CHRISISM #25 - Waterproofing the Business at the Point of Sale
19 September 2016
Have you ever had new business not complete due to the client getting “cold feet” and would you rather it didn’t happen again?
In Chrisism#12 we looked at waterproofing first appointments to make sure we were not the only one putting the appointment in our calendar and the appointment was “real”. This time around we are going to address the issue of waterproofing new business at the point of sale to ensure the business is real and is going to stay on the books.
In our business, because a client gets nothing in the form of physical, tangible product to show for the money they have ‘parted with’, waterproofing the sale becomes all the more important. We need to understand that, because we are selling intangibles, there will typically have been a particular point in the initial client engagement process at which the client made the decision to buy – it will usually be something we said, a picture we painted or a story we told that will have resonated with the client and triggered an emotional decision to buy, but the problem is that we don’t normally know what that trigger was because the client doesn’t suddenly exclaim “Yes – I’m going to buy!” – it is an internal decision they make without any verbalisation.
So let me ask you: - how handy would it be to know what each client’s hot button was i.e. what was the emotional trigger that we pulled that motivated this particular client to buy? Pretty handy, I would say! So why don’t you ask them?
At the point of sale, whilst the ink is metaphorically drying on the application form, I strongly recommend you ask your client the following question:-
“Welcome aboard as a client! Tell me, if you had to pick the 3 main reasons why you’ve decided to take up my recommendations today and go ahead with your personal protection package, what would they be?” And shut up!
Hopefully they will be able to verbalise why they have chosen to proceed with your recommendations in which case you need to write their reasons down on a piece of paper and keep them on their client file, because they represent that client’s hot buttons and you will now be able to press those hot buttons when it comes to review time!
Sometimes you may have to help them identify the main reasons why they have decided to proceed – in which case it’s just as well you did because they may just have been carried away on a tide of logic and reason and simply couldn’t think of a good enough reason for not going ahead – and they would make them very vulnerable to post purchase remorse as we know that people don’t buy on logic and reason but on emotion.
Even if you go through this process with a new client, it is possible that they will still hit the panic button – in which case you will need to get together with them to discuss a piece of paper on their file which has their reasons for going ahead with your recommendations which should outweigh any panic based reasons for not proceeding.
This Chrisism forms just part of one of eight sessions at my upcoming “Sales Skills for Financial Planners” workshop that I am running around the 5 major capitals in November. Just click on your capital city below for details and to get your early bird discount and I hope to see you there!
Register using the links below.
Cost: $450 + GST per person
Earlybird: $400 + GST per person
Time: 9.00am – 4.30pm
Book a ticket in your city below:
Perth - Tuesday 8 November
Adelaide - Thursday 10 November
Brisbane - Wednesday 16 November
Melbourne - Wednesday 23 November
Sydney - Tuesday 29 November
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