New Cold Calling Campaign
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I need to get a new cold calling campaign going again. Is there anyone on here that has been knocking the ball off the cover on their cold calls?
I will be doing some evening residence calls and need a little inspiration.
I'm also not too sure on what I should call about: a muni bond yielding 5% or asking tough questions like "What is your advisor's plan for how to deal with this market?", or "How do you feel about the possibility of retiring at the wrong the time?"
Are you sure that you want to do this? I think that it’s one tough way to make money. The DNC list makes this awfully hard. Sorry that I can’t be of help. I do have lots of success with daytime calls to business owners.
If you want to call residences, I strongly suggest that you back up a step first. Call all of your clients. Get referrals from them and then call. My guess is that it will take 100+ numbers to get 1 appt cold with residences. With referrals, it will take 2-3 numbers to get 1 appointment.I agree with Anon, it seems like residences are a really low return activity. Why not by a company directory - there are plenty of places you can get them, let me know if you need one, i can PM you (no i dont sell them, or endorse any of the names, but i;ve had some good experiences) and call people at their place of businesses. Or go to Lawyers.com and call attorneys between 5 and 7 pm. People who dont have their residential numbers on the DNC list are people who dont have computers, we dont want to talk to those people.
I had some success calling businesses this evening.
"Good evening, this is Akkula with XYZ. Have you or your employees had the opportunity to work with XYZ before? Here at XYZ we only cater to high net worth individuals who have at least X amount of investable assets as well as successful businesses. We reserve our wealth management capabilities for these exclusive markets. Have you or any of your employees ever needed to use the services of a high net worth advisor?" I think I may try to stick with this kind of script since the first and only guy I was able to reach with the script wanted to justify to me why he was a high net worth investor. Anyone have any tips, though, on how to get past a gatekeeper? My boss kind of scolded me for not clearly identifying myself to the gatekeeper ad nauseum when I called. How many barriers can your own firm place in front of you? This job is tough enough!Akkula - all the firms have their stupid rules. If i told you what my firm expects us to say, you would crack up - there is no way you could get thru it all and still have someone on the other line when you are done. But your boss must be an idiot. There are certain times when a boss needs to look away a bit from the rules. This is one of those times - its not like he is gonna get a ding on his u4 if you get caught not indentifying yourself properly.
For the gatekeeper, try sending something prior to the call and just tell her you are following up on some info he recently received from you. Or dont send anything but tell her or him you did and say that anyway.I am supposed to work for a top wirehouse. To me it sometimes seems like the people in my office don't really have a true concept of the building a real book using your sweat verusus having something given to you. There really seems to be a large disconnect sometimes. I am about the only rep in the office that consistently does cold calling. Sometimes you just wonder where people's heads are at.
To me, the spirit of some of these safeguards is the important thing to remember. The intent is to keep us from defauding and deceiving investors about investments. Since I am not marketing investments to the gatekeeper, shouldn't I only give them enough information to get them to let me talk to the boss without outright lying to them? Isn't this more of an art than a science? Jeez, cold calling is hard enough!I always say, “This is Anonymous from Anonymous Financial. My B/D is XYZ. I currently am contracted with the following 35 insurance companies ABC, DEF, FKD, DKFJF, FJOOS, … ZYWT. I am going to try to get the person whom I am calling to meet with me for 5 minutes. My real intent is to get him as a client and have him invest all of his money with me and buy all of his insurance from me. I also may want to charge him for a financial plan. Additionally, I am going to ask him to open up his rolodex and refer me to everyone who he knows. My investing philosophy is as follows… I am going to try to meet with him on company time. Is Joe Smith available to speak right now?”
