Capitalizing on Credibility - What's the Biggest Payoff? August 2010

The Myth of Client-Focus July 2010

Marketing Therapy - Just lie back and relax... June 2010

The Producer's Guide to Asking Questions May 2010

Questions - The Shortest Path from Prospect to Client April 2010

How to Build Your Credibility March 2010

Credibility's Impact on YOUR Bottom Line February 2010

How to Use Social Media in Your Business December 2009

Psychological Analysis of Your Marketing September 2009

How Contrarian Logic Makes Sales for You August 2009

Words that Sell - How to Use Psychology in Your Marketing and Selling July 2009

The Secrets of Marketing Psychology (Part I) June 2009

You've been replaced by a cartoon! May 2009

8 Ways to Distinguish Yourself in a Challenging Market (Part II) April 2009

8 Ways to Distinguish Yourself in a Challenging Market (Part I) March 2009

The Worst Mistake in Selling Financial Services January 2009

Fighting for Success! The “Special Forces” Approach December 2008

Yours - Free! November 2008

First-Impressions of Credibility - Part One October 2008

12 Ways to Screw Up Meetings -- And How to Fix Them September 2008

Article Index

Caution: this article contains ideas that might upset you!

About twenty-five years ago, when I began writing professionally, no one in business knew much about how people make buying decisions. A few years later, when I began studying advertising at the University of Texas, we learned how to be creative, but we did not learn how people buy. Doesn't that sound absurd to you? Creativity is ludicrous without knowing who is going to read and what they want. Isn't it just plain stupid to begin a marketing or advertising program before you know how people make buying decisions?

Ten years ago, when I was an advertising writer for JCPenney, I was taught to use demographics. Again, they have no bearing on how people buy. The income range within a certain zip code tells you nothing about the mental process those use to make buying decisions. Psychographics - ditto - they look at purchase history and consumer behavior, not consumer thought processes. Focus groups - an expensive disaster.

More recently, as I've written projects for major financial firms, they would sometimes give me a copy of their sales procedure. I'm intrigued to see that (to my experience) none of them understand the first thing about simple rapport, much less about mental buying processes or psychological convincer strategies. Their main psychological tactic is usually to enter into a light conversation based on trivia. Ha! Can you name an A-level client who loves to chit chat with strangers? Probably not.

The point of that history lesson is that it seemed to me years ago that academicians and businesses were throwing darts at a board they couldn't see.

Today, it's the same thing. Financial advisors lack the knowledge of how people buy - therefore, they are throwing away between 50-75% of their potential business! I base that number on two things: 1) Temperament Sorter percentages and 2) the typical "fallout" between first appointment and ultimate agreement.

The "smart" pill for financial advisors.

A few years ago I began discovering a specific body of knowledge related to applied psychology. It links language and behavior. While at IBM, a delightful man named Rodger Bailey developed a methodology for understanding, predicting and influencing someone's behavior by mirroring and employing specific language patterns. From Rodger's work, I found the "smart" pill for financial advisors! I now know how to find out how people buy! That said, consider this:

1. If you're developing marketing programs without employing this knowledge, you're simply sabotaging your own efforts. That's because you're selling the way you buy - not necessarily the way your best A-level client buys.
2. If you're marketing, advising or selling without this knowledge, you're losing millions of dollars. It tells me that you don't yet have an accurate psychological profile of your "A" level clients.
3. If you're communicating in your face-to-face meetings without knowing how your prospect buys, you could well be alienating most of the people you meet.
4. If you don't ask the right questions or learn to hear linguistic cues in your prospect's language, you're simply doing an ineffective job. And, isn't that a question of ethics?

Here are some facts about how people buy.

People buy products and services based on strategies they learned early in their life. Those strategies typically remain unchanged throughout life. To learn how to sell, or even present a product effectively, it helps to find out how the person bought the same or similar item previously.

