t know how you are going to go through the complete sales cycle in a defined, repeatable fashion, then you are going to be surrounded by cacti and will bump from one to the other.

The chances of success by not following a proven system diminish rapidly and I believe exponentially. Using generic direct mail is my system, yet that doesn’t mean it has to be yours. My point is that you simply must have a system.

Third, you must have the proper tools in your toolbox. I could not imagine not having my tools (products, software programs, contact management software, illustration software, letters, follow-up tools and, last but not least, presentation materials) available to do my job. I spend a lot of time (maybe more than I should, to be honest) practicing with these tools to hone my skills so that I am prepared.

Finally, you must know which cactus you simply refuse to hug and find a partner or staff to hug that one for you. In my case, I am notoriously poor at paperwork detail. While I can be painstakingly detailed in building retirement income plans for my clients, I am fortunate to have a partner who is fabulous at handling the paperwork side of the business. I have also been fortunate to find another staff person who hugs the phone cactus for me now, but do not be deceived! I know how to make calls and made them all myself when I first started my system and, if need be, it is a cactus I can and will hug again if I have to.

There is nothing magic without a system and the proper tools. Remember what I said earlier—that the mailing piece is just part of the system. As much as I would like to tell you that it will put you in front of prospects who are anxious to buy, it won’t. Sorry!

I will happily share with anyone who asks me which mailer I send. Mail it if you like, but if you are not using a system and are not willing to hug the cactus—meaning you are committed to learning a system and all of the steps in the client acquisition cycle or to developing and following your own system—then I hate to say it, but you’re wasting your money sending out mail.

I will confess that I still read the advertisements and talk to marketers and I look to see if they pass the smell test. My smell test is to find out if the person with the system is simply hawking the system or if they are sharing something that they use successfully. If it is the latter, then I will listen to the pitch; if it is the former, I will dismiss it for what it is. I could be wrong, but I know what is working for me, and unfortunately there’s no way around it—I have to hug the cactus.

In my next articles, I will outline the steps to the system that we use.

Good luck and good selling. 

Recently I read a quote in an article by a respected local writer in my community that rang so true. It said, “We have all drunk from wells we did not dig and warmed by fires we did not build.” Much of what I am going to share in this article is a reflection of the wisdom and knowledge I have gathered on my life’s journey from some very dear people I am blessed to call friends, as well as respected colleagues in our great business.

While in Cincinnati this past week I heard a statement that I have heard many times before. However, this time it rang true for me in a new and most powerful way. I suspect that it did so because I suffer from what is called “divine dissatisfaction.”

“Divine dissatisfaction” is that which keeps us going, always reaching out for unattainable goals, for only by so reaching will we attain what—hidden from us—are God’s goals.

The statement that hit me so hard right between the eyes was: The two most important days in our life are the day we are born and the day we figure out why.

How unbelievably powerful that is!

I have been blessed to have had a long and winding journey in our industry, as my bio points out. Clearly, one could read it and conclude, the man can’t keep a job! I have thought that about my journey many times myself. During my career, I have faced and made what I consider to have been monumental decisions. They have ranged from should I go into management? To should I leave company A for company B? Should I leave a home office job that I love for what could be a better opportunity? Perhaps the biggest decision came in 2006 when I decided that if I didn’t take the leap to form my own company—a lifelong secret desire and dream—perhaps I never would.

Owning my own business seemed so glorious and grand! Yet what I have learned as a business owner is that payroll, rent and marketing overhead are challenges that must be met before I can pay myself. I have learned by necessity that I cannot be greedy and that I have to work harder than ever before. Looking back, as we all sometimes do with the benefit of hindsight, I might have done things differently and certainly my life would have been different if I had. But as a good friend likes to remind me—I have to stop hoping for a better past.

My previous columns have discussed how we effectively use generic direct mail in our marketing and how we turn the responders into clients. It is a process or system that we have followed and it has helped me to achieve MDRT Court of the Table production levels. It was born from necessity (the mother of invention) and it works.

