As a financial advisor, it’s critically important to practice your language. This is particularly true for knowing the top objections you’re going to face and how you will respond to them.
Most people think that the importance of great language is so that you sound really good in front of your client. While there is some truth to that, having great language is more about you.
It allows you to have a track to run. Having your language down allows you to respond with confidence and focus on all the other important aspects of communication, such as your body language and tone, without having to think through what words your going to say.
It also creates consistency, so that you are not saying one thing to one client and something completely different to the next.
In my prospecting system, what I train advisors on is how to get well nominated referrals.
There is nothing more powerful than getting an extremely well nominated referral to someone that your client has a great relationship with already.
It is through this referral that you are able to essentially borrow the trust of your current client to make building trust and a relationship with a new prospect so much easier.
However, when you ask for referrals, you need to be prepared for objections or you are setting yourself up to lose the opportunity.
Objections should not catch you off guard!
You only have to be in this business for a few months before you’ve heard just about every single objection you’re going to face. Many of these have been covered in past blog posts, but the one many advisors stumble on is if a client just straight up tells you “no” when you ask for a referral.
This can take a few different forms, but may come across as something like “Jim, I’m simply just not comfortable providing referrals at this time” or “I just need see where you’re going to take this before I endorse you to my closest friends.”
Where many advisors mishandle this objection, is they take a situation that is uncomfortable and then they make it really uncomfortable.
They press on.
They say something like, “Well, why don’t you feel comfortable? What do we need to do?”
You must avoid responding in this manner!
When you become a master of prospecting, you will get plenty of referral where you never need to cross the line between being aggressive and being obnoxious. You don’t ever need to take the situation to an intense level of awkwardness or uncomfortableness.
So, how should you respond?
When someone says “no” to you, I would respond:
“I can understand and appreciate that. But let me ask you something. If we work together on an ongoing basis, will you give me permission in our annual review, once a year, to ask you for favorable introductions, on the agreement that you will never, ever give me a referral until you feel super comfortable in doing so? Is that a fair agreement?”
I’ve never had anyone say no to that response. When they say OK, simply respond “Great, I appreciate that!” and make a note in your case notes. Then, leave at that!
When you respond with the language above, most clients aren’t expecting it. They think you are going to force the issue. So it’s an unexpected response and they like it.
The second thing it does is it also allows you to make light of the moment. If you do a good job with your case notes, then when you come back a year later with that client in an annual review, when you get done with the meeting you can say, “Hey Mr. Client, guess what time it is?”
I'd do this with a huge smile on my face.
When you become a master of prospecting, you will get plenty of referral where you never need to cross the line between being aggressive and being obnoxious.
The client usually would respond, “I don’t know, about 3 o’clock?”
I’d say “guess again” or something along those lines, again with a huge grin on my face. And then the realization would hit the client and they'd say, “Oh, you’re going to ask me for referrals again, aren’t you?”
Humorously, I’d say, “Only if you feel comfortable! How am I doing?”
You make light of it! It’s fun. And I can’t tell you how many of my best clients came after years of asking this question. And slowly but surely over time, as trust and relationships were built with the clients, their walls would slowly come down and eventually I’d get the referrals.
So, next time you’re in this situation, remember: Don’t force the issue! Don’t make it more uncomfortable. Set yourself up for success by asking for permission to ask them again in the future. When you receive that permission, make sure you are prepared in you’re next meeting to ask again in a fun and light manner.
You’re clients will appreciate this approach – and, by creating a far greater likelihood that you’ll receive a referral in the long run, so will you!
I get asked a lot of questions during my workshops and presentations about cold calling.
They’ll ask me, “When you were younger, how did you meet with successful prospects and clients so quickly?” The short answer is through cold calling.
Now, of course, many things have changed since I was a financial advisor. So, naturally, the follow up questions are: Does it still work? What’s the best way for cold calling today?
First, I want to be clear that my prospecting system is focused on getting well nominated referrals. I encourage you to use the same.
This was my primary prospecting approach and the best system that worked best for me. This system has worked for countless other advisors I’ve trained to do it and will never go out of style. After my first few years in the business, I rarely did any cold calling.
However, when you’re newer in the business, you may not have many annual review meetings to prospect in that you can generate referrals from. If you find yourself in this situation, cold calling is one method you can use to supplement your sources of leads and referrals.
In the 90s, when I was an advisor, there was no caller ID. People answered their phones if it rang. It was just the normal thing to do.
Today, everyone has a cell phone with caller ID on it.
We all screen our calls and, most often, if we don’t recognize the number, we don’t pick it up. But some people still do.
So, is there still merit to cold calling? Unfortunately, the ambiguous answer is maybe. Sometimes. For some people.
