Showing posts with label Insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insurance. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 July 2014
The Science and Emotion Behind Trauma Sum Insureds
Is there a right way for calculating the appropriate sum insured for trauma? Do you have a rule of thumb based on a multiple of income or a formula for removing debt? Or is there a science to our art whereby we can combine the emotional fall out and the true cost of disease to determine a sum insured? Trauma cover, cover that provides a lump sum payment to assist an individual navigate through the treatment of a serious illness and focus on getting better not the stress of the financial strain, is where and when a quality adviser led insurance process is invaluable.
When my sister was diagnosed with a menigioma (a brain tumour that grows between the skull and the brain) there were a few things going for her:
• She’s a doctor and very quickly she had the best physicians around her
• It was thought to be benign
• It was operable
• She had income protection and trauma insurance
However what she had not had, was: advice. The policy for trauma did not make a payment. The income protection cover was inadequate relative to her salary at that point in time. Only through excellent financial advice post surgery was she able to maximise her income protection claim and secure an appropriate level and breadth of cover for income protection and trauma for the future.
As an adviser I worked with a rule of thumb for trauma. My best and most desired position was a sum insured that allowed for the removal of debt and the provision of one years income. My least favoured but lowest sum insured I would recommend was at least half a years income for the sum insured. Was this appropriate? That depends on the discussion I had with the client and their understanding with my guidance of the risks and outcomes.
Looking at the cost of disease in time and money provides some science to the process of calculating sum insureds. The Health Funds of New Zealand December 2013 report on the time of work due to sickness found that:
• An average of five weeks per person is being lost from the workforce as a result of surgical waiting list back-ups.
• Many thousands of New Zealanders waiting for surgery are having to take extended time off work, and also need loved ones to do the same so they can take care of them.
• 280,000 New Zealanders currently needed elective surgery with the average waiting time from GP referral to surgery in the public system was upward of 224 days.
• Almost a third of those needing surgery reported experiencing significant pain and said they had had to make lifestyle changes.
• More than half said their quality of life had worsened, mainly due to pain and mobility issues but also due to the psychological and financial stress of their ongoing illness.
A Canadian study, (Cancer and Work: A Canadian Perspective, 2011, Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology) reminds us of what we know only all too well that Cancer is a complex array of illnesses that can bring a potentially overwhelming spectrum of physical, psychological, social, emotional, functional and economic challenges. The paper concluded that there are broad reaching effects of having cancer on an individual’s worklife. And sadly that the development in the field of vocational rehabilitation and is fragmented and limited, in part due to its infancy.
This is where trauma insurance cover becomes incredibly important. Not only is the sum insured critical to allow required surgery and treatment to take place as soon as possible whatever the choice of treatment the patient embarks upon, but that they can do so without financial stress and further that upon recovery they have the resources to undertake vocational rehabilitation that can address the impact of the psychological and emotional strain of the disease and recovery.
The costs of disease, the financial cost to the individual and family must be also taken into account. As an example when considering the impact of Cancer the individual may also incur financial and economic costs, which are often overlooked when considering the impact of the disease (Cost of Cancer in NSW, 2007, A report by Access Economics Pty Limited for The Cancer Council NSW). This report found that non-financial costs are also very important – the pain, suffering and premature death that result from cancer. Although more difficult to measure, these can be analysed in terms of the years of healthy life lost, both quantitatively and qualitatively, known as the “burden of disease”.
Their detailed analysis found that, individuals bear around 40.4% of the total cost of cancer, with governments (42.1%), society (16.1%), family and friends (0.8%) and employers (0.6%) sharing the remaining costs. In regard to a dollar figure, the finding was this: that the total expected lifetime economic cost of cancer per person is around $966,000 – of which the burden of disease is $851,600 and the financial cost is $114,500.
