Archive for July, 2008

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You’ve Got 2 Seconds To Gain Credibility—Here’s How

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

In selling yourself and your financial services, it’s critical to realize that we live in a culture where prejudging is epidemic. Investors love to form opinions with almost none of the facts. Just listen to any economic prognosticator on television or your clients’ opinions about the stock market to see what I mean.

This prejudging virus forces you to alter your financial services marketing to make your best impression in the first 2 seconds of contact because you won,t get a second chance. The prospect will form a positive or negative judgment almost immediately. Let me give you some specific examples.

When sending direct mail, do all of your envelopes get opened? I doubt it because you allow the recipient to prejudge the contents without opening the envelope. You have a return name of your company on the envelope and you may also have a printed message on the outside of the envelope. You have a meter stamp and maybe a bar code or carrier route sort indicator. All of these scream “JUNK MAIL.” You will never get to communicate your message because the envelope gets tossed in the trash, unopened. You have allowed people to prejudge you and assume the contents of the envelope. Tip: mail items to strangers in a plain business envelope with a first class stamp, no messages, no bar codes, no return company name (use your own name) and with the recipient’s address laser printed on the envelope or through a window envelope. It’s impossible to prejudge the contents of a blank envelope and the recipient must open it. This will be financial services marketing that gets results.

The item in the envelope must have a super-compelling headline and it must be the first thing the recipient sees when they pull the information from the envelope. If the first item the recipient sees does not grab their interest in 2 seconds, you’re finished. TIP: include a big compelling headline and fold the page so that the headline is the first item seen when opening the envelope flap.

When sending information requested by a prospect or to a referral, include a picture and biography. (Have your picture at the bottom of every letter you send to the right of your signature). Remember that you are a stranger to the prospect. People are scared of strangers. By including your picture and biography, they get to know you. When you call, they feel like they know you because they know how you look form your picture. Tip: find the best commercial photographer in town as a good picture can open the door to win new clients.

Brian Tracy, well known motivational educator says, “the reason image is so important is because people are primarily visual and they form their first impression of you by the way you look on the outside. If they do not like what they see on the outside, they very seldom take the time to probe any deeper. In any field of sales and marketing where the impression you make on others is important to your success, it is absolutely essential that you look the part that is consistent with the financial product or service you wish to sell.” Clearly, Mr. Tracy understands financial services marketing.

As to your biography, DO NOT write a “me” biography. A “me” biography is where you talk about yourself “I graduated from Stanford…”, “I am a Certified Fund Specialist,” etc. Write it in the third person and before mentioning your position or credentials, have three to four sentences about what you can do for the prospect:

“John Doe has assisted over 2000 Ohio families increase their income up to 30% and reduce taxes up to 50%. In some cases, investors have used John’s advise to eliminate taxes on social security income and eliminate estate taxes. You may have seen his informative articles on ways to reduce stock market risks in the Akron Journal.”

Only after you have established why you are valuable, do you mention where you went to school and your credentials. Investors are interested in “what can you do for me?” before they want to hear anything about you. And when you do talk about yourself, keep all sales language out of the biography. That means you do not say “John is a registered rep with ABC securities” (unless your broker dealer requires it). Not only do 90% of investors not know what a registered rep is, the other 10% of the people know that you just want to sell something. Sure, everyone knows you’re in business to make a living, but never push any sales language in their face in a biography.

And obey some common courtesies so that people do not prejudge you negatively:

1. On your first telephone contact, do not interrupt prospects. It’s a problem that some of my hard-driving East Coast friends have.
2. Do not close to an appointment without identifying their motivation so that you can offer a potential benefit. When you try to close for a meeting and the prospect’s desires have not been isolated, you will appear pushy.
3. When mailing, do not take a 4-panel letter-sized brochure and stuff it into a business envelope. Use a 9 x 12 envelope so that the brochure can lay flat and the mailing looks professional.

Focus your financial services marketing on those first 2 seconds to gain your opportunity to present who you are and what you can do.

