Ok my first day is the books! It well a bit better than I expected even though I didnt reach my target of contacts. iI’m pretty proud to have picked up the phone because I had very heavy call reluctance. It is really because of all the great advices here that I’ve been able to pass through this weekness. Thanks all! So here are my daily stats;
Calls: 54
Contacts: 14
Email adress: 7
Meetings: 1 !!! Just felt GREAT!

I’ve sens emails to all and prepared myself to call them back in a month just to «checking in and see if their situation has changed and how are they positionning their investment with the new POTUS, blah blah blah.»

I’ll ramp up my game tomorrow to make at least 100 calls to business owners (54 this am took me 2h15).

Building my brand and spreading my name

A few suggestions to alter your pitch...

"Hi Mr._______, this is XXX from XXX. I understand you're busy, so I will explain we do in less than a minute, that way I don't waste your time, does that sound fair? (agreement)

"Ok _____, where do you invest your money now?" (stocks, mutual funds, 401k blah blah...collect some ammunition from them so you can blow it up and challenge what they are doing later in your pitch. As they tell you, dig deeper and deeper, get everything you can)

"Ok _______, and what are you doing to protect your money and generate income?"(probably nothing, if it's something than most likely it is not enough)

*Now you blow up what they are doing and put some fear in them, get their attention*

"The reason I ask _______ is because most investors aren't aware of the dangerous environment we are in now with the stock market. You've worked your whole life to grow your money with _________. The problem is, the past 7 years artificially low interest rates have created a bubble similar to 2008...I'm sure you're aware how that ended. The FED has made it clear that rates will be increased in the near future...the easy money party in stocks is over. Buying/holding is like buying/holding real estate in 2007/2008, what are you trying to gain? Maybe another 5% with 30% downside risk?

Our specialty is a strategy that produces monthly income for our clients, regardless if the market goes up, down, or sideways, while protecting that money they've worked their whole lives saving and lowering taxes on their investment income. "

*Set the appointment*

"What I would like to do is take 15 to 20 minutes to show you how we generate income for our clients, protect them in increasingly volatile market conditions, and lower the taxes that they actually pay. This is strictly informational. If it makes sense, great, we can set up a time to speak. If not, I won't waste anymore of your time. Does that sound fair?"

(If he says yes, set a specific time and date, make him choose the time and date. The further out the appointment is, the more likely this guy isn't showing up).

After he gives you a time, lock down the appointment...

"9AM on Thursday morning. Now ______, I am sure you are a busy man, I am as well. I am going to be taking about an hour to get ready for our appointment so I can get everything to you as efficiently as possible, aside from a zombie appocalypse, do you forsee anything that would get in the way of that time on Thursday?"

If he says no to your original appointment offer, don't just roll over. Or if he declines an appointment but asks for an email, don't take that as a positive either. That's just a non-confrontational way of saying no. When he says no, this is where the actual sale starts and where you'll gain his respect which will make an even better prospect for you. If he says no, you have to re-blow him up similar to before, challenge what he believes in the market to get his ear.

No....

(for example)

"Listen _______, I understand that you've been holding onto that stock portfolio in recent years. Of course, you've seen it go up because it was a bull market fueled by low interest rates. Just because that worked yesterday doesn't mean it will work tomorrow...that type of thinking is what turns investors upside down. You need to realize that the stock market is not a buyer's market right now, it's a seller's market. It's not a matter of if you will take a beating, it's when. We specialize in wealth preservation and income generation, ESPECIALLY in times like this. Like I said before, this will just take me 15 minutes to show you. I won't ask for your business...no commitments...nothing like that. At the very least, you'll be more educated on the fate of your current investments. If you like what I have to say, we can speak at a later date, if not, I won't bug you again. What day this week works best for you?"

A few additional tips that I would have for you...

1. Don't call with the goal of collecting or sending emails. You won't sell anything (or much at least) through email. Email should be used to confirm appointment times, send an appointment reminder...that's about it. People that ask to see info through email are usually just saying no in a nice way. Call them out on that and get an actual appointment.

2. You also should focus on your activity and how you spend your day. 54 calls won't cut it. If you did that in 2 hours, what did you do with the other 8-9 hours of your day? Don't focus so much on contacts/suspects/people that say call back in a month....what you have to focus on is quality appointment sets. Don't consider someone that says "call me after the election" a prospect...it has to be clear that your message has gotten across to them.

3. The best prospects, in my opinion, come from confrontation. Challenging what they do, their beliefs on the market, their perception of how to invest. Don't roll over to people on these calls, you have to have that confrontation with them to get them to conclude that what you do for your clients may be better than what they have going on now. Most advisors out there are going to give them the 'yes' service, tell them what they want to hear...you'll stand out by challenging them and educating them on a better approach to investing.

ComBroker thanks a lot for your insights and advices. I really like the script you propose. I think it uses psychology in a very effective way. I modified my text after reading yours and reading Robert Cialdini's new book Pre-Suasion. I'll use it tomorrow and give you feedbacks on it. With the new script I figured it will take me about 50%-100% more time than before, so about 3-4h for 50 to 60 calls. I'm willing to take this challenge as I think the new script will provide more meaningful conversations and therefore a higher likelihood to set appointments. I based my number of 50 calls on the assumption that I will reach about 40 people a week (50 calls x 4 days x 20%) and set 2-3 new meetings. So on a monthly basis meet 8-12 people and close 3-4 new accounts of roughly 400k ($1.2M-$1.6M/Month). People on my list are entrepreneurs with company's revenue of about 10-25M/y. So there are not that many people that qualified (about 500). How many calls should I make to reach my goal of 10M in 7 months ComBroker?

You should only be focusing on new quality appointments set. I have my guys focus on 20 contacts in a day and a minimum of 3 set appointments per day. To get the 20 contacts, it could be 100 calls, could be 150, could be 200...doesn't matter, they call until they get there. Focusing on this a lot of my new guys freshly licensed will see waves of business coming in right off the bat pretty quickly.

Make sure that you concentrate on structuring your day as efficiently as possible. For example, try to get all of your appointments set between 2-6PM so you can use 8AM to 2PM to keep setting new appointments and keep feeding your sales funnel. I don't like running appointments on Mondays because people tend to be in crappy moods and Friday afternoons people tend to be real flaky...so I use those times especially for appointment setting. You want to get to a point where you are legitimately overwhelmed with your calendar.

You have to adjust the way that you are setting your goals. What you laid out was a goal with the minimum amount of activity that you think you will need to get there. If I focused on running 12 appointments a month with new prospective clients I would have failed out of the business years ago. I run at least 2 new appointments per day, focus on a minimum of 40 per month.

It looks like in you experience you close roughly 25% of your appointments, avg account size of 400k.

If you focused your activity on running 25 appointments in a month, little over 1 per working day, you would be looking at 6-7 new clients per month, 2.5-3mm per month, and double your goal in that timeframe. Everything that you do would be the same...you know how to set them, you know how to run them, you know how to close them and what that closing rate looks like...now you just need the activity to put you in a position to get in front of more people.

This is a great thread, with some sage advise from Combroker. I'm at a firm where I am told cold calling is basically dead as you would have to check each number on a do not call list before calling. Is it different at your firm? My firm we are not allowed to purchase outside leads...does your firm provide leads? are you able to just go nuts on calling random prospects all day?