There is something for me, however, that is much more important—much more meaningful than achieving the limited amount of success that we have had. I have learned that the “divine dissatisfaction” is ever present in me still, but for a multitude of different reasons. Since reaching the age of 55, I have found myself thinking more and more about whether or not the second day of the two most important days in my life has arrived—and I believe it has.

I believe in my heart of hearts that we are all here for a reason, a purpose, as some like to say. While I have pondered what mine might be from time to time, as I get older it has become clear to me exactly what that is.

Without going into too much detail about the journey here, suffice it to say for this article that I have struggled with so many of the same problems and fears that many of the people I meet in our business have told me in quiet conversations they are struggling with as well.

Most prevalent among these is fear. Do I even belong in this business? Will I make it? Do I really believe in what I’m selling when there are so many naysayers trying to convince my clients and prospects that what I sell is no good for them? I have feared that my clients who have accumulated more than I would see me as a fraud. I have feared that I didn’t know everything about everything and, therefore, I was not qualified to offer advice on anything.

On a personal level, I have feared that my eating and, though a long time ago, my drinking habits, were not consistent with the person, the inner self we all know we can be if and when we overcome this or that one issue. I have felt inadequate when discussing my production with others who produce so much more than me, leading me to affirm my internal fears.

Have you ever felt that way? Do you feel it now?

Here’s the conclusion that I have come to. My purpose, and one of the reasons I choose to take the time to write for this magazine from time to time, is that I have a desire to be of service to others and nothing more.

I want to help my clients, but equally important to me is that I want to help other advisors. And it really isn’t very hard if I take the time to listen. My favorite prayer, the prayer of St. Francis, calls me not to seek to be understood so much as to understand.

By learning to listen better and talk less when I meet with my clients and prospects, they are able to open up and share the deeper concerns they have, not only their financial life, but also how it impacts the rest of their lives as well. When I do speak, I want to ask deeper questions before I discuss their situation and, when I do, the one thing I want them to know is that they are not alone and that I’ve been there, too.

Many of us become uneasy when it comes to discussing things of a spiritual nature. Recently, however, I have found myself quietly thanking God (as I understand God) that I have been exposed to some of the greatest and most creative minds in our business and in my life, who beyond anything else have taught me that my “divine dissatisfaction” really is okay. It will keep me striving to learn, to be better at what I do and allow me to chase my dreams.

I will never forget that while ultimately the spiritual side of selling is more important for me than the money, I have permission and a responsibility to be as successful as my talents and ethics will take me. They are not mutually exclusive.

So what is the spiritual side of selling? For me it’s about forgetting about the commissions and the fees in the larger picture and focusing on leaving a large log on the fire and some water in the well. I share that fire with all of you, and I drink the water from the same well. And if you will allow me, God bless you, and good selling. 

In my previous articles, I have written about how we use generic direct mail as our primary marketing system. For us, no other method has been more consistently reliable and predictable as a source of revenue and meeting new clients. The year 2012 was an outstanding year for us, and the majority of our revenue and new clients came from carefully and consistently working a generic lead direct mail system.

In this article I want to address what I think is an important topic for producers who are looking for a way to grow their business, especially if they have never considered using a direct mail program.

If you have “tried” direct mail in the past and decided that it “doesn’t work,” may I suggest that you may have skipped a few steps in the five stages of change. By the way, your prospects go through these exact same stages when approached by you or any new advisor who is offering something new.

The first stage is pre-consideration. In other words, you may never have seriously considered a direct mail prospecting program. You may have heard from other advisors that it doesn’t work, isn’t the best option, is too “old school,” etc. Therefore, your level of consideration may be minimal or non-existent.

Think about the prospects who receive a mailing and actually take the time to read it. They, too, may not have been considering any change in their financial plan at all until the moment they opened the envelope. However, a compelling message or offer can immediately change that for them. This actually can work to your advantage in a world in which consumers are bombarded by Madison Avenue and Wall Street advertising on radio and television, newspaper advertising, seminar invitations and so forth. Direct mail is actually a great way to approach a targeted audience with a very simple message or offer.

The second stage of change is consideration. You may already be starting to consider direct mail as a prospecting method simply as a result of the previous few paragraphs of this article.

