Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
During each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7-figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification. Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Sarah is a financial wholesaler who took on a new territory almost 4 years ago after some time in a different type of job. About two years into her new territory, the pandemic shut things down. She had been familiar with the Pillar System through training I had done for her company and we decided it was time to get together and figure out her weekly strategy going into the new year. We identified the following pillars during our call:
To hear other episodes go to
https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast
Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
During each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7-figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification. Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Sarah is a financial wholesaler who took on a new territory almost 4 years ago after some time in a different type of job. About two years into her new territory, the pandemic shut things down. She had been familiar with the Pillar System through training I had done for her company and we decided it was time to get together and figure out her weekly strategy going into the new year. We identified the following pillars during our call:
To hear other episodes go to
https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast
[00:00:00] Brian Margolis: This is Brian Margolis. And welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast, where on each episode I use the pillar system to help a sales pro entrepreneur or other results-based professional, create a weekly strategy to run a simple, more lucrative business strategy. So simple. It can fit on an index card, but so powerful.
[00:00:21] Brian Margolis: It's actually helped create multiple seven figure earners and is now licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to create strategies for their teams. If you'd like a free copy of my book on exactly how to do this, or want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com, enjoy the episode.
[00:00:40] Brian Margolis: All right. So Sarah, you are just to kind of set the stage. You are familiar with my pillar system. You've I believe seen me train on it before with your company either directly or indirectly. Um, and a lot of other people in your company use the pillar system. This is not new to you, correct? Correct. Okay.
[00:01:04] Brian Margolis: So what we're going to be doing today is it's been a while since you looked at your pillars. And so in a way we're kind of doing a reset here, we're going to kind of start from scratch. You have a newer territory for your sales job. And so we're going to build this from the ground up and figure out what your, a weekly strategy is.
[00:01:25] Brian Margolis: So let me just ask you just describe, so you, you're what they call a financial wholesaler. Um, some of my clients, I have a lot of clients in that world. You basically sell financial products, mutual funds, different things to financial advisors. So it's your job to represent your company and influence and try to get advisors to use your products with their clients.
[00:01:51] Brian Margolis: That's basically what you do, correct? It's like an external sales. Absolutely. Okay. And you've not recently, but relatively recently had a territory change. So although you've been doing this for a long time, right? I have. Yes. And you basically have a new territory that you got now what, three years ago, I'm trying to do the math in my head two and a half years ago,
[00:02:19] Sarah: actually three and a half, almost
[00:02:22] Brian Margolis: four, almost four years in the new territory, but about a year and a half into the territory COVID hit.
[00:02:29] Brian Margolis: Which changed kind of what you were doing, right? Yes. Okay. So although you have a lot of experience, you don't have a mature territory, is that correct? Correct. Okay. So let's just talk about your business then. Um, let's, let's just talk about your business and. Let's just start with, we'll just get real basic here and then I know we'll go down some side roads and that'll be awesome.
[00:03:00] Brian Margolis: Um, so let's just talk about consistency pillars, right? In other words, you know, if we think of it as you have your consistency pillars, these are the things that, um, you need to do consistently. Like you, you already know how to do these things. You can already do them effectively. You just need to actually make sure you're doing them.
[00:03:19] Brian Margolis: Right. Um, and then we'll get into effectiveness pillars and then we'll get into strategic pillars. So let's just start from the top. What are the things that you feel each week? You need to make sure that you're doing consistently?
[00:03:37] Sarah: Well, I need to, um, I need to be absolutely prospecting. Okay. I need to be doing a lot of follow up.
[00:03:48] Sarah: I need to, um, I have some presence on social media. So I've been trying to do LinkedIn posts as often as I can. And I need to be, I need to be watching my flows and making sure that, um, I'm, I'm a pre thing, you know, the business that, that advisors are throwing my way.
[00:04:11] Brian Margolis: W w what was the last thing you said, you need to be watching your flows and
[00:04:16] Sarah: yeah.
[00:04:16] Sarah: Essentially just thanking people for the business. Right.
[00:04:23] Brian Margolis: And when you say thanking them, that is in your industry. Because like I said, I have a lot of wholesaler clients, as you know, that has a, a, there's two pieces to that. Tell me if you're talking about both pieces. One is to thank them, right. Do the professional thing, but the second is also, it's a way to engage, right?
[00:04:44] Sarah: Yes. I look at it more from that perspective of,
[00:04:47] Brian Margolis: of a way to engage. Okay. So, yeah, the thinking the engaging. Okay. Let me ask you this. So when you say prospecting, okay. When you say prospecting, I like to in your industry, I like to define prospecting is just kind of a functional definition. So I think of it as you schedule your warm market, right?
[00:05:15] Brian Margolis: So advisors that you already have a relationship with. In other words, they know who you are and you know who they are, right? Whether they have zero business with your company, or they have 50 million with your company that year, they are warm market because they know who you are, you know who they are when I think of prospecting.
[00:05:36] Brian Margolis: And I just wanna make sure you and I are talking about the same thing. I think of getting the initial meeting with that with someone who they don't know you, and you don't know. They meet, they may even have business with you. Right? So warm market scheduling, cold market prospecting, trying to get that initial meeting, is that how you're defining prospect and getting the initial meeting.
[00:06:03] Brian Margolis: Okay. So prospecting, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing. Now, if I asked you how many advisors okay. In your territory, in other words, do you have a prospecting list where you have a top 300 people you'd like to get in front of, is there 50 people on the list? Is it 15,000 ballpark? What your cold market looks like?
[00:06:27] Sarah: It's too many currently. I do have, I do have, I do have a list and I will be updating it pretty soon, but it it's, it's in the hundreds.
[00:06:41] Brian Margolis: Okay. Now, when you say this list is in the hundreds, are you saying that, are you saying Sarah, that you've already kind of whittled it down and these 400 people or whatever it is, those people are like, you've identified those as the people you want to get in front of, or is it just, that's the size of the list and now you have to whittle it down?
[00:07:09] Brian Margolis: Oh, no, that,
[00:07:09] Sarah: that, those are the, as in those are the people that I want to get in front of using, um, just data and intelligence and whatnot, and certain lists, the, the, the amount of people that I've come up with. Yeah.
[00:07:24] Brian Margolis: Okay. And, and again, you don't, you don't know exactly how big that list is, but you think it's, maybe if I said, ballpark, are we talking 500, 300,
[00:07:34] Sarah: it's closer to 500.
[00:07:35] Brian Margolis: Okay. 500. In other words. And again, I'm just being real clear. 500 that if I said tomorrow, they'll take a meeting with you. You, they would be worth taking a meeting with.
[00:07:52] Sarah: Yeah, I guess there are probably different, different levels of, of, um, different levels of the, you know, I could, I could break up that list of, uh, definitely more for me. I have not previously covered this territory prior to a few years ago. And then I would, it was a great run for a year and a half of, um, you know, getting things up and running, but COVID definitely was a challenge and sure,
[00:08:24] Brian Margolis: no, no, no doubt.
