Find prospects without cold calling

With prospects answering the phone less and less often, advisors can always use opportunities to engage with people in person. Consider this approach: Arrange small business breakfasts for eight people who have something in common. If you have a particular client you want to clone, this is a great idea that is easy and not expensive.

You invite four clients who have something in common. Let’s say your favorite clients are architects. So you invite four architect clients and tell them you’re having a small business breakfast meeting. Their price of admission is to bring a colleague who is an architect and someone you don’t know. (Hopefully, they don’t think of each other, but a new person.) That means you get to meet four new people.

The speaker is either a center of influence (COI) or someone you want to develop as one. Make sure that person is a good speaker and has a 20-minute presentation on something relevant to your group. A lawyer, tax advisor, PR expert and so forth, would be good for this group. Any professional that has something of interest to this group of eight people is a candidate for being the speaker. You pay the bill, which is now breakfast for 10. Not expensive, and easy to set up.

This is what you get from doing this idea once a month: You

• Reinforce your relationship with your favorite clients.
• Meet four more people like your favorite clients.
• Create or reinforce a relationship with a COI.

I suggest finding a breakfast buffet at a nice hotel in your town for this type of meeting. Try to pick a quiet day of the week. I’d rule out Mondays. Instead of trying to cold call architects, this is a much more modern idea.

From her 2017 Annual Meeting presentation “Telephone tango: Get appointments in a no-answer culture.” (For MDRT members only) 

Gail B. Goodman is a prospecting and marketing coach in College Grove, Tennessee, USA.

More ideas about working with your ideal client

• Read “Increase your income by finding your ideal client”
• Watch “Your ideal future clients” (MDRT members only)