Building a Business Cold Calling: A Story About the American Dream

Regardless of an advisor’s background, pedigree, or age, (k)quote’s Steven T. Wilkinson explains how anyone can live the American Dream inside of the financial services industry… if they’re willing to put in the work cold calling.

Steve built a seven-figure 401(k) practice from scratch on a foundation of cold calling, and now is helping other advisors achieve their American Dream.

The Los Angeles-area advisor shares what he’s learned along the way via LinkedIN. Below, he shares how he got started in the business and how he can help other advisors benefit from his experience.

401(k) Specialist: Your path to the industry isn’t exactly typical. Tell us about how you got started as a financial advisor?

Steve Wilkinson: I started out at Merrill Lynch in August of 2008—which ended up being, in my opinion, the worst time in recent memory to try and “make it” as an aspiring advisor (who literally knew nothing).

It didn’t help that I was 22 years old and wasn’t even done with college yet.

The HR person showed me my cubicle, my phone, the bathroom, and that was basically it from a training perspective. (To be fair, the world was falling apart at the time).

• I had ZERO connections.
• I knew ZERO people with investable assets.
• I knew ZERO people who could help me in any way.

However, I did have one thing: A belief that cold calling worked.

You see, my mom started a cold calling company in her bedroom of our tiny apartment the summer of my 8^th grade year. So, during the summer in between watching reruns of Matlock and M.A.S.H because they seemed to be about the only things on during the day, I’d see my mom run out of her room so excited whenever she set a meeting!!!

Starting at Merrill Lynch, I didn’t have the “traditional markers” that’d I’d be successful, but I did have my belief that cold calling worked.

So, I started dialing. Figuring out what to say. How to say it and what resonated with plan prospects.

I built a lead generation and sales process all from the ground up.

401(k) Specialist: What would your advice be to someone looking to grow their 401(k) practice?

Wilkinson: As I always say in my LinkedIn posts in regard to marketing, “Everything works (a little bit). Nothing works well.” It’s important to set expectations. No matter what you’ve heard, it’s going to be hard and there’s no silver bullet. Consistency is king. If it’s hard, it means you’re acquiring skills. Acquiring skills for success is the name of the game.

401(k) Specialist: Cold calling can be a little bit of a polarizing strategy. First, tell us what you think are cold calling’s biggest weaknesses?

Wilkinson: Generally, cold calling’s biggest weakness has traditionally been that you don’t have great lead lists of qualified prospects. When I started at Merrill Lynch in 2008, I started cold calling businesses and personal residences and while I set did meetings with retail prospects, the issue was, even if I was calling in “nice neighborhoods,” I had no idea about the amount of investable assets they had.

I’d spend all this time to set a meeting, but it was impossible to tell if the prospect was a qualified lead prior to me calling.

The other is time. As an advisor grows their practice, their time becomes more valuable and naturally more things start competing for it. So, spending tons of times calling is going to be hard.

To be fair, regardless of the marketing strategy, that’s going to be true of any advisor growing their practice. The key is, can you delegate your lead generation process?

401(k) Specialist: Now how about what you see as the biggest strengths of cold calling?

Wilkinson: I’d say there are three main strengths of cold calling:

1. You can easily delegate it. Once you have a process, it’s just a function of replicating it.
2. Cold calling is linear. More calls equals more success.
3. It’s proven, period. The reason it’s still around is, it works!

401(k) Specialist: Can advisors learn more about your cold calling and sales process?

Wilkinson: Absolutely! I hold what I call my “4 Day 401(k)” where I’ll do LIVE cold calling training and “challenges” almost every month (there’s no cost to join).

Basically, how it works is we do a live session in the morning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific/11:30 a.m. Eastern over a four-day period with the idea that advisors will be calling before or after our session. Then, I can answer questions that they’re running into and how to solve them during the “Q&A” section of our training.

Every day’s training builds on the day before, so at the end of the four days, you’ll be able to go from scratch to having the complete sales process that we used to grow our practice.

Advisors can sign up at www.4day401k.com. Quick Note: We generally cap the attendance for trainings to make sure the advisors that do sign up get the best experience. If registration is closed, they can join the wait list and they’ll get an email from us letting them know about the next training (typically the following month).