Applying the 40% ratio does that provide a sum insured of $386,000? Perhaps, there’s a science to that calculation. Does it match up against my old rule of thumb? In some cases it far surpasses it, whilst in others it falls short. What it does highlight is this: that not all diseases are the same, in fact this Cancer Council report found that brain cancers can be double the calculation above. Not all the impacts on an individual are the same. Psychologically my sister was well prepared, was financially stable and had a good support network. Should these factors, those emotional input,s be part of your fact find and deliberations in determining a sum insured? Perhaps.
What all of this, points to is the value of advice, the matching of the art and science behind providing an insurance solution for a client. As the cost of cancer as an example, increases, as people live increasingly complex lives within complicated family structures, the value of a trusted adviser to shape solutions, bespoke solutions, has never been more important.
Saturday, 10 May 2014
Reality Bites : Getting Back to Basics when providing insurance advice
Advisers and retail insurers could still be the big losers beyond 2014 in capturing the hearts, minds and insurance policies of Australians unless they work together to get back to the basics of what customers really want from an insurance solution.
The reality is that retail sales growth via advisers was in 2013 the lowest in recent memory, whilst retail lapses continued to trend upwards (15%). Some stand out insurers did however buck this trend with declining lapse experiences.
The reality is that the reinsurer claims experience through the group channel has placed some retail insurers on the cusp of significant price increases, a result of prior pricing philosophies that perhaps did not adequately compensate for the risks being insured.
The reality is that faced with the resultant "bill shock" the value, service, and trust equation of advice and advisers is being questioned and a growing chorus of consumers have turned to the direct channel for a "value for money" solution.
The reality is that some non underwritten direct channels do not offer value for money, as they do not offer claims certainty.
The reality is that there is a growing disconnect between what is being delivered by insurers to advisers to distribute and what customers really want.
Customers and advisers want 'sustainable pricing', they want quality insurance products for the right price, reflective of a properly assessed risk and claims certainty. They want less complexity in the process of applying for and maintaining a policy.
2014 and beyond will be a success for those insurers and advisers who recognise and partner towards what customers really want : the right cover for the right price, and certainty that the right money goes to the right people when they need it the most.
It's a simple proposition that hasn't and shouldn't be changed.
The reality is that retail sales growth via advisers was in 2013 the lowest in recent memory, whilst retail lapses continued to trend upwards (15%). Some stand out insurers did however buck this trend with declining lapse experiences.
The reality is that the reinsurer claims experience through the group channel has placed some retail insurers on the cusp of significant price increases, a result of prior pricing philosophies that perhaps did not adequately compensate for the risks being insured.
The reality is that faced with the resultant "bill shock" the value, service, and trust equation of advice and advisers is being questioned and a growing chorus of consumers have turned to the direct channel for a "value for money" solution.
The reality is that some non underwritten direct channels do not offer value for money, as they do not offer claims certainty.
The reality is that there is a growing disconnect between what is being delivered by insurers to advisers to distribute and what customers really want.
Customers and advisers want 'sustainable pricing', they want quality insurance products for the right price, reflective of a properly assessed risk and claims certainty. They want less complexity in the process of applying for and maintaining a policy.
2014 and beyond will be a success for those insurers and advisers who recognise and partner towards what customers really want : the right cover for the right price, and certainty that the right money goes to the right people when they need it the most.
It's a simple proposition that hasn't and shouldn't be changed.
Friday, 2 August 2013
Is your financial services business PERFECT?
A really exciting day for PCE as we launch P.E.R.F.E.C.T, the 7 step process for transforming your business.
The PERFECT method is a way to positively transform your business and be truly a client centred successful business that delivers life changing advice to your clients, and changes your life and that of your staff for the better.
If you have been following our tweets you'll realise we can't count as we tweeted it as 5 steps.....doh!
So what is PERFECT?
P is all about planning. This involves defining what is is you are going to deliver, how you will do it and to whom. It is about structured activity right down to diary management.
E (the first one) is about execution. This is the delivery of the how. Your pitch now honed needs to be delivered so the focus here is on tools you are going to use to market and to communicate.
