CHAPTER 10

Setting and Achieving Big Goals

Not failure, but low aim, is a crime.

—Ernest Holmes

Rain making is about execution focusing on the right task and activities that bring in new business and retain customers. Success is achieved from setting big goals that propel your business and career forward. Many professionals process the capabilities to become effective rain maker, only few, however, actually succeed.

Financial services author David Mullins Jr. has noted that of the 20 percent of advisors who survive the first two years, only 5 percent ever reach the top of their game. This is consistent with other professional service business that I have researched and worked with. There are two reasons for so few professionals reaching the top, fear and unwillingness to pay the price of facing rejection.

Rain making is selling that requires deep motivation, which comes with a high degree of rejection. Second, not knowing how to build a business, or worst, building a business that limits growth.

What are the characteristics of top producers?

They understand the mathematics of selling.

They have a selling system.

They market relentlessly.

They are motivated to succeed.

They make establishing relationships a number top priority.

What is the Mathematics of Selling?

One of the reasons why many professionals struggle to become effective rain makers is that they don’t know how to build a business or they build a business that limits their growth. Becoming a successful rain maker starts with understanding the mathematics of selling.

There are six elements to this:

Element 1—Prospect pipeline

Element 2—Centers of influences

Element 3—Retention

Element 4—Referrals

Element 5—Minimum target size

Element 6—Account development

Element 1 Maintain at least 100 qualified relationships

You should develop and maintain 100 to 150 names in your prospect pipeline if you are a new professional (3 years or less) and 50 to 100 for experienced professionals (3+ years of experience). Experienced professionals should maintain a 50/50 ratio mix between existing and prospective clients. These should be your ideal category “A” customers and prospects that generate 80 percent of your business.

Use your sales system to contact each client three to four times per year. Assume each visit lasts one hour—that’s ten hour per year per client and five hour per year for each prospect across 100 relationships equals 1500 hours.

The average professional works approximately 2300 hours per years; this leaves 800 hours per year for administration and other stuff. There are simply not enough hours in a day to try to service every customer. To retain and develop these 100 relationships, you will need to spend 80 percent of your time on four key activities—results, relationships, retention, and referrals—Roger Sitkin’s refers to these as four money making activities.

Element 2 Maintain 10 non client referral sources

You should develop and maintain 10 centers of influence (COI) and meet them at least once a quarter with the goal of obtaining three referral and introductions each quarter. This will generate 30 leads per quarter (120 per year). Assume 50 percent agree to meet; this is 15 meetings. If 50 percent (7) are qualified and enter your selling process and 50 percent (3) become clients each quarter (12 per year), depending on your average sales—this may be the only marketing you will need to do.

Element 3 Have 100 percent of your top 20 percent customers

The goal is to retain 100 percent of your top 20 percent of customers that produce 80 percent of your revenue. Retention includes client numbers and the associated revenue. With 100 percent retention, 80 percent of your revenue budget is already achieved, and your top 20 percent are your category “A” and “B” customers producing the bulk of your revenues.

Element 4 Generate 80 percent of new business from referral and introduction

Top performers engage in referral only selling, whilst 100 percent referrals are difficult to achieve and maintain, however, 80 percent business from referral and introductions from existing customers and centers of influence is a realistic target. First, you need to follow selling system to retain 100 percent of your desired clients. We will cover this later in this chapter. You also need element number two—10 non-client referral sources. Implementing these two things will help you build and maintain 100 to 150 qualified relationships in your sales pipeline.

Element 5 Continually raise your minimum account size

As your business and capabilities grow, so should your minimum account size. One of the ways I achieved this during my career was by targeting more complex accounts. When the great Ben Feldman started selling his goal was to close three cases a week, as his cases got bigger, so did his volume. As your business grows annually, remove the bottom 10 to 15 percent of clients and replace relationships and targets in your sales pipeline.

Element 6 100 percent full-time customers

You should work toward having 100 percent wallet share with of top 20 percent customers who make up 80 to 90 percent of your business. There are three ways to grow your business. First, you can increase the number of customers through new business development; second, you can increase the average size of your new business customers; third, increase the frequency customers purchase from you. Start by conducting regular reviews to educate and upgrade your existing customers.

By applying these six numeric elements, a professional can continually grow their business by adjusting each of these elements for their situation. If you wish to increase the size of your new client’s accounts, focus on element 5 and raise your minimum target size. Require more sales, increase the number of referrals from existing customer (element 4) and introductions from centers of influence (element 2).

What type Selling System do you Need?

You can’t achieve big goals without customer. In Chapter 4, we discussed creating a sales model and unique selling system.

We will now focus on designing and implementing this sales system to produce results. I refer to this as the GARD system—generate, acquisition, retention, and development. Figure 10.1 outlines the GARD process to transfer your six numeric elements into an action plan.

