Update June 1st 2010: It’s been 90 days almost a full year since the first Wholesaler Masterminds groups kicked off and the ideas shared on those calls have really been terrific.

The collective wisdom of these groups, freely sharing ideas, is more than most wholesalers get in 10 years of national sales conferences, divisional meetings and Friday conference calls.

The ideas presented here only scratch the surface of the depth and breadth of knowledge, experience and wisdom great wholesalers apply in their practice every day.

While the tone, texture and context are lost in a blog post, the ideas are still of interest. For that reason I offer the following thoughts distilled from over 75 hours of calls:

1. Most wholesalers have no agenda when they arrive at a reps office. Great wholesalers send an email prior to broker appointments asking what the broker wants to discuss, issues they have, questions on their mind. Update: use Outlook (or Lotus notes) to future schedule the delivery of the email
2. Do you have a community of Twitter followers, of Facebook friends, or LinkedIn connections? Why not build a ‘community’ of brokers? Update: while many firms will not allow the building of a social media online community, the concept still applies to the formation of advisor “mastermind” or “study” groups facilitated by the wholesaler.
3. Handwritten Thank You cards get noticed now more than ever.
4. Handwritten Thank You cards that are specific to a broker’s interest (wine, golf, NASCAR etc.) are a home run, every time.
5. Use Copytalk (the link will save you $$) to dictate your call notes, thank you cards, follow up letters from your phone right after your appointment. Update: We successfully use the service to dictate newsletters and blog posts. The accuracy of the dictation and the speed of turn around are both good. We also had a chance to speak to the good folks at Dial A Note and recommend their service specifically for the CRM interface.
6. Good wholesalers ask for referrals.
7. Great wholesalers ask for referrals and deliver feedback to referrer on the progress of those referrals.
8. Develop a Fallen Angels List. Stratify that list by asset class, product, firm, producer level, and by geography. Update: another list to have is your Ten Most Wanted list. Use it when you Draft on Influentials
9. Business planning is a waste of time without firm business commitments. Tell them how much you need from them in dollars. Update: also use the the Top X method of requesting a commitment. “Bill, I’d love to say that you are a top 10 producer in my region and that requires you to commit to $5 million in business. Are you in?”
10. Old school marketing used fax blasts. New school marketing uses VoiceShot.
11. Joint client appointments allow you to display your brilliance. Great wholesalers press for them.
12. Good, albeit common, question asks “what cases are you working on?”
13. Great, consultative question asks “what cases have you missed on?”
14. Have an agenda for your meeting with reps that you have been seeing for years so it does not turn into a social only visit. Update: have an agenda for your meetings with all reps. You’ll stay more focussed and cover more ground.
15. Keep your internal, your scheduler, and your admin (you have one right?) all on the same page with Google Docs. Share calendars, spread sheets, etc. Update: we have heard good things about Zully at Timefficient. Tell her you found her through this site and she’ll give you a discounted rate.
16. Loops, zones, sub-zones are great. And sometimes a great wholesaler has to set a follow up appointment for hot prospects sooner than the rotation would otherwise dictate.
17. Run broker’s preferred fund grid through an analytic screen like FI360 to see where your product better fills styles needs.
18. For a phone call that requires a visual (PowerPoint, charts, graphs, tours of brochures, etc) use Glance. It is a simple, low cost way to bring your spoken word to life.
19. For your VIP brokers host a client call with a portfolio manager.
20. To find outsource help (virtual assistants, admin support, etc) explore elance.com
21. Take the time to comb through the IXI or Coates Analytics data that the firm provides and know your territory, and its weak spots, thoroughly.
22. With the holiday months ahead focus on relationship building with Centers of Influence.
23. Re-engage producers (see #8) with lists of clients that you hand deliver.
24. Stay in front of the information tsunami with RSS. Learn how to use it here. Use the password ‘learn’ to watch the video. Update: also use WholesalerBriefcase, a news aggregation service, to stay on top of information.

That’s just a sample folks. These calls are making good wholesalers great wholesalers. The best part is the participants are helping each other.

Just as they will be in the Summer 2010 Wholesaler Mastermind Intensive. 6 weeks – 6 topics – more production. Find out more here.

Here’s hoping you’re not competing against any of them!