Five Hidden Weaknesses That Keep Financial Advisors from Picking up the Phone

To be successful, financial advisors must be energized and focused, have meaningful goals, and know how to achieve them.  If you can’t seem to pick up the phone to build your business, see whether one of these five issues is the quiet culprit.

Rick was recruited into his company by one of the best and brightest managers in the industry.  He was a qualified financial advisor and was highly motivated to build a strong business.  His manager made it clear that the majority of his time initially would be spent on prospecting activities.  Rick buckled down and did everything his manager recommended.

Rick had appointments with his centers of influence, friends, and family.  He asked for referrals on every appointment, spent hours networking with strategic alliances and even cold-walked from business to business.  Because he was driven and focused, he succeeded.

Fast forward six years…

Rick was at ease in his niche and very comfortable in his lifestyle when he learned that his major corporate client was being acquired by a multinational company.  The news sent him into shock and he eventually lost 60% of his business.  It took three miserable weeks to get the final “Thank you: you did a great job” talk.

What happened to Rick’s business?  Since he had stopped actively prospecting for new business at year four, he had no potential prospects in the pipeline to make up for the loss of this major client.  For the next several weeks, Rick went through mood swings, ricocheting from anxiety to optimism, hope to despair.  He was haunted by the question “How will I survive financially?”  He was fearful that he would never get the edge again, and panicked about his future.

At last Rick came to grips with his reality, enlisted his assistant, and created an action plan for prospecting.  But every time he started to pick up the phone, he would put it down, feeling incompetent and inadequate.  His mentor suggested that he may be experiencing call reluctance.  Holy smoke!  That had never occurred to Rick, because he never experienced it initially.  He was determined to push through and make the calls.  But the more he forced himself, the worse it got.

Rick’s lack of prospecting certainly hurt his ability to bounce back from the loss of a major client.  But why was this onetime rookie of the year having trouble getting back on track?  Did Rick have call reluctance, or were there other issues causing his slump?  All production slumps don’t necessarily point to call reluctance. Here are five different issues, including genuine call reluctance that can cause a salesperson to stop prospecting and slip into a production freefall.

1.  Call reluctance

Genuine call reluctance always results in low prospecting activity.  Call reluctance is an emotional hesitation to prospect.

To be successful, financial advisors must be self-energized.  They must have strong goal clarity around meaningful goals in order to build a solid business base.  To be diagnosed with genuine call reluctance, a salesperson must demonstrate sufficient motivation and meaningful goals but nevertheless be experiencing an emotional short-circuit around prospecting activity.  An emotional issue is interfering with his goals. Call reluctance is when the energy that is available for prospecting leaks out into unproductive activities and busy work.

That wasn’t what was happening for Rick.  So if a production slump is not really caused by call reluctance, what is the problem?  The next three items are call reluctance imposters that are often confused with true call reluctance but develop at the goal and motivation level.  They certainly can wreak havoc on your prospecting, but you need to develop different solutions for each one.

2.   Low motivation

Motivation is defined in this context as sufficient physical and psychological energy to productively work through any given work day.  To be an excellent sales producer, a salesperson needs to feel good physically — it is vital.  If someone is not taking care of himself physically through diet, exercise, and sleep, it eventually shows up in his performance.  Excessive drinking or smoking, workaholism, mental trauma, chronic stress, or physical disease can take a toll on your physical energy.  If you’re getting tripped up here, you need to look at what’s zapping your physical energy and rout it out.

3.   Low goal levels

It’s been proven that the higher the goal level, the better the performer.  Perhaps that’s because as you get closer to a goal, a higher level of responsibility is required to reach and then exceed it.  Of course, achieving goals and emotionally connecting to goals is far more important than simply setting them.  Financial advisors who are emotionally connected with meaningful goals will link action and effort with the goal and will overcome obstacles.  They have a dynamic point of action that keeps them focused on their target.

4.   Goal diffusion

Goal diffusion is when a salesperson is scattered and has multiple, competing goals – too many irons in the fire.  It has been proven that the more focused financial advisors are, the more productive they are, the more gratified they are in their careers.

Ironically, today’s modern lifestyle of 24-hour access to everything – not to mention the complicated personal lives many people lead – keeps the average person unfocused and unproductive.  Most advisors are attempting to sustain their production with overloaded circuits.  They aren’t prospecting because they simply have too many things pulling at their attention.

