INTRODUCTION

Your role is to help the prospect to clarify their financial needs and goals and prioritize what is important to them. The more information you can obtain about the prospect’s financial situation the better will be your ability to clarify their real needs and provide appropriate solutions.

An experienced advisor should be able to determine what is important to a prospect by asking the right questions in a very non-threatening, non-obtrustive manner.

The facts are important, but so are the feelings behind the facts. Finding out what motivates the person by finding out what they care about will help you take them through the buying cycle.

When prospects see that you conduct yourself in a professional manner, and that you thoroughly review their needs, they will be trust you. This will help to build your relationship with them.

Your ability to help your prospect to uncover their needs and goals and to find solutions for these will also enhance the value of your products and services.

A QUESTIONING STRATEGY

To uncover needs and goals you require:

• a questioning strategy
• highly developed listening skills

The questioning strategy provides a structure for identifying problems you can solve for the prospect. Before you can develoop and present effective solutions, you must have two forms of infomration for each issue that is raised:

• the specific goal related to the issue
• information the prospect has relating to the issue

The skilled advisor uses the S-P-I-N TECHNIQUE (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need payoff) as a means of transforming needs from the very broad and implied to the specific and explicit.

Research into sales behaviour shows that prospects are most likely to buy:

• when they have explicit needs
• when the advisor communicates the benfits

The simplest picture of how to sell looks like this:

Obtain Explicit Needs from the prospect ==> Provide Benefits ==> High probability of a sale

A more complete picture of how to sell would look like this:

“Questions that uncover Implied Needs” ==> “Prospect states IMPLIED NEEDS” ==> Questions that develop Implied Needs so that they become Explicit” ==> “Prospect states EXPLICIT NEEDS” ==> “Provide Benefits”

Before you start the SPIN TECHNIQUE you need to put the prospect in the right mindset so that they will be willing to share their financial and personal situation with you. Begin by asking transition questions.

TRANSITION QUESTIONS

Begin by asking permission to ask questions. This is extremely important because it moves the prospect from the relationship building phase to the Uncovering & Communicating Needs, Wants & Values phase.

Also the question “Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions?” keeps the prospect informed about your intentions and tells the prospect what to expect. By asking permission you demonstrate a positive intent. Through disclosing your intentions, you communicate a sense of empathy and involvement. You also need to assure the prospect that any information they provide will be kept confidential.

Some prospects wil initially feel uncomfortale discussing personal and financial matters with you. So you want to gently lead the prospect into a discussion by using transitional type questions. Which go something like this:

“Pat, I have an idea that has helped clients in similar situations to yours. But before we discuss this idea, would it be all right if I asked you a few questions?”

After the prospect gives you permission to continue, it’s important that you state the intent of the fact find.

“Pat, the pupose of the questions I will be asking you are to help you understand your financial situation. If we find there is a shortfall in your sitatuion I will let you know what you need to cover the shortfall. If there’s no shorfall I will behappy to tell you.”

This helps put the prospect in the right mindset to share their financial and personal situation with you.

It’s interesting that lots of seniors liked to talk to me. They made me feel very comfortable talking. Although I know there are limited proucts I can sell to them, but I still like to talk to them. I think most of them may not be able to afford LTC, but Seg Funds are definitely a good choice for them.The bookmarks with my personal contact information on the back worked well when there’s no balloons, at least to get some kind of attention.

Strathmore is an interesting town. Not like last trade show in Cochorane, parents with young kids were not that much interested interested in animal balloons. Maybe because there were too many other kids’ activities outside, and kids were quite tired when their parents dragged them into the trade show. Some parents showed fear towards our free animal balloons. I guess they didn’t know their kids could get free animal balloons without any obligation from them. I like to give out animal balloons just to please the little ones. Of course I’m there to get chance to talk to others, but if they are not ready to talk or to fill the free draw, I will still give their kids free animal balloons.

One problem with the trade show there was it was super hot. There’s air conditioner. I was melting down at the weekend. Plus, 5 days trade show was too long for me. I had to work at least 4-5 hours per day, then my energy can only hold for maximum 3 days. If I don’t take rest after 3 days, I won’t have good mood and enough energy to keep running the trade show.

According to Ken’s teaching, I tried to find my own selling points. When we got back, I had 30+ leads I can talk to and few of them are really good. Susane also got lots of leads. But William and Gary almost had nothing. William really enjoy talking to the vendors, and he appears very happy with it.