The dining room table is the holy grail for retail and the break room is the holy grail of businesses.  Upside to having people come to you is that YOU reduce your drive time - which is important when you first start out.  (ESPECIALLY if you aren't qualifying people correctly.) You don't want to waste your time driving  an hour to a 1200.00 rollover appointment because that will not pay for your low test gas!

HOWEVER, bringing people to your office has down side too. Parking? Do you have parking? If not - strike against you.

Do you have a corner office? If not, they may wonder why they are meeting with YOU and not the BIG guy.  Hint - they notice.

Is your office nice. REALLY nice.  Impressively furnished? Clean? Really clean? 

However, the biggest thing you should be worried about at this stage is IF THEY WILL MEET with you and consider yourself lucky no matter where they want to meet. 5 10 miles is nothing - heck you can cold walk that and get a workout in too.   

Pikers go to the house. Never, ever, go to the house for biz.

After they are a client, fine, go to the house. BUT, you NEVER talk biz there. When you visit a client, have them show you around, give you their life story, show you the Harley, the guitar collection, the roses, the new wood flooring but for gawds sake, do NOT talk biz. 

And while we're at it. Dude, get to the point. Calling with an appointment?? Wow, how motivating....

Turn the tables, and ask yourself how you'd respond to meeting someone for a little non essential chitty chatty?

You need name brand recognition, 35 seconds, free/special offer, sexy/safe, and a sense of urgency. Otherwise, you're just blah, blah, blah like every other yo yo head that calls a biz or residence. 

There, if you're wise, I just saved you an enormous amount of time and grief. If you're not going to listen, come back to me in 6 months, and I'll tell you why the last 6 months of smelling cat boxes and talking about 1200 dollar 401k plans wasn't in your best interest. 

Ok, sorry if that was a bit blunt...

[quote=BigFirepower]

Pikers go to the house. Never, ever, go to the house for biz.

After they are a client, fine, go to the house. BUT, you NEVER talk biz there. When you visit a client, have them show you around, give you their life story, show you the Harley, the guitar collection, the roses, the new wood flooring but for gawds sake, do NOT talk biz. 

And while we're at it. Dude, get to the point. Calling with an appointment?? Wow, how motivating....

Turn the tables, and ask yourself how you'd respond to meeting someone for a little non essential chitty chatty?

You need name brand recognition, 35 seconds, free/special offer, sexy/safe, and a sense of urgency. Otherwise, you're just blah, blah, blah like every other yo yo head that calls a biz or residence. 

There, if you're wise, I just saved you an enormous amount of time and grief. If you're not going to listen, come back to me in 6 months, and I'll tell you why the last 6 months of smelling cat boxes and talking about 1200 dollar 401k plans wasn't in your best interest. 

Ok, sorry if that was a bit blunt...

[/quote/]

Blunt but true.   To get the appointment you have to intrigue them with something of interest.  From personal experience, a financial plan/review is not intriguing to very many people.

BTW, where are you folks getting these corporate directories? I'd give my left nut for a couple of directories of certain corporations around here.

I've actually been calling for appointments and BFP is pretty much right.  Very rarely will you find someone with enough money to make a living off of.   Unfortunately my firm doesn't really like me to cold call with products.  No bonds, CD's, or Annuity pitches.  Nothing.  It's really frustrating to pitch an appointment to a cold call when you know nothing is exciting them.   The reason being "suitability".  I still don't understand why other reps can pitch products but I have to ask to meet them to find out that they are on social security.  Plus -if calling wealthy areas and asking them if they have a local advisor they are working with isn't working, why not switch it up?  So for now it's back to calling for appointments.

There are a long list of stupid firms out there, and they are run by complete dolts that have either never been reps, or were not very good at it. They're dumb enough to look at the highest profit margin stuff, and figure that "if everyone just sold that..."

The phone must be used in a very efficient manner, or it's no different than the email spam you see these days. Funny how we can hate it when idiotic marketing is right in our face, but when it is our own turn, we do the same stupid stuff.... Always look at it from the other side of the table. 

At my BD, there are maybe 40-50 preferred providers. So, my firm gave them my name and information. Now, each of these 40-50 stupid fund families etc, are sending me some weekly email. So, I'm ticked off, and I read none of them. Man, it's just soooo stupid.  

Kankle, seriously, your firm doesn't like it if you call with a product? Doesn't like, and doesn't allow are two different things.

Call with a product---whether you actually sell it to the person is immaterial.  In my office (s. NJ) we've been talking a lot about urgency.  I always use a product-there's a finite time frame and it allows the prospect to make a decision one way or another.  My firm pushes fee-based, annuitized, etc, but that comes later--my message is, just get the account open and get funds in it, and then penetrate the other stuff. 

I doubt people lose sleep over not having a managed mutual fund wrap account. 

Yes, bonds can be commoditized, buut when it's a new issue, or a special deal, people like that.  Their existing advisor is likely not doing this for them. 

Some people will automatically reject you.  That's fine.  Others will tell you, "I'm not interested in X, but I am interested in Y".  Then, find Y and call them back. 

Others will bite on what your offering is. 

 I even read the Bond Buyer and pre-call weeks in advance, even if it's a competitve issue.  Why?  Gets a conversation going and some people aren't going to be ready right then and there to bite.  That's fine.  Or, it primes them for future calls and conversation, and potentially a drop-in when in the area to introduce yourself.  This has worked very well for me.