Good stuff!

The thing I like to see and take away from posts like this are the dates first contact was made.  Many of them are over a year ago and now coming to fruition.  As much as we’d like to have immediate sales, activity now will breed results both now (hopefully) and down the road.  Takingnames must do an excellent job of keeping on top of his prospects, yet another reason not to give up on a prospect if things don’t happen immediately.

I was wondering where you get your lists from, I use salesgenie a lot, but that has not been working as well recently.

There are certainly exceptions, but what often happens with cold calling is that nothing happens until the person forgets that they were reached via a cold call. 

I’d like to see the # of dials, contacts, etc. stats for this campaign too.

I was wondering where you get your lists from, I use salesgenie a lot, but that has not been working as well recently.

[quote=anonymous]There are certainly exceptions, but what often happens with cold calling is that nothing happens until the person forgets that they were reached via a cold call. 

Cold calling for retirement/fee biz will generally lead to a longer process pipeline. Of course Ira Walker got it down to a couple weeks. Product sales can shorten the pipeline to days or weeks. Generally there are two types of prospects, those with money now and those with money later. Bill Good calls these cherrys and green cherrys. The goal with a green cheery is to stay in touch on a regular basis, building a relationship, so when the dough is ready to roll you are the natural choice. This verus the norm where the advisor who contacted the prospect once six months ago calls a week before the money due date.

Quite a valuble pipeline can be built just "Finding the future money due." Commercial insurance agents work this way. They cold call businesses with two questions: When is your renewal date?" And "Can we compete for your business?"

The part I love about being an indy and cold calling are days like today. I have nothing on the calendar, so time to bang out 200-300 calls in jeans and a polo. And if i happen to set something for this afternoon, I am only 5 miles from my house for a quick change.

At my office, almost know one cold calls. I suspect it is the same for many offices (with the exception of commodities boiler rooms or aggressive FA’s).



I am still scratching my head over it.

What kind of office are you in? Established office working on referrals? Then they probably don’t need to cold call.

The part I love about being an indy and cold calling are days like
today. I have nothing on the calendar, so time to bang out 200-300
calls in jeans and a polo. And if i happen to set something for this
afternoon, I am only 5 miles from my house for a quick change.

The better part of being indy is having a second office set up at the house and cold calling in your pjs (which is what I did this morning)

I am currently planning the layout of the new house i am building and in this house I have included an office(don’t currently have one) so that will be 10x better.

Squash - I just did the same thing. My house has a stand alone office - I am very tempted to not renew my lease on my “real” office. However, I think my wife would kill me if I stayed at home all day.

Do you have clients come to your “office”? That is my concern, if I don’t have a real location

Mostly no. However,I do occasionally invite my A clients over. I tell them to come over on a Saturday, we will review the accounts and I will cook out on the grill. They seem to like that.

When I first went indy, I worked out of my house and used a virtual office (like Regus). I would rent the conf room for meetings. Nobody had any clue that I worked from home.

In my area, office space is $$$. It would save me about 5 grand a month to go back to that set up. However, I am not sure how to handle the two assistants I have working for me.

I am curious - don’t some clients/prospects get nervous about having an investment advisor that works out of a house, or even just a single-room office?  My area is overrun with wirehouses, banks and a couple of mammoth indy firms (like 25+ employees).  So people just equate nice offices and multiple employees with investment advisory practices.  Maybe this varies from region to region and city to city?  Some clients find it strange that I only have me, my assistant, and one other advisor in my office…and I have REALLY nice office space on the water.

I went indy a few years ago, then RIA. I didn’t notice the difference between RIA and indy-b/d. I don’t think clients understand it.

I was worried about going out on my own after working at a wire for so many years. But I figured I only need to move half of my clients to break even (since the payout was so much higher). Fortunelly all but one client moved with me.

But, I do sell assuming the prospect will have an issue with a small shop. I explain the relationship between me and the custodian. How the checks and balances work to keep me from stealing their money. I also tell them it is my dream to build a multi-generational business that I can hand over to my kids. At that point the prospect WANTS to “help me out” and gives me the business.

I do think you need to assume that being a small shop will be an issue with some,but not all. I once had someone who game me a million dollar account becasue she didn’t think she had enough money for Smith Barney.

Month 25 in retail.