Social Prospecting | Recommended Advisor

How to Make Time– Social “Call Blocks” for Financial Advisors!

April 27, 2012 by Rich LoPresti 4 Comments

Social Media Networking Clock: Time for Social Networking

Where Does the Time Go?

Financial Sales Professionals Have “NO TIME” for Social Media. That is a common excuse among the status quo. We all have the same amount of time in a day, no more, no less. Everyone’s life is busy, everyone wants more time. How do you get more time? Stop wasting it! You simply need to be more efficient and effective with your time. You might not be able to put 25 hours in a day, but if you complete your urgent and important tasks without wasting your time with all of the distractions around you, you’ll have more time to do other things.

Time Waster

Why waste time on old methods that simply aren’t as effective as they used to be? People don’t waste time these days getting from point A to point B in a horse drawn carriage; they hop into their car. The horse and buggy works, but it’s not as effective. You need to take care of the horses, clean up after them and feed them. They cannot do 80 MPH down the highway. You save time, by using a car instead of a horse and buggy.

Social Media Efficiency

When used as a sales tool, Social Media is not a distraction. If you take the time to understand it, the information it provides you with, turns into currency in your pocket.

All kidding aside, how do you think God knows everything? Social Media!

Communication has changed. If you don’t see that, then you have been living under a rock. This is why I cringe every time a financial sales professional says he has no time to learn about social media, no time to develop a strategy on social media and no time to execute actions on social media.

What I really hear him saying is that “I don’t have time to get to know my clients and those they care about,” “I don’t have time to interact with my clients.” “I don’t have time to efficiently and effectively find more people to help!”

What to Do?

I digress. Below I outline effective uses of time for a new financial advisor, a financial advisor who is trying to get to the next level, and for a more established, older financial advisor who is coasting and is happy with the status quo.

1) New Financial Advisor – Where’s my first appointment coming from?

When I see a new trusted financial advisor starting out, where does he get his leads, let alone prospects and clients from? I am sure you would agree, a good place for him to start would be to try and convince his rich uncle to trust his assets with him. Financial advisors, and Insurance agents especially are told to sell their solutions to their family and friends, just to give them a base. They already know, like and trust them, so why not? I guess it’s a start!

Good advice to a new advisor just starting out, wouldn’t be telling him to come in to the office and sit down and dial phone numbers “cold” out of the phone book until his finger is bleeding. A financial advisor cold calling for clients is no longer the effective way to go. How many times do you want him to get hung up on before he quits because of the constant rejection? Maybe 20 years ago it was a better approach, and the advisor would have had some success smiling and dialing. Communication has changed, and Cold Calling in no longer as effective as it once was.

Think about it… how could you accelerate the family and friends strategy above? Social Media. Since you are urged to start with family and friends, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ allow you extend your social graph more efficiently and effectively in less time!

2) Advisor Trying to get to the Next Level – Where’s my next appointment coming from?

Social media is a no brainer here. The advisor is at a point in his career where he is experiencing inconsistent income and may potentially be losing clients. He is not seeing the same results that once were from some of the more advanced “old school” marketing tactics. For instance, the “fish bowl shuffle” where they are going around putting fish bowls for patrons to put their business cards in and then buying them lunch, in hopes of landing a new client. They are frustrated because they are putting in the effort, but not getting anywhere. For an advisor that is looking to find a more consistent way to locate, win, grow and retain his clients, whether he knows it or not, Social media is vital to his survival.

Social media is about People, People are Prospects and Clients. Through social media, prospects and clients are letting you in on who they are, and what they care about before you can even ask them an open ended question! On social media, they are giving you relevant and actionable information. Advisors need to realize that this social information is currency. It is their job to use this information well. It’s not hard to figure out what you have to look for, where to look for it, and how to transform the information into an opportunity.

3) Established Financial Advisor – I don’t want any more appointments

More established advisors, put in the hard work and effort over the years. Their businesses are well established. They are now set in their ways. I strongly feel that the established advisor has the most to lose by not using social media. When they are ready to sell their practice, Social media is easier for them, they already have the clients.

