Business planning for 2010 is in full swing at many firms.
As a wholesaler are you holding business planning meetings with your clients?
Plan now to plan for 2010.
The upcoming holiday season represents an excellent time to have meaningful sit-downs with the top brokers in your region.
It’s the time where you will explore what the broker expects from your partnership and what you need to deliver on.
In return, it represents the best time to get business commitments in plain dollars and cents.
Yes, you need to get those commitments in firm dollars.
Alternately, you can tell them how much you need from them in order for the partnership to be mutually successful.
Today on a Wholesaler Mastermind call we discussed the importance of ‘finding out where it hurts’.
As you begin your 2010 planning session with your clients, think about asking important ‘where does it hurt?’ questions.
Questions like:
- As you think back on the past year, in what areas did you need your business to improve?
- Are your model portfolios behaving as you had expected?
- Are you net positive or net negative clients versus last year?
- Did the meltdown help or hurt your business? Why?
- What product provider changes are you thinking about making in the year ahead? By asset class? By carrier?
- What events do you have planned to reach your existing book of business?
- If you could hire a consultant to help you with one dimension of your business what would that consultant specialize in?
- What are your plans for acquiring new clients?
- Do you have thoughts about integrating social media into your business?
- Who is the best wholesaler that called on you in 2009? Why?
All of these questions are designed in some way to get at the ‘what hurts’.
Once you know what ails them you can begin to prescribe remedies that will deepen the relationships that you have with producers.
Frequently we offer solutions for pains they don’t have.
Or we simply ignore the symptoms they are displaying.
Take the guess work out – simply ask ‘where does it hurt?’
Are you getting great ideas from your managers or peers?
If you would like to up your wholesaling game by working with a group of seasoned peers, led by a professional coach, contact us right away.
Join the Wholesaler Masterminds group.
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