The #1 Strategy To Keep Your Prospects Engaged

Who comes in. So don't get on my bad side.

Hey, guys, what we're talking about today is how do you keep your prospects engaged? This is a topic that has come up a lot lately in my conversations with.

Prospects, in my conversations with agency principals. And it's the challenge I see so many in the industry facing.

And what I realized when I looked at how I work with advisors, how I work with agencies, is, at the end of the day, what this all comes down to is, can somebody mute themselves? Somebody's really loud.

Hold on. I think I know who it is. Okay, there. We're good. What it comes back to is process.

When it comes to marketing, when it comes to selling, you have got to have a process. And I don't care what it is. You don't need a perfect process. Just have a process. Just have something you follow. Because I just had this conversation with an agency yesterday. The agency is looking to sell.

And the principal is a little nervous right now because she doesn't think she's going to get what it's worth. And I looked at her and I said, one of the reasons that's probably true is you don't have any process. You guys are just kind of winging it right now. And if somebody came in and bought you and they saw no process, all they want is your book of business. They don't want anything to do with the people there. I said, but if you have a process, that's what they want. They're going to buy you for more. And you guys become very important because they need you to run that process. This is why processes are so, so important. And what we're going to talk about today is a process that I see too many advisors lack right now. And that is, how the heck do I keep my prospects engaged?

Has anybody found themselves in a situation where you meet with a prospect for the first time? It seems like everything's going well. They're eating out of your hand, and then crickets.

And you're like, about two, three weeks later, you go, did I say something wrong? Did I offend them? When 98% of the time it has nothing to do with you.

Or the flip side. You haven't met a prospect yet. Get them on the phone.

Kind of interested, but it's more of a maybe not now than a yes. And they say, wendy, sounds really interesting. But you know what? It's March right now. Call us back in August.

For too many advisors, the strategy at that point is I do nothing until August, and I call them back when they asked me to, but, dang it, now they've completely forgotten about me.

So what we need to solve today is the prospects that are stuck in the pipeline. And we also need to solve for those prospects who are a maybe. You haven't actually met with them yet, but they're a maybe. And you want to make sure you keep them engaged in the moving forward. Because here's what we want at the end of the day, when we can get meetings set with prospects that already know us and like us, makes your sales meeting so much more effective. And even for those prospects who already met with us but feel caught somewhere in the pipeline, we need a way to keep them engaged. Because what we have to remember, guys, is they're going to buy when they're ready, not when you want them to.

And quite frankly, most of our prospects aren't ready right now. And you got to remember, we come from an industry, the sales can. We agree the sales cycle is not short, especially if you're going after larger business. That sales cycle could be pretty long.

And so the question is, what can we do to keep them engaged? And, Chris Wormy, I'm looking right at you because I know we did a workshop a couple months ago. This is where the idea of the community comes in, guys.

Okay, what I want one mindset shift. I want everybody on the call to make, especially for the people I can see that have been around for a while. I've been around for 20 years. Some of you have been around longer than I have in this industry. We were all taught early on, see prospect, sell prospect, pitch, pitch product. See prospect, sell prospect, pitch, pitch, product. Those days are over.

We have to have a way to keep people engaged so when they're ready to buy, they think of you first.

So what I want everybody to think about today, the question I want everybody to ponder.

Is when I have prospects. And to me, what counts as a prospect is this.

Doesn'T matter if I've met with them or not.

I have something valuable from them. And in our industry, that value is an email address.

If I've got an email address from them, now I have an opportunity to bring value to them.

Not pitch at them all the time. Bring value.

Now, here's the key with this, guys. Who in the room. And you don't have to raise your hand, the guilty can remain innocent. Who here has ever bought a list of prospects just to get the list of emails so you can start sending emails? Anybody ever done that before? Wade, you're shaking your head no, but I don't know if I trust that.

Technically.

In the world of marketing, that's a no. No.

They did not give you their email voluntarily.

It's just like at the beginning of the last presidential campaign, did any of you just start getting these text messages telling you to vote for Biden or Trump?

I know I got bombarded with them. No, you guys didn't. I got bombarded. I'm like, I didn't give my phone number to anybody.

It's the same thing with emails. If they didn't voluntarily give it to us.

It could be kind of a no, no to start just pounding them with emails. However.

What if we can have a way that they do give us emails voluntary?

