Read this post on the naming EIAs as securities under SEC rule 151a on our sister blog.
Archive for December, 2008
EIA agents need to read this post on dealing with SEC Rule 151A
Monday, December 29th, 2008
Why Your Sales Success is Inconsistent
Saturday, December 27th, 2008It was before 9 am. Aaron cold called a prospect and made a sale. He felt pretty good about what just happened. Thinking he needed a small reward, he headed over to Starbucks for a coffee and something to eat. Aaron was exhibiting the same behavior that most people in sales exhibit–as soon as they have success, they sabotage it.
It’s exactly at this moment that Aaron can least afford to go to Starbucks or take any sort of break. He has just had a rare occurrence–he closed business on the first call before 9 am. The wind is at his back, the universe is responding to his hard work, the stars are aligned in his favor. Time to go to Starbucks? NOOOOO!!!! Time to pick up the phone and do it again!
Like the gambler in a casino on a hot streak, you stay at the tables as long as it lasts. Like the tennis player who hits one ball after another just over the net, like the golfer who places one drive after another onto the green, you STAY IN THE ZONE until your streak ends.
Not only do I see financial advisors sabotage themselves intraday like this, they do the same week to week and month to month. Barry had a really good week generating $10,000 of gross commission, more than he ever had in a single week. So he decided to reward himself with a three day weekend. NOOOOO Barry!!!. You want to get into the office on Saturday and line up your next week and make it a $12,000 week. Then be in the office Monday at 6 am.
The time when you want to take a day off or go to Starbucks is when you’re in a sump. Take the time off to regroup your thoughts, your tactics, your strategies when results are not there. You NEVER take time off when everything you worked for, everything you hoped for has come to fruition. That type of behavior is insane.
Mediocre producers will exhibit the above behavior. They have a great week and then slough off so that the month comes out to be just okay. The top producer behaves differently. He has a great and then rises the bar so that the next week is even better and has a $40,000 month. Top producers know that when the universe is delivering for you, you don’t spit in its face. You give thanks of gratitude and show it with your increased activity.
Learn about Brokerville to generate greater sales consistency.
The Zen Paradox of Sales Success
Thursday, December 25th, 2008Many financial advisors believe, without ever thinking about it, that sales success is convincing the prospect to do business with you. Accordingly, the goal is therefore to enroll people in conversations and the longer the conversation goes, the greater your chance of the close. Naturally, you believe that if you talk to a lot of people, the goal is to find those people that want to buy. Top producers know that the goal of sales success is just the opposite—the goal is to identify the people who are not buyers.
Think of any 100 people. How many of those people at this very moment have interest, are qualified and the right fit for your product or service. Maybe 5? The goal therefore is to get the other 95 people, the non-buyers, out of the way. Since your most valuable resource is time, you ideally want to have a 3 minute qualifying conversation with all 100 people so that you can quickly identify and omit the 95 non-buyers from qualification. You don’t want to spend an extra minute with those people who are not a fit or don’t have interest. That way, you can devote your time to the 5 people who ARE buyers and turn your time into money.
Although this makes obvious sense—to spend your time with the buyers, I consistently see sales professionals have their longest calls and meetings with the non-buyers. These non-buyers raise objection after objection, are the most skeptical and will consume far more time than a buyer. Please don’t do this anymore. Have your sales presentation ask a few questions in the beginning to identify the non-buyers so that you can leave them and move on. You then find the better part of your day spent with buyers and go home feeling successful.
Your marketing strategy should reflect the same philosophy—to weed out the non-buyers. Here again, many financial advisors will want to attract as many people as possible from their marketing. So they serve a nice steak dinner to attract prospect to their seminar. You have now successfully packed your seminar with people, most of them non-buyers. If you did not serve the steak dinner, the people who attend would be those sufficiently interested in your seminar topic and adequately motivated by your invitation. We call these people buyers.
Now that you have packed your seminar with a lot of non-buyers, you will find that some of these also set an appointment with you, take up a two hour slot in your calendar and tell you every reason that they won’t buy. If you don’t feel you make enough sales for the time you spend at work, you now understand why. Please stop wasting time with non-buyers.
Back To Financial Advisor School
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008The financial advising business will get tougher because your prospects are getting smarter. Are you getting
smarter, too? Fifteen years ago, stockbrokers had an edge in that people had to call them for midday stock quotes. Financial professionals also had an edge, as they had product information and the prospect did not. That’s all changed. If all you’ve got is product information, your days are numbered. It’s back to financial advisor school and more financial advisor training for you.
The broader your knowledge base, the more you stay one step ahead of your prospects. As they get smarter, so must you. If you stay wedded to selling only one product, don’t be surprised if it gets harder to do business. People want advice. Not product advice, but rather, financial advice. Start giving it and start charging for it! If you don;t have the financial advisor training you need, read on.
This is the millennium of self-learning. Those advisors who continually expand their knowledge base and apply what they’ve learned will win. Sadly, those who tread in one place will lose.
If you think that tax issues are for CPAs and legal issues are for lawyers, you’re mistaken. Some of the top financial advisors I know have far more expertise in their field than the average CPA or attorney. And they use that knowledge to attract business. After all, anything that anyone knows is in a book or on the Internet. The Internet is an integral resource of your financial advisor school of self-learning. The resources to learn anything are at your fingertips. Do you use them?
If you have been lazy in seeking out experts, then I guess you have some work to do. No one will call you up to give you the answers. Financial advisor training means training yourself–reading, attending seminars, researching issues on the Internet. The answers are there, however, for the taking. Million-dollar producers are self-learners. If a big producer wants to be an expert in direct mail, he reads books on direct mail, researches the issues on the Internet, finds the leading magazines and consults with an expert. In a short time, he too is an expert. And he makes profit with direct mail. Others who use direct mail but don’t learn the best practices, lose money and fail and then tell everyone they know, “direct mail doesn’t work.”
But learning by itself is not enough. The fallacy in our culture is that knowledge is power. Not true. Applied knowledge is power. More accurately: Applied knowledge = money. Let me share an example. Plenty of CPAs know more than Stan, a financial advisor knew about IRA distribution rules. But years ago, Stan took what he knew, arranged it into a system to fill a seminar room and provided a turnkey system that helps financial advisors gain new retirement plan accounts. This system earned Stan many hundreds of thousands of dollars. The knowledge by itself was worthless until he packaged his knowledge into something other people valued and until he marketed it.
In future articles, I will give you many examples of producers I’ve met like Richard Heckman who turned his knowledge of golf into becoming one of the top stockbrokers in the nation or Larry Banks, who turned his knowledge of health care marketing into earning a spot as one of the largest producers of LTC insurance. Or possibly you know my Ed Slott, CPA. Like possibly other CPAs, he knows a lot about IRA distribution issues. But how many CPAs get paid $10,000 to talk about it to an audience for 50 minutes? If you cannot convert what you know into a form that people will pay for, the knowledge has no value. Knowledge must be combined with the execution of smart financial advisor marketing.