For example, many financial advisors are getting advanced degrees, working on certifications, minding their families, growing their businesses and keeping up with the latest in the market.  They aren’t’ consistently prospecting because they have lost the balance in their lives.  This doesn’t even include the chaos that ensues when divorce or another tumultuous family challenges crop up.  In this scenario, time management issues are really self-management issues.

5.   Integrity issues

Finally, as a coach, I occasionally have a client who finds no resolution to his career troubles even though we’ve scrutinized the obvious performance issues at hand.  It often becomes apparent that this salesperson may be “out of integrity” someplace in their life, i.e. extramarital affair, hiding uncomplimentary habit, etc.  It’s usually something that is on the edge of their value system, and their conscience will not allow them to move forward.  They have an internal battle going on that is costing them dearly.  If you suspect you’re having an integrity issue, you must dig deep and get honest with yourself.  Guide yourself back onto the path you consider right, and break free of the guilt.

The diagnoses

Rick knew he couldn’t pick up the phone but was surprised when he found out that he suffered not from call reluctance, but low goal level and low motivation.  First off, he came to terms with the fact that he had gained 33 pounds and was not taking care of himself.  While he was aware of some physical changes, Rick hadn’t thought about how detrimental his gradual loss of physical energy was to his prospecting performance.

Second, Rick admitted to himself that he had lost sight of the long-term goals that had sustained him during his first few years.  He let himself realize that his mother’s illness had taken a toll on his outlook.  He had also lost his long-term vision, because he was blinded by the day-to-day activities that sustained his current client base.

If you suspect that like Rick, you may be suffering from a lack of motivation or clearly defined goals, ask yourself these questions for a quick dose of self-awareness.

How do you know if you have low motivation, like Rick?

Low motivation shows itself in these behaviors:

• Satisfaction with the status quo
• No sense of urgency
• Rhetorical goal setting with little behavioral investment in follow-through
• Leaving assignments unfinished
• Letting your appearance go
• Frequently being late for appointments
• Coping with demands for improved productivity by ignoring the issue
• Changing companies
• Working hard but in short bursts
• Feeling drawn to short, sensational sales trainings with titles like “How to Read Your Client’s Mind in 20 Seconds”
• Being all talk and no action

How do you know if your goals are too low?

If your goals are inappropriate, you’ll find yourself doing these things:

• Talking long-term but acting short-term
• Working to achieve other people’s objectives but not your own
• Being more interested in the company’s social activities than daily sales performance
• Changing jobs frequently
• Failing to focus on one niche or product
• Hurrying around but having little to show for it
• Giving inadequate or inconsistent services after the sale
• Feeling all dressed up with nowhere to go

How do you know if your goals are diffused?

Here’s what goal diffusion looks like on a day-to-day basis:

• Having high energy but little focus
• Starting many projects but completing few
• Losing interest quickly
• Continually needing novelty, stimulation, and change
• Getting bored very easily
• Being superficially familiar with many products and subjects
• Having a good general overview but lacking substantial product knowledge
• Feeling a loss of control due to over commitment
• Self-starting but having poor follow-through

Look at yourself

If you recognize yourself here and know you are not prospecting consistently, maybe it’s time to have a “spirit talk” with yourself – before you end up on the rocks like Rick.  You must internalize the reality that new clients are the lifeblood of business.  After you’ve had a retreat with yourself, you may want to invest in a diagnostic tool to delve deeper into what is really going on.  You may also want to consider hiring a coach who will not only assist you in ascertaining the cause of your lack of prospecting but also help you design a plan of action so you can rejuvenate yourself and your career.

Be consistent but gentle – no criticizing, judging, or punishing yourself. Self-criticism builds a failure image in your mental sphere, will dominate your thinking and gradually makes you a failure.

Design a plan to take care of yourself with diet, exercise, and sleep.  Slow down and take time each day to simply reflect and think.

The good news is that after some serious soul searching, Rick is now working hard to get his new business development activities on track.  It’s amazing how productive you can become when you clean up those loose ends that are creating the chaos in your career.  Awareness in and of itself is a course correction that will bear fruit – if you follow it.



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