While it is nice to believe that each of our meetings has equal impact, the reality is that only a handful, perhaps 2 or 3, actually produce the greatest impact on future business. The ability to repeat those relatively few high impact appointments has an enormous impact on your overall success. In this episode of Money Script Monday, Sal shows you how to turn your best appointments into a repeatable process, resulting in better execution, stronger relationships, and more business.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version of it!

Video transcription

Hi, my name is Sal Mendoza, and welcome back to Money Script Monday. Today, we're going to be talking about how to turn your best appointments into a repeatable process.

But first, we're going to talk about the preparation and what is necessary to do before you even engage in an appointment. Then, we're going to move on into the execution and what that looks like. And finally, one of the things that maybe a lot of us suffer from is what does that follow through look like. So if you're ready, let's go.

Preparation

The first phase of the preparation is you want to define your high impact appointments (HIA).

During a career, or during even a year, we're going to meet with hundreds of clients. And one of the mistakes that we do as financial advisors/agents is that we categorize everyone in one large group.

What I want to try to do is I want to be able to help you determine that each of those actually belong in a subset.

For instance, if you're going to be approaching a small business, a small business is approached completely different than let's say a regular, typical client at a home. A small business is going to be talking about different features like benefits. So let's go into more of an example.

Let's say that I was going to call a small business, I would probably want to prepare myself and think, "Okay, what do I exactly want to do... What do I want to talk about? I don't want to talk about benefits, maybe what I want to bring up something they've never heard of before because your typical small business already offers your medical, your dental, your 401(k).”

Most small businesses are now offering a Roth 401(k) so maybe I can go with something a little bit unusual. Maybe a screwdriver where they already have a hammer and maybe some other tools.

I'll come in with, let's say premium finance, but the premium finance that I'm going to be talking about is not your typical five-to-one ratio. Your clients, the key employees are going to have to have a net worth of let's say 5 million or an income of $400,000.

Because I've already done my research and I know they're small to medium I know that most likely, they don't have that kind of net worth or that kind of income but they're probably making a little over $100,000 and a lot of times that when I'm coming to approach them, especially if I'm using a life insurance product, a lot of businesses or individuals, don't want anything to do with collateral.

So start to look at that group. Start to jot down all the things that are the highlights. Let's say Kaizen… there is no collateral requirement and no net worth requirement. In fact, the only thing is that you have to have an income of $100,000 and you have to be able to pay premiums for the next five years.

Let's move on into the power of scripting. Now, there is a great book out there by Dr. Frank Luntz, and in his book he talks about the power of scripting, and I put three phrases down here. No worries, imagine, and long term.

Let's just take that first one, no worries. Believe it or not it doesn't sound like a very powerful phrase, but he talks about how important and how much penetration that phrase actually has on an individual or on a businessperson when you talk about the phrase "no worries."

For instance, let's say the owner, his name is Dan. "Dan, no worries. I'm going to be able to provide a benefit that none of your competition right now can offer unless they go exclusively through me. And since I'm not going to offer them this, this will be solely for you and for your key employees."

Finally, we're going to talk about prepared questions. Now prepared questions are also very vital. The first time I ever heard someone talk about prepared questions was Don Blanton. Most of you guys know Don Blanton as the owner of Circle of Wealth, and he created this 10 questions.

And all of a sudden, what it did for me, what I was able to do for a lot of you and some of you are brand new to LifePro, and so we have created these prepared questions.

One of them is real simple. When you're in front of a client, "What keeps you up at night?" And here's the reason that that question is so powerful. It's not the question is that it's already prepared before you actually speak to the client.

When you don't have something in front of you, what happens? You start to reach for questions, and so if you come in with let's say 10 questions and depending on how everything is going in those first few minutes, you can then go ahead and ask maybe three or four of those questions depending on how that appointment is coming.

Execution

Let's now move into what we call the execution.

Less is almost always more and that's what we call the two to one ratio.

There was a Greek philosopher back in like 350 BC, and he was actually the one who coined, "You should use your two ears to your mouth in the correct ratio." In fact, what he was really just trying to say is something that we all know, but something happens. And I don't know exactly what happens, but when we get in front of a client the thing that we want to talk about is we want to talk about us. We want to do a knowledge dump. We want to do a product dump.

We basically just want to start to talk just because we're in front of a client, and we think we need to show off.