R is for responding. This is your communication piece. It involves social media, email and telephone and what language you will use. It is also about your service proposition.
F is for follow up. This is very much a technology piece and about the way and when you will follow up and service your clients. Industrialising your process is key.
E (the second one) is about empathy and the exhibition of empathy. How you develop your emotional intelligence is one thing but how you connect with clients is another. The tools and processes you use are critical. You will not, repeat will not succeed if you do not get this right.
C is for consulting. This is about feedback and implementing that feedback in a demonstrable way. How and when you ask for feedback will determine success.
And T is for teaching. This is your education piece. It is for you, your staff and clients. How you shape your education piece is key : it needs to be tailored to your target market and needs to be accessible, enactable, have process, have coaching and support and most of all be compelling.
So where to from here?
We at PCE are on the cusp of bringing you a complete PERFECT package for you to enact once you engage with PCE.
The PERFECT method is a way to positively transform your business and be truly a client centred successful business that delivers life changing advice to your clients, and changes your life and that of your staff for the better.
If you have been following our tweets you'll realise we can't count as we tweeted it as 5 steps.....doh!
So what is PERFECT?
P is all about planning. This involves defining what is is you are going to deliver, how you will do it and to whom. It is about structured activity right down to diary management.
E (the first one) is about execution. This is the delivery of the how. Your pitch now honed needs to be delivered so the focus here is on tools you are going to use to market and to communicate.
R is for responding. This is your communication piece. It involves social media, email and telephone and what language you will use. It is also about your service proposition.
F is for follow up. This is very much a technology piece and about the way and when you will follow up and service your clients. Industrialising your process is key.
E (the second one) is about empathy and the exhibition of empathy. How you develop your emotional intelligence is one thing but how you connect with clients is another. The tools and processes you use are critical. You will not, repeat will not succeed if you do not get this right.
C is for consulting. This is about feedback and implementing that feedback in a demonstrable way. How and when you ask for feedback will determine success.
And T is for teaching. This is your education piece. It is for you, your staff and clients. How you shape your education piece is key : it needs to be tailored to your target market and needs to be accessible, enactable, have process, have coaching and support and most of all be compelling.
So where to from here?
We at PCE are on the cusp of bringing you a complete PERFECT package for you to enact once you engage with PCE.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
How to Sell Insurance For Children
Selling child trauma cover : an insurance option under a policy for a parent - that provides a payment should that child be diagnosed or suffer from a specific listed event must be a really hard thing to sell.
We have to believe that because we are told constantly by advisers that they find it a hard conversation to start with parents.
We have to believe that because when we look at the data : the number of policies that have child trauma attached is incredibly low : single digits in percentage terms.
Yet when we look at our own families surely we acknowledge that were anything to happen to our children we would as parents want to be there by their side.
We acknowledge that to be able to do that for however long their recovery takes will require financial adjustment.
We take out insurance on our children not to profit but to be able to fulfil the promise of parenthood - to be there for our children.
Why then is so little of it sold?
We have forgotten to share our values with our clients. And in doing so we have not connected to their values that are a mirror of ours. Of course they would want to be there for their children. It is the professional advisers job to facilitate that opportunity for them.
All that is required then is to share your values and beliefs and your action with a client.
An adviser dear to us, tells of how she sells child trauma insurance to every parent every time.
She tells them that if anything happened to her child she knows where she would rather be and she has arranged the method to allow that to happen.
Her clients acknowledge that choice as completely rational. They agree with it. They share that value and belief.
Why does this adviser do it? Because one day her daughter came home distraught that a school friend had been diagnosed with cancer. There was a physical and emotional battle about to start for that child and that family. There was also a financial battle.
For that reason this adviser tells her clients that she knows where she would want to be.
For that reason every recommendation includes child trauma. There is no need to go into micro detail about the policy.
