June 14, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Presentation Skills / 0 comments
Undoubtedly, you are familiar with the theme: You have a prospect in front of you with a clear objective. After gathering all the facts and probing them on why it’s important to them to achieve the goal, you present an iron-clad solution that checks all their boxes, throughout which they nod in agreement. You lay out the steps to get started and ask them for their approval to move forward. When they shift back in their seats, you know what’s coming—the pause, the hesitancy, and the anxiety over making a decision, leading to the standard, “We’d like to think about it.”
After addressing their concerns, walking them through how your solution helps them achieve their objective, once again with approving nods, they again shift in their seats and confide that they just don’t think it’s a good time to start investing.
That’s a very good sign—a strong indication you’ve done your job—up to this point. But your job is not complete until your prospects take action to improve their situation. All they need now is a reassuring nudge. All they might need is some perspective—some time perspective.
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Use the Perspective of Time to Move Your Prospects to Action
June 14, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Presentation Skills / 0 comments
Undoubtedly, you are familiar with the theme: You have a prospect in front of you with a clear objective. After gathering all the facts and probing them on why it’s important to them to achieve the goal, you present an iron-clad solution that checks all their boxes, throughout which they nod in agreement. You lay out the steps to get started and ask them for their approval to move forward. When they shift back in their seats, you know what’s coming—the pause, the hesitancy, and the anxiety over making a decision, leading to the standard, “We’d like to think about it.”
After addressing their concerns, walking them through how your solution helps them achieve their objective, once again with approving nods, they again shift in their seats and confide that they just don’t think it’s a good time to start investing.
That’s a very good sign—a strong indication you’ve done your job—up to this point. But your job is not complete until your prospects take action to improve their situation. All they need now is a reassuring nudge. All they might need is some perspective—some time perspective.
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Using Analogies in These 3 Situations Can Help Turn Prospects into Clients
September 30, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments
It’s your job to get prospects off the fence. You need to persuade them that hiring you to manage their investments is the right thing to do. Before they make that decision, however, they need to understand what it is they are buying, and why they need to buy it. Because “people don’t buy what they don’t understand.”
This is where analogies can help push the balance in your favor. They make the unfamiliar familiar.
An analogy is “a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purposes of explanation or clarification”.
Analogies can help you put forward an argument so that prospects see things in a new light – and conclude, of their own accord – that it makes sense to do business with you.
Here are three situations that warrant the use of analogies.
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Creating Urgency with Prospects
October 24, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 1 comment
I can recall few times in my career when business has been as slow as it has been recently. Perhaps the slowdown is due to the fast approaching year-end. Certainly, the pending Presidential election has a lot to do with it, as does the recent DOL running. Clients and Advisors alike have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. But there also are more traditional reasons at work.
People don’t enjoy the prospect of saving for a rainy day. There’s always a reason to delay investing, and never a ‘right’ time to make the move.
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Always Remember Your Clients’ Reasons to Invest
February 2, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
Failing to understand a client’s goals and objectives ranks highly when it comes to why financial advisors get fired. So it pays to remember that your client’s reasons to invest are the same as they’ve always been: they want to generate more cash in the future, whether it’s to send the kids to college, or to retire on a yacht in the Caribbean.
Your clients want to educate their children and build a retirement fund. That’s generally it.
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