Isn't that much better than, "Joe Smith, please." I tell the GK as little as possible. It's not that I'm hiding anything. It's just that it's stupid to accept a "no" from someone who can't give you a "yes". My phone language seems to change day to day, but it's all basically the same. This is fairly typical for me. I do the best when I follow all of her questions with a question. Me: "Joe Smith, please." (I get put through, or..) GK: "May I tell him who's calling?" Me: "Anonymous. Is Joe available?" (I get put through, or...) GK: "Will he know why you are calling?" Me: "I hope so." Is Joe available? (I get put through, or...) GK: "From what firm" Me: "Anonymous Financial. Is Joe available? (I get put through, or...) GK: "What's the nature of this call?" Me: "With all due respect, I understand that your job is to screen his calls. If he is available, I will be more than happy to play 20 questions with you before you connect me to him. I've heard great things about Joe and I'm trying to meet him. Is he available?" GK: "One moment please." (and then I get put through) or GK: "He's not available." Me: "I apologize for giving you such a hard time. I'll let him know that you are doing an excellent job at call screening. It's truly an important skill. When's the best time to reach him?" GK: "He's in and out all day." Me: "Well at least when I call him back, you'll be able to put me through. Have a great day."One of gems I took away from doing the Sandler training was when dealing with gatekeepers interrupt their pattern:
GK: Good morning ABC Me: Hi (enthusiastically), this is Preluder for Joe...Is he in? GK:Who is..um... I mean..yes...just a moment. It works a notable amount of the time, when I run into someone that I don't catch off guard with my lead in when they ask what co. I'm from I'll say: I'm with the (local neighborhood) branch of ABC (purposely leaving out the part of my BD name that hints financial stuff), is he in? For some reason that seems to help. I agree with Anonymous, it helps to answer their question and come right back with a question of your own to keep control of the call.Here’s a great approach – and almost always works.
Call the office of some senior exec at some decent comopany. Look at their proxy, get the names of officers, directors. Look at their web sites, most companies will basically post an organization chart (there's one outfit here that has the names and extensions of about 60 execs and PhD / MD researchers listed). This is what you do: call their number, or general office HQ number if you don;t have an extension, and say "Hi, my name is Mr. Variance and I'm called Bob to confirm our appointment for _________, at 1300 hrs. blah blah blah. " Now the ball's in his court. He'lll either call you back himself, thinking maybe he does know you and maybe he did set something up and didn;t write it down, or he'll have his secretary call and ask who the fuck are you. I'll leave the rest to your creative imaginations as what to do next. But if no one calls back then -- this takes some guys -- show up at his office at the appointed time and see what happens. Of course to make this work you'd better have an aligator briefcase and Feraggamo loafers.What will happen is
1) You'll waste a lot of time being stood up 2) If you don't get stood up, Bob will know that you are a dishonest person There's nothing like starting a relationship that needs to be built on trust by telling a lie. I think that I'll pass on this approach.Have you actually used this? How do you explain the alleged appointment when you are asked point blank?
Also, are you just hoping the client is qualified and interested? It just seems like a real long shot and not a solid start to building trust. If it works for you, great. It’s certainly not for the weak!
yesits a long shot, but then how many clients do the cold walkers get? And I am defining an account as $250,000 equivalent AUM.
In the ifrst place you don't show up -- some body always calls to ask what you are talking about. "Who nmade the appointment?" "Where do I know you from?" "I don't remember talking to you? I can't place you". Then you have a milion ways to go: 1- "I must have you confused w/ the other Bob" 2- "I'm not sure we'd even work for you. The firms min acct is $1MM." 3- The ice breaker -- "I understand your hobby is railroads from the 1880. I'm very interested in the Paducahah and Southern myself". 4- Evenif they won't talk raise some arcane topic like trading the VIX. Send em some stuff then call back a week later and see if they had a chance to read it. be creative but avoid conning em too muchI am 100% with anon. This so-called approach is both unethical and ineffective. Even if it were effective, it would never justify intentionally starting a relationship with deception.
And what, exactly, is “$250,000 equivalent AUM?” Never heard that term uttered before.
You certainly sound like someone with no or little actual experience in this industry. And given your tendency to dishonest prospecting, that’s not a bad thing.
Snags,
You've been asking for inspiration to get on the phone for months. It's all aversion behavior. Hate to break it to you ladies ... cold calling works. If you want more clients pick UP THE PHONE and make the calls. Just my $0.02