Some of the time you may get lucky and get an individual to pick up. Additionally, even if you don’t get a hold of them, leaving a strong voicemail may get you a call back.
While I would not rely exclusively on cold calling, for newer advisors it’s a tool you should have in your back pocket and you should know the best way to do it.
The best strategy for cold calling is to call upon people who have some sort of common association with you.
There should be some special type of benefit or reason of why they would work with you, due to the knowledge or relationship that you have with a common group.
For example, one of the cold calling lists that I used and developed a large clientele from was the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Business. These were MBA students that went to business school in the evenings and worked during the day.
I had a list of MBA students that went there that had their name, major and their phone numbers. It also told me what courses they were currently in and where they worked during the day.
When I called the people on this list, I’d tell them that I work with a tremendous amount of Kellogg students. The benefit is that I could relate to what was going on in their world. I also understood their challenges with their busy schedules that included both work and school and could accommodate them.
On my calls, I would create desire. Listening to me, they would think to themselves, “You know, if this Jim Effner guy is working with a bunch of other Kellogg students, I think I want to meet him too.”
I also had a bank that I was able to generate many clients from. I had a copy of their benefit booklet that detailed the types of insurance and financial service benefits offered to their employees that I memorized. I knew every single detail of every single benefit.
The best strategy for cold calling is to call upon people who have some sort of common association with you.
So, when I’d call employees from the bank, I would say to them, “Listen, I’m working with over 50 clients from your institution. I know your benefit booklet better than your HR department. I promise you that you will find immense value in meeting with me. Having said that, I’m going to be at your bank next Tuesday. Does 1 PM or 3 PM be better for you?”
Just like the example before, this created a feeling of association. Hearing that I worked with so many other employees automatically attracted other employees to want to do the same. Additionally, by understanding their benefit booklet, it gave me a way to add a ton of value to their financial planning.
In my sales process, I teach a three-step meeting process for the financial planning sales cycle. It begins with a fact-finding meeting to get to know your prospect’s background. Then, it moves to a planning meeting. Finally, it moves to an implementation or closing meeting where the plan is implemented.
With this in mind (this probably goes without saying) when you cold call, you are NOT selling on the phone. The only purpose of the phone call is to get the initial appointment. Even once you get the initial appointment, with few exceptions, you should never be selling anything in the first meeting.
Doing so will immediately confirm the negative perception that the prospect already had in their head that, “this advisor is just trying to make a sale.” That’s a major turnoff and a bad reputation travels fast.
That said, if you’re up for trying cold calling, give it a shot using the strategies above. You can find commonalities with the school you graduated from or with large local businesses that are in your area. Get creative with it. While it can be a challenge to get the ball rolling at first, once you have established a base of clients from a specific place or group, you’ll find that their peers don’t want to miss out on the opportunity of working with you either!
Are you struggling to overcome objections to book meetings when calling referrals and prospects?
If so, you’re not alone. This challenge plagues new and experienced advisors alike.
Booking a meeting with a new referral is a multi-step process. Think of all the steps you have to go through just to get to the ask:
You or your staff generate a feed list.
You’ve put prospecting on the agenda with your current clients and follow through on it.
You follow up with the referral.
You actually get them on the phone.
And, now, your new prospect or referral doesn’t want to meet…
They tell you they’re too busy. Or, they already have an advisor. They’re all set.
This can be a disheartening scenario if you don’t understand why it’s happening and are not prepared to overcome it.
This situation came up countless times during my 12 years as an advisor. The systems and language I used allowed me to never be caught off guard. It worked for me then and continues to work for the thousands of advisors I’ve trained and developed over the past 20 years. It will work for you too.
The first thing you have to understand is that people, in general, are automatically programmed to say “no” when they get approached by almost any sales individual.
For example, imagine the simple experience of buying some new shoes for work. You found a pair online that are available at Nordstrom’s, which is an hour away from your house.
You get in your car right away to drive out there and pick them up. There’s a very high likelihood that if you walked in that store and a sales representative came up to you to ask if you need help, you would say, “no, just looking” – even if you actually needed help locating them!
You’re not “just looking.” You just drove an hour to the store! You know exactly what shoes you want to buy. Why wouldn’t you accept his or her help?
People are simply programmed to say “no” the first time. Add on top of this that, according to an AARP survey, 45% of adults age 45 – 59 would rather make an appointment with a dentist than with an advisor, and I can almost guarantee that your first objection will be automatic.
Don’t take it personal. Don’t be caught off guard.
When calling referrals, you need to be prepared to go through three objections on the phone.
