Cold calling is a trying yet necessary part of all financial advisors' business. When you pick up the phone, you're walking into an unknown situation: who's on the other line? How will they respond to your call?
These unknowns, and the inevitable rejections that accompany them, can make even the most motivated and persistent financial advisors reluctant to hop back on the phone.Lucky for you, we work with some of the best minds in the business, and we've been compiling cold calling tips to help advisors make successful cold calls to potential clients for years.
Try these tips when making your next round of cold calls and see what happens to your conversion rate.
Before You Call
Arm Yourself with Information
One of the best ways to see success with cold calling is to eliminate some of the mystery that exists in the traditional cold calling strategy.
The more more detail you know about the prospective client you're calling before you pick up the phone, the easier it will be for you to forge a genuine connection with them, which will make your task of conveying the value you can provide to them all the easier.
We wrote a whole article on how to vet lead generation services, so we won't say too much about this here, but if you're using a service that essentially gives you a list of prospective clients' names and phone numbers with no more detail, you're making your life much harder than it needs to be.
Quick plug:
Planswell experts are among the best-informed financial advisors in the game when it comes to knowing about the households they call before they get on the phone.
Our experts start with 40+ pieces of information about a household's demographics, financial situation, and long-term goals. Plus, they also get a copy of the comprehensive financial plan built by our sophisticated planning engine, which gives them one of the most powerful opening lines available:
"Hi, I'm looking at the financial plan you built and I see a few areas where we could make improvements to help you retire three years sooner with an extra hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Want to talk about it?"
Use a (good) script
If you approach each different cold call you make like a college student going to the grocery store, you're going to end up spending way too much time wandering down random aisles of conversation rather than connecting with the prospective clients on the other end of the line.
It's going to be tedious for you and the person you're calling, which is the absolute last thing you want if you're trying to keep them on the phone with you — how can you make a sales pitch if the prospective client hangs up?
Plus you'll get worn out on calling a whole lot more quickly than if you had a trusty cold calling script to drive your conversations.
Having any sort of roadmap of where your conversations will go makes cold calling a lot more like a stroll through the park than a mad dash through a crowded grocery store trying to find the peanut butter.
Having an effective cold call script, one that's proven to work, however, is like skipping the grocery store all together and having the peanut butter delivered directly to you at home.
Quick plug:
Planswell's cold calling script is phenomenal.
It's been crafted carefully by some of the best financial advisors around, then tested and refined more than the dinosaur bones that power your car.
Most of the financial advisors who use our script (which we provide for free to our experts, by the way) agree it's the bee's knees, but George in particular is a huge fan: "I don't even get halfway down the first page and I'm booking meetings."
If this sounds like something you'd like to try out and you aren't already a Planswell expert, consider giving us a shot.
(If you're already an expert but you're not using the script, here's another nugget of George's wisdom: "just use it.")
Smile before you dial
We know: you've probably heard this corny rhyme so often in sales team meetings or trainings your eyes just rolled so far back in your head you passed out.
The thing is, you should smile before you dial.
Mary Jane Copps, a.k.a. The Phone Lady, has been training financial advisors and life-licensed insurance agents for decades. She's one of the masterminds of phone sales of all kinds, and she knows the science behind why this tactic works.
When you smile, you activate muscles in your face that actually change your tone of voice, making it more warm and welcoming, which is vitally important to successful cold calls — nobody wants to talk to someone who sounds like they’re stressed about making a sale.
On the Call
Build rapport rapidly
If you've been cold calling prospects for any amount of time at all, you know just how important it is to build rapport as quickly as humanly possible. Unfortunately, sometimes building rapport is easier said than done.
Lucky for you, we've got three concrete steps you can take that are all but guaranteed to help you connect with prospects you call.
Express genuine interest
Being authentically curious about prospects' lives is a great way to demonstrate to them you're here to be helpful as opposed to selling them something they don't need (which they're probably worried about if you're cold calling).
Ask open ended questions about their life, goals, dreams, fears, etc. Demonstrating genuine curiosity about what makes a prospect tick does far more than foster the development of a personal connection with a potential client, it also gives you insight as to exactly how you can be helpful to them.
If you know where they want to retire and what kind of lifestyle they expect to be able to live when they do, you can provide insight on how they can maximize retirement savings and how much money they'll need to have saved up.
If you know their kid aspires to attend Harvard University, you can help set the expectation of what that's likely to cost and guide them through the best way to start saving.
Be empathetic
The Phone Lady led an entire webinar on the importance of empathy when it comes to closing sales calls, and the information is especially prescient when cold calling is concerned.
(We actually wrote a whole blog on the webinar, which you should definitely peruse for a more in-depth discussion on the subject.)
The first point she makes regarding the power of empathy is to leave behind the age-old misconception that empathy means having deep, vulnerable, emotional conversations with prospects.
In fact, The Phone Lady considers empathy a logical process by which you gather information about a prospect's needs. She actually recommends replacing the word "feelings," which is so often associated with empathy, with "situation.”
