Selling with Belief

Why do you sell the products that you do? When you meet a prospective client, how do you see them?

Do you look at them and think, “Gee, I think he might need what I am selling. I hope he does.” When they raise and objection, do you think, “Oh well, guess I’ll try someone else.”

Or do you feel, “I’m happy I met this person. He needs me, he just doesn’t know it yet.”. When they raise an objection, do you feel, “Great! Another opportunity to prove how much he needs me!”

Most are of the former type. Very few are of the latter. Who do you think is more successful? Better yet, who do you want to be?

Ephemeral and permanent

What do you spend your time on? 

Do you spend your time focused on things that will change in the next year, month, day or shorter? Things like the market, the news, opinions of industry pundits and the momentary fears these things create in both you and your clients? 

Or do you focus on the things that will not change over a lifetime or beyond? Things like eventuality of birth, work, retirement and death and the needs these create? Processes that recognize the ephemera and keep short-term fears from guiding decisions, like diversification, rebalancing, and buying the right type and amount of insurance as early as you can? 

One choice leads to fear and uncertainty. The other leads to hope and calm for you and your clients. 

Choose wisely. 

Preach to the Converted

A wholesaler did a sales presentation recently to a group of highly successful advisors.  She believes strongly in what she was presenting, had proved it to herself, and did not hold back her passion and conviction. The result?  Two loyal advisors bought in immediately. Two other advisors did not, and felt she was too biased towards her company’s solutions. The majority are ‘undecided’ at this point.

I consider this a success. Why?

Too often, we try to appeal to either the ‘eternal naysayers’ or the ‘undecided majority’. Too often we sanitize or pull back from our message so we do not get a negative reaction from anyone. We end up ‘reverting to the mean’ in our messages to avoid offense.

No one ever achieved great things by becoming more average.

The two advisors who ‘bought in’ will be wildly successful, and act as an example to the ‘undecided majority’. The ‘eternal naysayers’ will always find a reason not to accept what they are told, no matter what you say.

In and on

There are two very distinct ways to work towards anything. The first way is to put your head down, complete tasks, deal with issues as they come up. It is a very effective way to get things done, and a lot of what gets accomplished it the world is completed this way. This is working ‘in’ it.

The other way is to step outside of the day-to-day tasks, and look at the where you are, where you want to go, and figure out whether the path you are on is the most effective and/or efficient. It is a reiterative process that constantly recalibrates and refocuses effort in the right direction. This is working ‘on’ it.

You need both modes to accomplish things, in a perfect balance. Too much of working ‘in’ it, and you end up just doing ‘busy work’ that, in hindsight, really didn’t help move you or your team closer to the goal. Too much working ‘on’ it, and you end up with a great plan that never gets done.

This is a very important distinction for financial advisors. You are best able to help clients step outside of their day-to-day and plan to get to a specific goal by following a specific path, and you add value by constantly re-evaluating and changing the plan based on where they are today. But you also need to be able to motivate them to work ‘in’ it, to consistently move along the right path. Help them step outside their plan when they need to be objective and realistic (How easy was that when the markets were down 40%? It’s called work for a reason). Help them re-engage in their plan, and take the right actions now (How many of your clients added more money to their plans when everything in the market was on sale?).

Always ask yourself and your clients whether you should be working ‘on or in’ it., and find the balance between.

No call to action

I started this blog, promising to end each with a defined ‘call to action’. If you look back, I stuck with that for only a few posts. Why?

I realise that my value to you is not to tell you what to do. My value is to make you think, to consider, to step outside of your day-to-day activities and see things a bit differently. Perhaps I’m just validating what you already know. Perhaps you choose to ignore me. Or perhaps you think about something you read for some time, and it helps you make a new choice, to forge a new path to success.

This is hard for many people. We live in a world where we expect to be given a ‘turnkey’ solution where we just need to show up, follow steps A to Q, and the result will happen. Rinse and repeat.

I’d like to think that you are more than just an automaton, more than just someone who follows a set of directions (I can find plenty of people like that working in factories and bureaucracies). You live in a complex world that is always changing. Q sometimes disappears before you even get to F. You are a human, with a unique gift. You can stop, consider, make a choice, and try in a new direction. You can make your own map.

I can’t lay a path out for you to follow, as that would be my path – not yours. All I can do is show you a new destination, point out some of the more interesting way points, and send you on your way.

Remember to send me a postcard when you get there!