How To Plan A Killer Week Of Prospecting

Let me hit record. All right, guys, so here's what I'm going to talk about today. I've been having a lot of conversations lately with advisors who, quite frankly, when it comes to prospecting, they feel stuck as far as what is my game plan every week? And what I've come to learn is when you don't have a couple things, my goal today is this. I'm going to walk through what I do every week because I think it allows me to be super productive. It allows me to prospect effectively. And I know some of you are already doing this as well, but it also allows me to do. It allows me to compress time. And to me, that's the most important thing. Right? We don't have a ton of time, but I also know a lot of folks that are going to jump on this webinar.

You don't just play the role of business development sales. You have other roles within your organization you have to play. Sometimes it's, I have accounts to manage. Some of you might own your own company, so you got to play CEO, and you can't just spend all of your time selling. I deal with it every week myself. So it's, what can we do to be more effective.

With our time every week? But make sure we're still outselling, we're still outgrowing. Because even some of my own clients that I work with from time to time, you know, or not from time to time, when I meet with them will be like, yeah, I didn't get a chance to really do anything with business development because my clients overwhelmed me. Right. So to me, that all comes back to how are you managing your calendar?

Because we know if you're not managing it, it's. It will manage.

And here's the three challenges I see pop up the most right now, and what it's keeping people from having a good weekly strategy with prospecting.

The first one is.

Not going into each week with a strategy. So Monday morning, you wake up and you don't know what your strategy is going to be as far as getting your message out prospecting. And here's what happens when you don't have a strategy. You resort to what you know.

You resort to what is easiest. And for most of us, what we know what is easiest is I'll pick up the phone a couple times this week. So you make some random cold calls over the course of the week. You look back and, yeah, I made about 25 calls. Weren't effective at all. It's because you didn't have a Game plan. Whenever we don't have a plan, we resort back to what we know. And I guarantee everybody that's on this call. What were we trained to do to sell in this industry? Cold call.

The second thing I see that is keeping advisors from really getting after it every week from business development standpoint is.

You'Re seeking a script. You're seeking a magic bullet versus a process.

And this is the one thing I tell our clients. Our biggest win when we work with advisors and agencies isn't telling you what to say. It isn't giving you the script, the perfect script, on the phone or an email or on social media. It's teaching you a process that you can go do yourself forever.

It's the old phrase we've all heard. You know, you give a man a fish, he eats for one meal. You give him a fishing pole and teaching him how to fish, he eats for a lifetime. That's our goal. We want to teach you a process. And that's prospecting is a process. It's not a secret sauce, it's not a script. And then the third challenge I often see is the constant desire for short term results.

Now, I don't blame anybody on this call for seeking short term results. That's what our industry has taught us forever, right? Your boss wants you to set four meetings a week. You, you need to sell this much by the end of the quarter, whatever it is, you need to sell this much to validate your contract. Right? Most of us have probably been in that role at one time. But what you have to do is you have to start looking at prospecting as a long term game. And what I mean by that is when you start looking at it as a long term game, you're still going to deploy short term tactics like cold calling, email, stuff like that. But you also realize on a weekly basis, your goal in prospecting is to create long term awareness too.

It can't just be short term things all the time. So how does that now play into cool? How do I create a killer week of prospecting? Well, when I look at my weeks and you guys can write some of these things down, the first thing I think about when it comes to.

How my weeks are planned is I look at everything I have to do in that week. Okay, So I want, first thing I would tell you to do is, and by the way, you need to be doing this on Friday, the week before I do mine on Sunday morning. You do not, you should not be doing this Monday morning, the week of. What are my priorities next Week, this coming week, what are my top priorities? And I hope business development is one of them.

Now, that list, sometimes that list might be 10, 12, 15 things long. I can remember being account exec years ago and when we got to fourth quarter, man, that anybody ever find themselves with a to do list in the fourth quarter, like 30 items long and you actually feel good the longer it gets because it makes you feel important. Right. But did all of Those lists of 30 have the same equal priority? No, we made it that way, but they weren't all equally important.

So what you want to do is after you make your to do list of my priorities this week, and if you're just jumping on, I apologize, I failed to send out the passcode that's on me. So if you're just joining, I've got the recording too. So you're all set.

As you look at that list of priorities again, it might be 10, 12, 15 things long. Here's the most important question I want to ask. You need to ask yourself, of all these priorities, what are the three most important?

So that if I get to the end of the week and I only got these three things done, I could still say that was successful.

Let me give you an example of how my weeks look when I break my weeks down from a priority prioritization standpoint.

I have two for sure that are always in the top three. Number one, it's coach my ass off for my clients, that's number one. My paying clients are always number one. Number two, business development's going to be in one of those top three.

