Twenty minutes and hundreds of thousands of dollars later
The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.
Twenty minutes cost Richard Cutler hundreds of thousands of dollars. And somehow, I had to find it for him. Fortunately, the solution was simple.
After fifteen years as an advisor, Richard had finally taken his place at the top of his field marketing organization. He had a quality that often leads to immense success in our industry – the ability to identify problems. He wasn’t just a solution provider, he was a problem finder, which enabled him to create large opportunities that other advisors would have passed over. So it was no surprise to me that Richard had reached the top spot, but that was two years ago, and since then, Richard spent the next year and a half sliding down the ranks. When I saw him last year, his revenue was off 40% from the year before.
Richard and I had scheduled our appointment for 2:00 PM, but he burst into my office at 2:20 and without mentioning anything about being late, said we should just get straight down to business. His entrance was my first clue as to why his practice had been floundering, and a few questions about his interactions with clients confirmed my suspicions – it was an issue of confidence. Not Richard’s, but his clients’ – their confidence in him.
Most advisors know that if their clients don’t have confidence in them, they won’t get the business. But a lot of advisors don’t really understand how to earn confidence. Sometimes confidence is infectious; if you’re confident, your prospects will develop confidence in you. But other times, as in Richard’s case, your own confidence can backfire on you. For Richard, reaching the top position in the organization was a marker of success for him. It proved to him that he was the best. But his own self-confidence caused changes in how he related with his prospects and clients. He began to think that they were lucky to have him as their advisor. He knew he could do for them what no other advisor could, and he began to take them for granted. Small slips in his behaviour soon took their toll on his business – to the tune of $180,000 – the amount his revenue had fallen over one year.
When I asked Richard why he thought he was down so much, he gave me a rundown of the large cases he’d lost. According to him, it was always the client’s fault: they didn’t understand, they had their priorities upside down, got pressured from their spouse, etc.
I said, “Richard, those are excuses. The real problem lies with you – your inability to earn confidence. Your being twenty minutes late today is symptomatic of a problem that is costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
A lot of advisors aren’t aware of how easily they can erode confidence, or conversely, how easily they can earn it. The latter is something I learned from David Cowper, a mentor of mine. David was a founding member of MDRT and author of Mega-Selling: Secrets of a Master Salesman. He taught me that you can go a long way with people just by following four simple rules:
- Be on time
- Do what you say you’re going to do
- Finish what you start
- Say please and thank you
They are simple rules, almost too simple, really, but I’m amazed at how many advisors don’t follow them. In fact, if you do just those four things, you’re almost guaranteed to win the confidence of your clients. And who could argue with David Cowper, a man who closed insurance deals for a hundred million dollars of coverage.
At the end of our meeting, I prescribed Richard the simple solution of following those four rules for the next three months. Fortunately, he stuck to the plan. He called recently to let me know that his revenue had taken a leap. If the trend continued, the year would be his best ever and he would be in the running for the top spot again.
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The Covenant Group is referred to by many as the place entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and have authored the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High-Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.