The positioning is simply:
- tell the client what you have done for your own children and why
- they will agree with what you have done : sometimes with just a nod of agreement sometimes with an emphatic "oh yes, I'd want that too"
- then when you present your recommendation you simply say and I have included childrens trauma because I want you to be able to make the same choices I can make and so you can be there for your children too
At about $10 per $10,000 of cover, I do not know a parent who would opt out of covering their child for an appropriate level of cover at what amounts to essentially a cup of coffee a week per child.
We have to believe that because we are told constantly by advisers that they find it a hard conversation to start with parents.
We have to believe that because when we look at the data : the number of policies that have child trauma attached is incredibly low : single digits in percentage terms.
Yet when we look at our own families surely we acknowledge that were anything to happen to our children we would as parents want to be there by their side.
We acknowledge that to be able to do that for however long their recovery takes will require financial adjustment.
We take out insurance on our children not to profit but to be able to fulfil the promise of parenthood - to be there for our children.
Why then is so little of it sold?
We have forgotten to share our values with our clients. And in doing so we have not connected to their values that are a mirror of ours. Of course they would want to be there for their children. It is the professional advisers job to facilitate that opportunity for them.
All that is required then is to share your values and beliefs and your action with a client.
An adviser dear to us, tells of how she sells child trauma insurance to every parent every time.
She tells them that if anything happened to her child she knows where she would rather be and she has arranged the method to allow that to happen.
Her clients acknowledge that choice as completely rational. They agree with it. They share that value and belief.
Why does this adviser do it? Because one day her daughter came home distraught that a school friend had been diagnosed with cancer. There was a physical and emotional battle about to start for that child and that family. There was also a financial battle.
For that reason this adviser tells her clients that she knows where she would want to be.
For that reason every recommendation includes child trauma. There is no need to go into micro detail about the policy.
The positioning is simply:
- tell the client what you have done for your own children and why
- they will agree with what you have done : sometimes with just a nod of agreement sometimes with an emphatic "oh yes, I'd want that too"
- then when you present your recommendation you simply say and I have included childrens trauma because I want you to be able to make the same choices I can make and so you can be there for your children too
At about $10 per $10,000 of cover, I do not know a parent who would opt out of covering their child for an appropriate level of cover at what amounts to essentially a cup of coffee a week per child.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
The Five Step Client Interview Process for Insurance and Financial Planning
So you have dazzled your prospective client with the customer experience they have just encountered when first entering your business. Now they are sitting across from you and the fun begins. What do the best businesses do to ensure what happens next: is fun, is differentiated, is highly engaging (for the client and the adviser) leads to 100% conversion from prospect to client and leads to obtaining client referrals at a rate of above 70%?
Essentially there are 5 things that these businesses do. They do them in sequence and as a part of a deliberate well thought out process. Further they advise their prospective clients sometimes well before the meeting itself that there is a defined process that they are going to take them through. Further these businesses have developed collateral be it corporate brochures or web site applications or information that defines what this process is.
The brilliance in what they are doing is first and foremost is that it is simple, second by doing this they tap into a vast array of positive client psychology techniques, third, because it is a defined process it can be taught to emerging advisers and front of house staff, fourth it can be articulated clearly and succinctly and best of all despite the simplicity the fifth point to note is that it is rare that a business works through all 5 elements and consequently it is highly differentiated.
The 5 step client interview process:
1) Engage your clients in the data collection process
This does not mean running laboriously through the fact find or similar data collection forms. This means a highly engaged genuinely curious inquisition into the clients world. This is best done using a formulaic method. Ideally visual, participative and a means to get the client talking about themselves. It's "going deep" with a client.
Best techniques and practitioners utilise mind map diagrams that go further than just assets and liabilities but cover much broader areas of a clients world.
How do you get clients to share that much information? Show them your mind map or family tree but the best practitioners start by outlining what it is that they have incorporated for themselves and then ask the prospect to reciprocate.
2) Ask great questions and set a benchmark for where the client is now and what the possibilities may be.
These are questions about lifestyle and other aspects that are non financial. It's about where else they have obtained advice and what was their experience. It's about hard questions about how they would live their life if time was limited or if money was no object.