In the consideration stage, we think about the possibility of doing something different than what we are already doing, which is producing less than desirable results. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

The reason I love using generic direct mail marketing is that by planning and executing a very detailed strategy, I do the same thing over and over again knowing that I can count on similar or better results. In other words, it is reliable and predictable. The insanity would be not to keep doing something that has been working so well!

The purpose of a generic mailer is to get your prospects to respond. Once they do so, your job is to bring them along to the next stage of change by how you approach them and what you do in that process. Your approach should be geared toward bringing them value in the first interview (the subject of my last article, which appeared in the September 2012 issue of Broker World) and at that interview to get them to consider changing the way they are doing things now.

The third stage of change is planning. Beginning a direct mail program without a plan or a strategy for how you are going to work that plan is a recipe for failure. What I learned from much trial and error is that like any other business plan, a direct mail marketing strategy must be executed with the same set of processes and rules for success as any other marketing plan. We have organized our process from beginning to end to do that, which gives us a comfortable feeling, to know that we are in business every day because we always have people to call.

By building up an inventory of responders, we can supplement regular mailing with a drip campaign and invite potential clients to our client dinners. We only do dinner seminars as part of our coaching process for clients. They are invited to bring a friend and we back-fill those seminars with mailings to our direct mail list of people we haven’t closed, or with whom we were not successful in obtaining an appointment.

Your prospect may not have been considering a change, but at the first interview your job is to get them to do so. How you do that is critical. We show our prospects a very simple method for retirement income planning that involves them in the process. Once we put the plan together with them, they are not investing money or purchasing annuities, life insurance, long term care, or other products, they are implementing a plan that they had input in developing along with us.

The fourth step of change is action. Once you have decided to implement a direct mail marketing strategy, it is important to commit to a plan of action. All of the steps for selecting your market, what you will mail, what you will say to responders on the phone and how you will handle each interview must be laid out in a plan of action. Implementing a plan that has been played out beforehand is much easier than doing so on the fly. Believe me. I learned this the hard way and now every step is organized.

Your prospect will be more than willing to take action on a plan than they will be to simply buy a product. That’s why we use the planning software we use. It is not one of those long, boring, multi-page boilerplate financial plans we have all seen. Those plans are rarely read and, if so, are seldom understood by the majority of prospects. What we have found, however, is that involving them in the actual planning process motivates them to implement that which they helped to create. The action step is a logical and much less emotional decision.

Finally, the fifth step of change is maintenance. This is, unfortunately, where most of us fail, myself included. I can’t tell you how many marketing programs I’ve “tried.” I will say that when I decided to make a commitment to a direct mail marketing strategy, I did so with the determination that we would make it work. Now that we have a practice that is thriving, and at times we are too busy to do so, we continue to mail consistently, knowing that we will find great new prospects and gain new clients. In other words, “trying” is not an option.

Maintaining a consistent direct marketing program is the key to its success. There will be bumps in the road. We have learned, however, that these bumps are an opportunity to learn and grow.

Your prospects expect you to be there to maintain the plan. The number one complaint about our industry is that we sell ’em and forget ’em. That’s the worst possible thing you can do!

You must make a commitment to see your clients on a regular basis. Whether that involves one-on-one meetings or inviting them to quarterly coaching events, it is critical that you stay in touch and be available to help them maintain their faith, trust and confidence in you. You will be amazed at the goodwill this brings, along with the satisfaction of building a growing practice. Follow-up is one area that our industry needs to improve upon more than perhaps any other.

So there you have the five stages of change: pre-consideration, consideration, planning, action and maintenance. Where are you? Maybe it’s time to consider a change in your marketing strategy!

Good luck and good selling!

In my last two articles (March and June 2012), I discussed why having a system for using a generic lead program is an important component to building your practice. I believe very strongly that having prospects to call on a consistent basis, knowing what to say when you call, and holding yourself accountable are the keys to success with a generic lead program. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

Bringing value throughout your sales process is where the rubber meets the road.

Let us assume you have set up your first appointment and you are now ready to meet with a prospective client. The most important questions in your mind should be: How do I bring value to this prospect? What do I mean by bringing value?

