Cold Calling Scripts for Financial Advisors

What Is A Cold Calling Script?

While there are a lot of channels that you can use to build your book of business, no approach is as quick to set up as cold calling.

Referrals are great, but they’re bound to dry up. Then, you’d need to go back to lead generation techniques like cold calls, cold emails, and basically being a salesperson for your business to get that pipeline full again.

Cold calling sounds simple enough — get a list of names and phone numbers, make the call, ask questions, and then (hopefully) get your potential client to set an appointment with you.

Yet that’s not how things always pan out.

It’s understandable if you get anxious before dialing strangers. After all, no one likes unexpected calls, so the thought of getting rejections after rejections can be quite daunting.

In the end, it’s just a part of the sales process. You’re simply trying to see if the prospect is a good fit to set up an appointment with you.

Practicing your techniques, such as your voice, tone, or the way you open the conversation, can help ease you into the cold calling process.

There are also other things you can factor in to help your chances, such as properly researching your prospective clients — figuring out the time when your prospects are commonly available or recent changes that bring up a new challenge for them right now.

Why Should Financial Advisors Use Cold Calling Scripts?

A cold calling script doesn’t have to detail every single bit of conversation as a movie script does.

The point of a cold calling script is to help you along as you navigate the complexity of a cold conversation — especially when you’re stumped on what to say. Think of it more as talking points instead of lines you need to recite.

By utilizing a cold calling script, you can make sure that you’ve said everything you need to tell the prospect during your call.

Covering everything makes sure that you’re giving off a great first impression — that you know what you’re talking about. Showing off your expertise during your first meeting increases the possibility of getting your prospect on the phone longer and thus helps you demonstrate how your financial services can be of value to them.

Sticking to a script instead of coming up with talking points as you go also helps make the phone call more productive and worthwhile for both parties.

And at the very least, having a script at hand can reduce the anxiety that may come from the idea of making cold calls.

5 Steps to Creating a Cold Calling Script for Prospecting

There are a lot of cold calling scripts that you can grab out there, be it for free or by paying a fee.

But an important part about using a script is to make your own tweaks so it sounds natural. It’s also important to make sure that what you say and how you’re saying it matches your target audience. Here are our cold calling tips on creating your own script.

1. Start With An Attention-Grabber

Make sure that your introduction is brief, clear, and establishes your credibility.

State your full name, company name, and the reason why you called them in the first place.

Avoid saying something like “Did I catch you at a bad time?” Rather than wasting your and your prospect’s time, you’re better off opening the call properly — keep your introductions short, preferably less than 10 seconds.

Cold calling doesn’t mean that you’re going in blind.

Research your prospects beforehand to understand what kind of value they’re seeking and discuss it during the phone call to maintain their attention. The only way to make them stay on the call is by discussing things that are relevant to them in the first place.

2. Personalize To Your Demographic

Having a niche helps you establish your brand and allows you to focus on one slice of the market and be really good at it. With that in mind, it should be a no-brainer to say that your niche also determines your marketing strategy. And in our case, it also determines how you approach prospects during cold calls.

When you speak to your prospects, you need to sound like you belong with them and understand their position — use a language they understand and can relate with.

3. Avoid General Statements

We’ve mentioned researching your prospects briefly before, and it’s still important at this point in your cold calling process.

By researching your prospects before the call, you can figure out what value you can bring to the table and offer them that. There are a lot of ways to research your prospects, such as looking up their social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), using your customer relationship management (CRM), or even through Yelp (if your specialization relates to business owners).

For example, if you specialize in financial planning for independent bookstore owners, you should give specific advice for independent bookstore owners—whether it’s saving money for their operations or planning out their retirement plans.

If you’re struggling to come up with more specific plans, try to write out some success stories that you’ve had with your previous and current clients.

Then outline them and see if you can put them in a sentence or two to tell your prospect over the phone.

4. Focus On The End Goal

When making cold calls, it’s important to have a clear goal in mind so you don’t waste your and your prospect’s time.

It’s easier for them to hang up on you if they feel like the conversation is pointless or irrelevant.

This usually happens when you beat around the bush too much because you’re not sure how to reach the end goal of this phone call — which is usually to set up another phone call at a later date or to get the prospect to set up an appointment with you.