And here's the point. You need to then once that is a top priority, you have to find space in your calendar and time block it. This is where most advisors are not doing this.

Meetings with clients, meetings with prospects, and meetings with your team, right? They all find places on your calendar.

For some agencies, way too many team meetings. But they're all, they all find plate, they all find space on your calendar. Now the good news is prospects is a great time block. A prospect meeting is a great time block. That should be on your calendar. But my question to you is, are you time blocking physically putting it in your calendar? Other parts of your business development.

The answer for most advisors is no. Therefore, if it's not on your calendar, you're not seeing it. It's not always top of mind. Therefore you get to Thursday afternoon, you go, oh crap. I haven't really done anything for business development this week. Again, sent out a couple blind emails and a few phone calls, but I really haven't done anything strategic.

This is where you've got to start time blocking. And my tip, my tip that I used when I was doing both business development and account managing is you need to figure out when you are at your best. So some people are morning people, some people are afternoon, evening people. When is your energy at its best? That should be where your prospecting time is.

So if I'm planning a week and I serve multiple roles for me.

I'm not doing a whole lot of business development on Mondays, maybe Monday afternoons. But guess what, your prospects are all in their own internal meetings on Monday morning. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time prospecting on Monday.

But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings hot prospecting time.

And I would even argue Friday mornings are hot because guy why people are good moods on Friday. You'll often recognize prospects make decisions on Fridays. So Friday mornings can also be a good hot prospecting time. So in my head I'm going into the weeks going, okay, I know when these pockets of time exist, when I am going to be focused on developing business.

Now the question becomes what am I going to do during that time?

Again.

My focus is, is on compressing time.

If I'm going to spend Wednesday morning cold calling, let's use this as an example. And I want to make 100 calls on Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning.

That's probably going to take up a good two hours, if not two and a half, right? That's a big chunk of time. Now if you love cold calling and you're awesome at it, it allows you to schedule a lot of appointments, by all means do it. But I guarantee for 95% of you it is not one of your expertise.

So you will block time to cold call, but.

You also need to block time for the exponential awareness, the compressing. The time. You see, when I started compressing time with my prospecting, meaning what can I do this week to get one message in front of a lot of people?

I now can get a lot more done prospecting wise in a hell of a lot less time. So let me share an example. What am I doing right now with you guys? A webinar, right? I do a webinar. I'm going to bring them back once a week. Now I don't, you don't need to do it once a week. But here's the point. Thursday morning at 9:00am Mountain time, I get a chance to talk to 14 of you.

That's a good use of my time half hour talking to 14 of you.

So my first Question is, how could you start incorporating something like that into your weekly business development? Now, it might be every other week, might be once a month, but compress time, get yourself in front of a lot of prospects. Webinars are a great way to do that.

I have a client right now who just started a webinar series. He's going to do it every month. He kicked it off with his own webinar. He was the speaker. And now for the next four months, he's got four subject matter experts coming on. And it's just a way to bring a group of prospects into his world at one time.

So I want you to think about that for a second. Technically, all of you are my prospects, right? I work with advisors and agencies and industry partners. I'm about to spend 30 minutes with 14 of you.

What's more effective, spending 13 minute 30 minutes with 14 of you or me making 14 cold calls?

Hey, we think, I think we all know the answer, right? So that's one. I go, okay, that's a great way to compress time.

By the way.

I prep all of my webinars. Come back. This comes back to the weekly planning gang I plan. I prep all my webinars on Mondays. Why? Because I'm not spending a lot of time developing business on Monday. So I'm preparing to spend time developing business.

And if you run webinars less frequent, you got more time.

That's number one.

The second thing I put into my weekly prospecting every single week is my weekly newsletter, the Inside Pitch.

Again, you don't need it. You don't need to put it out weekly can start monthly, every year, twice a month, whatever. Some of you get my weekly newsletter. But again, it is another way to get one message in front of hundreds of people with one send at the button.

The time I block.

Is on Mondays.

To write it.

So think about that. If I block an hour to write my newsletter, maybe it requires me to upload a video because I'm going to include my coaching.

I now can set that for Friday.

And by the end of the day on Monday, I'm done. My newsletter is ready to go and it's going to go get in front of a hundreds, hundreds of people at one time.

So now in one week, what have I done? I've held a webinar that sometimes we get upwards of 40 people on them and I've got an email going out to hundreds of people.

Now the third thing I prepare on Mondays is social media.

And if you've been on my webinars in the past you've heard me talk about LinkedIn at length, right? Do I feel you need to be on LinkedIn? Absolutely. But your job on LinkedIn is twofold, guys.

Connect with potential prospects and talk to them, share content for them.

My academy that I teach right now is going in depth with this as we speak. Too many of our peers and you might be guilty yourself. I used to be guilty. If you go watch the activity on LinkedIn from our peers, bad activity. Why? Because they're all posting stuff to talk to their buddies to get reactions out of their buddies.