Because if you get a prospect to actually give you their email address, can we agree that that's already a warmer prospect than somebody who you just got an email from from some list?

So the question starts with the community. If we're going to build a community for our prospects, how do we get an email? How do we give them to give us an email or. Or get them to give us an email voluntarily?

A great strategy to do that is what I'm doing with you guys right now. Who signed up for this webinar? What did you have to plug in to sign up for the webinar.

Email address? So webinars, guys, are a great way to generate leads. A lead means I have your email and you gave it to me voluntarily.

So that's number one. I start with the most basic strategy. We can all use webinars. If there's one thing you want to get as a takeaway, as a ROI from a webinar, it is a list of emails.

Too many in our industry view a webinar as an opportunity to get five new clients. Doesn't work that way. Emails is what you want.

Another great way to get emails is LinkedIn.

Now, it's not that I'm going to go into somebody's profile and I'm going to get their email because they have it sitting there.

It's when you're connected with prospects, you have an opportunity to slide in their direct, send them a direct message and say, hey, I share a lot of content. Every month we have webinars. I'd love to make sure you're invited. If you're willing to share your email with me, we'll get you added to the list.

Guys, you'd be surprised how many prospects are like, yeah, sure, sounds good. Here you go again. They gave you their email.

A third way to get it is having some other Kind of lead generator.

That can come in the form of a video.

That can come in form of a PDF. So here's a couple of examples.

If you or your agency and or your agency or your company were to create a Couple lead generating PDFs. Five steps to do this. Three pitfalls your company should avoid around this something that's valuable enough that they are willing to give their email to download. Has anybody ever done that on their end? Have you ever actually given your email to something because you wanted to get the white paper? We've all done that, right? Why not do it to your prospects? Create a PDF, a little article, a little how to that has a ton of value for the prospect that they're willing to give you their email to get the download. That's one great lead generator.

A second one is video.

You are all extremely good at what you do.

What if you created a five minute video where you taught something extremely valuable.

And in exchange for the video a prospect a company has to give you their email address.

I created a video last year called the 2021 Broker Master Marketing Plan. It was like 15 minutes. I just walked through the whole plan in a video that generated something like 175 emails. Everybody on this call can do the same thing. So when you're thinking about keeping your prospects engaged, the first thing you want to think about is how can I get their email address? And especially voluntarily. Webinars, LinkedIn lead generators, everybody got that. And if you own your own agency, I put that lead generator up on your website. Let somebody come to your website and download that puppy right from your website. I would share. Guys, if you have that video or that PDF lead generator, put it out on LinkedIn. Put the link to download it in your post. Let give people a chance to get it because in exchange they're giving you their email.

Now once you have this list of emails.

The second part is how do I bring value to them?

What we have all been taught to do at that point is I'm going to create a sales campaign and try to get meetings with these people, right? I'm going to email them until I get a meeting.

What you really want to think more is what is called nurture campaigns. What can I do to nurture these people?

What that means is I know you're not ready to buy right now, so I'm going to nurture you because the moment you're ready to buy, I want to be the one you think about.

So a great way to do that is to go, okay, I've got these emails. How do I nurture them? The first question I ask is, how often do you want to nurture them?

First, for most it's once a month.

I do them weekly, but once a month is a great way to start. How are you, how often are you going to nurture these people? Sprinkle value on them by way of a good email.

Second question is, what value do I want to share in the email?

This is a great place if any of you guys do educational videos. Great place to put your educational videos. Now that you're in my email list, you're going to get some great teaching, some great educational content for me.

If you guys do webinars.

Webinars are great for two reasons. Number one, you get emails from people, but number two, you also record the webinars and you have content from the webinar itself because you recorded it. Share the recording with your email list because not everybody's going to sign up for the webinar.

But what you're doing now is on a frequent basis, whether it's monthly, bi, monthly, weekly, you are sprinkling value on these prospects.

And so even when you have that prospect that says Kissinger, not ready right now, call us back in August, you're like, cool. If you don't mind, I share content every single month. That brings a lot of value. It's going to provide a lot of education to you and your team. Love to just grab your email address. If you're cool with it, we'll get you added. So you're getting that content. Most people say yes. And now what's going to happen, Kissinger, you're going to be sharing something with them once a month until August so that when you call them back, guess what? They know who you are.

They may already like you because you've brought them a ton of value.

So now that call back in August isn't cold. It's a heck yes because you have already brought them so much.