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Eliminate Sales Rejection From Your Sales Process

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Do you feel rejected when people don’t want what you are offering? Actually, when people do not want what you offer, they usually say “no” and you experience rejection. The sales process would be a lot more enjoyable and profitable if you never had to hear the word “no.” It is possible to avoid hearing the word “no,” if you follow these rules:

Never approach anyone that has not previously expressed interest, and ask them enough questions so that before you make a recommendation, you understand their concerns completely and know that they want what you offer. If you address their concerns completely, you should only hear “yes.”

Let’s take a look at both issues.

Getting people interested

You get people to first express interest by:

  • Responding to an ad,
  • Responding to a seminar invitation,
  • Responding to a direct mail offer, or
  • Buying a list where people have responded to other offers that match your offer (find such lists at www.srds.com).

Since the prospects has made the first move, your follow up is a response to their interest. Notice that none of the above methods of contacting prospects involves cold calling. Cold calling is a very inefficient way to find good prospects and it involves lots of rejection. I never cold call.

Now you’re thinking “but running an ad or mail campaign costs money and cold calling does not.” This is true. But you’re running a business. Do you know any successful businessperson that does not invest in their business? I don’t. So either leave the business and get a job (working for someone else who investments in their business) or realize that in order to be a successful business owner, you will need to invest in yourself.

I truly apologize if no one told you that. When you first started in this business, the company recruiting you wasn’t concerned if you had to face constant rejection nor did they mind that you wasted your time cold calling. They only paid you a commission when you made a sale, so your inefficiency didn’t cost them anything.

Let me give you an example of how investing can eliminate rejection. I wanted to sell more annuities. So I developed a compelling ad that gets annuity owners to call me for a free booklet. I send the booklet and make the follow up call a few days later. When I call, after introducing myself I ask them, “what motivated you to call for the booklet?”

They usually launch into something about their curiosity, interest, or problem. If they said something like “I’m not interested.” I would then ask, “Why then did you call me and ask for the booklet?” No matter what direction the conversation takes, there cannot be any rejection. They can only say they don’t want to talk about it; they want to read the booklet or something similar. All of those things are their issue because they called from the ad and “solicited” me. I didn’t contact them unsolicited.

Is there a fit between your services and the prospect wants?

Let’s deal with the next issue. The prospect and I agree to a meeting. The objective of our first meeting is to determine whether or not there is a fit between their desires and my products and services. My objective is NOT to sell them something. Making a sale becomes my objective only after I determine there is a fit between their desires and my expertise and products. The first meeting is for me to determine if I should reject them. If you skip this and believe that your objective in meeting with people is to sell them something, you will get a lot of rejection.

During the conversation to qualify them, I need to ask very powerful questions designed to assist the prospect to see their desires for themselves. It goes something like this: (S=salesperson, C=potential client)

S: Do you feel you pay too much taxes?
C: Yes, they’re terrible.

S: What have you done about that?
C: Well nothing. I keep hoping my accountant will figure out something.

S: But your taxes have remained high anyway?
C: Yes, they’ve gone up.

S: How has your accountant helped you with this?
C: He hasn’t.

S: What solutions do you think there are?
C: That’s why I’m here, to learn about solutions.

S: What solutions have you heard about?
C: I know there are tax free bonds and annuities but don’t know much about them.

S: You’d like to learn more about these to see which might be best?
C: Absolutely. Can you explain them to me?

S: I’d be happy to. But let me ask you something. Why is reducing your taxes so important? What will you do with the extra money you keep?
C: I’d take another trip.

S: You enjoy travel?
C: I love it. I have waited my entire working career to retire and travel to the places I want.

S: How does that make you feel when you can go more places?
C: Like a success. Like working my entire life has been worthwhile.

S: So If I can show you a solution that will allow you to pay less tax and travel more, we will have accomplished something important for you today?
C: Absolutely.

S: I see from your tax return, you paid $30,000 in taxes last year. By how much do you think it’s reasonable to reduce that?
C: I guess by $10,000—that would give me more cash for travel.

S: I see from your statements that you have $200,000 in the bank. If you needed to move that money to an investment that would give you that $10,000 tax savings to be used for travel, would their be any problem with that?
C: No, not at all. That money is just sitting there as I don’t know what else to do with it.

