I took the time this morning to make the bed. I cut it down to a minute and a half and I’m very proud, but please don’t tell my wife.
The reason I do it fast is that it is simple and quite boring.
Some things in life are really simple. When we do simple things, like making the bed, we go on autopilot – in other words, we automate it so that it requires as little conscious attention as possible. That way we can focus on something else. We speed up simple processes because they are boring.
Now, finding facts with our clients in a face-to-face interview is pretty simple. It is not difficult to gather information to complete a form. Hard facts are needed to complete a form most of the time. Once we have the facts, we as fully trained and educated financial advisors know the products the client needs and counting them is simple too.
Counting is not selling, especially not selling in harmony.
Selling fact-finding reports involves getting into the nitty gritty. Not only asking questions to obtain data, but also asking a variety of questions that simulate a discussion to open opportunities with our client, finding smoother information that helps us to link our products with them personally. Knowing what drives them to do what they do, making them feel worried about their lack of coverage, excited about a goal they had in the back of their mind.
Above all, make them want what we have to sell. Turning needs into wants is the tricky part, but the most rewarding for them and for us.
So how do we do this?
You need some skills and some process. The skills come from your ability to ask the right question, turn this into genuine conversation and interest in your client, and have first-class listening skills.
The process is this:
o Prioritize customer needs and take one at a time
o Discover the situation around the need
o Turn the need into a wish
o Earn commitment
Like any process, it can be adapted on the fly, but it is important to follow some structure. What is most important is that your client accompanies you. Ask them to join your journey. Tell them where you are going to take them. Explain the process in terms of benefits so they know exactly what is going to happen and what is expected of them.
“I would like to spend some time exploring your current situation by asking lots of questions. I will be listening a lot if you are okay as you talk about yourself, your situation, your goals and dreams and the issues you have around your Personal Finance. That way I can give you the best service and advice. Okay, Mr. Brown? “
Prioritize needs
Have a priority of needs that, hopefully, your customer has agreed to and has really prioritized for you. Usually this is the reason they see or refer you in the first place. Businesses use all kinds of acronyms to help you decide your needs, and each data search page is often dedicated to a particular need.
o PIMPSIO – Protection, income replacement, mortgage, pension, savings and investment, others
o PEPSI: protection, income replacement, pension, savings and investment
o SLIM: savings, life protection, insurance, mortgages
Above all, however, the customer decides the priority, not you. And take one need at a time.
Find out the situation
The factual findings are usually completed with information from the usual type of situation. Name, policy details, coverage amount, retirement date, lack of necessary coverage, etc. Now you need this, of course, but you also need smoother information. You need their feelings about the coverage they have, what they know about the alternatives, you need their priorities, their goals, their goals for their family. You want to know what they thought of their previous advisor, how much the state provides them when they retire or die.
These are just examples of your current situation.
Lots of open-ended questions, probes, and just good silence and old-fashioned listening will give you this information.
Turn a need into a wish
The principle here is that people are turned away from pain and problems or towards pleasure. Do you think about this in your life? What stimulates you? It’s probably one of those two.
This part is the smart part and also the most complicated. There are three avenues you can explore that will make the customer think they want some solutions. They can discover the problems they face if the current situation holds, they can see that some goals may be out of balance or off target and this can cause a problem or they can rediscover or re-ignite a goal that prompts them to take action.
Take life and protection needs. Lack of this can cause problems for people, especially when the cause occurs. They die or are out of work in the long term due to illness. Your questions should allow them to consider the problems personally and also the consequences. Your questions can allow them to think about what kind of solution will solve these problems and turn the need into a genuine desire for the products. A good mix of questions: open-ended and polls, summaries, pauses will pay off here.
Beware of entering a china shop like a bull. You are dealing with personal information, so we must be confidential. Take care of the style and tone of your question. Use a lot of “tell me …” and “I’m curious” and “I wonder”. Also make sure the tone of your question is raised slightly in the sentence. Really important that because on the contrary, a descending tone suggests an order and will be interpreted as an attack or an interrogation.
And you don’t want that, do you?
Take savings or investments. Having these or wanting this area of need requires end results. Why are they saving? A rainy day, the vacation of a lifetime, a retirement income, a new car, a house. This list goes on. Your questions will allow them to explore these goals, visualize the goal clearly, discover the pleasure that this goal can bring. This will be enough to turn this need into a wish.
What about mortgages again? This is big business these days. Is this a need motivated to move away from pain or towards pleasure? That really depends. You can ask what their concerns are with the mortgage they already have. They may be anxious about paying a higher interest rate than other people or having to make payments for longer than they want to. Here we have a problem.
Explore this further to see how it affects them personally, and you may find them driven by the desire for a better interest rate or the prospect of paying off the loan earlier than planned. You could explore the problems of staying with your current lender and perhaps the personal consequences. This walking away from pain could be your motivation.
So to be successful in finding the facts, we turn a need into a wish. A longing for advice. This may be a bit utopian, but this process armed with the right questions and acres of listening will get you down the road.
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your client, you’ll want to get small doses of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they will be interested in seeing more details shortly. Inquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way to prevent an objection later.
All the time you are building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give you the pleasure that you definitely want. At the end of the formal fact finding process, we need to announce that this is what we will show them and that they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There isn’t much more you can do to make the process of making the bed more interesting and challenging than the fact finding. But I think I’ll stick with the minute and a half and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you do a fact search, focus on the most challenging and challenging part: turning the needs you are discussing into wants. Remember to move away from pain and problems or towards pleasure.