[00:08:25] Brian Margolis: No doubt about it. No doubt about it. And we're, I, I'm telling you siren when we're done here. This is what I do. You're going to be crystal clear on exactly what you have to do. So let me see, let me keep splitting hairs. Okay. There's Def, there's definitely going to be a rank to your list. Right? Certain people are showing more potential than others, right?
[00:08:46] Brian Margolis: Either they've used your company's funds before, or, you know, their AUM, you know, for those who don't know this industry, their AUM, how much money that advisor manages is really high. There's some data point that tells you they're better candidates. Right? So there's definitely a ranking. We, we know that.
[00:09:04] Brian Margolis: Um, I'm trying to understand maybe what the end of that looks like. In other words, if I said, could you whittle this down to 200 people? Is that too small to start with? Or should we go bigger?
[00:09:15] Sarah: No, that, that absolutely is not too small. Ideally I'd like it to be smaller,
[00:09:20] Brian Margolis: but ideally you'd like it to be what?
[00:09:22] Brian Margolis: To be smaller. Okay. So, so whittling down your list is maybe something we have to talk about you doing? Correct. All right. Let me ask you about Walmart. Warm market being, like I said, they know who you are, you know who they are. Right. Ballpark. How many of these people do you have? Where again, I'm not saying you're best friends with them, but if you say this is Sarah from, you know, your company, they're going to be, they're going to know who you are.
[00:09:55] Brian Margolis: Right. I've met with her or I've talked to her or whatever it is 400. Oh, so you have about 400 people in your warm market. That's great. Okay. So that's a pretty sizable warm market.
[00:10:15] Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I, I sort of split it up, um, into, um, you know, fo focus, um, prospects and producers, and that's really, that's the number.
[00:10:30] Brian Margolis: And again, just so we're clear because this is so important to what we're about to do. You're saying focus, prospects. Do you mean cold market? You've never met them or people that you know now, but they haven't done enough business or any business.
[00:10:47] Sarah: Well, just people that I haven't had a meeting with. Right.
[00:10:51] Sarah: As a prospect or some, I guess some, maybe done a little bit of business, but we're not meeting on a regular
[00:10:58] Brian Margolis: basis. Okay. But you, but you have a, they know who you are.
[00:11:06] Brian Margolis: The,
[00:11:07] Sarah: some of them may in some of them may not.
Okay.
[00:11:10] Brian Margolis: So I just, I just don't want there to be any overlap between our prospect list and our warm market list. So the prospect list that we're going to whittle down, these are people who don't know who you are. The warm market are people who do know who you are.
[00:11:29] Brian Margolis: Right. Do you think it's still around 400 in the warm.
[00:11:35] Brian Margolis: And again, but we don't have to get it exact. I'm just trying to understand.
[00:11:40] Sarah: Yeah. I mean, like I said, we, um, I have not redone this list in a while and my territory coming out of COVID has, has been completely restructured. So I think that I'm talking with numbers of, um, so I'm not, I, you know, I'm not exactly sure Brian, if I'm, um, if I'm being completely honest this time I went through and looked at the territory, but my territory is, is a lot smaller now and, um, need to completely rework things.
[00:12:14] Brian Margolis: Okay. So, so this, this would be a good time to talk about something which is, so we're going to figure out what your pillars are today, right? And we're coming toward the end of a calendar. All right. And so I think a lot of times at the end of calendar years, people get, they kind of get caught up in this whole get ready to get ready, like get everything set for next year and all that kind of stuff.
[00:12:38] Brian Margolis: And to be honest, I think there's only two things you need to do to get ready for next year. Okay. Number one is figuring out what your weekly billers are. All right. So we're going to figure that out today. The second thing is I put them under the category of tasks, meaning you, you have to do them before next year, but once they're done, they're done.
[00:13:02] Brian Margolis: It's not an ongoing thing. So for example, if you were keeping a list here of getting ready for, you know, in this case, 2022, the next calendar year under your tasks, two of your tasks, what one might be, you know, to clean up your lists, right. To figure out okay, who is my warm market, right. Who's in the loop.
[00:13:22] Brian Margolis: So to speak. And then who are, who are my PR what does my prospect list look like? Like here's the 200 people I want to target. Right. And so do you know what I mean? Like that becomes a task, not a pillar because once you've done it once it's good for a while. Yep. Okay. Cause that's really, all you need to do is figure out what your pillars are.
[00:13:45] Brian Margolis: Write down your tasks that have to be done before the turn of the year and you should be good. Okay. Um, and again, I just, I don't want to go, I don't want you to think I'm playing semantics here with the whole prospecting, uh, scheduling, warm market, cold market. It's just, when we get into your pillars, it's going to get really clear why here, I want to keep warm market and cold market separate.
[00:14:08] Brian Margolis: All right. So you have your warm market products. So we talk about prospecting, follow up your social media presence, uh, thanking people, engaging them, and then. Um, what about scheduling? Do you think you need a pillar to schedule? Do you just think, or do you think that's something you already do regardless?
[00:14:29] Brian Margolis: Do you need some kind of accountability on that side?
[00:14:32] Sarah: It definitely needs, um, I definitely need a scheduling pillar. Sorry. I missed that one. I recently, um, was using a scheduler that I'm no longer using currently. And then I think I'd also maybe too many, but I also, um, like to have an event planning pillar where I'm planning, you know, any, any type of events, really, if they're more group, group events, sometimes they're educational.
[00:15:03] Sarah: Um, sometimes it's an activity, so something like that, because that can take a little while sometimes.
[00:15:09] Brian Margolis: Okay. Fair enough. Event planning, pillar scheduling. Got it. Okay. Um, anything else? Any kind of like in meetings stuff. That you feel you need to do more consistently, meaning whether it's asked for referrals or ask clarifying questions to begin to clarify in conversation or offer a different product so many times a week, anything like that, that you can think of that you'd want to be one of your pillars.
[00:15:40] Sarah: I think those are all great ideas. Um,
[00:15:45] Brian Margolis: I
[00:15:47] Sarah: would like to have less pillars more than, you know, too many before a hundred
[00:15:52] Brian Margolis: percent. We're just, I'm just getting, getting it all out there now. And then we're going to kind of play with this and, and simplify it.
[00:15:59] Sarah: So it wouldn't be asking for a referral. I feel like I get some, some good referrals and I'm, um,
[00:16:08] Brian Margolis: I.
[00:16:10] Sarah: You know, it would be okay. There. It might be, it might be just asking clarifying questions. I think be, would be appropriate. That's something I could add in.
[00:16:22] Brian Margolis: Okay. And what about cross selling? You feel like you're doing enough of that or?
[00:16:28] Sarah: Yeah, I feel like I've got a good handle on
[00:16:29] Brian Margolis: that. Okay, cool. All right, so let's jump over.
[00:16:34] Brian Margolis: So, so that's the consistency stuff. Let's jump over to learning pillars, right? Effectiveness pillars.