Great questions take practice and take time to construct. PCE has created 4 questionnaires available via PCE for those interested. (yes website still under construction)
Further PCE have a benchmark tool to assess where a client sits now and where they will be after your advice.
3) Describe your methodology, for insurance sales, for choosing the right levels of cover. There are plenty of applications that work through clients scenarios, even i pad applications provided by life risk houses, and worksheets that PCE have developed. What's important is to highlight that there is a method and that all your clients go through this process and have positive results as a consequence : this is where the power of story telling about your clients comes into its own. And story telling is a critical element of step 3.
4) Use visuals to explain your suggested course of action. Be it words on a slide. A diagram about how it all fits together, what you need to do here is imprint in a clients mind the solidity of your solution. Flow charts work very well and if you can for example explain how packing insurance options works and will work for the client sitting in front of you by a visual method what stays with the client is not so much the product names and intracacies but rather that you have constructed (or will construct) something cohesive, relevant and understandable for them.
5) Describe the next steps : what is the application process / when will your recommendations be ready / what is the underwriting process and in doing so define the outcome that they will have which should be in the clients words and aligned to the objective that they want to achieve or that you have identified is a necessary component of their well being. Further provide them with an engagement pack that reassures them that they have made the right decision in choosing you. This will certainly have relevance when natural buyers remorse sets in. By having managed the psychology of the sale process during the appointment you have mitigated the natural thought process of the client and reassured them that what they experienced in your waiting room was genuine and that in a very short space of time the feeling that you understand them and are genuinely concerned about their well being. The WHY you are in business is powerful here. Make sure you tell them at this point why it is you do what you do.
Essentially there are 5 things that these businesses do. They do them in sequence and as a part of a deliberate well thought out process. Further they advise their prospective clients sometimes well before the meeting itself that there is a defined process that they are going to take them through. Further these businesses have developed collateral be it corporate brochures or web site applications or information that defines what this process is.
The brilliance in what they are doing is first and foremost is that it is simple, second by doing this they tap into a vast array of positive client psychology techniques, third, because it is a defined process it can be taught to emerging advisers and front of house staff, fourth it can be articulated clearly and succinctly and best of all despite the simplicity the fifth point to note is that it is rare that a business works through all 5 elements and consequently it is highly differentiated.
The 5 step client interview process:
1) Engage your clients in the data collection process
This does not mean running laboriously through the fact find or similar data collection forms. This means a highly engaged genuinely curious inquisition into the clients world. This is best done using a formulaic method. Ideally visual, participative and a means to get the client talking about themselves. It's "going deep" with a client.
Best techniques and practitioners utilise mind map diagrams that go further than just assets and liabilities but cover much broader areas of a clients world.
How do you get clients to share that much information? Show them your mind map or family tree but the best practitioners start by outlining what it is that they have incorporated for themselves and then ask the prospect to reciprocate.
2) Ask great questions and set a benchmark for where the client is now and what the possibilities may be.
These are questions about lifestyle and other aspects that are non financial. It's about where else they have obtained advice and what was their experience. It's about hard questions about how they would live their life if time was limited or if money was no object.
Great questions take practice and take time to construct. PCE has created 4 questionnaires available via PCE for those interested. (yes website still under construction)
Further PCE have a benchmark tool to assess where a client sits now and where they will be after your advice.
3) Describe your methodology, for insurance sales, for choosing the right levels of cover. There are plenty of applications that work through clients scenarios, even i pad applications provided by life risk houses, and worksheets that PCE have developed. What's important is to highlight that there is a method and that all your clients go through this process and have positive results as a consequence : this is where the power of story telling about your clients comes into its own. And story telling is a critical element of step 3.
4) Use visuals to explain your suggested course of action. Be it words on a slide. A diagram about how it all fits together, what you need to do here is imprint in a clients mind the solidity of your solution. Flow charts work very well and if you can for example explain how packing insurance options works and will work for the client sitting in front of you by a visual method what stays with the client is not so much the product names and intracacies but rather that you have constructed (or will construct) something cohesive, relevant and understandable for them.
