EDJ Eval/Grad and paranoia
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Well I’m getting ready to head out for Eval/Grad with EDJ and it’s been a pretty crazy journey for me thus far in regard to prospecting. For those from EDJ I welcome your thoughts and opinions regarding my paranoia.
Here’s the breakdown of my first 5 weeks of door knocking:<?: prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Weeks 1-2: I started out door knocking and sounding like a total salesman at their door step but somehow managed to receive phone numbers, probably to get me to stop rebuttaling and to get me off their door step. I cross checked with white pages.com just to make sure the numbers were legit..surprisingly most where.
Week 3: I used a directory and scrubbed the numbers against the do not call registry to make 25 first contacts per day. Did it for a week.
Weeks 4 -5: I found my groove at the doorstep and my contacts are much better now. Of my 25 daily first F2F contacts I’d say 5 are crappy and all the rest are decent. For every day I’d go out it seems as if I meet 1-3 people who would probably open an account within a week. The other day I had one person specifically ask me to call back with GE & Ford bonds, one person who said he’d like to get into the stock market and to call him back soon with a recommendation, and one who said he’d like to put $1000 into the stock market. This was in one day and each day I find a few contacts like this.
So here’s my concern, after prospecting week my contacts from weeks 1-3 are so crappy that I might as well have never even prospected during that time. Of my 525 prospects in jones link about 250 are even decent and of those 250 there’s probably 10-15 who would open an account within a month or two. I feel like I’m going to eval/grad with only 250 prospects of which I’m scheduled to call nearly all of them. I know that if I continue to make the type of quality door knocks that I’ve made within the past few weeks that I’ll build a very successful business. I’m just paranoid that I’m going to get canned even though I’m confident that I’ll be successful if given enough time. My numbers may look crappy for the first few months but I should be doing great after that.
My biggest fear is that EDJ will give me the boot before I even have the chance to come out of my shell. I really enjoy this job and would hate to lose it.
Any thoughts from EDJ folks are welcomed.
You are not going to get canned. Just open accounts. Don’t worry about commissions, just keep adding prospects and open accounts. You are doing the work just keep grinding.
You’re doing well. I enjoy reading your updates. Keep it up.
And bear in mind – some of the good contacts you made will be rude to you when you repeat, but some of the weak contacts will respond to you when you go back.
Oh, and don’t sell anybody a Ford bond! (I don’t think we even have those in inventory.)
Echo what Ron said. They know in the beginning commissions will be small. But keep adding prospects, and keep opening accounts. I mean, don’t open B.S. accounts, since you’re only fooling yourself for a while. But really focus on creating as many relationships as possible as quickly as you can.
I will tell you something…For the first few years, I never bought into the “open as many accounts as humanly possible and the commissions will follow” routine. I thought “oh, I’ll only focus on bigger accounts”. Well, after a few years, and talking to lots of veterans, the one common thread among them was that they all opened tons of accounts their first few years (I’m referring to scratch starters, not people that inherited stuff). As I started looking closer at this, what I realized was, it didn’t matter how much the account was, but that (as long as they weren’t total deadbeats) opening and funding the acccount established a formal relationship. You could call them. They would take your calls. They could refer people. They would come to seminars and bring people. They had family and friends. And you just can’t do the same thing with prospects. So no matter how insignificant the account size, look at the relationships, not the assets. You will have PLENTY of time later on to pare back your book (through Goodknights, Partner Plans, changing firms, whatever).
Thanks for the input guys. I'll admit that I'm a little thick headed and wasn't a complete believer in door knocking until I found that it actually works. Sure, there are people out there that slammed the door in my face but I've also walked up to a door where they've said "you know, it's funny you should stop by because I was just talking to my wife the other day about setting up a college fund for Jr and.....” <?: prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
According to my FAST start plan in my FA performance summary page, I'm supposed to make only 25 first contacts per week and 100 repeat contacts for my first 17 weeks in the field following eval grad and before PDP. I'm thinking I'm going to flip those numbers and do at least 100 first contacts and only 25 repeat contacts for the first 8 weeks. I'm definitely going to make sure I make repeat contacts but I’m going to concentrate on making more first contacts for the first few months out of eval grad because I'd like to have at least 1500 prospects in Jones Link by PDP. I live in a suburb that has a lot of retirees and I've been shocked by how many haven't been approached by an EDJ FA.
I feel that I'll achieve success by:
- three years of adding 200-500 new prospects into Jones Link per month
-scheduling and conducting as many appointments as possible
- having 25-50% of my weekly prospecting time consist of repeat contacts
- sending out thank you notes and completing all other admin work each night.
Of course the busier I become the less time for prospecting but this is just my plan for the early years.
Baster, if you do 100 first contacts and 25 repeat contacts every week – well, do the math. You’ll be meeting 100 people but only going back to 25 of them. If you meet someone and qualify them as a prospect, you must go back to them either in person or on the phone.
Didn’t everybody… Calling your state from a St Louis number, that always goes overwell… I would have a list of 500-750 people and call them over and over again…Don’t burn good people because you will have to pitch certain investment( We did C and BAC, a guy who won triple crown, but was out of the business by PDP was telling people the dividend was guaranteed.)
One thing I’d mention is be careful about over-evaluating contacts made on the door step. Many of the contacts that seemed very positive may never follow through, and some contacts that seemed poor end up being very responsive over the phone. So, don’t get your hopes too high on the good ones and don’t discount the people you only get numbers from. Often you won’t see the “right” response until you’ve dripped on them a while, and sometimes a change in circumstances (job loss with 401k rollover) suddenly makes them receptive to your message.