Bringing value means you are able to demonstrate in a short period of time that you are different from other advisors and someone with whom a prospect will want to have a second, more substantial, meeting to discuss their situation. This should be built into your system for how you handle generic leads, and it should be the same for every prospective client.

Following are a couple of examples. I will use real life situations from cases we’ve worked on this year.

Earlier in the year, I met with a professional couple who had a unique set of circumstances. The husband, who is 64 years old and a retired physician, had already applied for his Social Security retirement benefits the prior year at age 63. The wife, who is 66 and still working, is a very energetic, high-level administrator at a private school. She intends to keep working until age 75! Unlike her husband, she had not yet filed for Social Security. Because we have made it a point to become experts in Social Security planning, I knew that even though she is still working, she is entitled to file a restricted application for spousal benefits on her husband’s record, since he had already filed for his benefit. I told them this is possible because she has reached her normal retirement age of 66.

They were very surprised to learn this, and as a result, they are now receiving about $1,200 per month more in Social Security income than they were getting prior to my visit. (She is entitled to half of the spousal benefit at his normal retirement age, by the way, so her benefit is actually more than half of what he is currently receiving.) At age 70, she will switch to her own benefit, which will continue to earn delayed credits until she reaches age 70! Because of these delayed credits, her benefit will be 132 percent of what she is entitled to at age 66. This one little bit of information brought tremendous value to them.

As a result of this, they moved a seven-figure account over to us to manage. We wrote significant annuity premium on this couple, as well as procuring hundreds of thousands of dollars of new assets under management. This one case will pay for my direct mail marketing for the next 6 to 10 years!

In the second, more recent example, I met with a prospective new client who has been working with an advisor for many years in the “traditional” sense. What I mean by this is that she has a portfolio with him but is not really sure why she has the mix of investments in her portfolio and how they will work for her retirement plan when she finally does retire next year.

She responded to our generic mailing, and as a result I was able to set up an initial consultation in our Massachusetts office. When she arrived, I went through the “deliverable” report we provide to all of the people with whom we schedule our first meeting. The report is attractively packaged and is full of important information about retirement planning. As an introduction to the report, we have a page that outlines exactly what we do and the five major concerns we feel must be addressed by each and every person before they retire and even after they are retired.

I walked through this standard “mini” presentation, asking questions along the way about her particular situation. Once this was completed, I went through the contents of our initial report and commented on the highlights of each section. Because she asked some questions, I then used the software program we use for income planning to demonstrate how we would help her to solve her concerns about retirement. I showed her why the information she would be expected to provide is needed so together she and I could begin to design an income plan and strategy for her retirement.

This demonstration gave her the ability to see it wasn’t about which investment or product would be best for her, it was the process we use which involved her input and agreement along the way that would lead to a logical conclusion about which steps to take.

At the end of the meeting she commented that she came as a skeptic but, at the end, felt I offered her two very important things. First, she was very appreciative of the information I provided and how complete the package was and, second, she liked seeing the methodology that would be used to help her put together a well-thought-out plan for retirement income. She also commented that this was time very well spent and the information was quite valuable. I have a second meeting scheduled in a week to begin the planning process and I fully expect her to become a new client.

In both of these meetings, the most important thing was that the prospective client received value. So let’s take a closer look at bringing value.

Free Consulting Versus Providing Value

As advisors, we often get trapped into the situation where we begin to dispense valuable information and ideas about what a client should do without getting paid for our advice. This is a conundrum for many of us because I believe most advisors are truly in the business because they want to help people solve important financial issues and enjoy doing so.

The truth is that many of us also egotistically like to demonstrate our knowledge and command of certain things. I know I do! The problem is that many times the more you give, the less you get back. I have had my advice or proposal for a prospective client taken back to their existing advisor more than enough times in my career to be careful not to give too much away in the first meeting. I suspect most of us have had this happen.

An example of free consulting is you agree to put together a plan or a strategy for free and then you present it to your prospect at your next meeting, hoping it will be so good they will buy it! However, the prospect has received what they wanted from you and they use the information to make them smarter with their own advisor—and implement the plan with the other advisor. This approach can leave you in a quandary, especially when you feel you can truly add value to a prospect’s current situation.

