Bob Cobb

Re-Engineering the Client Interview Ask most advisors if they believe that purchasing decisions are logical or emotional and the answer is almost unanimously emotional. Ask them what strategies they have in their sales process to tap into their client's deepest controlling emotions and you quickly find that most do not have a specific process; they are leaving it to chance.

This module introduces the Outcome Centered Sales Model. This Collaborative Sales Process teaches advisors how to talk to clients about their entire portfolio, not just the money due now and create an irresistible presentation that compels the client into action.

Financial Advisors are bombarded with an abundance of analytical sales tools all designed to appeal to the left side of our brain. Overdependence on these (Lipper rankings, asset allocation quilts, hypothetical illustrations, Morningstar Reports, Monte Carlo analysis) tools leads the advisor to attempt to logically prove to the prospect that doing business is the right thing to do. This leads to "paralysis by analysis", inertia, and often turns our service and expertise into a commodity, which the client wants to purchase from the lowest cost provider. The Outcome Centered Sales process taps into the client's specific emotions that control their decisions, increasing urgency in the process and arms the advisor with the information necessary to create a recommendation that is irresistible in the only place it really matters--the mind of the client.

In this module, we will cover:

• Hyper Open Ended Questioning Strategies- Prospects rarely waste their most precious and only non-renewable resource (their time) unless there is a gap between where they are today, and where they want to be. Understanding this gap quickly is the key to beginning the Ultimate Interview. Our six-step process gives you the tools to open up virtually any prospect.

• Mastering the Conversational Stack®- Getting past knee jerk reactions and conditioned responses is critical to understanding what makes this client unique. Most profiling tools focus heavily on facts about the client's past experiences and current situation, while the key to getting them to act lays in understanding their desires about the future. Once we identify the gap this deepening strategy produces a conversation where we can understand the client's Map of Their World.

• Eliciting your Prospect's Controlling Emotional Outcome (CEO) -- Anyone that has ever tried The Ben Franklin close knows we can pile an unlimited amount of "reasons" a client should implement our recommendations but still not compel them to action. Once we understand our client's desires, we must deepen the conversation to discover what achieving these outcomes will mean to our client. This process not only deepens the level of trust and rapport that we have with our clients, it positively separates us from other advisors with whom they have had contact.

• Understanding your Prospects Outcome Completion Strategy (OCS) -- What are the specific criteria the investor uses to determine if their outcomes will be met by your solution? Guessing or delivering the same presentation to everyone leads to haphazard results. Understanding how the client makes decisions allows you deliver the presentation in the method they prefer.

• Creating an Irresistible Presentation- Once you understand the Gap between where your prospect is and where they want to be and understand what closing that gap would mean to them on a deep emotional basis, as well as specifically how they will measure whether or not these outcomes are met--you are now in a position to deliver a presentation that is irresistible in the only place that it really matters…the mind of your client. Gone are the days of the "spray and pray method" mindlessly piling on features and benefits hoping that one will stick or be relevant. We show how to deeply intertwine the enjoyment of the outcomes they seek with the implementation of your recommendation.