The Financial Advisor Netzone: Inner Truth Sells Regardless of the Economy...

by Sidney C. Walker

Many people are afraid to spend any money on anything at the moment. They want to see some improvement in the economy which is a reasonable request. However, many of these same people will be the ones who invest money after the market has gone up considerably.

I am not sure how much you can help the people who make decisions based on the emotion of the day. Fortunately there is a group of people who are more grounded and know this is only the down side of a predictable cycle. This group of people also tends to make decisions based more on what feels intuitively right than based on emotion. These are the people who are currently buying financial products.

You may have to work a little harder than normal to find the "intuitive" buyers, but they are out there and they are a bigger group than you might think. The second thing you have to do is handle the interviewing process correctly so that you help the potential client get at the decision that feels intuitively right since that is what they will be willing to take action on.

How do you help your client get at the decision that feels intuitively right? First you have to ask yourself how you make decisions. Do you base your decisions on intellectual logic, emotional feelings, intuitive feelings (a quiet sense of knowing something is right or not right) or, some combination of all three?

How do you know when you have enough information? What tells you can stop looking at options? What does it feel like when it feels intuitively right? It is a good exercise to look back in your life at decisions you have made that worked out and look at how you arrived at those decisions.

Why is it important to look at your own decision making process in order to help others? You need to see that there is a process. Not everyone has the exact same process but for the majority of the people buying today, they are buying more because all the elements put together feel intuitively right than for any single reason.

One of the questions I teach advisors to ask in my Selling Without Wresting™ Sales Training is: "I think we agree this makes sense, the real question is does it feel right?"

This is not a question a controlling advisor is going to ask. It will only make sense to ask this question if you are a relationship-oriented advisor that is trying to help the client make an educated decision that feels right to them.

Helping people get at what feels right to them will close more sales that will stay on the books than any other approach.

There are people making buying decisions in this economy, just not as many as usual. And all the people you meet who are afraid to do anything will come around once they see enough good news. It's a good time to get to know as many new people as you can and don't worry if sales are down. The sales numbers will come back and the more people you have in the pipeline when things start to turn around, the bigger the payoff will be for you.

Thirty years ago, my sales manager used to pass out STP stickers to his reps. STP, which is still around as far as I know, is the oil treatment for car engines. Guess what STP stands for? See The People!