Notice that in this conversation I have made no statements. I have only asked questions. If you want to know what your prospect wants, then ask questions. They will tell you. Then, when you do get to the recommendation, they will say “yes” because your recommendation will be 100% consistent with what they told you they wanted.

This is so ridiculously simple yet so many people in financial sales people guess at what the prospect desires. There is no need to guess, just ask. There is no need to go into the second meeting thinking “I hope they go for this set of recommendations…” Rather, you will go into the meeting knowing that they will say yes; there will be no rejection. It’s like someone telling you that if you could get them the model 5556 car in black with tan interior, they would take it. You then meet them again in a few days and say “here’s model 5556 in black with the tan interior. Is this what you want?”

If they do respond in some inconsistent way then get rid of this prospect rapidly as you cannot serve anyone who changes their desires within a short period. Most people will, of course, say they want the car.

This simple 2-step sales process will keep you from being rejected and make the sales process a lot more enjoyable.

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Lead Generation–How to Build an Email List of Prospects

Friday, July 25th, 2008

Use the resources and ideas below and in a year’s time you can easily have a thousand
email addresses of investors in your area. Then, just use a dripping system like this financial advisor newsletter to email them each month and turn them into clients. You can stay in front of prospects for peanuts and have a continuous drip campaign. These contacts will not only lead to new clients but also:
• Invitations to speak at their clubs
• Invitations to write articles for their newsletter
• Referrals to others not even on your list

1) Get Email Lists from Your Existing Clients
In addition to asking your clients for their email address, ask your clients for list of
email addresses they may have. They may be willing to share them with you or make a
solicitation for you. For example, say you have a client that belongs to the local garden club with 250 members. Your client may be happy to give you a copy of that list or solicit the members on your behalf with something like the following email:

Dear Folks,
Bob Smith has been my financial advisor for the last three years. He has an excellent
newsletter for us seniors called “SeniorFinances” and you can get a free subscription.
Each issue contains articles on where to invest for more income, items on insurance like
long-term care, tips on reducing your income taxes and estate planning, etc. To get a
free email subscription, just click here.
Stu Svenson
President

2) Rent a an Email List
Just like you can rent mailing lists for sending mail, you can rent millions email
Addresses targeted to specific investors. Of course, you may only want those in your area and you can select those you desire by zip code.
At your library, you can find a copy of the “SRDS” Direct Marketing List Source (your
library may have this service on-line from a PC at the library).
If they have the physical books, find the section with the email lists and look down the
directory for lists that contain people with money, such as

  • People who take cruises
  • People who own luxury cars
  • People who gave large political contributions

Most of these lists area available by zip code and by age of person.
In the details of the list, you want the lists that offer a zip code selection so you can email to only those prospects in your area.

Please note that unlike regular mailing lists, email list vendors usually will not give you the list. They will want to do the email for you. So you are not going to be emailing them the newsletter. Rather you are going to be emailing them a solicitation to subscribe to your newsletter. It is those people who respond that you will add to your email newsletter list. Once they respond you then “own” that email address.

We have prepared the email text to send to a rented list below.

Don’t let the wrong financial advisor take advantage of you! Get your FREE subscription to SeniorFinances Newsletter, designed especially for people (describe your target prospect) Don’t be in the dark about your money!
Easy to read articles on:
Ways to reduce your taxes that you won’t hear from your accountantHow to steer clear of “sucker” mutual fundsSafe income investments that pay you 6% and MOREHow to slash taxes on your IRA withdrawals by 50%Understand long term care insurance before you buyHow different types of annuities work and which can help youHow to get cash for your old life insurance policy (more than your insurance company will pay)The big difference between bonds and bond funds that many retirees don’t realizeHow to identify hidden fees in your mutual fundsAnd much more on taxes, IRAs, annuities, long term care, investing for income,insurance and every phase of finances that affects people (description of your target market).