I have stopped consulting with clients this way. I will demonstrate sample cases or existing cases (with the clients’ names changed, of course), but I will not agree to put together any plan or proposal until I have “buy-in” that we are going to be doing business. How do you do this without being taken advantage of? The answer lies in how you use “soft” advice to show a prospect that it is to their benefit to work with you.

Soft advice might be discussing the Social Security concept mentioned in my first example. I might say something like, “When your current advisor last called to discuss retirement income planning now that you are closing in on retirement, what suggestions did he offer to you about the restricted application process?”

I know a couple of things when I ask this question. First, it is unlikely their advisor called to discuss their retirement income plan. Second, it is even more unlikely the current advisor would have discussed anything about the restricted application process.

Instead of asking the prospect, “You mean your current advisor never talked to you about this?” which is demeaning to the prospect, I make the assumption that the other advisor would be doing this and let the prospect come to their own conclusion.

By offering a simple piece of advice on a Social Security strategy, I lose nothing. I consider this “soft” advice because it is public knowledge, yet few people are aware of it. I want prospects to know about it, and usually, if they go back to their existing advisor, it will become obvious they are not getting up-to-date or good advice. (If they are, then the advisor deserves to keep the client; if not, they don’t.)

In addition, once prospects verify that my information was correct about a unique strategy like this one, they are likely to mention it to their friends who might ask, “Where did you learn about that?” I want to be the person who gets the credit. This is why part of our system is to send a follow-up memo of the “minutes” from our meeting.

In this follow-up memo, I remind them about what we discussed and what the next steps are—and I always include my business card. In addition, a thank you card is sent with my photo and my business card scanned right onto the card. I make myself hard to forget.

Adding More Value

I have come to understand the power of having excellent FINRA-reviewed leave-behind materials of a generic nature. It is important that a prospect who returned a generic lead card feels like he made a smart decision by meeting with you. You want the leave-behind materials to say something positive about you and your firm.

If I simply staple a couple of pages together and hand it to prospects, it looks like I took no time thinking about them. Instead, their name is on the front of the report and it is in a nice three-ring binder. I handle the binder like the important document it is when I deliver it. I carefully review the table of contents to show what is in the report. I make sure they understand that while they can read it all, it doesn’t have all the answers, but I do—or know where to find them. This message is critical!

Even though the report is 46 pages long (and I am sure the vast majority of my prospects never read it), I want them to know the report is just a start and they can count on me to help them with everything else. The message should be: there is a great deal to know about this subject and they are dealing with an expert.

As I have said in my previous articles about using a system for working generic leads, each step of the process is critical in developing a strong client base and, more important, for building the confidence that you have a system that works! It will work if you will work it!

In my next article, I will talk about the importance of asking the right questions, both on the phone when you call and at the initial meeting.

Good luck and good selling!

In my last article (March 2012), I wrote about how a system for working generic leads can make a huge difference in your practice. Thanks to all of you who contacted me about the particulars. If you read the article, you saw that there are many pieces to the system that will contribute to a successful direct marketing strategy.

In this article, I would like to address perhaps the most critical component and arguably the hardest one to deal with. My guess is that many of you who read this might feel a bit offended by some of what I am going to say, but the truth is, I learned this lesson the hard way and I can’t even begin to estimate the number of sales that I lost because of it. So here goes!

We’ve all heard that the “man (or the woman) in the mirror” doesn’t lie. When we look deeply into ourselves for the reasons that contribute to our success or failure, we often come to a startling and perhaps sometimes embarrassing conclusion. As much as we want to blame someone or something other than ourselves when we are failing (the economy, the competition, the political environment, our spouse, the weather, the products we sell—I’ve used them all!) that just isn’t the problem. When we make an honest assessment of our work habits and our true commitment to success, the conclusion we will always come to is this: I am responsible.

Brian Tracey, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude for helping me learn this most important concept in life, talks about this in almost every one of his books, tapes and CDs on success. Many great stories of successful people are rooted in the simple truth that until they accepted the fact that they were 100 percent responsible for their success, nothing changed to improve their lives. This is true in every aspect of our life, but none more so than in the profession of selling. Oh, and by the way, everyone sells!