Generating Prospects, Leads and Introductions

There are only two ways to market and sell, the hard way and the easy way. The hard way is through cold calling, and the easy way is leveraging your existing customers for referrals and centers of influence and past clients. Ultimately 80 percent of your new business leads should be generated from centers of influence, referral, and introductions.

image

Figure 10.1 GARD framework

There is no marketing activity that is more effective than a proactive referral process. In fact, if you had to engage in only one form of marketing, a proactive referral process should be it. If you are in regular and frequent contact with your customers, have disciplined process and provide great service, you have the prerequisites for effective referral marketing. Appendix A provides a detailed referral marketing action plan.

For newer professionals with few customers, your initial lead generation should start by reaching out to people you already know—your known contacts.

Over time, as you build your customer base, get in the habit early of asking for referrals. Your primary lead generation process will consist of letters, phone calls, and networking.

Centers of influence

People from all walks of life can usually be developed into effective centers of influence—bankers, doctors, dentist, lawyers, schoolteachers, real estate agents, builders, agents, and tradespeople.

To develop centers of influence, make a list of everyone that you know, all of your contacts and LinkedIn connections. Select those who you feel would be a natural center of influence. This person does not need to be an intimate friend of yours to qualify as a COI, but they should have the following basic qualifications:

They know you personally and a person who is willing to help you.

They should have contact with the types of individuals you want to serve.

They should have confidence in you and your ability

They should have influence with the people recommended—a person whose judgement is sought after. Also, don’t forget to add to your list the names of those people who did not qualify as a prospect. They may qualify as excellent COI. Appendix B provides a detailed action plan for obtaining centers of influence.

Acquiring: Converting prospects into meetings

The next part of the GARD model is converting leads into a meeting, and eventually, new business. A key skill for marketing success and building a successful business is the ability to obtain meetings with qualified prospects in person or virtually. Any activity that postpones this stage delays building the relationship; professionals who fear prospecting will do anything to get a feel-good response from a prospect and will delay rejection for as long as they can.

The essentials for acquiring new business:

What is a qualified prospect? They have a need and you can make them see that their need is important enough to have you solve it. They have sufficient resources to do what is required to solve the need. They can be induced to invest the resources they can be persuaded to see that it makes sense to part with some resources. They represent those with whom you can work to the solution a reality.

Packaging Ideal customer profile:

Create a clear ideal client profile, target market (niche), location, size, and number of employees.

Package your expertise:

Top rain makers develop their expertise before approaching a prospective client. You can develop your expertise by researching your target market, speaking with prospective clients, contacting key influencers working in your niche market, and researching the issues, challenges, and concerns of prospective customer.

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Figure 10.2 Outlines the four ways to talk about yourself

Package your expertise in writing with articles and reports on your insights, speaking to targeted groups. Key items to include in your written packaging:

Executive summary

Personal bio

Product and service description

The time invested in developing your expertise will pay huge dividends as you approach your market as an expert and are able to distinguish yourself from others.

Verbal packaging

Prospects who don’t know you personally have at least three questions they need answered before they consider meeting with you:

Who are you?

What do you do and for whom?

What value can you bring to my business?

Verbal packaging also known as value proposition helps you to describe what you do when someone ask what you do. Figure 10.2 outlines the four ways to talk about what you do.

Top professionals focus on a prospective customer problems and concerns. This is the most effective way that top rain makers package their expertise to reach out.

Proactive Reach Out

When first contacting a prospective customers, the first objective is to get a response, and second, getting a meeting to have a brief conversation. A mistake many professionals make is not knowing what they want to happen. Of course, everyone wants to receive a positive response from a prospect but are often unclear what that looks or sounds like. Among the various goals you can select are:

To contact a certain number of prospects each week.

To have one in 20 recipients call (that would be fabulous).

To have people recall receiving something from you.

To eventually land x percent meetings.

By following the lead generation process, you can select the prospecting activities that will work best for your particular situation.

Follow-up

Too many professionals give up too soon or worst don’t follow up at all. For example, you might contact someone and get their voicemail, which is very likely these days. It can take on average five phone calls to actually reach your contact. In some cases, you may need to send a follow up e-mail if you haven’t had a response base. You need to have follow-up mechanisms in place including voicemail script or follow-up e-mail or letter to send to a prospective customer.

Your lead generation process can happen quickly, or it can take a number of weeks, however, the ultimate goal is to make contact and have a conversation and moved them to your sales pipeline and to the acquisition process.

If you build your list as I described, you should expect to obtain between a 5 to 25 percent response rate from your list. Now, response rate doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to do business with you, but you avoid fence sitting and receive a yes, no or some sort of indication from them. As you get more experience and as the quality of your list improves and as you gain more referrals, about 50 percent you will have, you will get the 50 percent area, which is where a lot of top sellers operate from on referrals and centers of influence through the lead generation process.