As mentioned before, the first objection is automatic. You will have to overcome it or you have no chance at booking the meeting. But why overcome a second or third objection?
First, it displays professional persistency. What I have found in my career, is that the higher the caliber of the prospect, the more they appreciate and respect professional persistency.
Secondly, you have to put yourself in a position where you are creating attraction power and displaying a mindset of confidence.
Top sales people are masters of making a statement, not by directly stating it, but by inferring it. When you go through three objections, professionally, it lets the prospect know that:
Looking back at my career, I can’t tell you how many times some of my best clients I got on the third objection.
There are two primary reasons why advisors don’t follow through to the third objection.
People are simply programmed to say “no” the first time.
In the early years in the business, the first reason is fear. This happens when advisors don’t have their language down and they are doing to many ums, ahs, and awkward pauses.
They don’t know exactly how to respond to any specific objection. They wing it. They’re uncomfortable. They are scared they are going to make the prospect uncomfortable, but the very fact that the advisor is uncomfortable makes the prospect uncomfortable.
The way you overcome that fear is to get good. You practice your language over and over again. You do it until have it down to the point that someone could wake you up out of a deep sleep and you would nail it.
After being in this career for five or more years, it becomes more about ego. This is more sub-conscious mindset than a conscious mindset. When the experienced advisor hears the prospect’s objection, they think, “I don’t need you.”
They feel that by overcoming a third objection they are begging. It makes them sound desperate. They think, “I’m going to give this person one shot and if they don’t take the meeting it’s their loss.”
If you can relate, you need to remember to give people the benefit of the doubt. They don’t know much, if anything, about you or the incredible impact you could have on their lives – until you meet with them!
I learned early on in my career that in sales there is a very fine line that on one side is being aggressive and the other side is obnoxious.
You want to always get as close to that line as you can, without ever crossing it. In some aspects of the business, like prospecting with your current clients for referrals, you should only ever go through one objection. They already know you and trust you so going through multiple objections wouldn’t be appropriate.
However, when calling referrals and prospects for new appointments, you can get away without crossing that thin line by going to three objections.
The objections you face are going to be virtually the same every time:
I’m all set.
I’m busy.
I’ve already have an advisor.
You can get my language on how to overcome objections here and also see my language for opening up the phone call here.
Even better, join P2P Academy and go through the entire phoning course. If you’re already a member, log in a few times over this month, watch a few of the phoning videos, practice it, implement it and repeat.
Practice it over and over until you master it. Mastery will give you confidence. Your confidence will strengthen your commitment to go through the three objections each and every time when calling referrals. Most importantly, it will have a transformational impact on your business – as well as the financial security of so many clients who would never have had the opportunity to meet you had you not stuck with it.
Having completed 3,512 fact-finding meetings during my 12 years as an advisor, it's safe to say that I loved taking fact finders. It was one of my favorite parts of being a financial advisor.
While there are many aspects to conducting masterful fact-finding meetings, equally as important is avoiding the things that spoil them. Even experienced advisors sometimes fall into these traps.
Regardless of how eloquently you speak or how high your confidence level, these things will reduce your client’s experience of the fact-finding meeting to mediocre or worse. They’ll leave your clients thinking, “Why did I agree to this?” or “This person is just trying to sell me something...”
With this in mind, here are three deal breakers that spoil fact-finding meetings that you must avoid! Eliminate them and you’ll be amazed at how they transform the outcome of this critical meeting.
One of the most important things you can do to improve your fact finders is this: Leave Your Needs At The Door.
The vast majority of advisors are honest and ethical. They have integrity. However, too many advisors, either consciously or subconsciously, enter a fact-finding meeting with a goal of moving a client from point A to point B.
They have a product or service to sell. The questions and language they use are designed to move the client towards those solutions.
If you can relate, you must stop this immediately. In a fact-finding meeting, your goal is not to sell or manipulate. The goal is to leave your client with three fundamental feelings:
If these three boxes are checked when your client leaves the meeting, you’ll have created the right first impression. It will have been an experience that they will naturally want to continue.
Are your fact-finding meetings full of D.N.A.? In other words, are they are Different, New and Attractive?
People buy differences, not similarities. Yet, too many advisors ask token questions that generate token answers.
These are the questions that you can predict the client’s answer before you’ve even asked the question. They’ve been asked thousands of times and generate the same answer every time.
Q: “Where would you like to be financially ten years from today?”
A: “Well, I’d like to be more financially secure. I’ve got some credit card debt that I’d like to get paid off. I’d like to save more and start saving from my child’s education.”
Everyone’s answer will be very similar. By asking these questions you waste an opportunity to really learn anything about your potential client.
Compare this with a question such as, “If I were to look at your checking account and your calendar, what would I learn about you?”
