Whites Of Their Eyes

This is an amazing study.  I think we all know the importance of being confident but read this study:

A company set up “secret” dummy offices, manned by company personnel. The company then had new salespeople go out on 5 sales call… the last of which would be to the dummy office.  As you might expect, being new salespeople most failed to sell their first 4 appointments.

Their 5th sales appointment was with the dummy office.  The salespeople had no idea that these were dummy offices.  The people managing the dummy office were instructed to make it difficult for the salesperson to sell them… but to always let the salesperson win in the end with a sale.

Here’s the amazing thing! The salespeople were then sent back to the same 4 real prospect offices that rejected the salesperson the first time… and many sold all 4!  That is the  power of confidence!

(This very factor has allowed many of our advisors to sell huge amounts because they use a script that have been tested in the field successfully – not hundreds of times – but thousands of times.  Over a dozen advisors using the script have made over $1 million a year.  Now that’s a script worth having!  If you’d like to know how to get the script, give a 5Q Specialist a call at 1-877-941-9710)

Sometimes it’s hard to get a client to really understand our point… that’s why the table below is so powerful.  If you specialize in either income planning or annuity sales this table helps people understand the importance of working with you very quickly.

Source: http://www.fpanet.org/journal/CurrentIssue/TableofContents/DynamicImplicationsofSequenceRiskonDistPortfolio/

Here are 6 psychological research studies that are bound to put more money in your pocket… even though they may be counter-intuitive and most of us have been doing them backwards! Gregory Ciotti of SparringMind put together the research synopsis and you’ll see my two bits on how to use the info to bring in more business:

1. Be the Devil’s Advocate—A recent study showed that by playing the Devil’s Advocate and voicing all of your clients objections and concerns for them (instead of waiting for your client to bring them up) increased salespeople’s closing ratio significantly!
2. You Have to Give them Step-by Step Instructions—A study by Howard Leventhal gave two different groups brochures about the dangers of tetanus, encouraging people to get vaccinated.  One pamphlet did not tell the readers how to take action… the other just gave very rudimentary instructions on how to take action. The people that received even rudimentary instructions were MUCH more likely to take action than those that received no instructions.  You have to tell your clients exactly what to do!
3. Talk about Your Mistakes—Most of us avoid speaking about our mistakes… especially to our clients, but it ends up doing so is a very good thing!  By admitting your faults and how you corrected them… instead of blaming outside forces—you show your clients that you are able to both understand and control future adverse situations.
4. Call Your Clients Names—It ends up that labeling your clients is a really good thing.  People love to belong to groups, especially when those are groups with special standing.  A recent study showed that just labeling people as “politically active” increased the percentage of voters among the group significantly.  How can you use this?  How about calling your clients, “The Smart 10% of Investors” or “World Dominating Stock Investors”.  Either one could be a great way to make a client a long term investor instead of an investor that is calling your office at every market hiccup.
5. Immediate Gratification—A multitude of research has shown that people want immediate pleasure and delayed pain.  What are you doing to capitalize on this phenomenon?  You should be using words like “instantly”, “immediately”, and “over-night”… now I know you can’t talk about returns that way but there are many ways you could refer to service, information and communication with your clients with those words.
6. If You Don’t Have an Enemy You are Doing Something Wrong—You need to have a named enemy… it creates a sense of loyalty and “us against them” mentality among your client base.  History is filled with examples of how well this works (unfortunately)… but business has many great success stories as well—think of the Miller beer commercials making fun of “unmanly” guys trying to drink Miller.  You need to find something that you and your clients can stand against!  Weird but true!

It’s things like these 6 psychological principles that I constantly help the advisors I work with to leverage.  It’s amazing how a little change in phraseology or twist in your main thrust can accelerate your business almost overnight.

A study of 2,000 recent retirees featured on Journal of Financial Planning’s website reveals a few tidbits you can use to close a lot more business in a hurry… if you pay attention.  And pay attention you should with over 75 million people retiring in the next twenty years!

Here are some of the findings and the lessons to be learned:

• Only 16% of retirees have a written retirement plan when they retire
• Only 54% of retirees with over $500,000 net worth have an advisor
  • Lesson: You have a wide open playing field if you know how to get in front of retirees.
    (Hint: it isn’t by offering to teach them about financial issues)
• Only 20% of retirees are withdrawing systematically from their retirement accounts
  • Lesson: All this talk about emphasizing income planning may be out of whack
• More than 75% have no LTC protection
  • Lesson: This is obviously the reason that the hybrid (no premium) LTC products were the financial industry’s fastest growing product the last two years.
• Social Security makes up 41% of their retirement income
  • Lesson: You are missing a big opportunity if you are not using Social Security heavily in your marketing plan

At 5Q we are having terrific success on all of these fronts.  Our no upfront cost marketing is putting advisors in front of an average of 61 new people a month and they are selling a tremendous amount of the hybrid LTC at 6% to 15% commission and Fixed Indexed Annuities.

What’s the best prospect?  A referral.  Then why after hundreds books and thousands of articles that have been written on referrals, are we still not able to get more referrals than we do?  Simple, because we don’t give our clients an easy way to refer to us.  Implement what you see on this short video and that will all change overnight!

https://vimeo.com/45142445

New studies have shown that in our business, relationships really matter… especially to the affluent.

While everyone in our business is trying to build relationships through social media like Facebook and LinkedIn, I decided to try some old-fashioned relationship building.

So a while ago, I began to start my day with an old and forgotten relationship-building exercise.  As I looked through the local newspapers, I note who’s in the news.  Who started a new business… who got promoted… or who had a noteworthy experience or idea?

Curiosity Creates an Itch They Need to Scratch

Then, I handwrite a very short note sending my congratulations on their achievement.  It only has my basic contact information on it and it doesn’t include my title.  Name and phone number.

There’s no sales pitch or other clues to tell them who I am.

What would you do if you got a card like this?

Well, around 50% of these people call me.

Often, they just want to thank me. 

I don’t push our products at all during this chat.  I just use it as a time to share industry news, etc. 

These are people that are the movers and shakers of the community—and they would NEVER have responded to any of my other marketing. That’s been the start of some very profitable relationships… and it cost me a stamp.