Financial Advisor Blog on Marketing, Lead Generation, Prospecting and Sales

I've noticed that people who sell have frequently been trained to sell to difficult prospects. They have learned lessons like "the sale doesn't start until you hear 'no' six times" or "never take no for an answer."

However, I've noticed that rich sales professionals don't abide by these rules. Instead, they invest not more than 5 minutes with a prospect to determine if there is a match between the prospect's desires and the seller's product/service. If there is no match, the professional moves on. Less wealthy sellers will grind the prospect and attempt to convince the prospect why the seller's product/service is so great and why the prospect should want it. Please don't do this, for three reasons:

• It's disrespectful. if someone says they have no interest, respect what they say. The reasons that sales people of all types (e.g. car sales people, insurance agents, stockbrokers) get low marks for trust is because of their agenda to sell their product rather than placing the prospect's agenda first.
• This is not the kind of client you desire. If you have to grind them to a close, this is a person who will have buyer's remorse, likely cancel the transaction or just become a headache later.
• It makes you poor by allocating most of your time to people who don't buy rather than to prospects who DO BUY.

So why do you try and convince a prospect when they express no interest? Because you believe that prospects are scarce. This is not true but most of the economy operates under this assumption. We address it in our next post.