Jason: (00:04)
Hey everyone, this is Jason Owens. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of The Renewable Confidence Podcast. The show that helps you build confidence in yourself and in your business every day. All right folks. So you know that failure is a fantastic teacher. Well, I’m going to share with you, uh, a lesson than I had to learn the hard way and this all centers around the title of the episode. And that is how to catch deals that fall between the cracks. So here I am, gee, this was this probably about 15 years ago. I’m in the financial services world, growing my own business. They are growing a book of business. And as I was having meetings with people, part of the game, there was of course, finding assets, right? So they have some bucket of money somewhere that no one’s really helping them with.

Jason: (00:49)
Well, you can help them roll that money into you and into your company and then you can keep an eye on it for them, right? And develop a closer relationship. So I found a, a couple, a husband, wife couple, and we were sitting around the table talking about their financial plans and just kind of where things were with them and I was just trying to size them up and get a feel for how I could best help and come to find out the husband had a CD and this is a pretty sizable CD, wasn’t making a huge amount of money on it, but he wasn’t a super risky guy. So all right. Kind of fits well anyways. As typical with CDs, at some point they’re going to mature at some point they have, uh, the ability to, you either roll them over or you can move them or you can spend them or whatever.

Jason: (01:35)
Right. So they, they’re, they’re kind of in, whenever you invest in a CD, that money is kind of locked in, uh, for a little while. So anyway, what ends up happening is as I’m sitting around talking with these people, it was probably in April and come to find out they have a pretty sizeable CD that is going to come due in October. All right, great. So all this fits, just the way that this consultative sales process works. You check in with them a couple of times a year and that CD was big enough that for me it would represent, depending upon how I positioned that in the company. If we were to move it in to our management, that was going to mean somewhere between 12 and $1,500 for me. So of course this was a really big, uh, big, a smiley face on, on my bulletin board of, Hey, wow, I’ve got this money that’s going to come do.

Jason: (02:24)
All I have to do is keep a good relationship, uh, bide my time until October then. Right? So come back out, probably visit them in September, kind of set the gears in motion so that, uh, when the rollover time comes, then we can go ahead and move that money into the company. All right, 12 to $1,500. Nice. How in the world you forget 12 to $1,500, right? You’ve developed a great relationship with people. How in the world can you forget 12 to $1,500? Well, let me tell you folks, it happens all the time. So here’s how the story played out. I decided to a really big mental note about that really big mental note. How can you forget about 12 to $1,500 [inaudible] well in the process, I think it was probably in my second year at that point, running gun, uh, just out there moving like crazy doing business.

Jason: (03:14)
Uh, that was the year that I ended up winning a sales conference. Uh, so it was great. I was, I was out there doing it. I was getting the deal done. The next time that I thought about that CD was in November. How in the world can you forget about 12 to $1,500? Let me tell you folks, it’s really easy cause that, that was probably the last time that I relied on my make a mental note system. From that day on, I have done everything possible to capture opportunities. I have put, I’ve written stuff on a dry erase board, not always the best because of course the operative word there is erase a, I’ve written it down on a yellow pad right? So just good old fashioned legal pad, just write it down. A captured in and on Excel spreadsheets. I mean, you name it, I’ve done it.

Jason: (04:04)
Find a system that will work for you and do that system. Do not please people. Do not rely on the mental note to be the one that saves you. The best way that you can catch deals from falling between the cracks is to write it down. You pull it out of your head, get it into some kind of system. So, and again, I said you can go really low tech with this. Uh, I know there were many, many advisors. I would walk into their office and they would have the good old fashioned white board. Okay? It’s probably three feet by two and a half feet tall and they would have all of their deals written down on the whiteboard and that worked for them. That worked great. Okay. Can’t say that. That works great for me. Whenever I have a whiteboard, I’d use it too much.

Jason: (04:47)
So I erase things too much. So for me, I, I just went straight to an Excel spreadsheet. All right? Really simple, easy, one column has the name of the person, second column had at that point, you know, just kind of what, what kind of assets they had. So in that case I wrote down, um, CD comes due in November and then I would, uh, write down a due date, right? So I mean really easy stuff and Oh, sorry, not a due date. I would write down the revenue that it represented. Um, so at that rate, people, it gets real easy to sort those opportunities, right? So if you walk into the office one day and you’re, you’re really strapped for time and the question is, gee whiz, where do I best spend my time today? You sort that thing by descending orders. So you put your big opportunities up at the top and work your way down.

Jason: (05:35)
Wow. You should probably be working on your large opportunities. That’s where you can spend your time if you’re really crunched for time. So I offer that to you, uh, from a lesson of, of pain and disappointment. And, uh, I, I know as I’ve gone around and talked with some of you, uh, you have told me about some of your stories of yeah, I should’ve written that down but didn’t, or I’ve with some of you and Oh yeah, I’ve got all these things going on, which is great not getting a sense that they are really captured any place that you can go, Oh yeah, here you want to see that. Let me send you a screen capture or let me see the file over to you. Or I’ll take a picture of this with my phone and send it over to you. Right. Is, I’m not getting the feeling that you could do that with your opportunities very quickly.

Jason: (06:17)
So anyway, I offered that out from the, from the perspective of, uh, of experience there. By all means, take some time today, whether that’s just, just 10 minutes, even if you just do 10 minutes, I could just about guarantee that you could pull about a dozen opportunities out of your head right now. They may not be huge, but I’ll bet you could pull within 10 minutes. You could probably pull out a dozen opportunities to capture and they will never get lost again because you’ll have them right there, there’ll be front and center, you can pull them up anytime you need to. And you know, again, just start small. You can get as advanced with this as you want. I’ve seen people go as far as [inaudible], they would go down this opportunity list and then go create a calendar reminders so that whenever they would come in on a given day, they would end up getting some kind of a calendar to, you know, a pop up, what happened on their screen.

Jason: (07:08)
Oh yeah, I’ve got to go do, you know, such and such with this particular, um, well this particular, uh, engagement. So anyway, so that’s it. Everyone hope you are doing particularly well and I can’t wait to hear from you guys as to how you’re doing. If you wouldn’t mind, I would really appreciate it if you would jump over to the show notes for this episode. Uh, the name of this episode is how to catch deals that fall between the cracks. Go into that episode. You’re going to see a link down in the resources area and that rank is going to be link is going to be how to rate this podcast. That’ll take you back out to the Apple podcast area and you can leave me a review, will absolutely love that. Love to hear from you. And until then, everyone, Hey, this is the guy who running a big business and a small mountain town. My name is Jason Owens, and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care everyone. Bye bye.