Receive SeniorFinances FREE every month:
Just hit reply to this email and then in your reply provide your information below to get your subscription:
Your Name:
Your zip code:>

3) Inexpensive Ads on Local Web Sites

There are dozens of web sites focused on specific groups in your area. Just for fun,
we did a search on “Columbus Ohio Senior.” Here’s what we got without looking any
further:
http://www.ohiosenior.com—a web site for Ohio retirees—$49 a month for a banner ad
http://www.columbuswired.net/SeniorLiving/default.htm—the senior page of Ohio’s web
magazine—$20 a month
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~seniors/—the Aging in Ohio web site
http://www.subasekb.navy.mil/retkbnews.htm—the site for local Navy retirees
http://www.oshpra.org/mends.htm—the Retiree Association of the Ohio State Patrol
The ads are very inexpensive ($20 -$50 per month) and thousands of seniors can see your
ad to subscribe to your free senior newsletter.

4) Subscribe to Our National Internet Marketing Service (if your target prospect is the 50+ crowd)

The SeniorLeads™ service advertise on all of the national senior web sites asking seniors if they want free financial information on retirement issues.
If you subscribe for that service, we provide you the leads for your area.

5) Have a Sign-Up Form on Your Own Website

If you have your own website, be sure to promote the newsletter on the site and have lots
of places where they can sign up for it. Promote your website using Google pay per click on a local basis.

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NEEDS Have Nothing to do with Sales

Friday, July 25th, 2008

I interviewed a sales candidate yesterday and he told me the two most important things about sales are listening and fulfilling your prospect’s needs. Most people in sales would agree that these are important aspects about sales and this conclusion is unfortunately wrong.

First, people never, ever buy what they need. Needs are not relevant to any human action unless a matter of survival. (You will kill wild game with your bare hands if you are starving and need to eat to survive. In all other non-survival situations, you will not act based on your needs). Human action (unless for survival) is based solely on desire. The Centers for Disease Control report that 65% of Americans are obese and need to lose weight. But notice that most of those people are not on a diet. The only people that have called Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig or have placed themselves on the South Beach diet are those that want to lose weight. If you want to be a poor sales professional, keep focusing on prospect needs and you won’t make any sales. Worse, take an a seemingly altruistic motivation to supply to people what they need (but they don’t want).

This difference between needs and wants is not a semantic issue. I did some work for a VERY large insurance company. They have their agents complete a needs assessment for each new prospect. The entire indoctrination of their agents about prospect needs insures that their agents sales are significantly diminished. If the company simply changed the form name to “Desires Assessment” or “Wants Assessment”, the conversation between the agent and the prospect would be altered, the prospects motivations for action would become more clear, more quickly, the prospect would be better served and the agent and the insurance company would make more sales.

People Don’t Buy What they Need, They Buy What They Want

The second issue of importance to this sales candidate was listening. But the important question is listening to what? Listening to what the prospect says? Sit down because this will shock you: what the prospect says is irrelevant. If you listen to what the prospect says and respond to that, you will likely have the typical sales conversation of trying to convince, persuade and overcome objections. This is because your prospect is programmed to say things to ruin your sale, to interrupt your scripted presentation and to make it hard for you to close. So don’t listen to what they say.

Listen and Respond to Your Prospects Concerns, NOT Their Words

Here’s an example. A prospect may ask a sales professional at our company, Javelin Marketing, “where do you run your ads to attract prospects for my business?” In fact, the prospect could care less where we run the ads. The prospect is doing the best he can to use words to express his concern. His concern, if you really listen, is, “will you be able to get me quality prospects that will do business with me?” The sales professional who speaks to his concerns will avoid a needless conversation (about the various web sites where the ads run), better serve the prospect by addressing their actual concerns and close the sale is less time.

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How Financial Advisors Get An Abundance of Referrals

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Everyone tells you to get client referrals, that it’s the easiest way to build your business. But how many financial advisors do you know who get an abundance of referrals? Not too many. And how many producers work hard at it, but end up with little results? They join the board of a non-profit, they contribute to the symphony and get season tickets, and they hobnob in the “right” places. That’s a lot of work for uncertain results. Successful referral gatherers simply have their clients bring them more people. Those few financial advisors who have a continuous stream of client referrals have discovered three things that you too can use to generate that continuous client referral flow.