Lee Dubois, the famous sales coach from Alabama, published a book many years ago with the title Everyone Sells, and I read it again from time to time to remind me that in one way or another—no matter what profession we are in—everyone sells something!

Brian Tracey also taught me that selling is a profession like any other—and a most honorable one at that. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can be mastered. For those of us who choose to think that way, the sky is the limit! For us in the financial services industry—especially advisors—the greatest challenge that most of us face every day is to find someone to whom we can tell our story. We need prospects.

As I stated in my March article, I have found that direct mail marketing meets all of the critical criteria for keeping me in front of prospects on a regular basis. Interestingly enough, many of the calls and emails I received after the March article were questions: Which mailer do I use? What is my response rate? Who do I mail to? Here is the bottom line.

You cannot measure the success of a direct mail campaign based upon how many leads you received or the number of appointments you booked.

You must measure the success of a program by revenue versus expense. That’s the only measure that counts.

In my practice, we know that direct mail costs us less than 7 percent of revenue. So to make a dollar, we need to spend seven cents. This return on investment (ROI) is what motivates us to do more and more direct mail!

While response rates and the type of mailer are important parts of the system, the most important part is your commitment to working a system and religiously keeping 100 percent accurate and honest records of your activity when you start a direct mail marketing campaign.

You must not lie to yourself about any part of this key process, and you must be willing to learn where you need improvement, working on that part of your system until you get it right and persevering with determination in order to succeed in direct mail marketing.

It is of no use to you or anyone else if you can’t answer the following questions with 100 percent accuracy:

   1. How many leads did I receive from my mailing and what happened with each and every one of them?

 2. How many dials did I make to contact my leads?

 3. How many real contacts did I make?

A real contact is defined as when you speak with the person who has authority to grant an appointment and only when you speak with that person. If you call Mr. Jones but Mrs. Jones answers the phone and says you will have to speak to Mr. Jones, then that is not a contact!

 4. How many appointments did I schedule?

 5. How many appointments were actually kept?

 6. How many real presentations did I make?

A real presentation is defined as being one where you have presented your planning process to the client, shared at least one valuable idea, and asked for feedback on what you have just shared to see if you are on the right path. This lets you know whether you have earned the right to ask for a second meeting.

Personally, I use a “preliminary” presentation when I deliver the free information and then I move to a more substantive discussion using my presentation book. (More on this in my next article.)

 7. How many second appointments did I schedule?

 8. How many times did I ask for the business?

 9. How many sales did I close?

When you are truly honest with yourself about your actual activity, you will discover that the reasons for your success are 100 percent in your control—if you make the commitment to follow up on each lead properly and work your system the right way—and the same way each and every time.

You will also realize that you aren’t really calling that many people and you aren’t really speaking to that many people compared to what you used to believe. For example, if you make 20 dials, it can feel like 50. The reward is that when you keep very accurate records, you come to that realization, gaining a sense of peace and purpose.

You will begin to understand that the reality is what gets measured accurately can be incrementally improved and, when that happens, suddenly you are in control of your future! Here’s an example.

Let’s suppose that your results show that when you dial the phone, you contact 20 percent of those you dial (you should also track the dates and times of all of your phone sessions so that you know the best times that you are able to reach prospects). Let’s suppose that you always call on Thursday afternoons, and you conclude that your one-to-five ratio is too low to be successful. However, you also notice that you are scheduling appointments with 25 percent of the people to whom you speak.

What is more important, improving your closing ratio or your contact ratio? While both are important, if you can find a time where you can speak with twice the number of people, yet have the same number of dials, then finding the right time is your first order of business. You’ve just doubled your productivity. I find that most mornings before 10:30 am and Saturday mornings work very well.

Once you double the number of people you contact, then a small improvement in your appointment closing ratio can have a major positive impact on your results. If 20 contacts give you 4 appointments with a 25 percent appointment closing ratio, then 40 contacts with a 30 percent appointment closing ratio will give you 12 appointments, not 10! In other words, a 20 percent improvement on your appointment closing ratio will improve your appointment ratio by the exact same number.