You can learn a lot about someone from how they spend their money and how they spend their time. In my own case, my answer would be about spending money on travel, golfing, going out to eat with my family, and wine and cigars. This opens the door for all kinds of follow-up questions.
One of the most important things you can do to improve your fact finders is this: Leave Your Needs At The Door.
From my calendar, you’d learn about what I do for work as well as my hobbies and passions. It’s this information that gives great insight into your client’s story. Almost anyone could find some commonalities with my answer, creating an opportunity to build the foundation for a strong relationship.
Many advisors deal with only the facts, numbers and balance sheets. These are important, but this business is not just a logical business! It’s also an emotional one. It’s your role to connect the emotional and logical aspects of the business so that they work together.
Imagine if someone has been overweight for ten years and decides to meet with a weight loss consultant. In the meeting, the consultant takes the individuals measurements, weighs them, and then tells them that in order to lose weight they need to diet and exercise. They outline a plan and then send them on their way. How successful do you think they’ll be?
Logically, everyone knows that the key to weight loss is diet and exercise! Just like everyone knows that they should save more money and have adequate insurance – yet most still don’t do it! What gets in the way are all the emotional elements.
In order to address the emotional elements, you need to get to know your clients beyond a surface level. For example, when asking questions about their career, don’t just learn their industry and work title. Ask them: “What does a typical day look like? Why did you choose this career? What do you love about it? If you could go back in time, would you pick the same career?”
Dive deep into questions about their family, career, hobbies and future plans. People love to talk about themselves. It’s rare that someone genuinely listens and asks interesting questions like these. They will help you better understand their story and demonstrate to them that you care. The more they feel you understand and care about them, the more likely they will be to sign on with you and take your advice seriously.
The ideas above are fundamental to great fact-finding meetings, but they are also just the start.
Great fact-finding meetings open with powerful approach language that explains what you do, how you do it and the benefits of working with you. They close with a discovery agreement that summarizes the meeting and sets the expectation for the next steps. There’s a well-defined follow-up process for compiling any information you were unable to obtain during the meeting.
However, even if you do everything else right, the three deal breakers listed above will always dramatically reduce your effectiveness. Make sure to avoid them!
For my full fact-finding system, I highly recommend going through my fact-finding course on P2P Academy. This course will teach you step by step how to master your fact-finding meetings, and you’ll also have access to more than 200 training videos on all the other aspects of the sales cycle and monthly live virtual sessions with me.
Imagine you're going on a week-long vacation next year and I came to you and said, “Hey, we need to start thinking about packing for that vacation next year.”
You’d think I was crazy. You’d say to me, “That vacation is a year away. I’ll pack a day or two before the trip.”
If packing for a vacation a year in advance is difficult, imagine how difficult it is for your clients to plan for their “vacation” called retirement, 30 – 40 years in advance.
Vanguard conducted a study on how America saves in 2022, and the median household retirement savings for people aged 45 – 54 is $61,530. It's nowhere near enough. It highlights the challenges of planning and how ill-equipped most individuals are to do it on their own.
As a financial professional, you recognize that the decisions someone makes in their 30s and 40s have a dramatic impact on the quality of their retirement. However, these decisions are not felt until 30 - 40 years down the road.
Your role is to help bring the future to the present and create a sense of urgency for planning. This is an important topic to be discussed with clients. A tool that can be helpful to reinforce your message and create urgency is a financial planning checklist.
“Insurance is just another bill. Another bill is the last thing I need.”
As a financial advisor, you may have had clients who have expressed this mindset to you. At the very least, the vast majority are thinking it prior to sitting down with you.
In the last Open Office for P2P Academy members, I had a ton of questions on topics like setting goals, hiring staff, overcoming objections and more. Additionally, I received the question that’s the topic for this article: “How do you help clients understand that insurance is not just another bill?”
This can be frustrating for advisors to deal with as, from their perspective, the answer is obvious. Insurance isn’t just another bill! The premium is not the problem. It’s the solution to the problem.
However, it’s the advisors’ jobs to help their clients see it from that perspective too. And, in order to accomplish this, there are three things advisors must do.
First, it’s up to you to go beyond the numbers and really understand your client’s story. Too many advisors focus strictly on the financial numbers – their client’s income, assets, liabilities and insurance.
They operate in a logical business only; their questions are superficial and they form transactional relationships with their clients. In order to elevate your practice to the next level, you need to strive to develop transformational relationships. A transformational relationship has a foundation built on trust, emotional connection, understanding, partnership and caring.
The path to getting there is asking really good questions and follow up questions, being 100% present in your meetings, giving the gift of your undivided attention, and truly listening.
