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Prospecting Calls: Reframe Your Purpose, Reap the Benefits

By David RichmanManaging Director, Advisor Institute

What is your purpose when you call a prospect? If you answered "to get a meeting," we would like to offer a mindset shift to help you reframe your purpose.

What if you reframed your purpose to a mutual exploration, to see if it makes sense to have a first meeting? Subtle difference? Hardly. The benefits are considerable. Here are our top three.

  1. Avoid premature pivots. Rather than searching for opportunities to ask for a first meeting, a more fluid conversation evolves. Executed well, there is no abrupt, potentially uncomfortable pivot. Instead, scheduling a get-together becomes a natural extension of the discussion.
  1. Gain deeper understanding. Your genuine curiosity manifests through thoughtful follow-up questions to help you discover more about the person, his or her circumstances and the degree to which you may be of value. This approach can help you assess whether getting together is a sensible next step.
  1. Improve time efficiency. Time is one of your most valuable assets. Long-shot first meetings reduce the amount of time you have to serve existing clients. This reframing of purpose will serve as an "anti-selection" mechanism, increasing the probability that those you meet are more likely to be a fit.

Bottom line: Reframe your perception of the purpose of prospecting calls from "get a meeting." It can have dramatic implications for your new-client pipeline.