Guys. This is the one thing that has changed my business, even all the way back to 2016.

Is finding a way to keep these prospects engaged.

So as you sit down, take the time today that tomorrow, next week and go, okay, I have this email list of prospects. Heck, guys, right now, I don't even care if they gave it to you voluntary or not. I've got this list.

What can I start doing to bring value to this group? How often do I want to do it and what am I going to share with them?

With the entire goal of sprinkling value on them? Over time. Because I know not every prospect is ready to buy right now.

But for those, when they become ready, I want to be the guy they think of. I want to be the woman they think of.

Now, let me go off on a side tangent for a second. Some of you might work at agencies or companies who are already doing this.

Where you've already got a list.

Your agency may already be sending out content in the form of a newsletter.

Here's what I urge you to do, though.

Share more than you want to.

I see too many agency newsletters and I am so sorry if I'm calling any of you out that use Zywave content and they just copy paste Zywave and send it. Guys, no one's reading that stuff.

And 60% of the agencies in this, in this industry are all sending out the same stuff.

Make it unique to you.

What is it that makes your agency awesome? What is that process you have that helps your clients win? Start sharing that stuff. I know it's going to feel uncomfortable because there's that fear of, wait, am I sharing a little too much? Could they give that to their broker? Yeah, possibly, but they're not. But if you just go over the top with the value, it's going to lead to business. I promise.

I'll share. I'll share something I did six years ago, and some of you might have already heard this already. In 2016, I was staring at an email list of about 50 people. I was an advisor at Volk Bell here in Colorado. They were all HR professionals.

So I made it a goal to do two things with that list of 50. I wanted to grow it to 100, 150, 200.

But I also wanted a way to bring them value. And I didn't know what to do at the time because I wasn't taught. None of us were taught that right? And so I said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick once a month, I'm going to pick a strategy that I had Learned. So, Andrew McNeurland, you work at Script Sourcing. Script Sourcing was one of those strategies.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it in a PDF.

And all the PDF is going to say is, here's a strategy called Script sourcing, and here's what it does.

Here'S how you use it, and here's why you need it.

And every month, guys, I'm not kidding, I would go into the word document, change the strategy, change the what is it? What does it do? Why do you need it? PDF it.

And I would send an email. This is before we had email platforms. I would send an email via Outlook.

Where I would BCC all 50, all 75 of these people and the email would just say, hey, good morning. Here's your March newsletter. Enjoy. And it was just a PDF.

Well, what happened was, number one, early on I had a few people say, please stop sending these to me.

Awesome. Good. Those people were never going to buy from me, so now they're out. Good. I can get rid of the people who are not interested.

About three to four months in, I would get responses from people like, hey, this is really good stuff. Thank you.

Five to six months in, I started getting the emails saying, hey, can we schedule a meeting with you?

And in that first year of that strategy, guys, which I would call extremely basic, I wrote $180,000.

And it was nothing more than once a month finding a way to keep my prospects engaged.

And what was happening was not only was I setting appointments, but I was setting appointments with people who already knew me and started and liked what I had to share with them. So I was going into prospecting meetings and they would say, hey.

Show us what you would do. Show us that strategy you shared a couple months ago, script sourcing or whatever.

And it already allowed me to go into a first meeting with a prospect two steps ahead of the competition.

Andrew, I wish I could share a PDF of an example six years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have them anymore.

But here's the point, guys. All I did was take my prospect list, say, how can I bring them value? How often do I want to bring them value.

And then stay consistent to that process. And so that is what I wanted to talk about today because again, I see too many advisors who have no.

Strategy to keep their prospects engaged.

And they have no way to stay in touch with their pipeline. If you just use a little strategy like this, where you send them videos, send them content, send them a newsletter, send them something consistently where you're not even asking for business.

All it does is it keeps them engaged, it keeps you top of mind.

Because when they're ready to buy, you're going to look really good.

When this webinar is done, Kissinger, what do I send you? Every time this webinar is done.

You send a follow up email, even if you can't attend. I send you the recording, right? Yes, you do, guys. This is the beauty I'm doing to you. What I'm telling you to do to your prospects when I get done with this webinar, I'm going to take this recording and I'm going to put it up on my YouTube channel.

And I'm going to take that webinar, that URL, and I'm going to go to my pipeline tomorrow and I'm going to send every single person in that pipeline the recording.