[00:16:46] Brian Margolis: And I'll just ask you, you know, kind of the way it's written and then we'll go from there, which is, you know, Sarah, if I could magically give you, you know, five points in any skill, right. That skill being your ability to write an email, that your skill, that skill being the ability to get. To get meetings with hard to meet advisors or your messaging or your, you know, anything like that.
[00:17:12] Brian Margolis: What skill if I added five points for you would have the biggest impact
[00:17:21] Sarah: just to be quicker at everything. Um, I don't know. Um,
[00:17:27] Brian Margolis: just, just to be quicker, like to get more done.
[00:17:30] Sarah: Yeah. Just to, to get more done. Exactly.
[00:17:34] Brian Margolis: Well, unfortunately I can't give you superpowers, but I, I think, I think we need to move down the road instead of about getting more done. I think we need to think about getting a bigger ROI on what we do.
[00:17:52] Brian Margolis: Right? Cause I think, I think the maturity as a business and look, Sarah, I look at you as a business owner, right. You know, you might get a W2, but you have autonomy. Right. You have your territory, you have autonomy and you're paid for results essentially. And so you're running a business and I think the maturity of running a business, everyone realizes we can't get it all done.
[00:18:19] Brian Margolis: Right. We all know we can't get it all done. I think the maturity becomes when we realize that it's okay, that we can't get it all done. Right. Like, we're fine with it. We're saying okay. Since I can't get it all done and I only have so much mental energy, you know, I have so much time. What are the things that if I get done every week will give me the biggest ROI, make sense?
[00:18:42] Brian Margolis: I would pause. I would. I would like to give you pause on trying to get more done if that makes sense.
[00:18:53] Brian Margolis: And again, that's after, you know, you know, the, the thousands and thousands of thousands of sessions I've done just with people in. Field is whenever I, I, I work with someone and they become a big producer. And what you do, we always went always wind up doing less, not more, they always wind up slowing down, not speeding up.
[00:19:13] Brian Margolis: And, and that's kind of the direction we should be moving in. Let's try to get more specific, right. If I said, what's the biggest bottleneck in your business right now, right? What is holding you back from being number one in your company that you control that you control? Is it access to advisors? Is it getting paid more per meeting?
[00:19:39] Brian Margolis: It's definitely
[00:19:39] Sarah: access
[00:19:40] Brian Margolis: access. Okay. So I'm guessing one of the skills then would be, you know, if I made you a better prospector.
[00:19:55] Brian Margolis: Sure. Sure. In other words, if I could add five point, if you're, I guess I'm just making this up, but if you're a four at prospecting now and I made you a nine and you were that great at getting meetings with hard to meet people, I think that would be a skill that would change your business. Right. Okay.
[00:20:13] Brian Margolis: Because the one thing I know about your industry is you guys, as a whole get very caught up in, um, activity counts, right? How many meetings, how many dials, how many of this? How many of that? And if you think about it, Sarah, like you get paid for hits, right? You get paid for sales and there's only two ways like in baseball, for example, there's only two ways to get more hits.
[00:20:42] Brian Margolis: Right? The first way is you can get more at bat. Okay. Meaning you can send more emails, you can make more phone calls, you can go to more meetings, all that kind of stuff. The second way you get more hits is by increasing your batting percentage, right? The, the effectiveness part of it. So when you do send an email, you get a response.
[00:21:02] Brian Margolis: When you make a call, you get a response. When you have a meeting, you get paid on it. Right. Do you see how I'm dividing that up? You kind of have the consistency activity part, and then you have the effectiveness part, right? I want to, I wanna think, I want you to thinking about effectiveness as much as how many of everything, because you know, making a billion phone calls, sending a billion emails with a low batting percentage, you know, it's, it's almost like multiplying by zero, so, okay.
[00:21:32] Brian Margolis: So we have access. So any, any other skills besides getting access so that you can think of, um,
[00:21:47] Brian Margolis: Maybe just,
[00:21:48] Sarah: yeah. I mean, what did the, so prospecting we talked about, um,
[00:21:54] Brian Margolis: um,
[00:21:56] Sarah: I mean, in follow up, right. I think that's just something I need to commit to more, um, in terms of sometimes if it's on like, on my list for a certain day, you know, that's something that I put off or I could just be, you know, more efficient.
[00:22:12] Sarah: Um,
[00:22:13] Brian Margolis: okay. You're talking about on the, on the, on the follow-up stuff,
[00:22:17] Sarah: follow up stuff. Um, you know, social media, I'm trying to have much more of a presence on social media, but next time let's talk
[00:22:27] Brian Margolis: about that for a second. Let's talk about that because like, I like everything, there's a consistency component and there's an effectiveness component, right.
[00:22:36] Brian Margolis: The consistency would be, you know, I need to post on social media X times a week, right? Yeah. Pretty straightforward thing we could probably put into play if we decide to write, I know for a fact with what you're trying to do, the consistency with social media is not the issue. It's the effectiveness, right?
[00:22:57] Brian Margolis: Because if you have, and I don't know how much you post on social media now, and I know you're restricted by compliance in your industry, but very few wholesalers get much action on LinkedIn, right? Like if you post something, what you'll notice is you'll get like zero to 10 likes. Right? Usually. And like six of them are 50% of them are like people you work with right.
[00:23:25] Brian Margolis: In your own company. Um, I, I guess, and again, I'm just talking out loud and let's talk about this. I want to dive in, but I'm questioning, I'm questioning the ROI of getting really good at social media. Because of how restricted you are. Right. W how do you feel about what I'm saying? Or am I going, am I wrong?
[00:23:50] Brian Margolis: I could be wrong.
[00:23:53] Sarah: Um, I guess I, I understand where you're coming from. I don't disagree, but I have had some posts where, and specifically actually around, um, our strategies
[00:24:06] Brian Margolis: were around what strategies, I'm sorry, around the VAR strategy
[00:24:12] Sarah: where I've posted it on LinkedIn and then had people reach out to me and, and, um, CLS reach out to me and ask to schedule meetings for their branches.
[00:24:23] Brian Margolis: Got it. So here here's, here's what that tells me then. Okay. I think we can probably mold LinkedIn or social media into your consistency stuff. Um, I don't know. And again, I'm just, you know, this is about figuring out what the, what the biggest ROI is. I don't know if you have to spend time every week trying to get better at it, if that makes sense, like taking courses or reading about it.
[00:24:51] Brian Margolis: Right. But you tell me, right. It's like as good enough. Good enough. Is it just about being more consistent or do you feel like no, I actually have to dive in and learn how to write effective posts. That'll give me a big ROI.
[00:25:09] Sarah: Yeah, I guess I was thinking about writing more unique, effective posts and just getting in a good rhythm around them so that it's not taking me, you know, as much time as, as it has in the past.
[00:25:27] Brian Margolis: Okay. Okay. So I'll put that under social media learning for now, just as a category.
[00:25:38] Brian Margolis: Just, you know, just for, just for our notes again, I'm just getting all this stuff down, Sarah, and then we're going to go through it and really clean it up and get nitty-gritty as exactly what you have to do. Right. Um, any other skills? So getting better at social media, getting better at prospecting, right.
[00:25:59] Brian Margolis: Anything else you can think of?
[00:26:04] Brian Margolis: I would say,
[00:26:05] Sarah: yeah. Um, just, you know, just overall in terms of learning, um, we have some new products that I'm learning about. So spending some time, really, um, understanding and making sure I've got a good, um, a good pitch around those products. There. And then the, you know, just the application within the market environment too.
[00:26:32] Sarah: So making sure that, um, it's not just, you know, the product itself, but within, within the, the current market setting, you know, making sure that, um, those sales presence, you know, practicing the sales presentations. Um, sometimes I record myself doing that and I recently just learned that a tool that we have called the Lego, I can, um, I can record my own pitches on there and play them back while I'm in the car.
[00:27:01] Sarah: So that's something I could practice and be more. Um, in fact,
[00:27:10] Brian Margolis: let me ask you one more question. So when you schedule, okay, and this is why I was trying to get a, um, I was trying to get a. A feeling as to the size of your warm market, right? You said you're in a, your, your, your, basically your territory is one Metro city, right?
[00:27:34] Brian Margolis: For the most part, do you do any overnights or is all of your stuff kind of you day trips? If, if you leave the office,
[00:27:46] Sarah: currently, there are no overnights needed for my terror.
[00:27:51] Brian Margolis: So you're not, you're not in one of these territories where you need to necessarily have a rotation. Right.
[00:28:01] Brian Margolis: It's kind of like, you can go to the east side of your city one day and you can go to the north part Northern suburbs on another day, for example. Right.
[00:28:10] Sarah: Kind of, but I, I prefer to have a rotation. I try to try to leverage one.
[00:28:17] Brian Margolis: And what does, what does that rotation look like?
[00:28:21] Sarah: It looks like, um, So the, um, just city, you know, being in the city is one day being, um, in, you know, uh, far north shore and other day, um, being a little bit in, in, um, a little bit west of the city, um, is other zones.
[00:28:47] Sarah: So it really, it still has the capacity to have like three or four.
[00:28:52] Brian Margolis: I, I, you know, I do want, I do understand that, but do you kind of, but then do you kind of create the rotations and then schedule based on those? Or do you let the business dictate where you go each day?
[00:29:06] Sarah: No, I, I actually color code a calendar and then I had it to my internal partner and we work off that.
[00:29:14] Sarah: So we try our best to schedule in
[00:29:16] Brian Margolis: those zones. Got it. Okay. One of the things without going too much into a sidebar, and we can talk offline about this a little bit is, and again, if I understood your warm market a little better, I'd have a better take on this, but I think there's a lot of weight given to geography these days that doesn't need to be there.
[00:29:41] Brian Margolis: In other words, I feel like a lot of people in your industry, a lot of wholesalers, they have these pre-made rotations and then they try to schedule to fit into the rotations. Versus, I don't know if you remember me ever talking in the past about creating a hit list, like using the draft board style before, um, before you a schedule each week and kind of letting the business drive where you're going.
[00:30:12] Brian Margolis: Right. Um, but maybe, maybe you and I take that offline. Um, ma maybe that's a very specific thing and we can skip it for now. Um, but it's helped a lot of people, but it won't be as big of a deal because you do day trips. So it's, it's not the, uh, not the end of the world. Okay. Let's kind of start at the top.
[00:30:34] Brian Margolis: Let's let's start with scheduling. Okay. Is scheduling for you as simple as I want to schedule at least X number of meetings every week for the future. Does a pillar like that work for you or is that a more difficult way to do it in your situation?
[00:30:57] Sarah: No, that's what I've used in the past and I think it's good.
[00:31:00] Sarah: I just having a goal of how many meetings a week I should have.
[00:31:04] Brian Margolis: Okay. But I don't want to, I don't, I know I'm nitpicking. I don't want it to be a goal. I want it to be a predictable result. Right. Meaning. I don't know if you recall that part of it, but meaning if we're going to use a results-based pillar, like I want to schedule 10 meetings a week minimum every week for the future, 10 should be a predictable result.
[00:31:25] Brian Margolis: Meaning as long as you put out the effort, you'll get at least 10 meetings. Right. Maybe your goal is higher, but that's the pillar itself. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. I, again, I'm, I'm all about goals. That's just not what we're dealing with right now. Okay. So what do you think is a predictable number for you right now that Hey, as long as you do what you're supposed to do, you can schedule X number of meetings a week.
[00:31:52] Brian Margolis: Okay. For the future.
[00:32:01] Brian Margolis: It's so 15 is realistic at this point
[00:32:07] Sarah: in the past, I've used. And had two other people responsible for a number of another number within a weekly number, but I don't have that right now. So I think, I think 15 has to be, yeah, I've got to, got to make it real realistic.
[00:32:28] Brian Margolis: Okay. So 15, 15 now, just so we're on the same page, a meeting is a meeting, right?
[00:32:33] Brian Margolis: Whether that's a virtual meeting or that's an in-person meeting, it's these are 15 scheduled meetings for the future. Right.
[00:32:41] Sarah: I consider a meeting too. Yes. I consider a meeting to be something where I send a meeting invitation, whether it's virtual or, and it's
[00:32:51] Brian Margolis: accepted. All right. And that 15, that's a total that, that can be you, your internal partner doesn't matter.
[00:32:59] Brian Margolis: 15. Have to go on the books every week.
[00:33:05] Sarah: Yes, that would be
[00:33:05] Brian Margolis: okay. All right. So I'm going to call that for now. Pillar, number one, to schedule 15 meetings for the future. All right. Let's talk about prospecting, which again, prospecting is, you know, remember when I said scheduling, I think of warm market prospecting. I think of cold market. Now I want to be clear.
[00:33:35] Brian Margolis: Any, any prospecting that you do that turns into a meeting counts toward the 15th. I'm just separating it out as a pillar because of how you're going to approach it. If that makes sense. Right. In other words, when you reach out to get a meeting with people, you already have a relationship with or already know you it's slightly different than, you know, when you're, when you're, um, when you're prospecting, right.
[00:34:00] Brian Margolis: It's more of an automated, not automated, but it's. Generic kind of thing in general. Right? So, so it's a slightly different approach. Um, do you find these days when prospecting for email to be more effective or for the phone to be more effective?
[00:34:23] Sarah: Um, I've had, I've had more luck on email these days. Yeah, but I do always try to call first. Um, I guess I've had more luck than in the, um, in the past, um, on email, but I mean, I always try to pick up the phone and call and gather some information as, as, uh, uh, first priority.
[00:34:52] Brian Margolis: So we'll, we'll, let's talk about that for a second, because that could be potentially one of the places maybe we're, we're wasting some time.
[00:35:00] Brian Margolis: W when you say you're calling to get information, you mean you call you talk to the gatekeeper, you gather information.
[00:35:08] Sarah: Well, I think I'm calling with the intention of trying to get a meeting. If it doesn't work, at least then I feel that I'm trying to, I'm asking a couple of questions so that I'm getting information on.
[00:35:23] Sarah: Um, I'm just getting, walking away with information that, you know, is, would be helpful to me in the future or in a future conversation or meeting.
[00:35:32] Brian Margolis: Okay. But D again, so, so again, I can only use my experience, right. With working with people in your industry, working with other wholesalers. And like I said, I mean, I work with so many of them.
[00:35:45] Brian Margolis: I have such a large data set that I feel like if, if, if for whatever, some people are real effective with the phone, not many anymore in today's day and age, I feel like if we can accomplish the same thing by email, we could shave a lot of time off of your prospecting, if that makes sense. Um, by not having you calling 30, 40, 50 people every week versus you, do you do the email forwards right now?
[00:36:16] Brian Margolis: Do you use that technique?
[00:36:18] Sarah: I learned that from you and I, I do. I do occasionally use
[00:36:21] Brian Margolis: that. Okay. So here, here would be. Tell me how you think about this prospecting pillar. And again, please be honest. I'm thinking you get your prospecting list down to about 180 people, right? Getting it down to a list of the 180, you know, highest priority prospects.
[00:36:46] Brian Margolis: Okay. Now I'm not saying for the rest of them, if you're doing some kind of quick hit call or some kind of event, you can invite all. But as far as your focus list, do you think it's realistic to get it to 180? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to give you access to a bunch of trainings after this, but a lot of people don't have access to, but I think what you want to do is I think you want a prospecting pillar of 30, 30, and then I don't know what the last number is going to be yet, but where every week.
[00:37:24] Brian Margolis: So it almost be like a six week rotation. Where in week one, you send 30 emails, you know, to the first think of it. This way you break, you break the hundred and 80. Okay. You break the group of 180 into six teams of 30. Makes sense. Okay. Now they don't have to be exactly. You know, if 35 or with one broker dealer, then, you know, you can put them together.
[00:37:50] Brian Margolis: Right. But approximately six teams of 30. Okay. A, B, C, D, and F. So in week one, you're sending, um, you're sending an email to group a, right. And then in week two, you're sending that email or a similar email to group B, but you're also forwarding the 30 from week one to eight that same week. Does that make sense?
[00:38:18] Brian Margolis: Yes. So, so you're, you're, you're prospecting becomes 30 and 30. Those are the first two numbers, right? The initial emails and then the 30 forwards from the week before for those who didn't respond. Okay. And, and I, you know, I love that that'll go into your pillars because you know, forwarding will get you a lot higher response rate.
[00:38:40] Brian Margolis: Um, and then the last number I want to talk about are these wow. Mailers. We'll talk offline about how to do these well mailers. It's not critical to this particular session, but as of this recording, and I can tell you for a fact, we are getting 50%, 50% and above. Okay. And what I mean by that is if you, if you sent six wow mailers a week, I can pretty much guarantee you at this point, you will get three, three of those people will eventually turn into meetings.
[00:39:21] Brian Margolis: Okay. Pretty quickly actually you'll get meetings from those three people. So it's very targeted, very personalized. And so I'm thinking since access right now is a big thing for you. I'm thinking if we go 30, 30, and six, that that would be a great prospecting pillar for you.
[00:39:42] Brian Margolis: Does that 30, 30, and six.
[00:39:47] Sarah: So 30 prospecting emails, forwards and six well mailers.
[00:39:54] Brian Margolis: Correct. Okay. And, and the same people you send wow. Mailers to, you can still keep in the rotation. All right. You can still keep them in the rotation if they don't respond. Right. Because you know, maybe they don't respond to the wild mailer, but you know, six weeks down there, or six rotations down the road, you send them a something.
[00:40:17] Brian Margolis: And all of a sudden that interest them right now. If you want it to put calls in there, you could like, we could go 30, 30, 10, and six. Right. You make 10 calls to the 30, you pick 10 people. Um, again, you would be the final judge of that. I just know for most people I'm just going to speak generally the amount of time they spend calling and getting nothing from.
[00:40:44] Brian Margolis: It's just not a good use of time, but if it is for you, then maybe we added in later. Right. Okay. And again, that just because something's not a pillar, it doesn't mean you can't do it. But I think if you go 30, 30, and six, you're going to be very happy with how many new meetings you get as long as you're consistent with that.
[00:41:05] Brian Margolis: Right. Okay. So prospecting is 30, 30, and six.
[00:41:18] Brian Margolis: Now you talked a little bit about follow up and, and being more consistent with follow-up. All right.
[00:41:30] Brian Margolis: I think at, and T tell me if you're okay with this. I think the world's simplest most powerful follow-up pillar for any, for, in any sales and not just wholesaling, but any sales industry. Is to update and review your opportunity list twice a week. And I don't know if you've ever heard me talk about that before, but what that means is, so you're in a meeting, you have a clarifying conversation with somebody, right?
[00:42:03] Brian Margolis: And that clarifying conversation, you leave that meeting believing there's an opportunity. So what you do, if you haven't scheduled another meeting from that, which would be ideal is you position follow-up as a service. And then anyone who you identify an opportunity with, they then go on your opportunity sheet, meaning, okay, there's a next step here.
[00:42:27] Brian Margolis: And now I need to stay on top of them to take that next step. So what I'm, what I'm suggesting you do is, and by the way, you can do this in Excel. You can do it in Salesforce. I mean, most people think Excel is the easiest, right? Um, What I recommend you do. When I say review your opportunity sheet twice a week, let's say you have seven or 32 or whatever, people on this list of open opportunities that, you know, you need to walk across the finish line twice, each week.
[00:43:00] Brian Margolis: You literally go down that list, name by name, and you don't have to follow up with everyone. But as you get to each name, you make a decision. Hey, do I want to send this person another email? Do I want to call them? And the idea is, if you go through that list and execute on that list twice a week, no one's going to fall through the cracks.
[00:43:20] Brian Margolis: You don't have to save reminders for yourself. You don't have to. Does that make sense?
[00:43:26] Sarah: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I keep my, I keep my list on my phone just so that it's always accessible. And I, in the past have thought, I'm just, that's how I do it. I just sort of go through the list and review it. And my goal is to review it, um, once a week.
[00:43:45] Sarah: But sometimes I just, I am not getting to it, um, all the time consistently. And then there were other follow-ups I guess that I have that are, um, that are actually in my calendar, probably miss those more often, just because I get pulled away for certain things. But, um, that sounds very straightforward twice a week.
[00:44:08] Sarah: And I think I could do it.
[00:44:11] Brian Margolis: Um, I mean, look, it's not even, can you do it? It's how you get paid. Right? If someone tells me they don't have enough time to follow up on true opportunities and walk them across the finish line, that means they're doing way too much of something else, because to do all as you know, all the work to get a meeting, to have a meeting and blah, blah, blah, To have a true opportunity and then not walk it across the finish line.
[00:44:38] Brian Margolis: It's kind of like painting someone's house and then not giving them an invoice. Right. Um, but I, I think if you just, and by the way, there's a video, I'm going to get you about this system, um, to just up. But I think you can make it as simple as that update and review your opportunity list twice a week.
[00:44:57] Brian Margolis: And I think that'll be more, as long as you hit your pillars, obviously. Right? I think that'll be more than enough. I like it. Okay. So update and review opportunity list times two, w w we'll get you, I'll get you that, that video specifically for that. Um, thank you. Emails. What do you currently do with, thank you, emails.
[00:45:22] Brian Margolis: Is this something you kind of already? Cause a lot of people I know already do them every morning. Is that you, or do you need a pillar to make sure you're sending.
[00:45:33] Sarah: Um, I, I do do them. I do do them and I like to do them as early as possible. I don't necessarily, sometimes those are calls too. Um, especially if it's a, especially if it's a prospect.
[00:45:47] Brian Margolis: Okay. But right now in your current system, before we even got on this call here, are you already happy how you're consistently you're doing them or do you, do you need a pillar around them or is it just what you do in the mornings or tell me your current system is a good, is it bad?
[00:46:04] Brian Margolis: Is it leaky? Is it
[00:46:06] Sarah: yeah, no, I, I mean, I am consistently, I am doing it in the mornings. Um,
[00:46:15] Sarah: I am doing it in the morning. So yeah, maybe I don't need it as a pillar, I guess.
[00:46:20] Brian Margolis: Yeah. I mean, and by the way, Sarah, this just matters how your brain works, right? Like D sometimes people want certain things as a pillar cause they want to hold themselves accountable. Other times. They're like, I don't want to even write that on there because I do this anyway.
[00:46:34] Brian Margolis: I look at my sales report and I do my calls. Right,
[00:46:39] Sarah: right. Yeah. I think I've had it on there in the past. Um, it makes me feel good to sort of check that up, but I need it as a
[00:46:50] Brian Margolis: pillar. Okay. Why don't, why don't, why don't we do this? Let's keep it to the side for now. And then before we finalize these, we'll make a decision.
[00:47:02] Brian Margolis: If we want, if we want to put some kind of a pillar on. Okay.
[00:47:08] Sarah: I tell you what I think maybe more so, what I was thinking around that is that occasionally I like to do something that's a little less, you know, ordinary. Um, so if I'm just sending like maybe a nice handwritten note card, um, those would be the things that I'm not maybe getting to as much as I want, um, and written no card, or like a, just some sort of nice touch around as a show of appreciation.
[00:47:37] Brian Margolis: Okay. And that would all, that would be, we would either wrap that in, or that would be its own pillar if we decided not to wrap it in. So in other words, you might, well, why don't we wait, why don't we wait to see if we wrap it in? Cause we might just do a pillar just for those special ones. Okay. If that makes sense.
[00:48:01] Brian Margolis: Yup.
[00:48:04] Brian Margolis: Um, Social media. All right. Social media. The, do you, do you need a pillar? Do you want a pillar to make sure you are consistently posting, interacting all that stuff? Was that where you were kind of thinking about it?
[00:48:35] Brian Margolis: Yes.
[00:48:36] Sarah: Um, so that it's more consistent. I mean, it's pretty easy to go through our platform that we use as a firm and just do the automatic posts, but we all know that's, you know, those get overlooked very often. So I find that if I do a personal post or something, um, you know, if it's regarding an upcoming presentation of some sort.
[00:49:04] Sarah: Those get a lot more likes and comments and whatnot. So I just would like to be yes, posting on a more regular basis if I'm not. Um, if we're still having a challenging time, you know, a little, you know, from COVID and people being back in the offices a hundred percent, five days a week, it's nice to have a social media presence.
[00:49:29] Brian Margolis: So you're looking at it almost from a top of mind perspective. Yes. In other words, I have a weird feeling, right. If you have an event coming up, you're going to post that on LinkedIn. Like, I feel like you would do that anyway because you're trying to drive attendance. So you're like I sent out emails. I'm going to put it on LinkedIn, right?
[00:50:00] Brian Margolis: Yeah,
[00:50:03] Sarah: it's still something. Yeah, I'm not. Um, okay. I can't, I can't, I can't absolutely say a hundred percent. I would do
[00:50:11] Brian Margolis: that. Okay. Here's here's where my brain is going right here. Here's where my brain is going. So I feel like, um, you have two kind of pillar buckets here. You have a top of mind bucket, right.
[00:50:35] Brian Margolis: And top of mind would be sending out special. Thank yous. You know, I'm saying this I'm calling them special. The ones that you were referring to like, Hey, every once in a while, make it a little more than just a email or a call, maybe send them something. Right. I think, you know, about non touches from the.
[00:50:59] Brian Margolis: Yes. And then we also have these posts that you do on LinkedIn, these more personal ones, right? I think that's what you were saying or personal, personal, but personalized, maybe personal
[00:51:13] Sarah: personalized. Yes.
[00:51:14] Brian Margolis: Yeah. Personalized. Okay. I feel like maybe we have a top of mind pillar for you. And in that top of mind, pillar, we have a point system where every week you need to get X amount of top of mind points.
[00:51:33] Brian Margolis: And a top of mind point can be an NST. It could be a special, thank you, which I'm just using that word because that's what we just came up with two seconds ago. You can call it something else, but it can be an NST. It could be a special thank you. Or it could be one of these personalized posts, right? And the idea is, you know, some weeks you might want to do posts other weeks, you might want to send, thank you is other weeks you might want to do.
[00:52:02] Brian Margolis: MSTs some weeks you're going to combine them. Right. And if you just, as long as you get X amount of points every week, you're probably staying top of mind. Does that make sense? It does. And, and so, and then you can build, I don't know if you remember reference documents, but you'll have access to all these videos, but you can build a reference document for your top of mind, pillar with different ideas, things you can do, right?
[00:52:29] Brian Margolis: Different NST, these different posts. You can do different ways of saying thank you. That are a little more, you know, interesting, unique, special, all that. And you kind of, when you go to hit your top of mind, pillar, each week, you can open up that spreadsheet or that reference document. And that way you're not starting from scratch every week.
[00:52:53] Brian Margolis: You kind of have different ideas in there and you know, what, if you just started and you said, I want to get five top of mind points every week.
[00:53:04] Brian Margolis: I like it. Now you could also, I don't want to get too complicated here, but you could also wait them where you might say, you know what? In NST is a little bigger deal for me than a LinkedIn post, or maybe you go, no, it's not actually, they're both about equal, but if you want it, I'm not going to tell you how to do it, but you could weight them and say, an NST is worth two points.
[00:53:28] Brian Margolis: A personalized LinkedIn post is worth one point a, you know, whatever it is, a thank you card, a handwritten thank you card or whatever is worth X amount of points, right? Maybe something you can play with down the road. But I think for now, why don't we just say, you know, you need to get five top of mind points each week minimum.
[00:53:54] Brian Margolis: Okay. And we'll call those and STS special. Thank you's and personalized LinkedIn posts.
[00:54:09] Brian Margolis: Right. It sounds good. Now, do you ever interact with advisors on LinkedIn or is that a no-no right now?
[00:54:19] Brian Margolis: Um,
[00:54:19] Sarah: I, I mean, if they're commenting, um, trying to think,
[00:54:25] Brian Margolis: I mean, do you ever comment on their posts?
[00:54:30] Brian Margolis: So some companies don't allow you to do that, like hit, like, or
[00:54:34] Sarah: I do. I, I do say just something very basic, you know, recommendations or happy birthday or
[00:54:42] Brian Margolis: yes. Yeah. Because as the more you interact with them, the chances of them seeing your post goes up to, um, So
[00:54:56] Brian Margolis: I'm just going, I'm just going through this list here. Let's talk about, let's talk about, um, just hold on here.
[00:55:11] Brian Margolis: Let's talk about getting access to advisers. Okay. This is what I think you've probably heard me say this before, but I'll say it again, right? There's only two reasons an advisor will meet with you. Right? First reason is you have nothing. They value, you know, that happens, right? They're not willing to trade 30 minutes of their time or 45 minutes of their time for what.
[00:55:42] Brian Margolis: The second reason is you have something they value, you just can't articulate it quickly. Right? And you underline quickly about a thousand times. Um, I think what would help you in getting more access? I think, do I think you should consider, but tell me where you're at with it, having a pillar of spending at least an hour a week building VAR strategies.
[00:56:11] Brian Margolis: Now I know you're already a VAR person. You, these are for those who don't know what the heck I'm talking about. These are just value added programs, like where you're valuable to financial advisors in the non product way. Right. Um, but you kind of already do these, right?
[00:56:29] Sarah: I do. I do them on a quarterly basis.
[00:56:32] Sarah: So. Come out with a, I pick a 11 minutes. So all of my bars are 11 minutes and every quarter I send out an invitation to join. Um, I do three 11 minute seminars every, every quarter for every firm that I work with.
[00:56:53] Brian Margolis: Okay. And do you ever do VARs in-house like, we're just, you're meeting one-on-one with an advisor
[00:57:05] Sarah: that quarterly invitation often turns into one-on-one meetings. If our producers, um, that can't make it, they can't, they cannot make the meeting. And so I will turn it into a one-on-one.
[00:57:23] Brian Margolis: Yes. Okay. Do you think you have enough VAR strategies right now, or do you think you need to build.
[00:57:31] Sarah: No, I definitely want to build more.
[00:57:32] Sarah: I've only been doing that consistently, these quarterly ones for a year. Okay. '
[00:57:39] Brian Margolis: cause yeah. VAR is very powerful. Not only the way you're talking about, but also, um, you know, just one-on-one with advisors and also there's a video I'm going to give you access to called first meeting agenda. It's about 10 minutes long.
[00:57:56] Brian Margolis: That has really been a home run this past year and a half. And it involves, you know, different, um, different VAR strategies. How would you feel about a pillar of spending 60 minutes a week building VAR strategies?
[00:58:16] Brian Margolis: Is that too long? Is that too much right now? Is that
[00:58:22] Sarah: I'd like to give it a try? I think it could. I think it would help to have additional. Additional strategies and maybe something that I could use outside of that, you know, quarterly. Well,
[00:58:37] Brian Margolis: so here's, here's how I'm thinking about it. Right? In addition to these quarterly things, look, you're sending, you're going to be sending emails, trying to get meetings.
[00:58:45] Brian Margolis: Right. And one of the first things I said about why people don't, you know, respond so to speak is because you have nothing of value, right. To certain advisors who you've been trying to get meetings with, who are not meeting with you. You've kind of gone the traditional route already, right? You've said, Hey, we have great products or, Hey, we have this outlook or Hey, you know, you've kind of tried that way with them and nothing's happening.
[00:59:12] Brian Margolis: Right. And so to me, the way in the door with them is going to be, is going to be through non product stuff. It kind of serves two purposes. It gets you in the door with people you normally couldn't get in the door with that's number one and then number two, it, um, obviously when you have a relationship with an advisor, you, you can build reciprocity as you help them with different components to your business.
[00:59:41] Brian Margolis: So I would say put in a 60 minute VAR pillar,
[00:59:49] Brian Margolis: okay. To, to build, um, to build VAR strategies every week. Right? And again, you don't have to build a new one every week, but spend 60 minutes in the building process, like figuring out weaponizing the information, all that kind of stuff. Um, the I'm going to hold off on asking clarifying questions, right? Not saying don't do it, but.
[01:00:22] Brian Margolis: I think right now, if you're trying to keep your pillars, you know, reasonable what you should. I don't know that that one's going to rise at least at the stage you're at right now. I don't know if that rises to the level of a pillar. Whereas I think like you said, access is the big thing, right? I
[01:00:39] Sarah: agree.
[01:00:40] Brian Margolis: Um, the curve ball, I'm gonna S I'm gonna kinda throw your way is I think you should spend 30 minutes a week just learning about prospecting.
[01:00:57] Brian Margolis: Sarah. There are so many unique ways to get in front of advisors. It's not even funny, but very few. In other words, very few people actually learn prospecting, right? They don't, they don't like whether it's. You know, greeting cards or, um, there's something called like th there's all different techniques, like crumbled envelopes.
[01:01:23] Brian Margolis: And there are so many unique ways to get in front of people that I feel like if you spent 30 minutes a week, actually, you know, what, if you, I'm going to take that back. If you commit to wow. Mailers, I think you can hold off on that right now. I think, wow. Mailers are that powerful that if you, if you, if you wound up sending six of those a week, I mean, imagine if you got in addition to your 30 and 30, if you got three, if you average three new meetings a week, that means by the end of next year, you'd have 150 meetings.
[01:02:01] Brian Margolis: First meetings with advisors you want to meet with. I think that in and of itself is probably enough.
[01:02:10] Sarah: So. Just leave that that's in the prospecting, the well mailers, I think we're in the prospect.
[01:02:16] Brian Margolis: Yeah. In other words, what I'm saying is, like you said before about, you're trying to get more done, right. And I want to reduce the amount of stuff you have to do. And I can tell you that if you send six wild mailers a week and I'm telling you, you're going to get three meetings a week from it, I'm telling you, I mean, unless it could change down the road, who knows?
[01:02:39] Brian Margolis: What that says to me is, you know, three getting three a week over the course of, let's say it's 45 weeks next year. Right. Whatever 45 times three is okay. You know, that's 135 meetings with the advisors and your top 180. Right? That's a, that's a, I think your business is going to do very well. If you're adding three new people every week to your rotation, right.
[01:03:09] Brian Margolis: And so I think I'm going, gonna pull back on that one and say, that's kind of enough for now. Um, let's talk about your event planning and then I'll, I'm going to go, we're going to go back over this and, and review all this, but your event planning, right? You're saying you want it to be more consistent with that?
[01:03:32] Brian Margolis: Yes.
[01:03:33] Sarah: Ideally I would be spending a certain amount of time every week, um, planning events and
[01:03:39] Brian Margolis: creating them and planning them. Correct.
[01:03:44] Sarah: Correct. It, I mean, I'm doing that right. And I might be doing it, but maybe it's, um, I guess some of that comes naturally through scheduling and talking to advisors, but I mean, thinking, I mean, the whole process from, you know, beginning to end where I'm thinking of what new things or.
[01:04:04] Sarah: Activities or what would get people out right now and have some fun and learn about them and vice versa.
[01:04:14] Brian Margolis: Uh, but I also look at like quick hit calls as events.
[01:04:19] Sarah: Yeah. Correct. That too. And sometimes those are more educational sometimes that's VAR type stuff.
[01:04:25] Brian Margolis: Yeah. And you can also do quick hit calls on products.
[01:04:29] Brian Margolis: Yep. Hey, next week, I'm doing a six minute call on a strategy that can, whatever, if you'd like to join us, just reply I'm in. And I'll send you the details right here. If you'd like to listen in. Um, do you think 30 minutes is enough? Is that a good minimum?
[01:04:47] Sarah: I think it's
[01:04:48] Brian Margolis: a good minimum. Okay.
[01:04:52] Brian Margolis: And again, you already know what you mean. You basically mean everything from the planning, the coming up with ideas to the invites, to every. Correct? Yes. Okay. Um, you also talked about learning the products, like working on your stories, right? How much time do you think you should be giving to that
[01:05:26] Brian Margolis: an hour? About what,
[01:05:33] Brian Margolis: what was it? I'm sorry.
[01:05:36] Sarah: Oh, I said an hour minimum per week. Okay.
[01:05:40] Brian Margolis: So 60 minutes now I'm calling it product stories, but what would you call it? Like working on your product stories, your, which is everything that's learning, how to position, I'm learning about them. How do you tell the story? Right?
[01:05:57] Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I think of it as product knowledge.
[01:06:01] Sarah: Market positioning and competitor knowledge.
[01:06:07] Brian Margolis: Okay. W w what would you call this? Just so we're talking about the same thing. I want to use your words. So 30, 60 minutes of product,
[01:06:18] Sarah: um, I would say, um, pro product knowledge and positioning.
[01:06:24] Brian Margolis: Okay.
[01:06:31] Brian Margolis: All right. Let's go back to this. Thank you thing, right? Do you right now, I have seven pillars for you right now. And by the way, I don't think the number of pillars matters. It's more of a, how much time they take and a flow and all that kind of stuff. Um, do you want to put the, thank you.
[01:07:01] Sarah: I don't know. I don't, I, I think that I was thinking about it a little bit differently and um, I mean, I am doing, uh, doing that naturally,
[01:07:13] Brian Margolis: and then it's also going to contribute toward your scheduling and things like that. Um, okay. So the last one that we haven't talked about is social media learning, right?
[01:07:30] Brian Margolis: Again, I'll go back to my original statement, but this does not mean I'm right. I don't know you and your business well enough. Um, I just, with all the things you have going on to spend time learning about social media and how to write posts and stuff, because it's just a small part of what you do. And you're so restricted by what you're allowed to do.
[01:07:55] Brian Margolis: Like there is something to be said for engaging people with social media, the problem is most of the techniques you learn, you might not be able to use. Right. Um, I could be wrong, but you, you tell me, do you think intentionally spending time every week to learn about social media posting, specifically LinkedIn, that's all we're really talking about.
[01:08:18] Brian Margolis: I think, do you think that's a good use of 30 minutes or so? Well, I
[01:08:26] Sarah: think, I think we've covered some of it. I think we covered it in top of mind, you know? So if I'm just trying to, well, we, we
[01:08:33] Brian Margolis: covered the consistency that you're actually gonna write posts. Right? I thought maybe you were going down the effectiveness route of no.
[01:08:42] Brian Margolis: I also want to spend time becoming a lot better at writing posts that people respond to and learning the tips and tricks. You know, capturing people's attention and all that kind of stuff with a post, which again, you might just naturally do because you want your posts to be good. I'm just, does it rise to the level of a pillar at this point?
[01:09:04] Brian Margolis: I don't know that you have to do that weekend and week out, right?
[01:09:10] Sarah: Yeah. I don't, I don't know that you, that I get enough engagement, but I think part of it is because I'm not writing these, um, you know, more personalized posts that often, but I'd rather just try to keep, try to do that within the top of mind pillar.
[01:09:27] Sarah: And if I was going to use a post. Yeah.
[01:09:30] Brian Margolis: I mean, I mean, I'll be honest. It's very hard with the restrictions you guys are given to write posts that get a lot of engagement. I mean, Sarah, I don't even know if you have a dog, but if you put a picture of your dog up on LinkedIn, you'd get more interaction than with 90% of.
[01:09:48] Brian Margolis: Product or industry posts. Right, right. Um, and unfortunately, like I said, you guys are kind of restricted, so I don't know how much better you okay. We're on the same page. All right. So here's what I have. Let me, let me review the seven pillars and then you, you and I are going to go offline. We'll stop the recording.
[01:10:09] Brian Margolis: And then I want to tell you where you can access some things to get a lot better at these. All right. So here's what I have. Tell me if we're on the same page, schedule 15 meetings a week for the future prospecting 30, 30, and six 30 emails, 30 forwards six while mailers your, your followup pillar update and review your opportunity list twice a week.
[01:10:45] Brian Margolis: At least five top of mind points or Tom points every week. Those include MSTs LinkedIn posts that are personalized. Specialized. Thank you. Use et cetera. Okay. 60 minutes building VAR strategies, 30 minutes working on events and 60 minutes on product knowledge and positioning.
[01:11:12] Brian Margolis: Yes. Okay. Those are your seven pillars. Now here's the real question. Do you feel going into 2022, if you consistently hit these seven pillars, do you think everything takes care of itself? It's just a matter of time and pressure, or do you feel like something's still going.
[01:11:43] Brian Margolis: Um, I, I think this covers a lot. I
[01:11:46] Sarah: think this, this covers it, nothing is glaring at me right now in terms of something that might be missing.
[01:11:53] Brian Margolis: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.
[01:11:55] Sarah: Yeah. Sorry. Um, I think this, this, I think this covers it.
[01:12:00] Brian Margolis: Okay. So let's do this. Let's wrap it up there. Okay. You have your kind of your seven pillars to go forward.
[01:12:09] Brian Margolis: And then I want to talk to you a little bit offline about where you can, uh, get a lot more out of get a lot more information on these
[01:12:18] Sarah: sounds great. Thanks.
[01:12:19] Brian Margolis: Yup.
[01:12:23] Brian Margolis: Thanks for listening to another episode of simplify your strategy, magnifier results. If you know someone you think could benefit from this episode. Be their hero and share it with them. If you'd like a free copy of my book or you want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com.
[01:12:41] Brian Margolis: Have a great day. And thanks again.