QUESTION: What can I do to get more prospects to take my advice and buy what I recommend?
Prospects don’t know what they need because they don’t know what’s available and how it can help them get what they want. They need you to lead them from what they want to what they need.
Some pundits believe that good advisors convert needs into wants - they find needs and then help clients want them. That’s backwards. When you start with needs you end up telling prospects what they need, and no one like being told what they need. Need talk also feels invasive and puts people on defense from the start.
Wants are emotional, right-brain desires for the things we feel will make us happy. Needs are logical, left-brain necessities required to fulfil our basic expectations. So, we NEED a car to get us where we intend to go but we WANT a luxury car to feel prestige and comfort as we go there.
With life insurance type products, people want to feel good knowing that they and their families are protected; or that they can pay off their mortgage rather than lose their house if they suffer a life-altering illness; or that they have emergency income if they get sick or injured and can’t work…
In the wealth business, people want their money to last as long as they do when they retire; they want the peace of mind and quality of life that comes from having enough to meet their lifestyle requirements; they want to end up an “elderly gentleman or lady” rather than an old man or old woman, as the saying goes.
They want to feel happy because they are prepared for anything and won’t get stuck when it’s too late to make a difference. Most people know how they want to feel when things happen, but they don’t know what they need to feel that way.
The strongest advice comes after you uncover specific client wants related to your product or service and then translate them into the needs or solutions that satisfy those wants. Wants lead to needs. Make their wants clear, definite, and obvious and they will eagerly accept your recommendation because they can see that it will make them happy. Great advisors translate wants into needs – not the other way around. Prospects tell them what they want and then, using their expertise and experience, advisors translate that into what they need to do to make it happen.
Start by asking “Want Questions”. Not hard-fact questions like address, date of birth, occupation, or income – like you find on a typical fact finder. Instead, ask “soft-fact” financial security questions about what they want for themselves, their families, and their businesses in a circumstance you handle. For maximum buy-in to your recommendations, ask your prospect for their lifestyle and wealth wants. If we build a big enough, important enough, and urgent enough list of their wants, prospects will ask us for what they need to make it happen.
This is one of the most basic and important advisor sales skills – turning wants into needs. It’s how you get people to buy from you rather than you having to sell to them. It requires Want Questions like these:
- Do you want income security if you were sick or injured and couldn’t work?
- Do you want your family to have the income they need to stay in your home if either you or your spouse contracted a life-altering illness?
- What about if either of you died?
- Do you want a legal place to “stash your cash” and avoid income tax?
- Do you want to give your children or grandchildren a life-long financial start in life?
- What do you want to happen when you retire?
- How much guaranteed income do you want to have in retirement?
- How long do you want your money to last?
- Do you want there to be money left over to leave to the people you love?
- Do you want to have enough money so that if you need it, you can have medical care come to you?
- Do you want to move to assisted-living or nursing care someday if required?
- Do you want the nobility in your family to start or end with you?
Think about it. This way there is a need recommendation for every want question you ask. When you recommend based on a want; they have already said they want it. This is the magic for better uptake of your advice.
There are as many want questions as there are clients or prospects. Once they tell us what they want, it is a rather simple process to show them what they need to make that happen. Use your expertise and experience to recommend the right products or solutions so they can best satisfy what they want.
Start with their wants and your prospects will take your advice.
This column by renowned advisor coach Jim Ruta was first published in the February 2022 edition of Insurance Journal magazine.
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Jim Ruta’s mission is simple – to preserve, promote and propel the financial advisor business. A former insurance advisor and executive manager of a 250-advisor agency, Jim is a highly regarded coach, author, podcaster and keynote speaker. He has spoken 4 times at the MDRT Annual Meeting including the Main Platform. Jim Ruta is an Executive Coach and Keynote speaker specializing in life insurance advisors and leaders. He works with top advisors around the world and re-energizes audiences with his deep insight and passion.
If you have a question for Jim, you may send an email to [email protected]