5) Describe the next steps : what is the application process / when will your recommendations be ready / what is the underwriting process and in doing so define the outcome that they will have which should be in the clients words and aligned to the objective that they want to achieve or that you have identified is a necessary component of their well being. Further provide them with an engagement pack that reassures them that they have made the right decision in choosing you. This will certainly have relevance when natural buyers remorse sets in. By having managed the psychology of the sale process during the appointment you have mitigated the natural thought process of the client and reassured them that what they experienced in your waiting room was genuine and that in a very short space of time the feeling that you understand them and are genuinely concerned about their well being. The WHY you are in business is powerful here. Make sure you tell them at this point why it is you do what you do.
Friday, 11 May 2012
More sales by connecting what you do with why you do it
This is one for the sales leaders. For the state managers, the heads of sales. The financial planning practice manager. The senior adviser. The team leader.
This is one for any one who leads or aspires to lead in a sales environment.....and yes financial planners and strategy solution coaches...that means you too....all sales people....trying to engage a client with an intangible....with a promise.
When we look at our teams we see people on different journeys who have come from different destinations and ended up in our team at our place of work. We induct them, some more in depth than others and we show them what it is that we do here. And some of them even get it. Others don't ...and it's really not their fault. Some do the same job for years and don't really understand at all how the company makes money and stays in business. They don't get how all the things that happen in the work place are interconnected.
They live in their silos ...the silo's mind you ...that leaders have created and maintain.
And then we ask them to share our vision, our goals, to work together to meet our objectives, our sales targets, to put the clients at the centre of their world, to practice stewardship and make customer focussed, commercially sensible decisions at the front line.
Yes, that'll work.
Well actually it won't but yet in our industry businesses operate like this every day and get by. They however are constantly on the look out for new opportunties for the next big idea, the clear water where they can get slightly ahead of the competition if only just for a quarter.
They spend money building new systems, new processes, new campaigns....new yes....innovations no....it's catch up in the donkey race.
Amabile and Kramer, The Progress Principle, HBR Press, 2011, write of their observations, study and findings discovering the essence of progress at work and its' connectedness to meaningful work. And there it is in all its' simplicity.
Progress can be achieved by connecting employees with meaningful work and celebrating the small daily progress that is achieved on the way to a goal.
What does this mean for an insurance providers sales team or for example a financial planning practice?
What it means is this:
1) do an audit of your staff - what in their own words does the business do?
2) what is their role in that objective?
3) what does it mean for the customer?
4) what are some of the daily hurdles that get in the way of their role?
5) what do they see as being daily wins that they feel proud of?
Now, you are not getting to get through to number 5 straight away. PCE thinks you might be talking about 1 for a while.
What's the pitch of what you do that all staff can embrace? And next and most importantly are they willing to walk that talk? Do they embody, practice and believe in the core promise of your business?
For insurance businesses it's pretty easy to work this one out. Do all your staff from front desk to admin, from claims staff to the sales team......do all of them have/or have discussed/planned for:
1) a comprehensive insurance package for themselves
2) a comprehensive insurance package for their significant other
3) insurance such as trauma cover for their children
4) for their siblings they know what cover is in place
5) for their parents they know there is adequate estate planning and powers of attorney
6) for their parents they know how aged care accomodation may be funded
7) for their friends they have encouraged and made sure they they speak to an adviser to get a plan in place for all the above
If the answer is yes to all of the above, then you have a leap ahead of your competition far more than any system upgrade will provide.
What you have at your disposal is a team that understands what it is that the business does and WHY the business does it. They have embraced it. They live it. They believe it. All they need to do now is bottle that story and deliver it to every prospect the business has.
And letting them do that ....that's your job...that's right...the leaders in the business....you need to get out of their way...and remove the hurdles in the way of letting these people shine.
