Truth and consequences: Many top advisors don’t have the time for wholesaler drips.
Yes, “ya gotta stay in front of ‘em.” But how many times? Does it really take 7 drips to get an advisor interested a product? That’s a very expensive sales process.
And if you are paying your sales team to drip… Call me crazy, but how about paying for a shorter conversion cycle– the fewest number of visits that result in a sale?
Research across sales organizations shows that measuring activity, (number of meetings/drips) is not in many cases correlated with sales results. Cause and effect lies in the quality of the sales behaviors that happen before, during and after the meeting.
Your best wholesalers self-impose quality measures, so they will nail any quality criteria you put in place and continue to dominate the leaders board. For others, these measures help raise their game.
How do you turn drips into quality sales calls?
Introducing quality measures is not as tough as some perceive. A good starting point? Introduce ‘quality call preparation’ as a measure to help wholesalers upgrade drips to sales calls that have more impact. You can track this quality measure by setting criteria for information to be entered in the CRM before a meeting that helps the wholesaler drive customized conversations. Examples of criteria: Connections/interests in common (from LinkedIn®), target clients (from the advisor’s website), objective for the visit (besides sell something), questions you want to ask, how you might move the sale forward…
One of the biggest complaints that advisors have today is that wholesaler drips and pitches are often not linked to how the advisor does business. To be nice the advisor nods and says “I’ll take a look at it. ” Often that is mistaken for interest which prompts more drips.
Here’s the rub: Transforming these drips to conversations that have more substance takes preparation. Quality preparation takes time. So take a look to see if your activity measures are making it difficult for your wholesalers to find the time for quality preparation. Dripping to drip can be detrimental. Thoughts?