For more established financial advisors (any advisor for that matter), I can’t stress this enough, bring your offline client base (World) online. The more networks you connect with them on, the more actionable information and incite you will reveal. Start with Linkedin, in most cases they will put their website and Twitter handle for you to access, making your process easier, and then quickly branch out to Facebook.

Please, please don’t use the excuse that my clients are too old, and they have no interest. They are interested. Just like when the VCR was introduced. Older generations did not know how to use it, but they watched videotapes, just like the DVD player, the Internet, and now social media. I’m just saying, Apple TV?

Educate your clients (heck tell them to invite their friends), it would be a great idea for a seminar. Add personal value to them through social media education.

Aside from the amazing connections you will make with your client’s network (the ones they care about) and the endless referral opportunity. When you are ready to retire and sell your practice, you’ll get more money for it. Through social media, you will be able to establish and deepen the relationships with the beneficiaries of your clients, because you now will have access to their lives.

Social “Time Block”

Many social media strategies can be implemented effectively in as little as 5 to 10 minutes a day. At first, I’d recommend spending 30 minutes to 60 minutes a day on social media.

Please don’t use time as an excuse. Replace a “call block.” Successful financial advisors religiously block hours of time to make phone calls, called a “call block” simply take half of your time allocated to your “call blocks” and allocate that to a “social media block.”

Additionally, It would be a good use of your personal time, to help jumpstart the process. That personal time where you’re sitting in front of the TV, playing games on your iPhone. Instead of playing games… network. You can even keep your social strategy going while you’re going to the bathroom. Your mobile device, smartphone tablet… helps you continue your prospecting, monitoring and engaging round the clock!

Have any Social Prospecting Tips for Financial Advisors or other Sales Professionals? Add your knowledge and experience below!

Filed Under: Cold Call, Facebook, Linkedin, Social Communication, Social Lead Generation, Social Networking, Social Phone, Social Prospecting, Social Prospecting, Social Referrals, Twitter Tagged With: Cold Calling, Compliant Prospecting for Financial Advisors, financial advisor cold calling, Financial Advisors, Financial services, Lead Generation, prospecting social media, Social Cold Calling, social media efficiency, Social Media for Financial Advisors, Social Prospecting, traditional cold call

Making Social Media for Business Accountable, Actionable and Effective

April 18, 2012 by Marisa Peacock 1 Comment

State of Financial Social Literacy in the Financial Services Industry!

Penton Media’s Registered Rep and WealthManagement.com conducted an online survey in September, 2011 and February, 2012 for financial advisors. The survey sought primarily to determine the social media presence among advisors from all channels, as well as examine the business purposes for which social media is used.

The report A Day in the Life of a Financial Advisor: Current and Future Social Media Trends surveyed approximately 1600 respondents in September 2011 and more than 1400 respondents in February 2012 and highlighted a few meaningful trends and change in the industry.

Advisor Demographics

Advisors had on an average 220 clients, and an average $86.4 million in assets under management. A majority (29%) were affiliated with a wirehouse or national firm, or worked for an independent broker dealer (24%) and served primarily as a financial planner (34%), wealth manager (17%) or investment manager (14%).

How Advisors Spend Time

Advisors spend over 50% of their time on client management and prospecting. For the next 12 months, however, many advisors expect client acquisition through prospecting to be the leading driver of business growth.

To help them keep up, many advisors have turned to social media. The survey found that a majority of respondents indicate using social media for one or more business purposes, with networking and client prospecting being the most popular. Between 2011 and 2012 social networking activities increased by more than 10%, whereas those using social media to keep updated on industry news decreased by five percent during the same time.

Still, approximately 43 percent of advisors do not use social media for business purposes. Though, 74% of respondents who do not currently use social media for business purposes are interested in learning more about how to use social media for prospecting, marketing and client communication. This clearly shows that financial advisors want to learn how to incorporate compliant social media into their practice.

