What is your Prospecting Source Strategy?

Prospecting sources that give your Agency leads are vital to any financial service professional. They help create a robust pipeline, which creates consistent cash flow. In addition, the leads tend to be warm leads making it easier, quicker, and more affordable as the cost of acquisition is lower. They are the dream.

Yet, many financial service professionals do not have an official prospecting source strategy, simply waiting to see if they develop organically. If they happen, they happen. And they do happen, but slowly and often times the relationships are not as fruitful as they could be with a proactive strategy.

The first thing to remember is that prospecting sources are busy. They have their own business or career to run. Sending you leads is probably not within their top 20 or even 30 priorities. Even if they want to send leads to you, they’ll forget. Which means you need to be top of mind.

And secondly, although the leads are a dream for you, you need to stop and ask, “Why would a prospecting source send us leads?” What is their motivation? A lot of people will offer bonuses or referral fees, which can be nice. But chances are the prospecting sources can earn more money by focusing on their core business. Money is often not the best motivator. Other motivators might include: being a value add for their clients, as a mutual relationship for you sending them leads or promoting their business. Knowing why they would send you leads will help you craft your strategy.

Your prospecting source strategy should include:

• Who is your ideal candidate to become a prospecting strategy? These are individuals who often come into contact with your ideal prospects. It might be people in the community: coaches, religious leaders, individuals who are active in the community as volunteers. It might also be professions: real estate agents, car salesmen, builders, landscapers, etc.
   
• Names of people that fit your ideal candidate.
   
• A ranking system for how ideal of a fit a potential prospecting source could be. This helps ensure you’re not spending too much time with someone that isn’t likely to send you leads. For instance if a real estate agent sells part time, they may not have enough leads to send you to consider them a great source. Or if they have a sibling that is also an Advisor, they’re probably not sending the leads to you. This helps you to know where to invest your time and energy.
   
• A drip campaign. If you want someone to send you leads you need to stay top of mind. A drip-campaign will help ensure that you’re building a relationship. The touches in the campaign should be as scalable as possible to ensure it’s sustainable for you to keep up. And you can use their motivation for sending you leads in the campaign to make it more effective.
   
• An ideal schedule. There’s no way around it. A prospecting source strategy takes time. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but it’s something you have to invest in. You should plan to block some time each week to work on developing and maintaining your prospecting sources. During this time you’ll make introductions and work your drip campaign to strength the relationships.

We challenge you to take a step back and consider your prospecting source strategy. If you don’t have one then it’s time to design your Agency for optimal outcomes.