1. When starting off a new client relationship, you must ask your new client, “What will I need to do so that you tell all of your friends about me?” WRITE DOWN THE ANSWER AND THEN DO IT! Most clients will not say, “I want a 25% annual return,” or some other request that is impossible to honor. They will say something like, “I just want you to stay in touch every couple months, help me not to lose money and call back the same day when I call you.” You can certainly promise this and deliver it.

2. After 60-90 days, you set up a meeting with your client. You explain that the meeting is to do a review and for their assistance in developing your business. Tell them to bring their phone/address book. At the meeting you read to them what they told you at the beginning of the relationship. You read them the requirement they stated in step #1 above. Then ask them if you have done what they required. They then see that you did what you promised and they will also. They will provide you client referrals.

3. Last, you need to get your client to introduce you to the referral. If you just get a referral name and phone number from a client, that’s pretty worthless. When you call the referral without an introduction don’t expect much because: They don’t know who you are. They don’t know what you do. They don’t know why you are calling. They don’t know how you got their name. They don’t know why somebody gave you their name and they are not expecting your call. Therefore, you need your client to call the referral, send a note or physically introduce you.

Getting your client to send a note is easiest because you can have your client sign a standard form letter saying how great you are. With your client’s permission, you then run it back through your printer adding your client’s return address. The note arrives at the referral’s home and appears to have been sent from your client’s home. Of course, not every client will provide referrals. However for those clients that provide none, you will have other clients that provide 25. The key is to treat this as a system rather than an ad hoc process of asking whenever you remember. This process is neither a lot of work nor very time consuming. Best of all, you can build these three simple steps into your normal client monitoring procedures. Three simple steps to generate new clients every month.

Learn how to get professional referrals from CPAs, attorneys and other business owners.

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Capture Those Sales That Get Away

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Every financial advisor has had the experience of losing a sale. You’re left scratching your head knowing that your proposal was right on, and the prospect should now be a client. What went wrong? Although there can be many reasons that the sale did not close, in today’s post, I will talk about one element in particular–your lack of credibility.

Don’t be insulted, I’m not addressing you personally. But please realize that in many cases, you simply are not a credible financial advisor in the eyes of the prospect. They have no prior knowledge of you, they were not referred to you by a trusted friend, and given the financial horror stories they read about in the newspaper, they are leery of you.

From the prospect’s point of view, are you any different than any other financial advisor in town? Is there any reason they should trust you? Often, we expect people to trust us just because we know we are nice people. If you want to capture more sales, you will need to prove yourself.

Can you overcome this prospect skepticism, even though they just met you?

The most powerful way in our society to overcome skepticism and to establish yourself as a trustworthy expert is to get published or have others write about you. Before you decide that this solution won’t work for you, I’ll show you that you do not need to write a word.

Think about it. Don’t people believe what they read in the newspaper? Don’t they automatically trust news reporters, columnists and authors? You can join these trusted ranks.

First, you can get interviewed repeatedly by your local press. Many times, our staff has been interviewed as the “expert” in local newspapers, national journals and on the web. I really don’t know any more about financial planning, insurance and investments than you do. I do however know how to get the press to pay attention to me. There is a simple process of sending press releases that gets the press to pay attention to me. Although describing this process and showing you a sample press release would be too lengthy for this article, just do a Google search on “press release writing” and you will find plenty of samples.

Secondly, you can write your own booklets. We ghost write financial booklets on several financial topics used by financial advisors all across the country. These financial advisors booklets give producers instant credibility and their closing ratio soars. I just got this email from a user this week, “Your annuity marketing system works beautifully!! My annuity sales are skyrocketing.” I did not teach this producer one thing about sales or annuities. I merely gave him a tool that positioned him as an expert in his local market. He now has credibility and he closes more sales.

Third, you can write a book. Actually, you do not need to write one word. I have seen estimates that up to 20% of books published are not written by the author whose name is on the book. These books are ghost written. You can do the same. You can hire a ghost writer to write what you want. You do not need to start from scratch and the work is already done, as there are some books on the market, already written, that can be printed with your name and picture.
Please be aware of FINRA rules about ghostwritten materials and make the proper disclosures. These disclosures are made in the booklets produced by Javelin Marketing.

Use these three recommendations to get credibility, establish yourself as an expert, and close more sales.