Your job is to talk to your target audience. So you need to spend time on LinkedIn, connecting with your target audience and posting content for your target audience. I don't care if it gets one like and one comment, as long as you're talking to your prospects. That's all that matters. Again, why? Because if I make a good post on LinkedIn, if I share something valuable from a content perspective, that one post can get hundreds or thousands of eyeballs. Views.

Compressing time.

So now in one week.

I have held, I've hosted a webinar and again, I don't even care if seven show up 14 or 40. It's more than one good use of my time.

I'm sending out a newsletter to hundreds of people and I'm create content that's going to get hundreds if not thousands of views.

And I can do all three of those things.

By time blocking a total of probably.

Three hours a week.

Again, if I were to dedicate those three hours to picking up the phone to try to create an instant result, I'll probably crank out 100 to 120550 phone calls if I want.

But for many of you, that's frustrating. I know that.

So now I've gotten so much more. I've created so much more awareness in that same three hour time period.

Now the last thing I'm going to bring up, and I think it's I'm just sharing what I do. Some of you get my text messages. I've got a text community.

It'S got a few hundred people on it. Again, one text.

Goes out to hundreds of people at one time. And if you're prospecting, by the way guys, I'm going to tell you you need to start thinking about there are plenty of text platforms out there nowadays. I know it doesn't seem like we would do this in the benefits world, but it's how people communicate. Now think about a text platform. How could you use a text platform to educate Your prospects communicate with clients. How about communicate with your clients employees?

But again, on Monday mornings I can set all my texts ready to go for the week and it hits hundreds of people at once and that takes me a half hour.

So now three and a half hours of time that week I'm getting my message out in front of thousands of people and I haven't even started to think about public speaking. You know, all the other things I can be doing to get this message out. Now here's the key.

Do many of those activities create short term results?

No, but they create a boatload of awareness.

So that when I do deploy the short term activities, cold calling, emails, maybe I go network. I was just at a conference yesterday.

I have created so much awareness.

People know who I am. Therefore it makes the short term activities so much more effective.

You see, most advisors right now are caught because they're all. The only weapon they have when it comes to prospecting is to pick up the phone or send an email to a prospect who has no clue who they are.

That is a very tough road to go down, especially post pandemic 2022. It worked a lot more effectively in 1995, 2005 than it does today.

But if you also focus your week when it comes to prospecting on what am I or what is our company going to do to create a ton of awareness for us so people get to know us, they like our content, it's going to make the other activities very effective. So when I look at my week, to me, a home run, a killer week of prospecting includes my webinar, my newsletter text, going out, I have a public speaking engagement. Awesome. My social media. But then, yeah, I'm going to send emails to prospects, I'm going to send emails to my pipeline, I'm going to pick up the phone and call a prospect. But because I'm doing this in a lot less time and being a heck of a lot more effective, this stuff becomes so much more effective too.

So that's what I wanted to leave you guys with today is again, if you are just jumping on midway through, too many advisors are waking up Monday morning not knowing what the strategy is.

Your only things you have on the calendar for prospecting is short term, short term, short term, short term. And you're chasing a script or a new product when what you need is a process.

And your job is to just execute that process on a weekly and monthly basis.

So think about the channels I shared. I know some of you are doing it already and doing it well. How Can I leverage some of these channels of awareness and include it in my weekly process of creating massive awareness for my team and I.

So, with that being said, now's your chance. Fire away. Questions, guys. Where do you have gaps with your weekly planning or what are you doing? Maybe that's working well. You want to share?

Anybody want to chime in?

I hear pretty birdies in somebody's background.

Anybody got anything they want to ask or bring up as far as weekly planning goes? Weekly prospecting.

Andy.

Yes.

Can I tell you.

Last year I spent some time with Steve, Steve the Peloton, before he got sick.

Yes.

And worked on my.

45 second intro. And you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

And it's amazing how.

We have so much to say and so little time to say it, to get across to the audience who we are, what we do and how we're there to help them.

Yes.

I deal with strictly CEOs and CFOs of large groups and I've been hung up on each even after being referred to them. So you realize you've only got a certain amount of time, so you've got to make the best use of it. So you have to craft your words to tell them who you are, why you're calling, and it takes a while to sit down and do it. They don't necessarily want to talk to an insurance guy, but know your audience and know the right language to use.

That you're talking to them on the same level to get their interest. And what I have found, too. Tell them you just need 10 minutes.

Everybody's got 10 minutes.

Well, what was the goal of this webinar right now, Wade? Right, everybody on this call. Time is precious. You guys have very little time. You guys have some, some of you have bandwidth issues. So do your prospects. They don't want to schedule a 45 minute meeting as an intro. Especially nowadays if we can do them virtual, give them 10, 15 minutes. But to your point, Wade, you need to get to the point fast.