An example of the types of questions you can ask to build transformational relationships include:
• Are Mom and Dad still living?
• Are they retired?
• What can you tell me about their retirement?
• Are they financially secure?
• If they’re comfortable, what do you think contributed to that?
• If they’re not comfortable, why is that?
It’s these types of questions that will give you insight into your client’s story, what’s important to them, and the motivating factors behind their decision making. When it comes time to recommend or implement your financial plan, you’ll be able to connect your plan to why it’s important to them versus only explaining why YOU think it makes financial sense.
Once you understand your client’s story, now you need to make sure your plan connects to the emotional aspects of it. As a personal example, my parents ended up in a long-term care facility. One thing that I will never forget is the smell walking in to the facility. That alone is enough to motivate me to make sure I never end up in one.
Top advisors are able to sit down with their clients, ask the questions like the ones above, and uncover the story. Once they have that, there’s no real “selling” that needs to occur. All they would have to do is remind me of my parents’ situation and my experience visiting them.
In order to elevate your practice to the next level, you need to strive to develop transformational relationships.
This is exponentially more persuasive than anything that an advisor could come up with on their own. Reminding me of this experience makes it personal and real. The advisor isn’t telling me that long-term care insurance is important – they’re simply holding up a mirror that reflects back to me what I already told them was important.
It’s up to you to always remember to connect the dots from meeting to meeting with your clients. During my years as an advisor, my client meetings consisted of a fact finding/ data gather meeting, a planning meeting, an implementation meeting and then annual review meetings.
Clients are busy people and it’s a mistake to assume that the stories, emotions, and reasoning for financial planning will be remembered every time you meet with your clients. Most clients will not remember everything you went over from a fact-finding meeting, even if it was only a week or so ago.
That’s why I highly recommend that you start your planning and implementation meetings with a brief, executive summary of what was discussed in your prior meetings. This not only shows that you really listened to everything they told you previously, but it’s also an opportunity to bring the client back to the stories and emotions that are the motivation behind their financial plan. For more on this topic, see my article on How To Open Your Planning Meetings.
The best way to overcome the “insurance is just another bill” mindset is to never have it come up in the first place. If the steps above are not addressed, there’s a high likelihood that clients will have some second guessing when it comes time to take action.
However, by understanding their story, connecting their emotions to the plan, and bringing them back to it in your planning, implementation and annual review meetings, clients will realize that insurance is not just another bill. They’ll come to this realization not because of your language, sales skills or persuasiveness, but because you helped them verbalize what’s important to them and uncover their truth.
As this year comes to a close, now begins the time-honored tradition of setting goals for the new year.
For most, the new year starts off with so much hope and promise. But, within the first month or two, the goals become nothing more than an afterthought.
Why does this happen? There are a number of reasons why, but the main culprit is the lackadaisical way that people go about “setting some goals.”
In order for your goals to work, they need to be exciting. There needs to be a concrete plan in place for how you are going to get there. And, you need to have system of support and accountability.
Goal setting has been instrumental to my success. From my first year in the business as an advisor, goals were integral to achieving MDRT and becoming a three-time Forum qualifier, representing the top 5% of advisors within the company.
Over the past five years, goals have been the driving force behind my own company, P2P Group, taking it from an idea in my head, to notes on a yellow scratch pad, to a running a company with three full-time employees, publishing an Amazon bestselling book, developing P2P Academy, our online sales training website, and so much more.
The point is, goal setting works… when it’s done right. Here’s how I approach goal setting and advice for you to use it to create transformational, sustainable change in the new year.
Imagine that I’m a world-renowned hypnotist. One day I sit you down and hypnotize you to make you believe that you did $1 million in premium over the past calendar year. When you awake after our session, you believe with every fiber of your being that it’s the truth.
I would almost guarantee that, with changing very little else in your business, you would hit $1 million in premium again in the coming year. Our minds are so powerful and your mind leads and your body follows.
When most people set goals, they base them off of what they’ve already achieved. They think, “I sold $200,000 of premium last year, so this year my goal is 20% growth to hit $240,000.” This is what I call looking through the rearview mirror.
This year, I challenge to look forward through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. Set goals based on what you want to achieve, not just based on what you’ve already done. These goals should get you excited every morning when you wake up over the coming year.
As we all know, it’s not enough to only set a goal. If you don’t have a plan of action to achieve it, it’s highly unlikely that your goals will be achieved.
Consider the common goal of losing weight in the new year. If all you did was pick the number of pounds you want to lose, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get there. You need to be far more specific and outline things like: When do you want to lose the weight by? How often are you going to work out and for how long? What types of workouts will you do? What dietary changes will you make? How will you handle the temptation to skip the gym or eat unhealthy foods?
