Whose Future Are We Talking About?

You became a financial advisor because you wanted to help people, but you aren't getting enough people to help. Now you find that you're struggling to get appointments and sales are few and far between. You know people need what you have and that you can really help them. So, what’s wrong with this picture? n nFirst, you have to realize that most of the people you meet with are skeptical and leery. A recent commercial about the consumer who’s thinking aloud and wondering if his advisor isn’t more interested in his own future than the future of the customer just openly addresses the thoughts of your prospects. And quite often your behaviors only reinforce those concerns making it very difficult for you to achieve investment sales success. nnYour prospects want it to be all about them and you make it all about you. Do you see a disconnect between what they want and what you give them? You call them like an uninvited pest and ask them to hold an appointment with you. Why? It’s not like you’re the only financial advisor to interrupt their life and want something. If they want it to be about them you have to make it about them and asking them to do something for you, like letting you have an appointment with them, isn’t making it about them. nnSo you talk them into having an appointment with you. Why do you want to do that? That’s like shooting craps hoping your gonna win. It’s a gigantic waste of both your time and theirs and it certainly doesn’t lead to positive feelings about you. Shouldn’t both of you have an agreed upon valuable reason for meeting? Shouldn’t you know they have a reason to want to do business with you, that they are willing to allocate a portion of their money for what you can help them to accomplish, and that you’re meeting with someone who can decide by themselves to do business with you? Wouldn’t your investment sales success increase if you spent all of your appointment time with people who are likely and capable of doing business with you? n nAnyone and everyone can help people with investments. It’s far from an exclusive industry these days. Attorneys, CPA’s, bankers, insurance agents and more have all entered the investment game because government research indicates the baby boomers have billions of dollars to invest and everyone wants a cut of the pie. So what can you do to actually provide value for the people you want to work with? Figure that out and how to communicate it, and you won’t have problems filling your appointment calendar and achieving investment sales success.n