Yep.

Now here's the punchline, guys. If you know who your prospect is, you know your brand message. Again, I got some academy members jumping on here. We've been going laser, laser focused on your brand message of your ideal prospect. Your job is just to share that thing far and wide every week. Get to the point. And here's the part. Somebody asked a question, Jeremy. What percentage of my business comes from LinkedIn? Cold calls, networking. I get most of my business, guys, probably starts from LinkedIn, but I'll admit I work with you guys, you guys are all over LinkedIn. It's easier for me. Is it as easy for you going after a CFO or CEO? No, it's not. But you should still be there. It's awareness. And here's the last part of the whole awareness game, guys, I'm going to talk about to Wade's point, when you get a chance, when somebody does show interest, you got to get to the point. Yes, but before that, I go into every week going, you know what I know not every prospect I want to talk to this week is ready to buy right now. They're not. They're not going to buy on your terms. They're going to. They don't care that you have to validate next month.

They're gonna buy when they're ready.

So you need to be constantly top of mind in their eyes that. So when they're ready to buy.

You'Re the one they think of. And that's where I talk about the. What are you doing on a weekly basis to stay in front of them to bring them value, not the calls that says, hey, Jeremy, it's Andy. You ready? You ready yet? You ready to get to Swan to check in and see if you're ready to call? Ready to connect? No, no, no. Bring them value every week.

Gary Vaynerchuk has a phrase anybody knows. Gary Vee, you literally want to guilt these people in doing business with you. How do you do that? You bring them a ton of value. So focus your weekly prospecting as much on how am I going to bring value with awareness as much as you do. I got to pick up the phone and try to schedule some meetings. If you mix the two, it is going to be so much more effective. And by the way, guys, I call this aggressive patience. You got to get after it every day with this stuff, but be a little patient with yourself. What will happen over time when you focus on awareness. And I know some of the people on this call, it is starting to happen. They start reaching out to you.

I've shared this example, guys, and I think we only got a couple minutes left. 2016, I decided to start an email newsletter. What I did is pick a strategy. Here's what it is, here's how it works, here's why you need it. And I PDF it is a word doc and I would attach it to a PDF, send it to my prospects, called it my newsletter.

What happened was after three or four months, people started emailing, replying, thanking me because it's really helpful stuff. But then after about six or seven months. Guess what? They started emailing or calling saying, hey, are renewals coming up? And we'd love to have you come in because the stuff you've been sharing with us is stuff we've really been thinking about. It's really good stuff, guys. I had prospects reaching out to me that first year. I wrote almost $200,000 that first year on that email. And all three of the biggest wins I had came to us.

Because of the awareness. So anybody can do it. Guys, this is question best practices for coming up with new content and then repurposing it. Great question. Colton. Repurposing is your friend. Meaning how do I take one piece of content and use it multiple ways? If anybody here, I'll give you guys a little tip as far as best practice Colton goes, the more you can repurpose Colton, the better it is. That is Andy Neary's version of best practice. Which means what if I have a webinar? I host a webinar.

Could I not put clips of that webinar on LinkedIn? Yes. Because it's going to teach my audience. Could I not take that webinar recording and make it the hub, the crux of my next newsletter? Yeah. So now what I've done is one webinar that I recorded has become a webinar. It's become a social media. A bunch of social media content, and it's become a newsletter.

Thank you for bringing that up, Colton. Compressing time can also include repurposing your content, which is how do I use one piece of content multiple ways? You don't have to create new stuff every time, guys.

So that's my challenge. I'm gonna leave everybody with that today. Want you to look at your weeks and go, okay, am I structured? Do I have that game plan? Do. Do I have time blocked for creating newsletters, prepping webinars, whatever it is? Because that stuff is as important as picking up the phones. Dedicating an hour to pick up the phone because you need to create. You need to be creating awareness as much as you are the short term marketing. You do that and again, you be a little patient because it doesn't happen overnight, guys. You will be amazed by what happens, I promise you. So if you guys need, here's what I'm going to challenge you guys with. If you're like, I am fricking stuck. I get it, Andy. I hear what you're saying, but I'm still stuck. Reach out to me. Schedule a call. Let's talk about it. Because I want to have the guys. This is the thing that changed my career, is having a process. I no longer was chasing scripts. I no longer was chasing the perfect message. I just said, I got a process I got to run. My job's to go run it, and you become loyal and dedicated to the process. It's going to work. I got some academy members on this call right now. I guarantee the ones who leave my academies and kick butt versus the ones who leave and are still a little stuck. The ones who kick butt are the ones who go, okay, I know the process now. I'm putting a good message.