But really, we need to turn that around and we need to be able to just go ahead with these prepared questions is after the question is to sit idly with a piece of paper and a pen, ask that question and start to write down some of the notes that you're going to help to address whatever it is that's causing him that pain, or what's keeping him up at night.

So, it's important to use your two ears and your one mouth in the correct proportion.

Let's move on to the final piece of the execution is the metaphors and intuition.

So, with metaphors, I think one of the great speakers out in the circuit today is a man by the name of Tom Hegna. And he has several books that are out there and most of you guys have maybe read a book or two.

I was recently reading one of his books, "The Seven Steps to Retirement", which is a phenomenal book. And in that book, whether it be an advisor or you hand it out to a client, in one of the chapters it goes and talks about a story.

And so, what it does is it puts that client in that story, and that story was real simple. I'm going to give you a little preview what that story sounds like and looks like because you'll kind of get right into it.

So basically, the story describes about a couple. And that couple have always wanted to drive in Death Valley in a van, in a souped-up van, right, with the KC tires, and the knobby tires and the KC lights.

And so, they rent this van. One of the things about Death Valley is that it gets really hot, 120, 125, 132 degrees so they wanted to be sure that this van had what? Yes, air conditioning. So they made sure that it was a souped-up van, that it had the KC Lights, the knobby tires, the AC.

And of course, they had their food, they had their water, and there they go. The next thing you know they've been gone for a few hours, and all of a sudden, Mr. who is driving it, realizes when he looks down that they're almost out of gas. Not only are they almost out of gas, but the little red lights that indicates that they're almost out of gas is now on.

So, the first thing that's going to happen to him is what, panic, sweating, "What am I going to do?" you know. And there's no gas station anywhere near because where are they, they're in Death Valley having a great time.

That's the same kind of feeling that a client has when they don't prepare for retirement and they're like 15 or 18 or 20 years into retirement and they realize that their money is almost gone.

It's important to be able to weave some kind of story during that first meeting.

Follow-Through

Finally, we're going to talk about the follow-through, the 1-3-7 sequence.

I have to admit that I have worked with thousands of agents in the 20 years that I've been in this business. And I feel that probably this right here is one area that I think everyone can actually improve on.

So, I'm going to give you guys a little tip on this follow-through process that I learned recently.

I want everyone to grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I want you just to write down one, three and seven.

What's nice about this is that every client that you meet is going to fall into three different categories.

There are your high-end clients, there are your medium clients, and your low-end clients. We're going to start with the low-end clients first.

Day One: Email

Let's say you engage and you realize that they don't have anything or that they're already with another financial advisor, and most likely there's nothing really there. However, you still want to go ahead, and the following day is you're going to send an email. Thank them for coming. You want to maybe have a couple of bullet points and a summary of your discussions, and if they had any questions in the future, they have your contact information.

Day Three: Call

Let's move on into a medium sized client. Let's say this is a client that there's some potential. Let's say there is some qualified money that maybe there's an annuity that's possible or, if they're willing to, move over some of that 401(k) money or after the match you might be able to put that into some kind of permanent insurance, maybe like an indexed universal life (IUL).

That client you're going to do the same thing as your low end. The next day is you're going to send him an email. But what you're going to do is on day three, even if you made an appointment on day three no matter what, you're going to go ahead and call them and let them know that you were thinking about them. Did they have any additional questions? If it's a voicemail, it's going to be the same.

Day Seven: Mail

Then finally, is you're going to have your high-end clients. Your high-end clients you're going to do exactly the same. You're going to send that email after the first day. Then, you're going to make that call on day number three, but you're going to do is something uniquely different on day seven.

On day seven, you're going to actually mail something. Now, that can be anything. It can be as easy as a little "Thank You" note, or, I don't know if many of you have checked your mail lately, but one of the great things that realtors do is they always seem to send like a note pad or something magnetic.

In other words, they send something out to say, "Hey, thank you for taking my call," or, "We're interested in doing business with you."

So, I want to try to empower you to do the same thing for your high-end clients is to write a thank you note, or go ahead and send out a pad and a pen so every time they sit at their desk they have that pad and that pen they were thinking about you.

That wraps it up on today’s lessons of how to turn your best appointments into a repeatable process.

We’re always interested in hearing your feedback on this topic. Please reach out to us at 1-888-LIFEPRO with any of your questions or comments. My name is Sal. Thank you for watching Money Script Monday. I hope you all have a great day. Thank you.