Investment Sales Success: If You Want to Sell them You Have to Feed Them

How’s the seminar/dinner approach working for your investment sales success? If your offer has real educational value you don’t have to bribe people to come by offering them a free dinner. If you can’t get people to attend your seminars now unless you offer some kind of free food it can only be because what you’re offering has little or no educational value and is really nothing more than a sales presentation, or you aren’t clearly communicating the benefits of attending to the people your sending your offer to. nnIf your seminar is nothing more than a sales presentation I would recommend that you stop doing them for the health of your long-term investment sales success. Yes, there are people that can be coerced into buying. It happens every day in sales and if you understand human behavior and motivation you understand why and how that happens, but it doesn’t mean it’s something you should ever do. For one thing it’s unethical and for another if that’s how you intend to be successful you better be prepared for a long and arduous unending struggle for the rest of your career. nnIf your seminar truly does have educational value and benefit for your clients you need to learn how to communicate that value so they will be lined up to attend. If you have a truly valuable seminar that really benefits your attendees they will come, and they will tell others to come too. Good seminars are a great way to start to build a relationship with prospects. If the problem is how you are communicating the offer to the people you’re sending it to, sit down and identify all the ultimate benefits and results the people attending walk away from your seminar with and use those points to communicate to future attendees. If you’re stumped an easy way to identify the real benefits of the seminar is to ask your current attendees to write them down for you based on their experience. nnThe best way to build long-term investment sales success is to feed your prospects with educational value. A seminar is just one of many ways to educate your potential prospects, and to get them to contact you for more information and help. You can also use white papers, analysis and checklists, articles, interviews, and other educational tools. Whatever tool you use absolutely has to have real educational value for the prospect. It should peak their interest, explain something that they probably don’t understand, or call a potential problem to their attention, and get them actively involved in wanting to know more. nnThe better you are at providing real value to the people you reach out to before you ever meet them for an appointment the greater your investment sales success will be. An added bonus to this approach is that it will actually set you apart from the competition because you know your competitors are trying to go too far too fast asking people to meet with them when they have no relationship and focusing the conversation on their needs rather than the prospects. Feed your prospects with education and value and you will build a business with long-term success and a steady stream of referrals.