So, when you’re being empathetic, you’re actually looking to discover everything you can about the prospect’s actual lived experience so you can determine how best you can help them.
What's more, because empathy is a logical process rather than an emotional one, it's also a skill you can actively develop through practice. Asking those open ended questions (and actively listening to the answers) is a great way to do just that.
Have authentic conversations
Just because you're following a cold call script, doesn't mean you have to sound robotic or that you can't engage in meaningful, authentic conversations with the folks you're calling.
In fact, if you're not having real conversations with your prospects, the likelihood of converting them into clients goes down significantly. One of your main goals when cold calling is to convince the person you're speaking with you're invested in providing them value and service, and engaging in authentic conversation is one of the best ways to do that. Selling isn’t about convincing. Selling is about helping.
Quick plug:
Here at Planswell, we know having an authentic conversation with a prospect is much easier if you're aware of the common ground held between you and the person you're calling before you pick up the phone.
That's why we only pair advisors with households from their state or province. This way, when you call a Planswell household, you know you have at least local culture in common.
Because you're familiar with their hometown, you can discuss their favorite pizza restaurant, commiserate over the local sports team's season, or even make recommendations about the best place to do Karaoke on a Friday night.
Explain logistics early
One of the first things that goes through a person's mind when they realize they've just picked up a cold call is "when is this going to be over?" This anxiety can take over a person's mind and prevent them from ever actually engaging with you, no matter how charming and personable you happen to be.
That's why overviewing the logistics of your call at the beginning is so important.
Before Eric Arnold founded Planswell, he honed his sales strategy selling window cleaning services door-to-door (he closed at a mind-boggling rate: 95%)
One of the secrets to his success (which he outlines in his free ebook) is to ensure you review the schedule of your call early on. If the household knows about how long the call will take, they'll be much more relaxed and receptive to the value you can provide them.
Eric also notes that giving them the option to decline is super important. Simply asking "Does that sound okay to you?" after walking through your call agenda is all you need to do.
Most of the time, they'll agree, and them agreeing to this social contract will do wonders for your conversion rate.
Avoid overly polite phrases
When The Phone Lady first started her career as a phone salesperson, she made a realization that would change the trajectory of her business. At first, she recalls, she was "having great conversations, but not selling anything."
She realized the issue was how she was beginning her calls: "I'm just calling because..."
The problem was the word "just." It implied the only reason she was calling was because she didn't have anything better to do, devaluing the service she was trying to provide.
The same is true for a whole slew of phrases that make their way into our vernacular because in casual conversation we tend to err on the side of being polite rather than direct.
Here's a list of some phrases you might be using that could be harming your ability to close business on cold calls:
- "Just," as in "I'm just calling because..."
- "If," as in "If you have the time..."
- "Wondering," as in "I was wondering if..."
- "Maybe," as in "Maybe we could connect..."
- "Possibly," as in "Would you possibly be available..."
After you call
Be Persistent
If you aren't calling prospects back because you're worried you're going to bother them, you have a fundamental misconception about the reason you're calling in the first place.
A financial advisor's job isn't to sell financial products. Your job is to help this person achieve their short and long term financial goals, build retirement savings, and be able to retire comfortably some day (maybe even sooner than they'd hoped).
If you truly believe the service you offer is of value, then it's actually doing your potential customers a disservice to not call them back — it's up to you to ensure they have access to the value you can provide.
Using the double- or triple-dial method will actually help distinguish you from sketchy telemarketers who only call once. It will show your prospects you're willing to put the work in for them, which will help you earn their trust and their business.
Move Past Failure
The sad truth of the matter is most cold calling efforts are in vain.
Nobody closes anywhere even close to 100%. In fact, Planswell legend Ermos Erotocritou (and basically every other successful person ever) considers failure to be a necessary part of the journey to success.
When you don't close a cold call, your reaction shouldn’t be frustration and anger, but curiosity — what happened there? At what point did I lose their business? Did I ever have a chance? How could I have done better?
You should be asking yourself these questions after every missed opportunity so you can learn and make adjustments for next time.
Andy Cosby (another Planswell legend) actually advises asking the folks you're calling these questions. What questions are you referring to here?Not only will they be able to give you feedback to help you grow, but you might have legitimate solutions to their objections, and you could turn a missed opportunity around at the last minute.
The Gist
Making cold calls successfully requires building a genuine connection with the person you call.
Easier said than done, for sure, but there are some concrete cold calling tips you can employ before, during, and after you call to help ensure you're having better conversations and building stronger personal connections with the folks on the other end of the line.
Implementing these strategies will certainly lead you to making more successful cold calls, but if you really want to supercharge your business, you should consider a partnership with Planswell (if you don't have one already).
We're a one-stop-shop for financial advisors to grow their business: we offer everything from executive peer groups, sophisticated planning software, sales coaching, and prospecting solutions, most of which is available for free.
Why wouldn't you give us a shot?
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