The same holds true for your business goals too. You need to build a plan that gets specific. Over the next few weeks, schedule a Critical Think Time session on your calendar – an hour that you can spend completely focused on mapping out the details of your goal and how you’ll achieve it. Think about the following questions and write down your answers:
Notice one of the questions above is, “Who will be involved in the process and how can I create alignment?” If you have a staff member, it’s essential to involve them.
For instance, let’s say your goal was to double your life insurance premium in the coming year. One of the ways you think you can move the needle is through your prospecting efforts. You’re going to need to see more people and a higher caliber of individuals. The next step may be to figure out how many clients you’d need to meet with per year, per month and per week and what the ideal prospect would look like.
Once you have that information, communicate that with your staff. Tell them your goal and put a system in place, like a weekly stand up seven-minute meeting, where you are touching base on that goal on a regular, consistent basis to see if you’re on track. If you’re not on track, have honest conversations about what went wrong and what needs to be corrected.
This year, I challenge to look forward through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. Set goals based on what you want to achieve, not just based on what you’ve already done.
Additionally, make them a partner in the process by incentivizing it. Let them know how they will benefit by helping you achieve your goal and what happens when they hit certain milestones that help you get there. An example of this may be a monthly bonus to your assistant for kept appointments on your calendar.
Keep in mind that if you are looking to create transformational results in your practice, what you’ve done in the past is not going to get you there. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
Real change is uncomfortable and you must learn to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. However, by setting big, audacious, scary goals, thinking through all the specifics of who, what, and why, and implementing systems for tracking and accountability, you are setting yourself up for transformational results.
Over the course of my 12 years as a financial advisor, I conducted 3,512 fact finder meetings. While I love what I do now as a trainer and a speaker, the one thing that I miss most about being an advisor is executing a fact finder meeting with a new prospective client.
I truly believe that being able to connect with a client over a fact finder meeting is a gift, although it comes with the highest level of responsibility. When done correctly, the fact finder meeting is an opportunity to get to know the prospects better – financially and personally – than perhaps anyone has known them.
While there are many aspects to conducting a masterful fact finding meeting, one of the important, yet often overlooked aspects is opening with questions that address the personal and emotional side of it. This should happen after your approach, but prior to going into any types of numbers, finances, or benefits they will receive from your services. This comes down to asking fact finding questions in five categories:
There are many different types of questions you can ask prospects in this particular section, but the bigger interpersonal risks you take, the deeper you can go, the better planner you can become for them.
In the family category, there is, of course, the obvious: “Tell me about your spouse, your children, your mother and father.” Get their children’s names and dates of birth. These are typical questions and are good to ask.
However, after you ask the family questions, one of my favorite questions is: “Mr. Prospect, obviously I’m in the business of financial planning, so one of the questions I’d like to start with is, 'Could you tell me a little bit about – even from your first memory – what you learned about money from your parents?'”
Then sit back and listen.
After your prospect has talked for a while, you can ask them questions like, “What do you want to continue doing that you learned from them?” and “What did you learn from them that you absolutely don’t want to repeat?”
Other helpful questions you can ask are “Tell me, Mr. Prospect, what differences do you and your spouse have when it comes to finances? Has this had an impact on your planning?” and “How can a financial advisor like me help with that?” Or you can ask, “If there are no differences, how did you two get connected on your financial planning philosophies?”
These questions provide you with valuable information and are also questions that nobody has asked them before.
The obvious questions are about what they do for a living. However, many young reps I mentored would come back and tell me that their potential client was an attorney, without knowing what type of law they practiced. They missed out on knowing if their client was a non-profit lawyer, divorce attorney, or a litigator!
I used to teach my mentees to find out details they cannot find on the internet. For example, when asking about a potential client’s career, pose questions such as, “What specific area of law do you litigate?” and “How did you become interested in that? Did you go to school to get into that area specifically or did it just happen?”
Ask about their favorite and least favorite part of the job. These are the types of fact finding questions that will get you to know your potential client. People love to talk about themselves and very rarely does someone genuinely listen and ask interesting questions like these.
Simply ask your prospect to describe their career dreams and goals. What do they see themselves doing 5, 10, and 15 years down the road? Ask questions such as, “What do you think might get in the way?” “What excites you about this and what scares you about it?” and “Is there anything I can do to help?”
As a successful financial planner, you should have connections in your community. Perhaps you know people in fields that the prospect is interested in and you might be able to help the prospect get together with your contacts at some point.
“What do you like to do for fun?” while simple, is actually a great question to ask, because, once again, it helps you to get to know the prospect on a personal level. But you also get to build some similarities.
