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

People buy your product when the perceived value is greater than the cost. They won’t buy when the value is equal to or slightly greater than the cost. The difference between value and cost needs to be LARGE. That perceived difference typically has little to do with the product and more to do with your presentation. That’s why the best copywriters get paid more than $1 million a year for creating killer ads and that’s why million dollar producers earn millions a year for making killer sales presentations. How do you create maximum value and make a killer sales presentation?

You create value by having the prospect see that your product matches with their important goals.

You won’t do that by explaining or telling the features and benefits of your product. You do that my first asking questions and determining what’s really important to your prospect. The “really important” stuff does not sound like “making more money” or “savings taxes” or “lowering costs.” The really important stuff sounds like “taking care of my family” and “taking my grandchildren to Hawaii” and “being a responsible father.” If you don’t find out what’s really important to prospects, then don’t plan on being a million dollar producer.

Here’s what an insurance sales conversation sounds like by a million dollar producer (P=prospect, A=Agent).

P: I don’t really know why we agreed to meet with you. We really can’t afford any insurance.
A: I do help people get enough insurance but that’s not really what I wanted to talk with you about. Before I explain that, let me ask you a question. Since we are not going to talk about insurance, why did you set this time to meet?
P: I’m not sure; I guess you might have something useful to tell us.
A: About what?
P: About how to handle our money better.
A: Why, do you feel it’s not handled well now?
P: Well, I make a good living but it always seems we are behind, never able to do the things we want to do or are important, like get enough insurance.
A: Do you think that everyone has priorities?
P: Yes.
A: What are yours?
P: That confuses me sometimes.
A: Really? Is that your new BMW in the driveway?
P: Yes.
A: Do you have a loan on it?
P: Yes
A: Well, then I guess your priorities are clear. You have decided to put your family in debt and use your limited cash in order to drive a new German automobile instead of those things you previously alluded to as being important. Would you agree that people set their priorities with their checkbook?
P: Yes. And I don’t really feel good about it.
A: I think you do or you wouldn’t have bought the car. Do you notice that people do what makes them feel good today?
P: Sure
A: do you think this leads to the best decisions?
P: No, not at all, I think it’s a little immature.
A: What do you think is mature?
P: Making decisions based on the long run and those things that are really important
A: What’s really important to you?
P: The health of my family, being able to send my kids to good schools, making sure they are happy and protecting them
A: Do you feel you have made those things a priority—is the BMW consistent with that?
P: No.
A: Would you like to get on track and start living consistent with your priorities and making financial decisions consistent with them?
P: Yes.
A: Where do you think you should start?
P: Well, I know I need to start placing money in a college fund and I know I don’t have enough insurance should anything happen to me.
A: And god forbid you become disabled; are those you love protected?
P: I’m not sure if I have enough of that protection through work.
A: You tell me. If I could help you with the items you just mentioned so that you start making financial decisions consistent with your visions for your family, those things that are priorities and living the vision of being a responsible father that you have for yourself, would that be valuable for you?
P: Yes, that would be unbelievable.

At this point, the sale is made. The conversations that occur hereafter are mechanical. The prospect now desires to make a change. The product features are close to irrelevant because the prospect has made an emotional commitment. And the sale is not about insurance or anything about the product. The sale, when concluded by a master, is always about something important to the prospect because the prospect will ALWAYS buy that.

It’s amazing that every new recruit is told that “people buy emotionally” and then is immediately taught to sell logically using features and benefits. The dialog above is the true definition of selling that makes a difference:

• Selling is the asking of appropriate questions so that prospect sees the correct course of action for himself
• Selling is enrolling the prospect in their own vision
  
  

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.

Frankly, most sales skills books are poor. They contain scripts from the 1950s or focus on “closing techniques.” What I’ve learned is that when a sales conversation is done correctly, you don’t need closing techniques; the prospect wants to buy. They also focus on objection handling and when the lessons from the books below are mastered, objections disappear.

If you are just starting in sales, read “The Closers.” This is an old book with some older advice but it made a big impression on me and taught me that selling is not just a conversation about features and benefits. Selling is a science.


Next is SPIN Selling. Rather than repeat opinions (most of what you get about sales), this book is the research results of 35,000 sales presentations and details exactly what works. The books conclusions:

“Investigating is the most important of all selling skills and it’s particularly crucial in larger sales.”

“There is a clear statistical association between the use of questions and the successes of the interaction. The more you ask questions, the more successful the interaction is likely to be.”

The next book, Question Based Selling reiterates the same major conclusions—it’s all about asking questions.

Note that the two books above are written by authors involved in large ticket industrial sales. But the lessons are easily applicable to the one-call-close or the sale to individuals (insurance, securities, mortgages, law and accounting services, etc.)

Some sellers may think that they ask questions but not to the degree these books illustrate. In our company, we have even taken this one step further with a rule, “Never say anything that does not end in a question mark.” This prevents the me-focused selling so prevalent in America and insists that if the seller makes a statement about the features and benefits of his product, that the statement must still end in a question to the prospect, inquiring about how this stated benefit fits the PROSPECT’s desires.

David Sandler’s book “You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike in a Seminar” is awesome but please don’t even read it unless you already rank yourself a very skilled sales person. Sandler’s techniques for uncovering pain will be difficult to use unless you’ve mastered the tools of the previously mentioned books.

From the lessons learned, we’ve adopted two definitions of sales at Javelin Marketing:

“Selling is the asking of appropriate questions so that the prospect sees for himself that he wants to buy your product (service)”

“Selling is a conversation where the seller enrolls the prospect in the prospect’s vision.”

When you really learn how to sell, you realize that the notions of convincing, persuading and handling objections have nothing to do with sales when done by a master. Sales is about what the prospect wants, nut what you want. Will you be a sales master or do what others struggle to do?

Read and grow rich.