Because I know they're in my pipeline somewhere. And I know every week I do these webinars. I'm just going to keep sending it to them. I'm going to keep sending it to them. I'm going to keep sending it because I know one day they're going to be like, we're in.

Everybody else can do the same thing. It doesn't have to be every week like I do. It could be once a month. But come up with a consistent way to keep pinging these people. That's not a sales pitch.

And you will be handsomely rewarded for it, I promise you.

All right, guys, five minutes to go. What questions?

Or is anybody doing this with success? What comes up? This is your chance to ask.

So my question is, is everybody in your pipeline getting the same email regardless of what, whether you've met with them or.

Whatever? Great question. Great question, Wendy. Number one, 90% of those emails follow ups I send out to the pipeline are nothing more than copy and paste. Truth be told, if I think there's a uniqueness with that one prospect, something I really, a message I really want to drive home with that specific one. I'll tweet the email, but 90% of the time it's copy, paste, copy, pay is copy paste. Okay, thank you. I think I've been overthinking it. Don't overthink this. And remember, guys, don't think like the email even has to be perfect. Just give them something you truly think is valuable for them. That's it.

Andy, are you sending this through activecampaign or just you using regular email? Great question. So my newsletter that goes out every Friday, some of you are probably. Yeah, most of you are probably in it. Inside pitch that I use a platform called Kajabi.

But that's a coaching platform.

ActiveCampaign. If you have a platform like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp, great platforms to use because obviously you just have to send one email.

Hit send and it goes to everybody. Now I'll tell you the emails I send out, Stacy, that are the follow ups with the webinar recording in my pipeline. Those I send out individually through my Gmail through my Google account.

What else, guys.

I literally covered everything you need to know. You guys are all good. You are now going to go out and become community masters.

Alison, I'm staring at you and I can tell you just kind of staring at me. Yeah, no, I'm kidding. Somebody, sorry, somebody was going to chime in there.

I was just going to say, Andy, I really think that this whole thing about sending something out, it has to be unique to you. Sending out the siwave stuff or whatever.

That does nothing.

You need to put your personality into it in some form or fashion.

It's a great point, Chris. Every single one of you on this call are an expert in what you do and some way, shape or form, maybe it's self funding, maybe it's Kissinger. I keep looking at you because you're on my screen. You're an underwriter by trade. Like things that make you unique. Guys, use this, use these newsletters, these touches to teach, be expert. And again, I will tell you, teach more than you want to because it's going to reward you on the backside, I promise you that.

And I laugh when I said, guys, I'm literally doing to you what I'm telling you to do to others. Everything you get from me, like the follow up email from this webinar, that's the stuff. Literally take it and copy it. That's the stuff you should be doing.

Because that's how you stay the name of the game is top of mind. You just want to stay top of mind with these prospects.

Andy, last question here. As I know we're buttoned up against the 10 o' clock or at least in my time zone.

Yep.

This is awesome. Appreciate it. As always, the balance of pushing your company's agenda versus pushing your agenda. Do you have any quick thoughts with that regard?

Yeah. And I will tell knowing that some of you work for large organizations, sometimes you got to play nice in the sandbox, right? But I will tell you, the more Chad you can lean into, to Chris's point, the more you can lean into your content versus I'm just going to share company based content, the better it'll be. Yeah, because you got to remember guys, at the end of the day, humans buy from humans. They don't buy from logos on cards. So the more they can see you or your content, the better it's going to be. But again, sometimes I know you have to also mix it with the company content too.

And that's where it's like, okay, on a LinkedIn or a public platform, maybe you do a little bit more your company, quote, unquote. And then the personal monthly newsletter.

Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. And if anybody. By the way, guys, if you want to jump on a call, talk about this, I do discovery calls for people to help them out. Feel free to reach out. You all will be getting an email from me in like five minutes if you haven't gotten it already, because I follow up, schedule a call. Let's talk about this, because this is the stuff I'm telling you guys. I'm going to go back to how I started the pod, started the webinar. Just have a process, have a way to stay in touch with these people. Don't think it has to be perfect. Don't get. Don't overthink it, Wendy. Just start doing. Just follow a process and it'll work.

Awesome, guys. Go kick some ass. Like I said, that email will be in your inbox. If you want us jump on a call, get some help. Click on the link and let's schedule a call.

Thanks, Andy. Awesome, guys. Have a good Thursday.