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Prospecting is part of building an advisory practice, and there really isn’t a shortcut around it. You need to continually meet people and create new opportunities. Whether you’re building a practice from the ground up or trying to take an existing one to another level, consistent activity matters.
We tend to measure the return on that activity in a pretty straightforward way. Did the prospect become a client? Did new assets come in? Those are the results we can see and measure, but there may be another return that is much easier to overlook.
Every prospect conversation is also an opportunity to become better at the business. Not simply more comfortable talking about what you do, but better at understanding the person sitting across from you and connecting what you do to what actually matters to them.
That may be the hidden return on all that activity, but only if you’re intentional about capturing it.
Go Into the Meeting Trying to Learn
Getting someone to agree to meet with you is an accomplishment. You worked to create the opportunity, so naturally you want to make the most of it. But before your next prospect meeting, try something simple. Instead of focusing primarily on what you want to explain, decide what you need to learn.
What is this person trying to accomplish? What matters enough that they agreed to have the conversation in the first place?
You don’t need a list of 20 discovery questions. A few good questions followed by genuine curiosity about the answers will usually tell you much more than working your way through a script.
Mack Hanan, who spent decades studying complex sales relationships, built much of his work around the idea that effective selling begins with understanding the value the client is trying to create rather than simply presenting the value of what you offer. That distinction is particularly relevant in financial advice.
Your job isn’t simply to explain what you can do. It’s to understand why any of it matters to the person sitting across from you. The prospect is ultimately trying to answer a simple question: Why is this important to me?
Make the Connection for Them
Once you understand what matters, there is another practical step that is easy to miss: connect what you’re discussing directly back to what the prospect told you.
A recommendation can be completely appropriate and still fails to resonate if the prospect doesn’t understand how it addresses something they care about. The investment strategy, planning idea or service you’re discussing isn’t the point. What it potentially helps them accomplish is the point.
This also gives you a simple way to test your own conversations. If you find yourself talking for several minutes without connecting the discussion back to something the prospect has told you, you may have shifted the meeting away from them and back toward you.
Give Yourself a Process to Improve
A good process helps make these conversations repeatable without making them robotic. You should know what you’re trying to learn, how you’ll determine whether you can help and what a logical next step looks like.
That doesn’t require a complicated system.
Before the meeting, ask yourself: What do I need to understand?
During the meeting: Why is what we’re discussing important to this person?
Afterward: What did I learn that will make my next conversation better?
Those three questions create a pretty simple framework. They also shift the purpose of your process. Instead of helping you remember what to say, the process helps you pay attention to what you’re hearing.
Spend Five Minutes After the Meeting
When a prospect meeting ends, don’t immediately move on. Take five minutes while the conversation is still fresh and think about what happened.
You don’t need a complicated scorecard. Ask yourself what seemed to connect, where the conversation lost energy and what you would do differently if you could have the meeting again.
Then write down one thing...just one.
Maybe you talked too much. Maybe a particular question opened up the conversation. Whatever it is, carry that observation into the next meeting.
Do this consistently and your prospect conversations stop being isolated events. Each one begins influencing the next.
When Experience Starts Becoming Judgment
Have enough conversations and eventually something interesting happens. You stop relying quite as heavily on what you planned to say and become better at recognizing what the conversation needs.
You know when to explain something and when another question would be more useful. You recognize when the direction you planned for the meeting isn’t nearly as important as something the prospect just told you.
Some of that can be taught through training and coaching, but much of it develops through repetition followed by reflection.
That’s why years in the business and meaningful experience aren’t necessarily the same thing. You can repeat the same meeting hundreds of times and become very good at delivering it. The greater value comes from allowing those meetings to change how you approach the next one.
Capture Both Returns
Not every prospect is going to become a client. That’s part of the business. But a conversation that doesn’t produce new business doesn’t have to be a wasted opportunity.
If you learned something that improves the next conversation, there was still a return on the time you invested. Then the next conversation teaches you something else. Over hundreds of meetings, those small improvements begin to compound.
Just make sure you’re capturing both returns.
The first is the one we naturally measure: new business.
The second is the advisor you’re becoming through all those conversations.
Go in trying to understand the person. Make sure what you discuss answers “Why is this important to them?” Then take five minutes afterward to learn from what just happened.
It’s simple but do it consistently and the hidden return may eventually become one of the most valuable returns you earn.