Prospecting as We Know It Is Dead. And that’s OK.

Social media is here to stay and can be a powerful tool in your prospecting arsenal.

By Marvin Feldman, CLU, ChFC, RFC

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One of the hardest parts of this business is prospecting. Even after more than 50 years in this business, I still find it difficult and not particularly enjoyable. What prospecting looks like now is very different from what it looked like when I started out, or even from what it looked like 10 or even five years ago, and that’s OK.

As of 2017, 81 percent of Americans had a social-media profile. People are online and on social media as never before. It’s how they connect. It’s how they get their news. It’s how they see pictures of their friends, kids and, frankly, where they watch the latest viral cat videos. Gone are the days of running into people at a Rotary meeting; instead, they are glued to their phones, which they wouldn’t think of using for an actual phone call. Instead they are texting or using social media.

Getting started in the new era

Whether you love it or hate it, social media is here to stay and can be a powerful tool in your prospecting arsenal. So how do you get started? If you haven’t already done so, create your social profile on at least one of the major social-media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or even Instagram. If you don’t know what you’re doing, get help from someone in your office who does, or even a niece, nephew or grandkid. Then start posting.

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We are not on social media to sell. We are there to establish ourselves as trusted advisors.

The easiest way to find good, relevant content is to follow Life Happens on its social-media properties (get all the links at www.lifehappens.org/socialmedia), and then simply share what you like and what you know your friends or followers would like to see or hear about. Besides being easy, this method is free, and there are not many places where you can get something that is best in class and free.

Don’t sell!

Life Happens has been curating content on its social-media properties for more than 10 years. We know what