This is one for any one who leads or aspires to lead in a sales environment.....and yes financial planners and strategy solution coaches...that means you too....all sales people....trying to engage a client with an intangible....with a promise.
When we look at our teams we see people on different journeys who have come from different destinations and ended up in our team at our place of work. We induct them, some more in depth than others and we show them what it is that we do here. And some of them even get it. Others don't ...and it's really not their fault. Some do the same job for years and don't really understand at all how the company makes money and stays in business. They don't get how all the things that happen in the work place are interconnected.
They live in their silos ...the silo's mind you ...that leaders have created and maintain.
And then we ask them to share our vision, our goals, to work together to meet our objectives, our sales targets, to put the clients at the centre of their world, to practice stewardship and make customer focussed, commercially sensible decisions at the front line.
Yes, that'll work.
Well actually it won't but yet in our industry businesses operate like this every day and get by. They however are constantly on the look out for new opportunties for the next big idea, the clear water where they can get slightly ahead of the competition if only just for a quarter.
They spend money building new systems, new processes, new campaigns....new yes....innovations no....it's catch up in the donkey race.
Amabile and Kramer, The Progress Principle, HBR Press, 2011, write of their observations, study and findings discovering the essence of progress at work and its' connectedness to meaningful work. And there it is in all its' simplicity.
Progress can be achieved by connecting employees with meaningful work and celebrating the small daily progress that is achieved on the way to a goal.
What does this mean for an insurance providers sales team or for example a financial planning practice?
What it means is this:
1) do an audit of your staff - what in their own words does the business do?
2) what is their role in that objective?
3) what does it mean for the customer?
4) what are some of the daily hurdles that get in the way of their role?
5) what do they see as being daily wins that they feel proud of?
Now, you are not getting to get through to number 5 straight away. PCE thinks you might be talking about 1 for a while.
What's the pitch of what you do that all staff can embrace? And next and most importantly are they willing to walk that talk? Do they embody, practice and believe in the core promise of your business?
For insurance businesses it's pretty easy to work this one out. Do all your staff from front desk to admin, from claims staff to the sales team......do all of them have/or have discussed/planned for:
1) a comprehensive insurance package for themselves
2) a comprehensive insurance package for their significant other
3) insurance such as trauma cover for their children
4) for their siblings they know what cover is in place
5) for their parents they know there is adequate estate planning and powers of attorney
6) for their parents they know how aged care accomodation may be funded
7) for their friends they have encouraged and made sure they they speak to an adviser to get a plan in place for all the above
If the answer is yes to all of the above, then you have a leap ahead of your competition far more than any system upgrade will provide.
What you have at your disposal is a team that understands what it is that the business does and WHY the business does it. They have embraced it. They live it. They believe it. All they need to do now is bottle that story and deliver it to every prospect the business has.
And letting them do that ....that's your job...that's right...the leaders in the business....you need to get out of their way...and remove the hurdles in the way of letting these people shine.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Successfully Engaging Centres of Influence - Slide Set
For the full presentation, Australian based personal risk insurance advisers can contact PCE. But here's a snippet for everyone.
Is strategy advice the key to successful centre of influence engagement?
So select your COI targets carefully.
And match them to your ideal clients.
As an example maybe your ideal clients are like these?
Build and be ready to articulate your capabilities and pitch.
Tailor your pitch to something that suits your style.
Then deliver to your chosen COI.
Finally use PCE tools such as the Wealth Management Index and Client Lifestyle Questionnaire to give the relationship with your COI ongoing life.
Is strategy advice the key to successful centre of influence engagement?
So select your COI targets carefully.
And match them to your ideal clients.
As an example maybe your ideal clients are like these?
Build and be ready to articulate your capabilities and pitch.
Tailor your pitch to something that suits your style.
Then deliver to your chosen COI.