However, if you give yourself twice the opportunities by contacting twice the number of people, the overall impact is a 300 percent increase in overall productivity! Two more appointments per week can mean the difference between a good year and a great year. That’s 90 more appointments per year in a 45-work-week cycle. If you close 25 percent of the people you see, that’s 18 additional sales.

For years I have known that I will reach 40 percent of the people I dial. This year the exact number is 40.5 percent. If I make 100 dials, I will contact 40 or 41 people with decision-making authority. I also know that I will book appointments with 43 percent of them (actually 43.9 percent so far this year). If I want to schedule 10 appointments, I simply work the numbers backward. Ten divided by 43 percent equals 23 contacts. If I want to contact 23 people, I will have to make 57 dials (23 divided by 40.5 percent).

There are ways that I can improve upon the numbers. For example, if I start by calling people with whom I have had a prior conversation and they have asked me to call them at a later date, I will start there. By scheduling my calling time as if scheduling an appointment and sticking to it, my commitment success is the same as if I were seeing a prospect during that same time period.

Having the same process for contacting the same kind of lead card and saying the same things that have worked with most prospects means that my results will become very predictable and that reduces the anxiety level (which, to be honest, I still have before that first call).

It all starts with having that honest conversation with the person in the mirror: What is your commitment to success? Be honest. Your activity will tell you what it is. If you lie about your activity to yourself, then you are lying about your commitment. I know, because I’ve been there. Numbers don’t lie.

I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for advisors to improve their results, but only when they really know from where they are starting. It takes discipline and determination to measure every aspect of your business. The only immeasurable reward you will receive from creating and following a specific prospecting process is the realization and confidence that you are running a successful business.

Once you have developed your system and know that your plan is working by every measure, you have created a sustainable competitive advantage for your practice that makes all the difference in the world. Imagine the day that you look in the mirror and you finally know with certainty that you are honestly on track. Measure that reward, because now you can!

In my next article I will get into the nitty-gritty about the first interview with folks in my target market. Good luck and good selling! 

Here we are nearing the end of the first quarter of the new year and I’m sure many of you are thinking: How do I get my pipeline going?

I want to share a little about my background before launching into the topic at hand. I’ve been in the business for 32 years. While it’s been an interesting journey, nothing has been more of a challenge than returning to full-time personal production five years ago. I think I might be one of the rare birds who worked for almost 20 years in home office jobs and then successfully transitioned back to becoming a full-time personal producer at the MDRT level.

In the late 1980s I was fortunate to be hired as the director of marketing for John Hancock’s retail long term care division. I have a college degree-not in marketing, but in music education-not much help in knowing how to create a marketing plan!

I got to John Hancock after having some success working leads and selling long term care insurance for Amex Life earlier in 1988. At John Hancock, I quickly realized that trying to teach old dogs new tricks was going to be a challenge, so I developed a sales process that eventually became known as the “Fast Start” program. It was a system that addressed every aspect of the sales process for LTC insurance from beginning to end. In order to make a sale in front of a prospect, I developed a scripted seven-step sales process. However, a producer had to get in front of a prospect before he could use this seven-step sales process. The art and science of getting in front of a prospect is really where the rubber met the road.

We used a call-mail-call system in the days before the Do Not Call (DNC) regulation, and it was a system that worked like a charm! Today that same selling system would be almost impossible to implement since most people are on DNC lists, have caller ID showing up on their television, or are simply using cell phones instead of land lines. Yet that doesn’t mean there is no way to get a real prospecting and marketing system together that can be exceptionally useful and lead to great success today.

Let’s face it, without a real system for getting in front of new prospects each week, we’re out of business. The problem is that most field marketing organizations, independent marketing organizations and brokerage general agencies don’t teach the “ins and outs” of developing a real lead generation system. If they do, there’s very little being taught on the A-to-Z process of making it predictably successful.

Through much painful trial and error, what I have found is that using generic sales leads for direct mail marketing is still the one sure method I can count on to get in front of prospects on a regular basis. But it’s much more than that.

You must treat your lead system like the most important part of your business and you must have a systematic way of handling and tracking each and every lead to include measuring your cost of sales every month.

