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I often ask reps, “What’s your biggest challenge?” The answer is almost always the same: Prospecting.

They tell me that they are great at fact finding, building a relationship quickly, and putting together a plan. But, hands down, the thing they feel they have the most room for improvement in is prospecting.

The reason why this is the case has become obvious to me and it has everything to do with the mindset of financial advisors.

What reps work really hard at, during every single moment of every single day, is to fight the negative perception that consumers have of financial advisors.

Let’s face it: The overall image that society has of financial planners, despite the incredibly positive impact we have on so many clients, is pretty low.

Time and time again, surveys show that the financial services industry ranks among the lowest of professions in the public’s eye in terms of trust and honesty. From their perspective, we are right on par with used car sales people.

They think that insurance agents just go out and sell stuff that nobody needs and are only concerned about making a commission. That we won’t provide any service after we make a sale and then we will get a list of all their contacts and prospect with it relentlessly.

The list goes on and on.

That’s why financial advisors work so damn hard, on both a conscious and subconscious level, to make sure that their client and prospective clients don’t have that same perception about them.

This is why prospecting is so difficult for the majority of advisors! The pinnacle of behavior that could trigger a client to have a negative perception of a financial advisor is asking for referrals. It’s the very essence of what you are trying to avoid. And yet, it’s one of the most important aspects of your business that you must do.

The Right Way To Prospect And Ask For Referrals

What I’m here to tell you is that there are some very unprofessional ways to prospect that warrant those feelings by clients. There are advisors who use sketchy sales tactics and only care about making money. This is the minority of cases.

The vast majority of advisors I’ve met genuinely care about people and got in the business to help others.

For these advisors, there are also extremely professional and attractive ways to prospect. And it all comes back to your mindset.

You need a deep conviction that the people who get the opportunity to work with you are lucky. The work you do with your clients vastly improves their overall financial security so that they can have peace of mind and serenity. Your clients and community need you more than ever. You follow a system, add tremendous value, and you follow up and follow through. That you have the courage to tell people not always what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.

With that mindset, prospecting is not about asking for a favor or just trying to make a sale. When you ask for referrals, you are giving the individual that you are asking a referral for a gift that they can give to the people they love and care about most.

That’s just not a play on words or something you can trick yourself into believing. It’s has to be authentic and genuine. It has to be the truth that you believe in the deepest part of your soul.

Why Advisors Struggle To Ask For Referrals

The biggest reason advisors fear prospecting and asking for referrals is that they are going to be pigeonholed as society’s negative perception of the insurance salesperson.

There are some other associated reasons as well. For example, asking for referrals is asking for help. It’s goes against the ego. Once a rep has an established business, sometimes their mindset is that, “They don’t need any help. They’re already successful.”

When this thought process is combined with the fear of coming across as the “salesy” insurance agent, this becomes a powerful force driving you to avoid prospecting.

Yes, every advisor needs a system for prospecting and they need to master great language. But the first step to becoming a masterful prospector is to master your mindset. Getting rid of all your self-defeated thinking and replacing it with empowered thinking.

Without first addressing what goes on in the six inches in between your ears, no system or language will be able to help you. Your body language, tone of voice and subliminal communication will always manifest what you really believe inside.

If you are an advisor who can relate to this post, I highly encourage you to try out P2P Academy, my virtual sales training website. One of our most popular courses included on P2P Academy is the course on prospecting.

In this course, I go more in depth on ways that you can develop and master an empowered prospecting mindset, but also give you my eight-step prospecting system and powerful language that hundreds of advisors have used to elevate their practice. Check it out at P2P-Academy.com!