Social Media Trends

The survey showed that over one in four advisors have landed clients from social media efforts. In most cases, the social media connection followed a more traditional first contact. However, clients acquired from social media prospecting had a smaller average portfolio. Nearly 10% of advisors indicate the average portfolio size of clients acquired through social media is larger than $500,000. Once Investment representatives learn how to properly use social media for business growth, that number will go up.

What platform are advisors using the most?

LinkedIn activity dominated (84%) social media usage among advisors, followed by Facebook (28%) and Twitter (16%). There is a goldmine of opportunity on these underutilized social networks.

What types of content are they sharing? Receiving?

Interestingly, many advisors stated that they are unlikely to send content or communications to clients using social media. Those who do are likely to create their own content or use content created by their firm.

Currently, only 13% of advisors receive information from product providers via social media, though half indicate they would be interested in receiving it.

Social Media Challenges and Concerns

The survey showed that for many advisors social media policies help guide their activity and presence on social media. Advisors from Wirehouses and bank brokerages are most likely to have a written social media policy, while RIAs are least likely to have a policy in place.

For those with policies in place, nearly two-thirds of firms prohibit the use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for business purposes. More than one in four prohibits the use of LinkedIn. For a financial professional to succeed in the future, this needs to change.

Compliance is considered to be the primary challenge when using social media, with advisors showing concerns about compliance and regulatory aspects of using social media. Advisors are most uncertain about how to answer questions, if they can share opinions or advice with clients.

There’s good reason why compliance should be a concern as most respondents indicated that they do not actively archive their social media interactions. Fewer than one in ten advisors personally archive social media interactions, while an additional 17% indicate this is a function of their firm. 22% of respondents are unsure if their interactions are archived, while 33% of respondents from wirehouses are unsure if their interactions are archived. Clearly, there is a high percentage of registered investment advisors are on social media, where is the social media education?

Where to go from here?

Advisors already on social media should be pro-active and reacquaint themselves with FINRA policies and those of their companies concerning social media activity. They can also develop effective strategies for using social media to actively listen and monitor prospects, and clients, looking for the reasons that are going to influence their buying decisions.

Maximize your social media efforts?

Assess how effective your social media efforts have been, and learn how to take your efforts to the next level by utilizing RecommendedAdvisor’s FREE social media assessment: CLICK HERE for your FREE ASSESSMENT

Similar study from American Century Investments

Enjoy Pat Allen of Rocktheboatmarketing’s perspective of American Century’s report: Really? LinkedIn Groups Are Asset Managers’ Most Important Social Media Offering?

Filed Under: Social Communication, Social Compliance, Social Networking, Social Prospecting Tagged With: actiance, advisor marketing, Compliant Prospecting for Financial Advisors, Financial Advisors, Lead Generation, registered rep, Social media, Social Networking, Social Prospecting, wealthmanagement.com

Is the Financial Services Industry Bearish on Social Media?

April 6, 2012 by Rich LoPresti 9 Comments

Is the Financial Service Industry Bearish on Social Media? A Bear’s Perspective: The Glass is half empty for Financial Advisors

A Bear’s Perspective: The Glass is half empty for Financial Advisors

At a brand level, and on a customer service level most big financial institutions have embraced social media. But, they have lagged behind in granting the power of social media to their distributed sales forces. Aren’t they the ones who keep the lights on?

Have you figured out what the number one reason why the financial services industry is bearish on social media? Because, I haven’t. If you already know, stop reading and share with us your thoughts in the comment section. I want to know. If you are as perplexed as I am, at the end of my diatribe, decide for yourself if the reason is among the areas I cover. In any case, be sure to share your thoughts with our readers in the comments section below!

Is the number one reason why financial institutions are bearish on social media compliance? Maybe. FINRA, SEC, NAIC, and CFPB oh my! It’s a good argument—why would a financial institution want to get fined for something that they don’t understand? For compliance sake, how would they know what to do? The regulators keep changing and revising their policies, and revising them again, and again. How can a financial institution, let alone a financial advisor, keep up?

Who is the Business Prevention Unit? Is the Compliance Department to Blame?