So what is a “generic” lead? A generic lead begins with a mailer that addresses several concerns a senior adult might have. It may reference tax deferral. It might discuss long term care. It might talk about saving taxes on Social Security or avoiding probate. In fact, lead cards that I mail have five or six of these items all on the same card.

The magic with this approach is that you will typically get a much higher response rate than a product-specific lead card. The challenge, however, is that you must have a detailed process to handle the leads when they are returned to you.

Here are some of the complaints I hear from agents who have tried to use lead lists:

• They didn’t remember sending in the card.

• They just wanted me to mail them the information.

• They weren’t interested.

• They weren’t there when I got there.

• They had no money.

• They were lousy prospects.

• I couldn’t get them on the phone.

• These leads just plain stink!

Sound familiar? When I first started ordering lead lists and trying to “work” them, I said every one of those things. So I came to the conclusion that I had two choices-to stop buying them or to figure out a way to make them work.

Fortunately, I chose the second option, but not without a lot of experimentation and help from some great folks I’ve met since returning to personal production.

Eventually I was able to develop a system that has returned extremely profitable results. What’s even better is that I know that I will never be out of business because this system works-if I stick to it!

In 2011, we did a substantial amount of business using generic direct mail. We also tried several additional marketing systems because I like to experiment, but the fact is that our return on investment with generic leads was off the charts.

We sell mostly fixed and fixed indexed annuities; life insurance (indexed life, universal life and final expense); long term care; as well as Medicare supplement and Medicare Advantage plans to the pre-retired and retired. We know who our best prospect is, we know what to expect from a revenue standpoint, and we know what our results will be every time we mail.

By now you’re probably thinking, so what’s the secret?

The secret is that it’s all tied together. The marketing and sales process we use today is very much like the one I developed at John Hancock for long term care insurance so many years ago. Now, instead of just looking for LTC insurance prospects, I look for prospects that fit the demographic that I feel most comfortable working in.

Once we receive a lead card, it goes into our system and we work every single lead the very same way. Here are the steps in our system and what you need to develop to create one of your own.

1. We have an identified market: age, income and geography.

2. We have three specific leads and several postcards that we mail to the same people.

3. We have a specific telephone approach. This is enhanced through the use of our reliable business telephone system. You can learn more about business telephone systems by doing some research into sip trunking providers.

4. We have a very specific way to confirm the appointment and we never get “porched.”

5. We have a specific “deliverable” for the first meeting that gives us tremendous credibility.

6. We have a specific flip chart sales presentation (not in PowerPoint) for point-of-sale that is in a very attractive leather bound presentation book, with a script.

7. We have the same presentation in PowerPoint for use at workshops and seminars.

8. We have a specific objective for the first meeting, which is the answer to a yes-or-no question to sort our prospects into likely clients and tire kickers. We schedule second meetings only with the prospects who will likely turn into clients.

9. We have a simple but specific fact-finder that we use at all first meetings.

10. We have a process for finding out which products might best fit which client.

11. We have a specific follow-up letter and thank you process for after the first meeting.

12. We have a specific presentation method for the second meeting.

13. We have a process for handling applications and delivery.

14. We have an annual review process for each client.

15. We have alternative follow-up drip material for prospects who didn’t buy but who we think are still attractive prospects for the future.

16. Most important, we have a tracking system so that we know what all of our critical success ratios are: responses, appointments, second appointments, sales, revenue per sale, average cost per sale, and profit! Of course we track the average cost per lead, but that is nowhere near as important as the average cost per sale.

Our results are that in 2011 we believe we qualified for Court of the Table (not official as of this writing) and we spent 7 percent of revenue on lead generation to achieve that result.

The bottom line is this: You must approach lead generation like a business person, understanding that it’s not the type of lead that you use, it’s the process that you employ that will bring success.

Our response rate with generic leads runs from 1.5 to 2.6 percent in our marketplace, which is upstate New York and New England. We track everything very closely so that we know what is working and what needs fixing.

If you follow the outline above and methodically develop a system that does all of these things, you will have a predictable and methodical path to success in 2012! Heck, it even works for an old, home office dog like me!

Good luck and good selling!