Client Acquisition
Prospecting...Building A Practice One Client At A Time
Marketing and Prospecting a.k.a. Client Acquisition
Most people think of prospecting as the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens. Prospecting is quite intensive physical labor, involving panning, sifting and outcrop investigation, looking for tell-tale signs of mineralization. Many Financial Services Professionals must deploy prospecting skills to grow their financial services practice. These professionals are not seeking minerals; they are in pursuit of a much rarer commodity i.e. professional relationships with people who they can offer products, services and within their practice focus…professional advice.
Prospecting versus Marketing
Prospecting is not marketing. Prospecting is a function of marketing. Financial Services Professionals select target markets and the systematic approach and activities to finding new customers in this market is called prospecting. If I can use a fishing analogy…Marketing defines the pond you fish from. Prospecting defines the fishing strategies and techniques to attract and capture the fish. In this section of the Practice, we collaborate on Prospecting and Client Management.
Client and Prospect Data Management
Prospecting is more of an art than a science. Prospecting is the basics of sales. Mission critical to effective prospecting skills is appointment scheduling and management of prospect/client information.
Appointment Scheduling
Whether it is meeting over the phone or a face-to-face, the appointment requires a planned time. During the first year in business, the Financial Services Professional will spend 70% to 80% of their time prospecting. In other areas of The Practice, we will drill deep into effective appointment scheduling. A Financial Services Professional grows her/his practice through the acquisition of clients and consistent execution of brilliant client services. It is simply smart money to hire a strong administrative assistant early on to help with prospecting and scheduling. You will not want to spend your time administering the business. This enables you to address client issues. There are other sections of Auburn Mountain that will help you build the right culture in your practice from the first employee and client. In this section we will focus on Client Data Management.
Client Database Management or Client Relationship Management-CRM
If the Financial Services Professional does not plan, this can mean only one thing…Failure! Many salespeople don't adequately and systematically manage the abundance of information available to them. Prospecting involves multiple contacts by phone or by mail. Over periods of time, Financial Services Professionals can get overwhelm by it all. This will result in career failure unless a calendar and vent management process is deployed to coordinate dates, times and events. Financial Services Professionals must stay productive by coordinating critical contact, appointment, and to-do information. This is call a client or data base management.There are some time-management experts that believe that poor database management skills are perhaps the most astounding failure of many Financial Services Professionals in the 21st century.
Heed This Advice
Please do not create your own database. You are a Financial Services Professional, not an event planner or marketing assistant. Buy a client and event management system that deploy features such as:
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Comprehensive practice management capabilities, including contact management
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Investment tracking and insurance policy tracking
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Features Of CRM That Make Prospecting Seamless And Effective:
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Rich contact management instantly access your centralized customer and contact information, including complete histories.
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Time management features that help stay on top of your day with reminders, alerts and a complete view of your schedule.
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Sales force automation features that automate mass mailings by easily generating targeted, personalized email, letters and faxes from a central location and track results!
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Opportunity tracking features that immediate updates for your pipeline. Track products, prospects, revenue potential, and closing dates in real time.
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Team-based collaboration features that help you share critical information across the whole team, inside and outside your office.
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Reporting and analysis features that allow you to analyze your leads, sales, and marketing, so you can focus your efforts of what's working.
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Forecasting features that help you sort sales by product or probability e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly quotas.
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Integration with email such as Microsoft® Outlook® and Exchange
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Ability to share contacts, email, calendaring and scheduling.
Source:
Goldmine
The Client/Prospect Management System Should Also:
Other features should include the ability to rate prospects. This allows you to use your client/prospect management system as a database that creates a visual tool of instant productivity. A quick glance at an "A" in your database reminds you to see a prospect frequently. Imagine how powerful it would feel to have detailed, qualitative information on that volume of business. Imagine how difficult it would be to remember all those details in your head. A rating system for customers and prospects provides a visual reference that may surprise you is a must in your client/prospect management system.
List Building
The Internet has many sources of free leads that you can use to market your product/ service. The ListGrabber, eGrabber and AdressGrabber are tools that allows you to build your own lead list / prospect list from various publicly available sources of free leads on the Internet. You can use this lead generation software to capture contact lists from Online Directories (like yellowpages.com, superpages.com, whitepages.com), association websites, membership directories, MLS Listings, etc. and enter them into an Excel spreadsheet or any database. Find potential customers for your product or service by marketing to this list, and expand your business.
Get Busy and Productive
Please use the ideas and resources we have given you here. Earlier we mentioned that there are time-management experts that believe that poor database management skills will cause the failure of many Financial Services Professionals. Do not become a statistic…Get Busy Now!