You are the sole architect of your business. You and you alone are the only one that can create, construct and care for the business of your dreams. Your responsibility to fulfill this dream lies with no one but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best when he said, “No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.”
Unsuccessful financial advisors/agents let obstacles not opportunities dictate their outcomes while successful financial advisors/agents have learned that the secret to stretching beyond their business limitations is in making a conscious decision to succeed. This then leads to unearthing strategies that reach beyond their present situation and to creating the future they desire.
Any challenge that you have in your business can be overcome by believing there is a solution and directing your energies toward pursuing it, applying solutions, assessing progress and continuing the process until you find yourself accomplishing objectives.
What follows is a process I use with my clients and how that process was used with one financial advisor who was feeling limited and stagnant.
Step 1: Identify Your Challenges
The quickest way to get past your own business limitations is to acknowledge that you have them. A lack of honesty can absolutely deter progress on many levels. You must admit where you are in order to first go in the direction of where you want to be going.
Take James K., a veteran financial advisor with twenty-five years of experience who wanted to take his business to the next level but couldn’t bring himself to prospecting because he believed that after being in business for so long that prospecting wasn’t something he needed to do.
After an extended coaching session he admitted that his real challenge wasn’t the amount of new business in the pipeline but that he had this negative attitude towards prospecting that he was aware needed to be adjusted.
Step 2: Believe in the Solutions
The next step is to be open to exploring new possibilities of what worked for others and the reasons why! It’s important to note that just understanding what the solutions are is not enough. You must delve into each step in the process and comprehend its importance. Then you need to believe that they can work for you as well!
In James’s case, I needed to work on helping him understand how other veteran advisors manage prospecting. They leverage existing relationships via centers of influence, networking, prospecting their natural market and through referrals. After I explained each form of prospecting and mapped out a proven step-by-step process, I had him pick out two prospecting methods that he would like to utilize and implement. I then had him listen to two audios of clients who had applied these methods so that would believe that the solutions worked.
Step 3: Apply, Assess and Deploy
The final steps are to apply the process, assess how it is going, make course corrections if need be and repeat until you ultimately get your desired results! This might seem like a daunting task but once you do it gets easier and easier. In fact, each time you apply this step it helps you to make tweak routinely which means the difference between working harder and working smarter.
Since James understood what to do, I immediately had him take action, record daily progress and debrief me on his prospecting efforts each week. It didn’t take long before we identified a few steps that needed some customizing but once we did he was filling up his pipeline and closing new business! In addition, he was open to exploring additional business limitations.
Why Stretching Beyond Your Limitations Works
If you can relate to having limitations that are holding you back, apply the aforementioned steps and find yourself on the right side of the results spectrum. It may seem a simplistic method and mindset but I assure you that it is effective because you are refocusing your attention from the current undesired outcomes to a proven system.