One of the biggest frustrations for advisors is the amount of dithering that prospects do - sometimes it feels like it takes forever for people to make a decision.

Or you'll have a really good meeting with a prospect, you agree to send them some information as a follow-up and then prospects won't return your calls.

There are a number of reasons for this. People are busy. Often they're genuinely unsure whether life with you is going to be better than where they are now. Inertia is a powerful force - for some investors, it's just easier to stay where they are.

And often the harder that you try to accelerate the process, the more prospective clients get their backs up.

As a result, you need to have three strategies in place

1.     Minimize pressure:

The challenge when talking to a prospective client is to communicate that you'd like to work with them but that you don't need to work with them - you need to allow the conversation to evolve at a comfortable pace. The moment you convey anxiety or even a trace amount of desperation for the business, your chances go way down.

One way to do that is to have lots of prospects in the hopper. If you have five prospects, inevitably you'll feel pressure when talking to one of those five.

If you have fifty five prospects, much less so.

2.     Create momentum

Recently I featured an article by a US advisor coach outlining a four meeting process to convert prospects to clients.

Whether your process when meeting with prospects is two, three or four meetings, you need to try to close each meeting by setting up the next one, ideally in the next couple of weeks. You need to try to build an appropriate level of momentum into prospect meetings, without creating pressure

So if a prospect asks you to send information, if it's a significant prospect, I'd try to set up a time to briefly review that material face to face. The problem is that mailing or emailing information after a meeting typically doesn't add to momentum, in fact it often reduces it.

Instead of emailing information, I 'd say something like: "I've found that the best way to cover this kind of material is in person. I wonder if we could set up 20 to 30 minutes the week after next to review this. We could do it at my office or if more convenient I've got a meeting in this area a week from Friday morning."

3.     Communicate scarcity

Let's suppose that you've met with a prospect, had a good meeting and then they don't respond to your voice mails and emails.

At that point, you could call the prospect and leave a voice mail along these lines:

Hi Jim, it's Dan Richards. Sorry we haven't been able to connect.

I have capacity for six new clients in the next quarter. After our last meeting I thought we'd work well together and you might be someone I could help.

It sounds like you're busy right now ... I'll touch base in about three months. Feel free to give me a call if you'd like to talk in the meantime.

This says you're busy too. It lets the prospect know that you're interested but not desperate. And whether or not the prospect calls you back, you've set the stage for your next contact in 90 days.

We have to accept that prospects will make decisions in their own timeframe, not ours ... but that doesn't mean we can't do things to help the process along.  The next time you're talking to a prospect, consider trying to minimize pressure, develop momentum or communicate scarcity - and see if that helps move the prospect to a faster decision.