I’ve recently been working with a new coaching client. He is a financial advisor that wants to aggressively build his book of business. My new client has been prospecting off and on and not having the success that he had envisioned. He was frustrated and demoralized.
Part of this new client’s challenge is accountability. Some days he would dial the phone hundreds of times. Other times, days would pass, and pass, and pass… With no prospecting activity at all.
One of the first assignments I gave my new client was to track his calls (dials, conversations with decision-makers and appointments scheduled) and to send his reports to me every day. It’s important to be consistent in prospecting activities. It’s much better to do a consistent number of dials every day than a blitz one day and nothing again for weeks.
Here is an excerpt from an early call report I received:
- 70 Dials
- 12 Conversations
- 10 Rejects of every variety
I emailed him immediately to say that he was forbidden to ever use the word, “reject” when discussing prospecting. The reason is simple. If every time that someone is unwilling to schedule an appointment you think that they are rejecting you becomes very, very hard to make that next dial. Over time it becomes more and more demoralizing. If you think every prospect is rejecting you, why even bother?
A better way is to look at what prospects are actually saying. The things that prospects say are not rejection they are simply things that prospect sometimes say. In this case, prospects were responding with common objections that prospects sometimes respond with: “I’m busy,” “Send me information,” “I’m working with someone”… My client had not yet learned the best way to handle these objections but they are all easily handled with a few simple scripts.
In our next coaching session we discussed how to change and reframe his thoughts about prospecting. We also discussed the best way to handle those common objections. Here is the email he sent me after that session. I share it with you as I believe my client’s reframe is valuable:
“Instead of 10 rejects, I found 10 people who won’t enjoy the benefit of working with me AND I don’t have to think about them for a few months OR I just ruled out 10 folks who don’t know what’s good for them which brings me to closer to those who do OR I passed through a few folks on the way to my next client.”
