BCF – Projected Profits + SAC = Serendipitous Results!!!!!!!!

It always amazes me about the number of financial advisors that disregard the recommendation to have a vision, business plan and budget cash flow.

Many behave like sales people struggling to get the next sale so that they can survive another month riding the ups and downs of an emotional roller coaster for with out a vision, business plan and budget cash flow there is nothing to aim for, only survival.

I’ve been using a budget cash flow ( BCF ) for years as part of the vision, business plan and budget cash flow big picture planning process.

To me a budget cash flow means a 12 month spreadsheet that starts out with the opening cash balance, less all expenses including taxes, plus income, plus projected profits equals ending balance carried forward and so on. This process helps me to get honest about what my ending balance will be in the months to come … but was I being totally honest?

In the past failure to create a budget cash flow was because of my unmet needs of safety and security and these fueled negative beliefs and negative emotions causing me to not to want to look at the bottom line because I was too afraid … why bother looking, I’m too afraid at what I might see so I better keep working and working and working not realizing that attraction was working in reverse of what I truly wanted because I was pouring negative emotions into negative beliefs that “I am not safe”.

I now believe that I was fooling myself by putting projected profits into the budget cash flow.

This years budget cash flow included the changes of taking out all the projected profits and linking a sales activity calculator spreadsheet to the bottom of the budget cash flow so that I could see the true ending balance if no more sales were made and a good, better, best ending balance via the sales activity calculator spreadsheet.

This is a very sobering process and causes one to face reality very quickly.

While it is clearly painful to look at what might happen if activity is not taken, the pain passes and what is left is our natural inherent ability to create the necessary action to meet and exceed the financial goals that we want to achieve.

It is important to get clear on the necessary action and a sales activity calculator looks like the following;

• calls per hour
• x conversations per hour
• equals prospect bookings per hour
• x hours of calling
• x days per week
• equals prospect bookings per week
• x weeks prospect calls made
• equals prospect bookings per month
• x closing ratio
• equals sales bookings per month
• x average income per sale
• equals total income from sales

The sales activity calculator can be applied to prospecting for anything and in our case it is speaking to attract coaching and workshops because without the speaking, we will not have the contacts to create the clients for the coaching and workshops.

The sales activity calculator is another sobering experience because it causes one to get very honest about what they need to be doing with their time.

The next paragraph is worth repeating;

While it is clearly painful to look at what might happen if activity is not taken, the pain passes and what is left is our natural inherent ability to create the necessary action to meet and exceed the financial goals that we want to achieve.

Then you go to work and then serendipity goes to work at the same time to honor your courage to clearly look at the bottom line, the necessary activity, for being honest about what might result from a lack of focus & procrastination and to be honest about what you must do with your most valuable asset, your time.

As I said, if we don’t speak we will not fill our prospect funnel for coaching, workshops and other speaking opportunities.

So we went to work using our speaking marketing plan approaching decision makers at Associations, Brokerages, Career Agencies, Life Insurance Companies and MGAs.

Then serendipity went into affect. Kind of like what one of my clients said to me after I showed them how to identify and get their unmet needs met; “I don’t know what is happening, prospects that I have been calling for ten years are calling me!”

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated. – Wikipedia

We didn’t accidentally stumble upon serendipity, serendipity came calling in the form speaking enquires coming in from the internet and from a speaking agent.

I often joke that we wake up unemployed every morning and it is true.

Every year for the last four years we have completed 32 financial advisor speaking presentations and every year we start off with the same goal, at first not having a clue where the speaking presentations will come from and we diligently do our work on our vision, business plan and budget cash flow … and then we go to work.

This year 32 financial advisor speaking presentations appeared to be even more challenging because we realize that we cannot continue to go back to the same speaking opportunities because in the speaking producer’s mind, the audience has already seen Simon. Simon wants to say that the audience needs to hear the message a number of times before they get it but you can’t fight city hall so new pastures must be found.

Three cheers for Laura who booked 5 new financial advisor speaking presentations this month from her activity and three cheers because serendipity came calling in the form of 2 speaking bookings coming in from the internet and from 6 speaking bookings coming in from a speaking agent.

These additional 8 speaking presentations are significant in that they include the first 2 financial advisor speaking presentations that have been booked by a USA company on USA soil and it is the first time we have been booked to do 6 financial advisor speaking presentations for a cross Canada nation wide series of events for an MGA firm.

Our goal is 32 financial advisor speaking presentations for 2010 and we have 16 as February 28, 2010, two months into the year and we are at 50% of goal and for this I am so grateful for the opportunity to continue to deliver our message.