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Rethink How You Attract Clients

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Many financial advisors would like more and better clients. But their effort to obtain new clients is often wasted and misplaced. Here are three concepts that can help you attract more and better clients:

Make yourself scarce. We live in a culture where people want what they cannot have. In order for people to want you, you must make yourself scarce. That means you only deal with people who fit your profile (yes, turn away business). In all marketing you do, communicate that you only deal with a certain segment of people Here’s an example. A financial advisor only deals with people age 60 and over. His firm is called Senior Resources. His business card says “Retiree Investment Management.” He does not deal with people under 60. If his client says, “Can you help my son—he’s 48 and he has some money,” he declines and refers the son to a colleague. By being so picky, his clients refer him to others as “He’s a specialist in dealing with people like us.” No client wants to go to a generalist. They want a financial specialist. What do you specialize in?

Another example is the financial advisor who specializes in an industry, For example, an ex-engineer who only prospects chemical engineers. He becomes known in that circle, writes a columns for the engineers’ magazine and becomes an invited speaker at conventions. I know a guy who sold hundreds of life insurance polices to United Airlines pilots by visiting their layover facility at major airports. He gave talks to a group of pilots as they were waiting for their next flight. Be different. Every time you open an account, it’s because you offer something different than the client’s current advisor. Yet most brokers look alike—many do the same activities, offer the same products and services and are indistinguishable from the next broker. Why should the prospect deal with you? You distinguish yourself from others by crafting your business differently.

One way to be a unique financial advisor is by focusing on a certain niche as described above and making yourself scarce. Another way is to run your business differently. For example, if most financial advisors are recommending mutual funds, then you recommend stocks (and have a well researched argument with evidence as to why stocks would be better). If other advisors offer bond funds for fixed income, you offer individual bonds (and have a good presentation as to why individual bonds would be better). If other financial advisors have no system for selecting stocks, then you specialize in quantitative systems like the Dow Dividend Strategy, Value Line or CANSLIM (as documented by William O’Neill in How to Make Money in Stocks). Show people why “guessing” about stocks is no way to invest and why a structured system brings all-important discipline to the process. If other financial advisors are raising money for third party money managers, you be the money manager (if you use a structured system, the time it takes to manage portfolios is negligible as the system does the work).

If every one in your office is selling growth stocks, then specialize in precious metals or whatever interests you. Team up with the other financial advisors in your office and split commissions. They are not talking to their clients about metals and this business will be lost. It would be smart for both of you to split commissions and have him introduce you to his clients (other brokers will bring you business if they you are not competing with them, that you specialize in an area they don’t know about—metals, options, 401k, etc).

Write. In our culture, financial advisors who write are considered financial experts. If your name is in the newspaper or on the spine of a book, you will stand out from other brokers. You do not need to write a word. There are firms that offer ghost writing services to make you an author overnight. Think of the difference when you can give a prospect a copy of your book. Do you think he is more inclined to open an account with you? What about sending information to a referral and you include in the envelope two articles from the daily newspaper in which you are interviewed and one article you authored. Have you increased the probability of that prospect becoming a client? As you implement your marketing, ask yourself each week how you are being different and distinguishing yourself from every other broker in town. Why will prospects leave their current financial advisor to join you?

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Training Yourself for Sales Failure

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Do you ever get off the phone or leave an appointment thinking, “that prospect seemed really interested. He could become a really good client.” You feel good about the outlook with this client. Every time you do this, you train yourself for sales failure.

In fact, you have ended the visit or phone call with the prospect and you have failed to make a sale, you have failed to get any type of commitment whatsoever and now “reward” yourself with some “good feeling” because the conversation went well. Most prospects are pleasant. They won’t say “no” to your face. They will simply string you along. This is likely another pleasant prospect stringing you along and the sad thing is that you feel good about it. You reward yourself for sales failure.

