Financial Advisor Blog on Marketing, Lead Generation, Prospecting and Sales

In the last post, I discussed the only three things that determine how much money you earn.

• The quality of the prospects you speak to
• The number of prospects you speak to
• The quality of your presentation

This post is part two which focuses on getting enough inquiries--getting more prospects to talk with.

For most people involved in sales, the solution to more prospects is one word: MORE. If you use direct mail to get responses of interested prospects, then instead of sending 500, send 5000. If you make money from 500, then you make 10x as much from 5000. I've heard all types of foolish responses to this suggestion to gain more prospects. Here's two of the most foolish:

1. But I don't have enough time to follow up on all of those responses! Well then send only as many as fits in the time you have or hire someone to help you and leverage their time to make more money
2. But I don't have the money to send 5000. Well then borrow it! That's what Intel and IBM and ATT do. They borrow money from people to build plants, hire people, etc. If you have a winning formula (i.e. you make money from 500 mail pieces), then it wont matter if you borrow money on your credit card at 21% because you will quickly pay it back from profit.

In other words, stop being a wimp and think BIG. If you want to have more prospects, to make more money, then once you have a marketing method that works, just expand it. Put your hand into your pocket, take out some money and INVEST in your business.

A more advanced problem is when you simply cannot increase your marketing because your cost per prospect will rise. Here's an example. If you advertise on Google using pay per click marketing, you will get so many responses from an advertisement (keyword) for "annuities in Memphis" if you are willing to spend $4 per response. But if you want to triple your responses, you may need to bid more per prospect. You may need to spend an average of $7 per response to get more prospects because you are in competition with other advertisers for the same or similar keyword.

If your marketing model won't handle a higher cost per prospect, then you need a second marketing method. You need to uncover a second way to generate more prospects at the $4 per lead or change your model (e.g. charge your prospects more) to justify the $7 per lead price.

Next post, we address the issue of a higher prospect conversion ratio.