Keep this point in mind as you ask about their hobbies. For example, if you are both very interested in golf, you probably know some of the same courses and have probably played at some of the same golf clubs. You might even know some of the members at a golf club and can build some connections that way as well.
Before getting into the heart of the fact-finder meeting, I like to ask clients about their past experience with financial advisors. Reps should understand what the prospect expects of them.
But if you’re going to ask that question, you must learn how to ask in a way that elicits a genuine and illuminating response, because often all the answers will be similar. “I expected them to be honest.” “I wanted to trust them.” “I didn’t want them to try to always sell me stuff.”
"There are many different types of questions you can ask prospects in this particular section, but the bigger interpersonal risks you take, the deeper you can go, the better planner you can become for them."
When the prospect gives these predictable answers, I think it’s good to say things like, “It’s interesting that you said that.” “Why did you pick that?” “What does that really mean to you?” “Tell me how that would play out.” “Have you had experiences similar to that in the past?”
These are questions – probing for the reasons behind their stock answers – that will help you understand what you must do to work with them.
The most important thing an advisor can do during the fact finder meeting is to leave their needs at the door. The fact finding questions above will help you truly focus on getting to know your prospect or client. It’s up to you to listen carefully and really understand everything they say. Giving the gift of your presence and undivided attention is one of the most precious gifts you can give anyone. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will help you better understand how you can help.
One of the keys to becoming a top advisor is mastering prospecting language, but not for the reasons you probably think.
Most of advisors think that the importance of language is that it will land an appointment or make a sale. While there may be some truth to this, the reality is much deeper and more personal to you.
Great language gives you confidence. It allows you to speak with enthusiasm, tone inflection, and maintain strong body language. You can focus more on your clients and less on choosing what you need to say. You stop “winging it,” saying one thing to one client and then something entirely different to the next one, which leads to a roller coaster of results.
During my 12 years as an advisor, I dedicated myself to honing my prospecting language. And, as a leader and trainer, I’ve spent the last two decades training thousands of advisors across the country on prospecting language in Prospecting Mastery Workshops and my Sales Cycle Mastery programs.
Through these experiences, I’ve mastered my own prospecting language to the point that you could wake me up out of bed at midnight and without blinking an eye I could deliver it to you. The good news? Mastering prospecting language is not rocket science. With proper practice, any advisor can do it.
Having trained and coached so many reps on their prospecting language, I can tell you that there’s a simple difference between advisors that absolutely nail their prospecting language and those who are average at it. That reason is hands down repetition.
While some advisors are naturals when it comes to prospecting and can get by on talent alone, those advisors are the exception to the rule. Most advisors need to practice over and over again to get their language down. Repetition is the mother of all learning. Mastering prospecting language is simple, but not easy.
Think about it from a golf perspective. Professional golfers like Phil Mickelson spend thousands of hours practicing three-foot puts. It looks easy when you see it on TV, but it takes work to get it down. And, it’s mastering these fundamental aspects of the game that distinguishes the elite from the amateur.
There’s a Navy Seal saying that says, “we don’t rise to the occasion; we fall to the level of our training.” Essentially, what this means is that even once you feel you have your language down, keep practicing, because you need to be able to deliver when the pressure is on.
What if you had to deliver your language in front of an audience? What if I woke you up in the middle of the night to do it? You goal is to become so good at it that you could nail it in these situations. When you reach that level, doing it in front of your clients is easy.
The best advisors use language that is concise and compelling. One of the fastest ways for this to fall apart is when filler language is injected into your speech. The obvious example is “um” and “ah.” These make it seem like you don’t really know what you are talking about.
However, there are other common language issues that plague advisors. One is the word “just.” You probably aren’t even aware that you are using words like “just.” For example, when presenting an agenda to a client that includes time at the end for prospecting, an advisor who has not mastered prospecting might say:
It may seem innocent, but the italicized words are major turn offs. You don’t ever want to “just” do anything. The word “just” has a negative connotation that you are minimizing or apologizing for what you are asking for. Additionally, the words “little bit of time” and “might be willing to give to me” show that you’re coming from a self-defeated mindset, not an empowered one.
Your mindset should be that you are not asking for a favor when you are prospecting. You are giving your clients the gift of an opportunity to help their loved ones achieve financial security too.
Lastly, advisors often try to say too much when they don’t have their language down pat. An example of this is asking too many questions like, “What’s the best way to get in touch with Mr. Prospect? Does he prefer email? Text? A phone call?” As an advisor, it’s your job to LEAD the client. You tell them the process and the next steps and they will have more confidence in you.
