Have you ever wondered if anything positive could come out of getting a negative result. Let’s use the example of the last time you did not close a sale; your hopes were probably deflated as the prospect walked out the door to go home and “think about it”. Did you take time to reflect back on your conversation with the prospect and think about what you learned from the situation? Successful advisors know that the flipside of failure is being able to learn from their mistakes.
The following are just of few examples of what you might do to get better results next time.
- Prepare for the Presentation
Many advisors spend the majority of their appointment preparation time working on a financial plan to determine their recommendations. However, what they don’t take time to work on is preparing and practicing the actual presentation or dialogue. As a result, they rush into recommendations which often times leaves the prospect feeling confused or overwhelmed.
- Make a Personal Connection
People tend to work with people they like. Personality-Based Selling is the art of understanding personality types to make and build better connections. If you don’t know much about it, you should do some homework. Remember, you must make the connection BEFORE you can make the sale!
- Help them Understand Why they should Buy
People hate to be sold but they love to buy. When you map out a series of questions to take them down a “questions path” to understand why they should buy you are helping them come to their own conclusions before you’ve even explained your recommendations. This is one of the single most important things you can do to help close a sale.
- Prepare for Objections
You should ALWAYS expect objections! If you don’t, you most certainly will get them and not know what to do with them. Take time to write out rebuttals to at least five common objections and practice them well before your appointments.
- Ask for the Order
A little known secret to sales is that an interested prospect will give you buying signals by asking you questions as if to imply that they are considering owning your recommendations such as, “How long will it take to move the money over?” When this happens, you must answer and ask for the order. One of the easiest closes is to simply say, “Are you comfortable moving ahead?” Ask this and you might get another objection, to which you are prepared with a rebuttal or you get the sale!
Turning Your Failures into Success
Obviously, there is much more to each of the aforementioned five summaries to ensure you find success. It is a proven fact though that you can turn any failure into a success if you take the time to learn from your past errors and find solutions (or best practices) to keep you from repeating them which will allow you to find the flipside of failure!