Acquisition Stage

This is where you convert qualified leads into sales meetings appointments (phone, video, or face-to-face) and ultimately customer. Many professionals including myself conduct a good portion of their selling activities virtually. There are five acquisition steps:

Obtaining a meeting

Qualifying

Explore needs

Presenting solutions

Closing

Obtaining a Meeting (the Sales Discussion)

You want to obtain a meeting. This is simply asking that’s been set for you and their previous process. During the meeting stage, you want to further qualify or verify if there is a fit, which leads us to step two. Firstly, does the client qualify not only for your products and services, but are you good fit for the individual you are working with and your business. The prospective client is also interviewing you.

Exploring Needs

During this stage, ask questions in detail to explore the needs. In the appendix, you will find questions to ask during this stage to drill down needs and qualify and determine where and how you can add value.

Presenting Solution

This is can be a two-step or more process depending on the complexity of your product or service. You may need to customize package your solutions, this is often a key differentiator with top professionals. On rare occasions, I have been in situations where I have gone through all the steps in one meeting, but for more complex sales and quality selling, it should be divided into two steps.

Besides if you have followed your process and have thoroughly qualified the client, they are not going anywhere. Where you are presenting your ideas, packaged your expertise, and presenting the customer solutions to make their situation much better than before they met you. This is where you outline how are you going to do and what you do.

Closing, Questions, and Objections

The close is nothing than a summation of the discussion. It should be nothing more than just a natural flow of the ideas you have been discussing, depending on your industry, in your marketplace, your products, and services. It’s natural and welcoming when a prospective client has questions—that means they are interested. There is no excuse for not being prepared and anticipate prospective client’s questions. The close should really be nothing more than a summation of what you have agreed upon. In the appendix, you will find the ten most common type of objections.

Retention

The third stage of the GARD framework is retention. 100 percent retention of your desired clients should be a primary goal if you are focusing on your ideal client profile category A and B with the potential to deliver 80 percent of your revenues over a period of time. These are the ones you want to maintain and retain over the long stage. These are the ones that are going to dramatically increase the value of your business, and you want to maximize the lifetime value of these clients. Retention process includes:

Planning

Deliver

Implementation

Review

Present

Continuation

Planning Stage

When a prospect is converted into a customer, they are transferred to your retention process. First, update your contact management system and client records. Depending on your service, set up a service calendar that aligns your continuation process to ensure the client is being contacted and updated.

Delivery

The actual physical delivery of your product or service. This delivery can be done in person or virtually. It’s confirming that the service has commenced. I once purchased a new car, as I was swapping my old vehicle, someone from the dealership delivered my new car and drove my old one away. The next day, I received a call from the salesman from dealership who went through a checklist with me to confirm delivery. A similar approach can be developed for any type of product and service.

Review Stage

Some services may have a renewal date such as an insurance policy, annual contract, or subscription. Often unless there is a problem, there is no reason for the provider to contact you until the renewal. I recently contacted my phone carrier to discuss my plan and was surprised to learn my current plan was no longer offered and the newer plans offered more benefits and better coverage, but no one had bothered to contact me, I did change to a better plan to meet my needs that was cheaper and I also added on a couple of additional services. How much money are you leaving on the table by not conducting regular reviews with your customers to share new ideas, innovation, or simply update any changes in their circumstances? Depending on your product and service, this could be a midterm review where you learn a little bit more about your client professionally and personally.

Presenting Stage

When you discover gaps in a client’s program this is an opportunity to present fresh ideas, not to sell but update providing an additional touch point, an opportunity to maintain your client relationships.

Continuation Stage

This is the education stage. Some professionals use events such as hosting a lunch or dinner for their best customers to educate them about trends, issues that can be actually fun nights. Some professionals do wine tasting, book signings, it’s a great way to get your customers together to network with each other. It’s also a nice way to ask for referrals indirectly by inviting your clients to bring along their friends and colleagues. The continuation stage is to continue the relationship and not simply renew.

Use the GARD Model framework to execute your plans and strategies.

Case Study

JB runs a mid-size insurance and financial services business specializing in family owned business. The firm’s revenue had flat lined for the past three years and organic growth was negative. Whilst new business growth was slow, the big issue was the retention rate, which had slipped from the mid 90’s to the high 80’s. The firm had several long-term clients, however, unless there was an issue, the client would only be seen at renewal time. The GARD model was introduced, and all the key accounts were visited several times during the year. Within 12 months, referrals from key accounts increased driving up new business production and retention rates improves into the low 90’s while cross selling additional services to existing clients improved.

Summary

Rain making is selling that requires deep motivation, which comes with a high degree of rejection. Second, not knowing how to build a business, or worst building a business that limits growth.

One of the reasons why many professionals struggle to become effective rain makers is that they don’t know how to build a business or they build a business that limits their growth.

Becoming a successful rain maker starts with understanding the mathematics of selling. There are six elements.

Element 1—Prospect pipeline

Element 2—Centers of influence

Element 3—Retention

Element 4—Referrals

Element 5—Minimum target size

Element 6—Account development

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