This is absolutely crazy, but here is a possible solution. I hear stories that FINRA wants financial firms and institutions to reach out to them so they can work together to figure out this social media stuff. Financial institutions and FINRA working together in harmony to develop some real-life social media case studies to shape social media policy. I hear the financial institutions now, “Really, you want me as a financial institution to be proactive and voluntarily go to the regulators? I understand what you’re saying, but I can’t believe that’s something the financial institution really wanted to go to the regulators, volunteer to be a case study… We’re not fully buckled down with traditional media. We can’t go to them so they can look at us and see what we’re doing internally, I don’t want to open up that can of worms. Why would I want to invite in a regulator? It doesn’t make any sense. Not to me it doesn’t.”

Regulation aside, financial institutions want to protect their brand. Listening in again on their conversation: “Brand Reputation is big for me, why would I want all of my reps out there Tweeting? Posting and texting and messaging and doing all sorts of social sales stuff?” I mean, they are pushy right—we are trying to push our commoditized product. So why would we want to push product where everybody can see it, and be recorded forever? What happens if the collective “we” messes up? Everybody in the world will be there to watch. Why would we want to do that? Who is really listening on social media anyway? Employees, competitors, clients, prospects, everyone? Well, if we started talking on social media, I hear you can’t control the conversation. I can’t get over that. If I can’t control it, the conversation can and won’t be safe. If a social media fire started, how do you put it out? Once you say something stupid, you can never take it back, you need to live up (or live down) to what you said and honor your actions to make it right.

Additionally, aren’t their legal ramifications for financial institutions and advisors? What’s at risk? Social media puts the multiplier effect on personal versus professional. Is the employee they hired the same person (business or pleasure)? With social networking, the lines are more crossed than ever. For example, who owns the social accounts if we allowed them—the company or the employee? They might spend time working for us just to run away with the information and the relationship. Reference this enlightening article from the Wall Street Journal: Covering a dispute over who owns a Twitter account, and a similar fight over a LinkedIn account.

It’s getting kind of hairy; maybe it’s better if we turn the other cheek and look away, we won’t notice all of our financial advisors who are already using social media on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google+, and Pinterest. I mean, they are on there for personal reasons, right? We can’t prevent them from bringing those “smartphones” into work anyway. If they do happen to get new business from it, good for them (I mean us).

FINRA Suspends Advisor

Just say we did want to embrace social media, it would be easy to implement, right? David B. Armstrong of Monument Wealth Management said in reference to social media, “If you are Series 7 registered, you should already know what to say, and what not to say.” That sounds about right. It’s just a new way to communicate. We’ve been in the same industry for years. That’s a good thing because we don’t have the time or the inclination to educate our advisors on social media. Oh, wait, slow down. Did you see what happened to her? She was Tweeting, promoting, pumping, and dumping stocks on Twitter. We can’t control our reps, why did we hire them?

Read more later about her case, if you want to know what not to do… FINRA Suspends advisor for social media communication. Bottom line, Know your customer. Don’t blast buy or sell recommendations to random people.

Then again, if we did allocate the resources to training, like I mentioned before, we just don’t have the time. Honestly, why would any great sales manager take time from activities that are already working and bringing in business, to suddenly change an advisor’s structured activities to add in a medium that is not yet proven, at least in our eyes? I can’t see the justification for our established representatives. Additionally, how do you monitor it all? How well have we monitored traditional media—are we exposed? Our monitoring was never 100% and never will be, we are fallible. Social media can’t really be a gift to the compliance department; everything can’t be recorded, achievable, traceable, trackable, measurable, right down to its origin, right?

When you think about it, there is only close to 1 billion people on Facebook, and another half a billion on LinkedIn, 300 million on Twitter, and God knows how many people are on Google+ these days. So if there are over 1 billion people on social networks, that means there are 5 to 6 billion people who aren’t using social media, especially for business. So why should we?

Even if we do use social media, the people with money, those boomers, they’re not using social media, are they? What interest do seniors have in using social media? There isn’t an entire cottage industry teaching our most profitable demographic on how to use social media, is there? I mean the fastest-growing segment can’t be among 55-year-old woman on Facebook, right? It must be a fluke that my 68-year-old dad just bought an Amazon Kindle Fire, what’s he going to do with that? Generation Y are getting older (which means they’re accumulating more money), but anyway everybody’s not utilizing social media, so why should we?

How we used to communicate, and still should

Time, time, time—we don’t have time like I mentioned. We have all of these other operational activities that we have to do. Why in the world would we take time from prospecting strategies that are working, like knocking on doors, in person meetings, client appreciation events, seminars and the telephone? I mean, the telephone still works right? The telephone has been closing down business since 1876, and besides, the phone went mobile in 1973. Production, is sure to go down. As it is, representatives have so many different activities and responsibilities. They don’t have time for one more dial, let alone social media. Hey, I love my corner window office—I don’t want to be a social mobile advisor. Besides, we don’t have to worry about any FINRA 10-06, 11-39 regulation on the aforementioned modes of communication, right? How compliant is all of the other media (The social in-person meeting, social phone, social letter, social e-mail, social fax, social seminar, social water-cooler talk, social bar, social seminars, social client appreciation events, social everything) we’ve been using? Even though we don’t have a social media policy, I guess we are no stranger to similar internal and regulatory policies for, record keeping, archiving, suitability (Know Your Customer), communications with the public, advertising, supervision and endorsements. We just started using email, how different can social media be?

Again, I’m not going to do something that I don’t know how to do. I don’t have the time to take away from producing activity to a non-producing activity and, I don’t really have the time for an education; those days of continuous learning are over. I’ve been doing this for years. I have spent hours and hours getting my CFP, and my Masters and all of these other NASD designations and licenses. I’m not going to spend time on social media, not me, no way. Social media is for kids, right?

I’m not registered to sell in all 50 States; there aren’t any boundaries on social media. All I know is that I’m not risking my licenses and reputation and getting in trouble on social media. I’m not putting myself out there, no way, no how. So what if everybody is going mobile and will be able to find me if I put myself out there to be found? Come on now, we can’t rely on the Internet, let alone social media. What if the Internet crashes—what happens then?

But then again, where’s the return on investment (ROI)?

I plan on getting a nice return (viewership) on ignoring the topic of ROI. My next blog post will be dedicated entirely to exploring social media ROI for the financial services industry.

If you or your firm would like a free social media assessment to determine where you stand, Learn more here:

FREE Online and Social Media Assessment

I invite you to share your thoughts below:

Filed Under: Facebook, FINRA, Google+, Linkedin, SEC, Social Communication, Social Compliance, Social Networking, Social Prospecting, Twitter Tagged With: advisor marketing, Business, Compliant Prospecting for Financial Advisors, facebook, Financial adviser, Financial Advisors, Financial Planning, Financial Service, LinkedIn, Social Cold Calling, Social media, Social Prospecting, twitter

Social Prospecting: Monitor the Competition for their Hot Leads

March 8, 2012 by Rich LoPresti 6 Comments

Effective Step-by-Step Guide to Monitor Your Competitor’s Social Prospecting Efforts

Social Network Prospecting: Lead Generation Monitoring Strategy

To say we live in the information age is an understatement. These days, everyone is over-sharing information. Too much information surrounds us. Everyone is so open to sharing and will communicate with anyone and everyone willing to listen. For example I am sharing this social-lead generation secret with you. The awesome social-lead generation strategy I’m about to share with you shouldn’t be shared. Truth is, I know you’ll share it too!

Why all this sharing? Are we professional businessmen and women trying to be more successful than one another, or are we unnoticed children crying for attention? In any case, it seems like everyone is learning how to talk online for the first time. It’s time to grow up—the public Internet is going to be 18 this year.

This keen observation begs the question: Did we ever communicate correctly before social media, or were we always trying to have everyone hear every word and thought we had and know about every action we made? My guess is social media exacerbated this over-sharing problem.

Now to the social business world:

In the business world, salesmen who prospect online may have an excuse for over-sharing. They may feel they need to justify their social communication actions to their boss. They need to “show” their work. Their cold call dials are down; their mass email communication is ineffective; where are the new prospects coming from? I’m sure you’ve heard your “old school” sales manager say “Social prospecting, what’s that?” The saleswoman’s work needs to be justified with PROOF! Forcing them to be public about their work so their bosses and their boss’ bosses can see how their online communication strategies are working.

Little do the salespeople realize that their competition is watching their every step! Did you really think that the social salesman’s bosses aren’t the only ones monitoring their great social sales communication?

So what should you do?

If the sales professionals are naive enough to inform you of sales opportunities, as a salesman, you need to be prepared to take full advantage of other saleswomen’s over-sharing of information. Because these social saleswoman like to talk a lot, there is a mixture of relevant and irrelevant information that you need to sift through. How do we filter out the noise and stay on task? The answer—social monitoring with optimal organization.

Your Goal:

As a salesman, your goal should be to get in front of as many qualified prospects who are in the market to buy what you are selling.

Well, how do I find them in the information-overload era you ask? I am here to tell you.

Here’s How:

My friend and prospecting thought leader, Cory Kapner, show’d me his amazing prospecting secret and the endless flow of leads it has generated for him. I was floored. Follow this strategy and you will be the top sales professional in your organization. Forget about cold leads; forget about warm leads; your leads will be hot and ready to close. They are all ready to solve a problem that you can solve. Please read and reread the step-by-step guide below.

Hot Social Lead Generation in Action:

1) You should know your competition, but if you don’t, research your competitors on LinkedIn by putting in your company name on the ”companies” page. If your industry is commoditized, start with the companies that you know your organization is superior to:

Locate and Research your Competition

2) Now it’s time to get to know your competition in real-time online. Drill down further on the companies one by one. First, research your LinkedIn contacts within the competitor’s organization. You should focus on (corporate level) C-level decision makers, sales and client services people. The idea is not to befriend them. The idea is to identify who they are, what their role is, and if they can help you drive more sales within your organization.

Drill Down on your Competition and Locate the Key Individuals you want to Follow

3) Once the individual contacts are identified, the best way to have them help you is to follow them on Twitter. (You can follow them on Linkedin as well, but that’s a whole different conversation.) They will bring you right into their conversations. For organizational purposes, first locate the individual Twitter handles for each contact and start compiling your list offline.

Finding Key Actionable Information on the Selected Individuals

*Amazingly, in some cases the companies do all the organizational work for you—they put together public lists of their sales-force for you to follow. What a nice gift!

It's always nice when someone does the grunt work for you!

4) Now bring your lists back online using a third-party social media management application (SMMS) application (or Twitter lists directly) to “sneakily” follow the Twitter handles you patiently compiled. There are SMMS platforms that offer the “sneaky” follow, although there are many other ways you can do this without your competition knowing you are watching them. For example, you can easily create lists on Twitter using a separate Twitter prospecting account.

Using Twitter Lists and Groups to Organize your Findings

5) Filter the conversations based on competitor (or whatever other goal(s) you may have set up). Monitor through alerts, watch through Twitter, or watch through a third-party SMMS platform.

Start Listening to your Competition for Relevant Sales Information

Start Listening to your Competition for Relevant Sales Chatter

6) Identify and qualify potential leads by researching conversations. Like magic, the social Twitter conversation below didn’t capture a warm lead—it captured a hot lead! Here is a prime example of a perfect lead you can pounce on (carefully)! Talk about hot lead generation! The prospect is searching for a solution, can you articulate a better solution than your competition?

Like Magic, Hot Sales Leads Appear!

Sale Speak on Twitter: Client is Looking to Buy a Solution!

7) Now reach out to the hot leads you found on different social media platforms using the research you’ve gathered. In the above example, this prospect had a link on her Twitter page to her LinkedIn profile. Now you can identify if you share any commonalities with the prospect, such as groups you share on LinkedIn. Information can easily be found on their “about me” section of their website. You can also take a look at their companies “about us’ page for information about them and the company they work for. Again, this is important: Once you have located their LinkedIn profile, you can connect with them if they share a similar group with you. If you are in any of the groups, join it, and connect through that commonality. This will be the gateway for you to distance yourself from the real way you found them. It may be too creepy to tell them that you have been waiting and watching for their conversation to take place.

Time to Connect with the Prospect on Linkedin!

If your competition is going to give you an open look into their social prospecting, you would be foolish not to take notice. I urge you to listen to your organized social network’s conversations. You will be pleasantly surprised by what you see. No time like the present to capitalize on this opportunity.

If you are struggling to apply this strategy to your niche let me know, If you think it doesn’t work for your niche, remember social media is not business to consumer (B to C) or business to business (B to B)—it is person to person (P to P). With this in mind, just listen! If you talk to your sales prospects, remember the competition can and will be listening.

What do you think of this strategy? Please let us know by sharing your thoughts below:

Filed Under: Linkedin, Social Communication, Social Lead Generation, Social Prospecting, Social Prospecting, Twitter Tagged With: Lead Generation, Prospecting, Sales Technique, Salesmen, saleswoman, Social Lead Generation, Social Monitoring, Social Networking, Social Prospecting

Cold Calling: Dead or Alive? PART TWO

February 26, 2012 by Rich LoPresti 2 Comments

Cold Call: Dead or Alive?

Part Two:

In continuing where we left off in Part One of Cold Call: Dead or Alive, let me be perfectly clear: social networks are the new cold call (or at the very least social networks should always be used to warm up every cold call you make). Why dial and hope someone will answer the phone? Why dial and pray that if they do answer you can get through the gatekeeper who does not want to help you? Why dial and wish you get your prospect’s full and undivided attention when they say hello? Instead of calling a gatekeeper and fishing for information on one possible decision maker, you can now advance search within relevant categories on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and drill down to find exactly who you’re looking for BEFORE you make the call. You discover who is connected to your connections and find people by job descriptions, job titles, job history, location, pay grade, and education. You can find out what they are reading, what they are writing, what they like, what they don’t like. I still am not fully sure why people share all of this powerful information that can make them vulnerable online, but they do. Use it to your advantage.

Financial Advisor Conversation:

I recently heard many differing views on the cold call from a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) event. A lot of people were asking, is the cold call dead? Everyone agreed that a new advisor would fail if he sat down and tried to dial through the phone book, which was the norm 20 years ago. Today, it is not the right approach. No more smiling and dialing; instead, it’s surfing and typing. The cold call is evolving to the social call.

No matter what year you were born, one thing remains the same: sales is a numbers game. The metrics I used to measure my success in selling were Activity, Skills, and Knowledge. With phone activity being the engine for everything, you’d create your own luck. Without activity, you were dead. It was clear that the more dials you made, the more contacts you had. The more contacts you had, the more appointments (phone or in-person) you had. The more appointments you had, the more presentations and closes you’d make—and the more you’d get paid.

This success equation is still relevant, but you need to replace the phone activity with social activity to be successful. Phone calls are unexpected interruptions. In general, it’s harder to get someone’s attention these days through the phone; you need to go to where they are already paying attention.

The phone call has now been demoted to a follow-up tool, used only after a social interaction.

When I connect with someone online, the goal is to connect with them offline. Most times, I use the social network to secure a face-to-face meeting. If not, I pick up the “heavy” phone and secure a face-to-face meeting that way. I have had more success meeting people in person than having the same conversation over the phone. Nothing, in my opinion, replaces physical human interaction.

Conversely, when you connect with someone offline, at an event, or on the street, and you then search for them online almost the second you get back to your office. You search to find useful information out about them by accessing their social profiles. After you take it all in you then need to decide which is the best social network or networks to get back to them to round off the interaction. Interactions are continuous. You can then follow their online movements and likes and get to know what information they are reading, commenting on, sharing and talking (creating) about.

Because the number of interactions has accelerated at an astronomical pace (albeit, the same pace of the average social network growth), it takes more time and organization, as well as a follow-up system, to not lose track of all these interactions. It is quicker to develop a relationship because the person you are trying to connect with flat out tells you what you want to hear.

By doing this, you are not interrupting them, or controlling the conversation, or not paying attention, dosing off or daydreaming while they are speaking. You can proactively look up this information at your leisure, but again, you need to know what to do with this information, how to organize the social profile so you don’t forget. And, of course, you need to remember how to close. By leveraging and organizing the social web, there is no question your closing ratio will go up, each interaction deepens the client advisor relationship. This social process makes selling easier, for the motivated salesman or saleswoman.

In conclusion, the new social prospecting process shouldn’t feel like marketing, it should just be how you are—your personality, your process, ingrained in your soul.

What is your opinion of the traditional cold call?

Filed Under: Cold Call, Social Communication, Social eMail, Social Events, Social Networking, Social Phone, Social Prospecting, Social Prospecting, Social Referrals Tagged With: client aquisition, cold call, Cold Calling, Compliant Prospecting for Financial Advisors, Lead Generation, Social Cold Calling, social media prospecting, Social network prospecting, Social Networking, Social Prospecting, traditional cold call

Cold Calling: Dead or Alive? PART ONE

February 24, 2012 by Rich LoPresti 8 Comments

Cold Call: Dead or Alive?

Part One:

The cold call as we know it will never be the same. I’m not saying the phone call is dead; just the way we approach a cold lead through the phone has changed forever. Sam Richter in his must-read book Take The Cold Out of Cold Calling, covers warming up the cold call before you make the call, through his in-depth methods for searching the web to find out more relevant information that you can use to warm the call. You can discover more information than you ever thought you could know about your prospects and clients. What if we took it one step further and saved some valuable time by ELIMINATING the first phone call entirely?

Prospecting is the lifeblood of any salesman or saleswoman. As Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling, tells us, the classic theories of selling teach us that the most effective way to open a sales call is to find ways to relate to the buyer’s personal interests and to make an initial benefits statement, which his research found relevant in small sales, but ineffective in larger sales. He says to “put an extra effort into effective needs development.” If you can successfully convey the relevant value of your solutions to your prospect, he notes “you are going to face much fewer objections.” Social prospecting gives the salesman a distinct advantage in shaping their sales strategy for each and every unique qualified prospect.

Through social prospecting, I have found that the first call isn’t needed at all. On a consistent basis, I connected with my prospects through their social network of choice, usually, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ or Twitter, or a combination thereof. The important part is that there is so much relevant public information out there that allows me to approach them more effectively. With my newfound knowledge, I craft my messages to take the OBJECTIONS out of the conversation. I can find out what type of personality they have and approach them accordingly. Through this method, I have been approaching higher-quality prospects and turning them into well-qualified leads.

I am not the only person telling salespeople that the cold call of yesteryear is antiquated. Jeffrey Gitomer, author of Social Boom, kindly reminds us that “the cold call has been part of the selling world for more than 100 years. And it’s over (at least the way you knew it to be). Technology, guards, gatekeepers, voicemail, and the overall sophistication of buyers and executives, have forever changed that landscape. And that this is GREAT news” for salesmen and woman everywhere! He goes on to say, “It will take you less time to write 100 words of value (for your world to see) than it does to make 10 cold calls that you’ll get hung up on, or 10 unsolicited emails that will get deleted.”

What Is a Cold Call?

Wikipedia defines it as “the marketing process of approaching prospective customers or clients, typically via telephone, who were not expecting such an interaction. The word “cold” is used because the person receiving the call is not expecting a call or has not specifically asked to be contacted by a sales person.”

What Is a Social Call?

I define it as the marketing process of approaching prospective customers or clients, typically via social networks. This subtle, educated, needs-based approach eases the marketer’s message right into the flow of the prospect or client’s life. The word “social” is used because the person making the call has quickly uncovered real-time, relevant information about the individual before they contact them.

See the difference?

Still Not Convinced?

Read on: Part Two of Cold Calling: Dead or Alive?

Filed Under: Cold Call, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Social Communication, Social eMail, Social Events, Social Networking, Social Phone, Social Prospecting, Social Referrals, Twitter Tagged With: Cold Calling, Compliant Prospecting for Financial Advisors, Lead Generation, Social Cold Calling, Social Networking, Social Prospecting

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