Posts

Rusty Iodice

Prospecting, then and now.

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Prospecting for gold in the 1800s was a labor-intensive activity.  Searching for gold meant traversing rugged terrain, climbing outcroppings and wading through streams.  A trace of minerals would lead to panning on hands and knees to sift out a nugget that may indicate a distinct vein, and ultimately a principal vein – the mother lode.

Most advisors have heard the analogies of sales prospecting to prospecting for gold. Actually, it’s more than an analogy, it’s where the modern sales term came from, but I’d like to take it a step further.

Of course, gold is still mined today.   Sophisticated metal detectors and geological ultrasound have replaced searching on foot or horseback.  Panning and sifting on hands and knees has given way to powerful magnets separating valuable metals from surrounding soil.  

So what technologies are available to help with our prospecting? 

LinkedIn and some CRM systems may resemble those geological ultrasounds. Powerful search tools which enables us to cover a lot more territory in less time.  However, while those tools may show us where to look in a vast sea of connections, they rarely help us separate the gold – the best opportunities to act on. 

What if we had a tool that acted like those powerful magnets, separating the best opportunities from the rest? 

Complete Connection is a system based upon Points of Connection (POC). The discrete intersections of Needs, Expertise and Trust which comprise the best opportunities.

Rusty Iodice

The Curse of Later

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The most limiting word in our vocabulary is “later”. 

Now is good, even empowering.  Never is okay too, it’s final and can open a different path. Later is insidious, especially if the terms we set for later are ambiguous or out of our control. Later will rent space in our head and obscure the path we should take.

We all understand that prospecting is key when building our practice, and deep down we know that the people we respect most are those that can help us most. 

However these are the people we most want to think well of us. The last people we would ever want to see us as needy. So we choose not to engage these people now.

Later, we tell ourselves. Later, when I am more experienced, more established, richer and obviously NOT needy. Then I will engage those great people. Or better still, they will come to me.

The problem of course, is that later never comes. We may or may not have success in our career, but we fail to achieve what we might have had we asked the right people the right questionsearly on.

When you prospect, go for now or never. Later sucks the life out of you.