You also need to build a relationship with them before you get to that stage. Pay attention to your prospect’s answers, note the urgency of their situation, and only go for the buy-in when you’re sure they’re on board.

5. Leave Room For Feedback

You won’t get it right the first time. The flow of the conversation might be different than what you’re expecting, or the topics that you’re bringing might be irrelevant to the recipients.

Practicing the script a few times might help wrinkle out some weird sections or wordings, but you can also learn and grow more as you do more of these calls.

In addition, the talking points you’d like to go over will evolve — just as how your understanding of your customers grows, your niche changes, or how the market evolves.

Financial Advisor Cold Calling Script Example

Here is an example of a script that you can tweak to adapt as your own — influenced by the example at Indeed. One important tip to keep in mind: don’t use it as a template.

Introducing Yourself

Keep it simple. Remember, you’re calling strangers here. Get to the point quickly — the only thing they need to do to end the conversation is hit the hang-up button...

“Hi (Prospect Name), my name is (Your Name). I’m calling from (Firm Name). I specialize in helping (Your Niche).”

Or, if you have a mutual acquaintance, you can use that connection, such as:

“Hi (Prospect Name), my name is (Your Name). I got your name from my colleague (Colleague’s Name) at (Colleague’s Firm).”

Bringing up their name here also means you’re borrowing your mutual connection’s credibility, so make sure that your colleague knows you’ll be mentioning their name.

Proposing The Service That You Can Help Them With

This is your value proposition, your sales pitch. As much as you want to tell them how you can help, it’s important to keep it short and sweet. Use success stories that you’ve had with your other clients to show them that you can help them. For example, if your specialization is independent bookstore owners:

“Are you familiar with [Competitor Name]? Last year, we saved them [Expense] in expenses. Most independent bookstores partner with us because we provide [Value]. I expect we'd have similar results with your store.”

In addition, you can also use a change in their business, recent events, or a problem they might be struggling with — prior experience with similar clients might help a lot here.

Context

If the previous part acts as a hook, this is where you set the context for your upcoming discussion. Give the prospect an idea of where you intend to bring the connection beyond this.

“Does this sound interesting to you? If you have time right now, I’d like to chat more for a quick 10 minutes and see if it makes sense to continue our conversation in a more in-depth Zoom call next week.

We can also reschedule if it’s not a good time for you right now. What do you think?”

You might be taking them out of an important task, so this also acts as permission to continue, or an opportunity to re-schedule at their own time.

Questions

This is the part where you analyze your prospective clients. Ask qualifying questions and listen to their responses to see if you can help alleviate their pain points, and see if the prospect is a good fit for your services.

Closing

The closing phase is where you should set a follow-up interaction if the client shows potential and interest.

Make sure to provide a few potential dates to schedule the next interaction. In case the prospect isn’t available during those times, have a few more options readily available.

“It seems like our eight minutes are up. I believe we can make something happen here. Let’s schedule a 45-minute Zoom call so we can talk more about your [solution to their problem]. Would [date and time] work for you?”

It’s also an option to offer a different method to interact — like using email messages to move things along instead of immediately jumping on a meeting.

Monitor Cold Calling Progress With Asset-Map

Bottom line, if your cold calling efforts have been going nowhere or if you’re anxious whenever you pick up the phone, you should give cold calling scripts a go.

To boost your chances of success, make sure that you’re doing your research to keep the discussion relevant and keep your prospects engaged.

With just a couple of prospects, cold calling is easy to execute. However, at scale, cold calling can be hard to keep track of.

Considering the success rate, you’ll undoubtedly need to do a lot of cold calls.

We recommend using Asset-Map’s visual map to keep track of all of your cold calls. A visual map helps you recall information in a glance — which would also work very well with keeping track of all the research you do prior to jumping on a call.

After you beat the odds and actually get people to jump on a video call with you, you can also use Asset-Map’s visual map and use the information you gathered during your research process to create an intuitive Target-Map to show them how you plan to improve their financial situation.

Asset-Map helps you organize your information in a visual way, so you, your prospects, and your clients can get all they need to continue the discussion.

Schedule a demo today and learn more about how Asset-Map helps you set your services apart from all the other financial advisors they’re considering.