This scenario happens again and again because you are training yourself with positive thoughts every time it occurs. Rather, you should be saying to yourself, “I screwed up if I did not get the sale. Period.” That way, you can take action not to have a failed sale again. Not every successful sales conversation ends in a check. The sale in large cases, may take several steps so each communication needs to have a “sale” defined as a satisfactory conclusion telling you that the prospect has bought the next step. If the conclusion to the meeting would not have been a check, then other acceptable conclusion in a multi-step sales can be:

  • Agreement to meet (or call) again on a specific date and time at a specific location
  • Agreement to sample the item or get started with a toe in the water
  • Agreement to check to another important party and get back to you by a specific time

If you didn’t make the sale, don’t feel good about it. Feel lousy and take corrective action so it does not happen again.

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emailappenders is a ripoff

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

do not deal with Emailappenders–this company will not give you accurate lists and will then keep your money.

read more | digg story

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Answer Your Buyer's Only Question–What's in it for me now?

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Buyers are not only focused on their own best interest, they want it now. Yet, you spend most of your working hours offering future payoffs to prospects. Yet future payoffs are hazy and often hard to conceive. Let’s take an example.

The Center for Disease control reports that 61% of Americans are overweight. I postulate that most of those people know that being overweight:

  • Takes years off their life
  • Results in increased risk of heart disease—the #1 killer of Americans
  • INCREASES the risk of numerous other diseases such as diabetes, gout, hardening of the arteries—which not only produce a shorter life expectancy but creates fewer desirable days while alive
  • Can significantly reduce the enjoyment of old age, possibly restricting travel or resulting in the need for a walker rather than being fit and playing golf three times a week
  • May result in a condition where the last weeks or months or life are spent writhing in an uncomfortable hospital bed or nursing home, ill, rather than at their comfortable home

Americans also know that high fat/high carbohydrate foods contribute to being overweight. So why is it, in light of the dismal outcome of being overweight, Americans consume an estimated 100,000 pounds of cheesecake a month, a food saturated with fat and carbohydrates?

Because it tastes good right now. Your prospects are far more interested in an immediate payoff than what you’ve been offering for your entire career. You’ve offered products and services that pay off 5, 10 maybe even 30 years in the future. But your prospects want the cheesecake now, more than they want good health in 30 years.

Is it any wonder that the baby boomer generation has a savings rate for retirement less than 2% of income, yet the sales of BMWs (fun to drive right now) continue to soar? Retirement is years away but that road hugging, corner grabbing, quick acceleration offered by precision German engineering is instant gratification!

Those mutual funds you offer, those annuities, that LTC policy, the life policy—all produce benefits far into the future—a place that has little allure for Americans who relish today’s good time.

You can sell twice as many products and services (and help a lot more people) when you show your prospect the payoff is right now.

The cliché question the old-time life insurance salesman used to ask is a great example. He asks the husband in front of the wife, “Do you love your family?” That salesman understood that people buy because there is a payoff right now. The payoff to the husband is his demonstration of love for his family (as well as the added incentive of not having his wife brow beat him. He trades off saving the premium for showing love of his family).

When you sell an LTC policy, don’t focus on some payoff 20 years from now and your bevy of statistics about people entering nursing homes. Rather, offer current payoffs:

“Mrs. Smith, do you like to keep your options open?” (A loaded question as this is an American addiction). Then, would it be better to have this protection now and be able to cancel it at any time OR, wake up tomorrow with an illness, never able to get this protection no matter how much you want it? Which of these scenarios would give you better options?

In the above situation, the payoff you offer (keeping options open) is in the present, not 20 years away.

When you speak to the engineer about investing in the mutual fund portfolio, is there a current payoff you can offer? Every engineer I have met wants to be smart and be right. So you might ask, “Steve, do you know these names: Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Richard Branson, Sam Walton, and Rupert Murdoch? Do you know in which single asset they all focus their money during their careers?” They invested their money in businesses, just like you have the chance to do by owning these funds. So do you want to take the risk of investing your way or do what these brilliant, super wealthy, super successful and super smart people have done? Do you want to join them?”

No one has ever made a decision that did not have a current payoff (even if that payoff was to feel good now about organizing their future). Your job is to help uncover (for yourself and the prospect) what that current payoff is for them and have them make the decision for that benefit.
America is a wonderful country and Americans are wonderful clients. To have them take action, just answer their perpetual question, “What’s in it for me right now?”

Annuity Leads for Financial Advisor Marketing
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