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“My no.1 sales challenge is I don’t have enough time to prospect” – that’s what many advisors tell me when I ask them what their biggest challenge is.
‘I barely have enough time to service my current book of clients, let alone prospect for new ones”, they say.
This either/or problem, the classic working in your business vs. working on your business conundrum, is very common among advisors.
As an independent professional, trying to make a living from what’s called the “expert consultant sales model”, can very quickly seem like you’re trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Getting a new client is psychologically rewarding at first.
But as you become involved in delivering for that client, there is less time available for you to do your usual marketing activities.
Yet, by the time you get ahead of the curve with servicing your current clients, you may not have any new ones ready and waiting in your pipeline.
New client outreach becomes a race against the clock, a struggle for survival, which can lower your defences, making you susceptible to dysfunctional sales practices.
It becomes easier to take on lesser qualified clients that you know will be difficult and won’t lead to meaningful income long term.
But because you need new business, you may have have no choice.
You reach for the “lowest hanging fruit” like buying leads, which often make you “chase” unqualified prospects.
This can lead to retreating into your comfort zone of only servicing your current clients, hoping for an occasional referral.
Oscillating between the extreme highs and lows of the feast/famine cycle, is an accident waiting to happen.
Having a reliable sales and marketing system that worked automatically in the background, bringing in new qualified leads every month, instead of having to go on the hunt, allows you to finally breathe a sense of relief.
Is that even possible?
Yes, it is.
Here’s what it takes to begin building that system:
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Shift your mindset from outbound to inbound
No more hustling, shaking the trees, networking, etc. When you stop chasing clients and trying to persuade them of your value, you begin attracting them to you instead. An inbound process maintains your authority but an outbound (chasing) process, demeans it. -
Believe you can learn to make the sale on the very first meeting
When you switch your focus to inbound, you flip the entire sales proposition from having to prove yourself (they really can’t see your value until after they’re a client), to their present concerns (which they have an immediate and emotional connection to want to solve now).
This eliminates all the usual steps you’d normally go through like a discovery meeting, retrieval of financial documents, free financial planning, and more meetings/activities to follow up. These unnecessary steps can take up more of your time, than the time it takes to service one client.
With the traditional outbound approach, informing and educating your prospect makes them want to consider your ideas and get back to you. But with an inbound approach, it’s all about guiding the prospect into owning their problem and to guage their willingness to commit to addressing it now, rather than later.
Once they own their problem, there’s nothing left to think about. There’s only the decision of whether to move forward with you or not, and this moment of decision can be reached on the very first meeting, without any pressure.
Having an inbound, problem-centric, marketing process and being able to guide your prospects into owning their problems (instead of informing and educating them about solutions), are the keys to escaping the feast/famine prospecting cycle.
To learn how to create your own inbound lead generation model, order your complimentary book and consultation below.
Related: Building Trust in Sales Without Giving Away Free Information
Get your Free copy of Ari’s best-selling book "Trust In A Split Second!" here and you’ll also receive a Complimentary Sales and Lead Generation Consultation (value $995.00). Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net-worth new client acquisition expert for financial advisors. His latest book, “Trust In A Split Second!” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide.