December 2009 - Don't Tell Me What To Do, Tell Me How To Do It
By Don Connelly
Excellence is a habit. In last month's letter, we decided that top tier Advisors are blue-collar workers in a white-collar world. They weren't born top tier Advisors. They became top tier by practicing their trade day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out. Mariano Rivera was not born a great relief pitcher. His brilliance is the stepchild of repetition. As Tiger Woods has the most repeatable swing in golf, Rivera has the most repeatable delivery in baseball. Aristotle said it best: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."
What should advisors be practicing? We know golfers practice grip, stance and alignment all day every day, if they want to be great. They make it a habit, just like brushing their teeth in the morning. We know pitchers practice keeping the ball low all day every day, if they want to be great. They make it a habit, no different than taking a shower every morning. What, then, do top tier Advisors practice all day every day? What are their habits? Where do they practice? How do they practice? When do they practice? What must I practice in order to be great?
Practice prospecting. Introduce yourself to strangers. Say hello to people. Get a good cold call script and practice it until saying it becomes as natural as brushing your teeth. "Hello, Mr. Prospect, my name is Don Connelly. I'm a Financial Advisor with XYZ, Inc. Occasionally, I add to my list of clients by calling people like you. I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's a great deal easier to spend money than it is to save it. Yet success-minded people always seem to find a way to save, etc., etc." Do you want to guess how many times I've said that over the course of my career?
The very best way to meet truly affluent people is to go meet them. Take a stack of business cards on a slow day and walk down the side streets of your town and stop in on the small business owners. That's where America's money is. Learn their lingo and learn their challenges. It's not incumbent upon them to understand you. It's incumbent upon you to understand them.
Better yet, develop an image that causes affluent people to call you and ask you if you've got time to see them. I'm sure you've been told by now that a prospect is someone who has a financial need, who has money and who can make a decision. Well, that's only partly true. A real prospect is someone who has a financial need, who has money, who can make a decision and who values your opinion. And therein lies the rub. You've got to burn through a lot of people before you find seventy or a hundred or three hundred people who are willing to burn their canoes and follow you. In fact, it's going to take at least ten years. So don't get frustrated. Think like a lifer. And understand, the better the prospector you are, the faster you'll get where you want and need to be.
Practice selling. Learn how to create and deliver the best Initial Benefit Statement ever. "Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, if I understand you correctly, your need today is to set up a plan for retirement. Is that correct? Many of my clients with the same goal as yours allocate a portion of their assets to growth mutual funds. One major feature of growth mutual funds is long-term growth. What this means to you is that if all goes well between now and the time you retire, your retirement funds will be there when you need them."
Learn how to probe for support or resistance. Support the positive comments and probe the negative comments for better understanding.
Become great at turning objections into questions and then dealing with the questions. "Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, if I understand you correctly, you are happy with your Advisor at JP Morgan Chase. Is that correct? Well, I agree with you that JP Morgan Chase is a wonderful firm and I have no doubt your Advisor is very good at what she does. I hope you agree with me that not any one firm or person has a corner on all the good ideas. Do you agree with that? If I can show you one idea designed to increase your income, reduce your taxes or both, may I compete for part of your business?"
Learn how and when to close. Learn how to play back to the Kelly's the benefits of investing in growth mutual funds.
Practice effective communication. Be the envy of your peers when it comes to keeping it simple. Picasso said it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but it took him a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.
Don't make easy things difficult. Use word pictures rather than industry jargon. "Mrs. Smith, would you like a check in your mailbox every month? Would you like two checks in your mailbox every month, one on the first and one on the fifteenth? Would you like them to be tax free?" If everybody understood everything you said, you would be the number one Advisor in the world.
Practice time management. If you are not sitting in front of a client asking for the order, you are unemployed. Frank Sinatra was not paid to move pianos. His game plan was simple. Get in front of the customers, perform and get paid. His job was to sing. So is yours.
Jettison one activity every day that does not contribute to your success. I was in the audience when a senior management person from a major firm said that management knows that the average Advisor at that particular firm spends seventy percent of his or her time preparing to meet with clients and thirty percent of the time meeting with clients. What, he mused, if we could reverse that ratio? Well, what if I came in your office as your assistant and guaranteed you fifteen closing appointments a week. What if, three times a day, five days a week, you were asking for the order? How would your business be then?
Napoleon Hill said that millionaires share five traits: They know exactly what they want to accomplish; they are very keen in understanding human behavior; they are able to ask the right questions; they have commitment and focus; and they possess a superior work ethic. They also sound pretty organized to me.
Next month I'll tell you some stories about Advisors I know, Advisors who are like pizza. They're so good that even when they're bad, they're still good.
Don can be reached through his website at www.campconnelly.com