a better knot in your tie. If you’re a woman, consider visiting the experts at the makeup counter in your local department store. You have to look as sharp as you are mentally.
You and I know that it’s your knowledge people really want, but if you don’t look like you have taken your own advice and appear financially successful, why would they? Appearances do count when working with the public.
The Groundwork
Okay, let’s get back to our blueprints. Before a structure can be built, the ground must be measured, tested for density, and in some cases worked over a bit to be level. The groundwork in selling includes a basic understanding of what I call the selling triangle. The triangle is not unlike a pyramid-one of the most sound structures man has ever created. Talk about standing the test of time! I’ll speak about all three sides shortly, but let’s begin with the beginning, the base.
Attitude, Enthusiasm and Goals
The foundation of your business includes your attitude, enthusiasm and goals. You see, you can have all the product knowledge in the world and excellent people skills, but if your attitude is sour and you’re not enthusiastic about what you’re doing, you might as well not bother getting out of bed in the morning. Your lack of enthusiasm will show. Worse, it’s contagious. If you’re not upbeat and excited about what you do for people, they won’t be either. If you don’t engage their emotions, they won’t do business with you.
As a comparison, think of a doctor with a poor bedside manner. He may be very knowledgeable and skilled, but if he doesn’t excel at making his patients feel they’ve made a good decision by seeing him, they’re not likely to return. They’ll find someone who makes them feel good about feeling good.
Your positive attitude is what you feel within and your enthusiastic manner is what people see on the outside. They should come not only from your belief in the service you provide but from the goals you have set and are working to achieve.
Let’s say you have a goal to do what every red-blooded American family wants to do—go to Disneyland. You’ve done the research and know how much you need to earn and save to achieve the goal by a pre-determined date in time. Your family is excited. You’re excited. You want to be the hero and achieve the goal. You know that providing excellent service to a certain number of clients will do the trick. Are you excited to get up and get to work every day? You bet you are! Are your spouse and kids excited for you? Are they telling you how great you are to be helping other people so they can benefit, too? Yes and yes.
That’ s your foundation: Attitude, Enthusiasm and Goals. Evaluate each of those areas right now. How do you feel about what you do? How is that feeling showing up in your outer world? If you’re not satisfied that they’re as good and as strong as they could be, perhaps you need to set better, loftier goals.
The goals you set must be better than your best, but believable. Otherwise you won’t stretch and grow. You won’t be motivated to achieve them. Let’s take a moment to review the basic laws that apply to goals:
1. Your goals must be believable. If you don’t really believe you can achieve it, you won’t. End of story.
2. Your goals must be clearly defined. If you set a physical fitness goal regarding weight loss, you wouldn’t write, “I’m going to lose weight.” Why? Because nobody wants to “lose.” They want to gain and in this case you want to gain a healthier body. So you’d write, “I’m going to achieve my ideal weight of 175 pounds by November 6th, 2009.” It’s clear. It’s specific and it has a deadline. Great goal!
3. Your goals must be ardently desired. You simply won’t work for something that “would be nice to have or do.” Your goals must be ardently desired. I love that phrase because you nearly have to grit your teeth to say it. It just doesn’t sound right if you say it without emotion. You must be passionate about your goals.
4. Your goals must be vividly imagined. This goes back to our discussion of what you see in your mind’s eye. Can you envision yourself at 175 pounds in the summer? What are you wearing? How do you feel at that weight? Get as vivid a picture as you can. See it. Smell it. Feel it. Taste it.
5. Your goals must be in writing. This seems to be the most daunting task for people. Too many feel that if they put a goal in writing and don’t achieve it, they will have written proof of their failure. If that’s your thinking, stop it right now. The value of putting your goals in writing is so you can read them over and over again to keep them fresh in your mind on days when everything you touch turns to something other than gold. Your written goals are your motivators to keep moving forward. And it’s okay if you change your mind or alter your goals as you journey toward them. They’re not stamped in concrete after all. But do put them in writing. It’s an important step toward making them real.
That takes care of the foundation of our selling skills triangle. Now, let’s take a look at the sides.
On the left side, we have product knowledge. As I already mentioned, this is something you get from the company or group you’re associated with. Since you’re now treating your business like a hobby work is now fun. One of your goals must be to study all of the product information you can get your hands on. After all, it will do you no good to stutter and stammer your way through information on something you want your clients to own.
“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Johnson, we have this new product that’s exactly what you need. Let me find the brochure on it. It’s, uh, oh, I don’t remember exactly how they describe it, but it sounded like it would take care of your concerns about…”
If you don’t know it, don’t try to sell it! You won’t come across with confidence and they won’t have confidence in either you or the product even if it is great for them. You must be seen as a truly knowledgeable and competent professional within minutes of meeting any new prospective client. The potential client must believe you not only can “talk the talk,” but that you can “walk the walk.” This requires study, rehearsal and may even involve conversations with others who are marketing the same product to get a better feel for the type of client it will help the most.
Financial products are changing all the time to meet changing consumer needs. Government regulation of the industry requires you to stay on top of what you can and cannot do or say within this realm. If you don’t keep up and follow the ever-changing rules, you may find yourself out of touch, out of the office because you’re in court, or worse, out of business.
To stay on top of the knowledge game, attend as many educational sessions as you can reasonably fit into your calendar. Join an industry trade association and read the newsletters and other information they publish. It’s their job to provide the latest information. It’s yours to read, understand and internalize it.
Now, let’s move on to the right side of our formidable structure and what the rest of this book is all about—your people skills.
This is where you put your great attitude, your enthusiasm for your products and your product knowledge to use in achieving your goals. As a general overview, people skills involve: finding ideal potential clients for your products; how you meet them; strategies to qualify them about their needs; skills to educate them; methods to address their concerns; a course of action to get their business; and, to earn the right