With these tips, it’s up to you to work on mastering your language. For my exact language, I recommend signing into P2P Academy, or subscribing if you’re not a member already, and going through our prospecting course. In this course, I share my exact language for how to feed a name, ask for a favorable introduction, and overcome the top 3 – 5 objections that clients most often respond with.
Secondly, I would watch those videos over and over again. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Work to deliver my prospecting language exactly as I deliver it. Once you’ve got it down, practice with a peer or manager that will hold you accountable. Ask them to grade you on how closely you matched the version that I deliver and give you feedback on how you can improve.
Most of all, make a commitment to practicing throughout your career. Too many advisors train early on in their career, and then stop after a year or two. The best advisors are always looking to elevate their skills and have a growth-focused mentality. With the right training and a commitment to professional development, you can truly transform your potential into real performance.
COVID-19 has drastically impacted nearly every profession, and financial services is no exception. However, despite the challenges and uncertainty, many financial advisors are having their most productive year ever.
According to a Nationwide Financial survey of more than 2,000 adults, 24% of respondents engaged a financial advisor for the first time ever back in April. Additionally, 49% of respondents said that COVID-19 made them realize that they, “need help managing their finances and investments to succeed in the future."
This illustrates the current demand for trusted advisors who can help clients create a solid financial plan. With the right prospecting approach, you can be the one to provide it to them. Here are four best practices for financial advisors prospecting in this post-COVID world.
Those who have participated in my Prospecting Mastery Workshop or any of my training programs know that mindset is a big deal. In all of my training programs, we teach using a three-dimensional approach that deals with mindset, sales skills within a proven system, and language. We always begin with mindset because our mind leads and our body follows.
Take a moment to check in with yourself. Are you full of self-defeated thinking that prospects and clients don’t want to hear from you? Or, do you believe in your head and heart that people need you more than ever?
According to a recent LIMRA survey, 64% of people who had contact with their advisor felt it eased their concerns and 74% said they were likely to recommend their advisor to others.
The time is now to reach out to your prospects and clients – even if it’s just to check in and see how they are doing. Doing so means developing stronger relationships with your current clients. It is through these relationships that you’ll be able to open the door to high-quality referrals and help more people achieve financial security.
The prospecting system that I used as an advisor and that I still teach to this day is based upon generating quality referrals from your current clients. Your best referrals will come from clients who feel you understand and care about them. In order to establish these essential feelings, face-to-face communication is a must.
While there are advisors who do all their meetings over the phone, I highly recommend using virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and GoToMeeting instead. Virtual meetings allow you to better pick up on non-verbal cues and view financial planning documents together.
If your clients are unfamiliar with virtual meetings, have your staff reach out in advance to teach them how to use it as a value add. Your communication will be so much more effective which makes getting referrals much easier.
Left to their own devices, advisors will often “feel out” a client meeting and then decide at the end whether or not to prospect.
The problem with this approach is that we are all emotional beings. Leaving prospecting up to how you feel at the moment is an easy way to opt out of doing it altogether. Prospecting often goes against advisors’ instincts and they’ll come up with excuses not to do it, such as:
“These clients already have too much that they are dealing with.”
“I don’t want this client to feel like I’m taking advantage of the situation.”
“I don’t want to come across as the pushy life insurance salesperson.”
One tool you can use to overcome this issue is to use a client meeting agenda that includes time at the end for prospecting or networking. Present this agenda to your clients at the beginning of the meeting and gain their buy in right from the start. This also then creates a commitment to yourself to do the prospecting.
When you get to the prospecting part of the meeting, let your clients know that you appreciate them. There are so many people out there in need of a financial plan. They certainly have other people in their life that they love or care about, and you are here for them too.
Just like a doctor or surgeon doesn’t walk into their office and then work on whatever they feel like for the day, you shouldn’t be winging it either.
"Leaving prospecting up to how you feel at the moment is an easy way to opt out of doing it altogether."
You need to work from an “ideal calendar” and one of the things that should be blocked off on it every week is time for phoning. This is time that is used to follow up with referrals and book appointments. Treat this time as if it’s an appointment with an A+ client.
Of course, in a work from home environment, you face new challenges and distractions. Make sure you have a closed off space to do your prospecting. Have a strategy to minimize distractions and handle them when they do arise. This may be as simple as sitting down for a conversation with your family about the importance of uninterrupted time during “office hours.”
Even during these turbulent times, there are many advisors who have substantially grown their practice over the past six months. They are talking to more prospects and clients than ever before who are more in need of a financial planning conversation than they’ve ever been. With the right mindset and the ideas above, you can significantly increase your prospecting results and reduce the financial stress and uncertainty that so many people are facing.