Here are some questions you could ask:

1. Have you ever bought a financial product before?
2. Have you used a financial advisor before?
3. What about the product/or investment caused you to buy it?
4. What did you like about the advisor?
5. How did you know it was a good product/service?
6. How did you know the advisor was good at his or her job?

What you will learn in the answers will be the key to how that person buys financial products, services and advisors. Questions 1-4 give you a starting point, but the really important questions are 5 and 6. Those questions will elicit specific words that tell you how the person represents information mentally. They will give you the psychological strategy the person employs when making decisions in the context of financial products, services and advisors. For instance, most people access information and learn visually. That's why PowerPoint slide presentations are ubiquitous at conferences. But, financial products and services are explained in an auditory mode - words, not pictures. How could you effectively advise someone without that knowledge? If you Talk to them, instead of Show them, you'll lose their interest.

The other essential question deals with values.

"What's important to you?" There is a well-known question in the financial industry that asks about the value of money. The research clearly shows that most people do not list money as one of their top values. So, the question is like asking some one in Oakland, "How do you get to from Detroit to Phoenix?" Asking the "money" question forces the person to go to a place in his or her brain that is not necessarily important. It says to your prospect that YOU value her money more than she does. How does that make you look?

When you ask someone to list his values, he often can't answer, or he'll give conflicting answers, or he'll give you a list of goals, instead. Why is that important? If you don't know the values, you don't know what your prospect is working for. Without knowing the values, you will build a strategy based on the wrong information. And if you suggest values to the person (like money), you're doing a gravely inappropriate thing.

There is a vital skill set required to be proficient in asking these questions and understanding the answers. Observation and rapport. My firm has a tremendous amount of experience helping people define their life's values. A lot of our experience has been gained in doing self-development and belief-system coaching in the process of building psychological profiles of you and your "A" level clients. More often than not, our clients refer to this as "business therapy." These coaching sessions have taught us how to get people to open up and talk about their values.

The secrets to getting people to open up are in rapport and recognizing the non-verbal information. Since between 70 and 90% of any communication is non-verbal, it's the obviously the non-verbal stuff that's the most important. We use this knowledge to teach planners how to help their clients go through a values elicitation process. Conducting this process during a seminar helps your prospects feel that you're connecting with them. They, then, begin to trust you. That's the first step in making the psychological sale. Only after that can you make the logical sale.

MICHAEL LOVAS is the author of ten books, three columns, and a thousand articles on Professional Credibility and the Psychology of Communication in the financial industry. He's the co-founder of AboutPeople and the founder of Credibility Marketing.

Michael speaks at conferences and seminars in Canada and the US. He is an inspiring trainer and coach who helps advisors improve their businesses. He holds three prestigious certifications: Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Licensed Trainer of NLP; and Clinical Hypnotherapist. They make Michael an expert at helping financial professionals succeed at a higher level by building more meaningful business relationships.

AboutPeople Books:

1. (NEW) Questions Are the Answer! - A guide for using questions effectively in sales conversations
2. (NEW) Axis of Influence! - How credibility & likeability intersect to drive success!
3. (NEW) Words that Sell - The language of psychological marketing & selling
4. Face Values - How to read people and connect with them in less than 3 minutes!
5. The Boomer Report - The financial advisor's guide to understanding the boomer mind
6. Presentation Magic - How to gain a psychological advantage in your seminars and sales presentations
7. The 5 Levels of Rapport - How to create a meaningful connection with people who are important to you
8. Magnetic Connections - Consultative selling for financial professionals
9. IDENTITY - How to create and deliver the most important statement of your business life
10. Inside the Mind of the Senior Market
11. Beyond Wave Marketing - How to add credibility to your relationship marketing

Find AboutPeople books at: www.aboutpeople.com

Michael Lovas, C.Ht.
AboutPeople
(509) 465-5599
1503 E. Riverview Dr.
Colbert, WA 99005
www.aboutpeople.com

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