How to Master the Art of Selling Financial Services. Tom Hopkins
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spouse and kids excited for you? Are they telling you how great you are to be helping other people so they can benefit, too? Yes and yes.
That’ s your foundation: Attitude, Enthusiasm and Goals. Evaluate each of those areas right now. How do you feel about what you do? How is that feeling showing up in your outer world? If you’re not satisfied that they’re as good and as strong as they could be, perhaps you need to set better, loftier goals.
The goals you set must be better than your best, but believable. Otherwise you won’t stretch and grow. You won’t be motivated to achieve them. Let’s take a moment to review the basic laws that apply to goals:
1. Your goals must be believable. If you don’t really believe you can achieve it, you won’t. End of story.
2. Your goals must be clearly defined. If you set a physical fitness goal regarding weight loss, you wouldn’t write, “I’m going to lose weight.” Why? Because nobody wants to “lose.” They want to gain and in this case you want to gain a healthier body. So you’d write, “I’m going to achieve my ideal weight of 175 pounds by November 6th, 2009.” It’s clear. It’s specific and it has a deadline. Great goal!
3. Your goals must be ardently desired. You simply won’t work for something that “would be nice to have or do.” Your goals must be ardently desired. I love that phrase because you nearly have to grit your teeth to say it. It just doesn’t sound right if you say it without emotion. You must be passionate about your goals.
4. Your goals must be vividly imagined. This goes back to our discussion of what you see in your mind’s eye. Can you envision yourself at 175 pounds in the summer? What are you wearing? How do you feel at that weight? Get as vivid a picture as you can. See it. Smell it. Feel it. Taste it.
5. Your goals must be in writing. This seems to be the most daunting task for people. Too many feel that if they put a goal in writing and don’t achieve it, they will have written proof of their failure. If that’s your thinking, stop it right now. The value of putting your goals in writing is so you can read them over and over again to keep them fresh in your mind on days when everything you touch turns to something other than gold. Your written goals are your motivators to keep moving forward. And it’s okay if you change your mind or alter your goals as you journey toward them. They’re not stamped in concrete after all. But do put them in writing. It’s an important step toward making them real.
That takes care of the foundation of our selling skills triangle. Now, let’s take a look at the sides.
On the left side, we have product knowledge. As I already mentioned, this is something you get from the company or group you’re associated with. Since you’re now treating your business like a hobby work is now fun. One of your goals must be to study all of the product information you can get your hands on. After all, it will do you no good to stutter and stammer your way through information on something you want your clients to own.
“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Johnson, we have this new product that’s exactly what you need. Let me find the brochure on it. It’s, uh, oh, I don’t remember exactly how they describe it, but it sounded like it would take care of your concerns about…”
If you don’t know it, don’t try to sell it! You won’t come across with confidence and they won’t have confidence in either you or the product even if it is great for them. You must be seen as a truly knowledgeable and competent professional within minutes of meeting any new prospective client. The potential client must believe you not only can “talk the talk,” but that you can “walk the walk.” This requires study, rehearsal and may even involve conversations with others who are marketing the same product to get a better feel for the type of client it will help the most.
Financial products are changing all the time to meet changing consumer needs. Government regulation of the industry requires you to stay on top of what you can and cannot do or say within this realm. If you don’t keep up and follow the ever-changing rules, you may find yourself out of touch, out of the office because you’re in court, or worse, out of business.
To stay on top of the knowledge game, attend as many educational sessions as you can reasonably fit into your calendar. Join an industry trade association and read the newsletters and other information they publish. It’s their job to provide the latest information. It’s yours to read, understand and internalize it.
Now, let’s move on to the right side of our formidable structure and what the rest of this book is all about—your people skills.
This is where you put your great attitude, your enthusiasm for your products and your product knowledge to use in achieving your goals. As a general overview, people skills involve: finding ideal potential clients for your products; how you meet them; strategies to qualify them about their needs; skills to educate them; methods to address their concerns; a course of action to get their business; and, to earn the right to ask for referrals.
You may already be strong in some of these areas. Most people who get involved in a career in financial services enjoy meeting new people and getting to know them. They may also be good at explaining new ideas and concepts to others. Those skills are essential to giving effective presentations. The goal of the following pages is to help you understand that there is a step-by-step process to effective selling and to teach you where your existing skills fit in. For those areas in which you may not be as skilled, we’ll cover very specific, how-to strategies for taking those steps in the most productive manner.
Before we begin with our selling steps, let me give you one bit of advice. If you truly want to improve where you are right now, it will take some dedicated effort on your part. You will need to commit to read this entire book not once, but several times. In fact, most of our students have found it most beneficial to read our books a minimum of six times to gain solid retention of the training. Don’t panic! I’m not telling you to read it six times through over and over, though that’s not a bad idea.
Rather than overwhelm you with directions of how to proceed, make a commitment to live by the following twelve words that have made all the difference in my career and the careers of millions of my students.
I must do the most productive thing possible at every given moment.
That’s it. Simple, isn’t it? In fact, you could probably memorize that sentence right now if you just repeat it to yourself six times. That little sentence is something I have lived by for many years. I’ve encouraged others, like you, to do the same and it’s amazing what happens. If you ever find yourself stuck on a plateau in your career, stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. Take a moment to consider if what you’re doing is the most productive thing possible. If it’s not, make a new plan and move on with energy, enthusiasm and confidence.
It’s probably not productive to work on analysis of your client’s financial information during times when you could or should be talking with clients directly. Plan your time to do those things when it’s most productive.
Many people have a fear of planning their time. They think if they plan it all out and something changes the schedule their world will come crashing down. It doesn’t if you plan correctly. Plan for client time, analysis time, study time, time to reflect on what you’re doing right, time to consider where and how to improve, time to rest, time to take care of your personal needs, and quality time to invest with your loved ones. (Please note, your loved ones shouldn’t be last on your list of how to be productive with your time. If you do put them last, you may find yourself financially successful but with no one there to share the rewards.)
Those twelve words above can be the most profound source of direction for you in wise time management. Obviously, since you’re still reading, you must consider this time most productively used for learning new ideas for selling more effectively. Let’s get on with it!