Finally use PCE tools such as the Wealth Management Index and Client Lifestyle Questionnaire to give the relationship with your COI ongoing life.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Pay $0 for your next financial planning client lead and pay 1x$1 for your next financial planning client base
How'd you like to pay $0 in marketing costs for your next financial planning or insurance lead? That's right, no telemarketing costs incurred marketing to your existing client base or leads that you've paid for or clients that you've purchased.
Speaking of books of clients that you've purchased, just how much did you pay? A multiple of 2 times? 3 times? Surely not 3.5 times? In this market?
How'd you like to pay a multiple of 1 times for your next client base if not less?
This is the reality that financial planning and insurance professionals are creating for themselves by asking the right questions.
It is the people that they are posing these questions to that delivers this reality.
They are conversing with and engaging their existing client base.
Pay $0 for your next financial planning or insurance lead
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they work for?
2) What community or social groups do they belong to?
3) Who do they employ?
4) Who are the related to?
Let's start with who do they work for or who do they employ.
If they are employers themselves - what about that pay packet they pay staff - (that their staff rely upon) - it can be taken away from that staff member in an instant should that person be unable to work due to illness or an accident away from the workplace. Is that something they as an employer thinks is in the interest of the well being of their staff and is a positive outcome? Of course not.
If they are employed. Contact that employer. Offer that employer a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their staff has experienced. And upon experiencing the positive outcomes and process - should that not be something of value they could expose the remainder of their staff to?
Pay a multiple of $1 times for your next client base
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they obtain accounting and business advice services from?
Contact the accountant and yes offer that accountant a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their clients has experienced.
Maybe they won't buy in to that process that easily. No problem. Send them a sample statement of advice. Make sure it's one that aligns with the accountants niche (if they have one). Highlight in a cover letter / presentation the cross referral opportunities.
If you have constructed your statement of advice in the way we here at PCE have talked about (in our previous posts) then it's most probable they have not seen a document like it in the way it speaks and communicates to the client.
One business we know did just this.
A request came back from the accountant to takeup the free statement of advice. But it was not for the accountant. It was for the accountants mother.
Following the perparation of the statement of advice the recommendations were accepted and implemented. Within a short period of time (6 months) the accountant referred with such regularity that the main adviser based themselves out of the accountants office 2 days a week (7.30am until 5am) engaging with staff and clients.
That adviser now owns 50% of the accountancy practice (bought at 0.90 times).
All that by asking their top clients who did their tax.
Speaking of books of clients that you've purchased, just how much did you pay? A multiple of 2 times? 3 times? Surely not 3.5 times? In this market?
How'd you like to pay a multiple of 1 times for your next client base if not less?
This is the reality that financial planning and insurance professionals are creating for themselves by asking the right questions.
It is the people that they are posing these questions to that delivers this reality.
They are conversing with and engaging their existing client base.
Pay $0 for your next financial planning or insurance lead
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they work for?
2) What community or social groups do they belong to?
3) Who do they employ?
4) Who are the related to?
Let's start with who do they work for or who do they employ.
If they are employers themselves - what about that pay packet they pay staff - (that their staff rely upon) - it can be taken away from that staff member in an instant should that person be unable to work due to illness or an accident away from the workplace. Is that something they as an employer thinks is in the interest of the well being of their staff and is a positive outcome? Of course not.
If they are employed. Contact that employer. Offer that employer a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their staff has experienced. And upon experiencing the positive outcomes and process - should that not be something of value they could expose the remainder of their staff to?
Pay a multiple of $1 times for your next client base
Pick your top 25 clients and ask:
1) Who do they obtain accounting and business advice services from?
Contact the accountant and yes offer that accountant a free statement of advice (financial plan/insurance recommendation). Why? So they can experience the service and outcomes that one of their clients has experienced.
Maybe they won't buy in to that process that easily. No problem. Send them a sample statement of advice. Make sure it's one that aligns with the accountants niche (if they have one). Highlight in a cover letter / presentation the cross referral opportunities.
If you have constructed your statement of advice in the way we here at PCE have talked about (in our previous posts) then it's most probable they have not seen a document like it in the way it speaks and communicates to the client.
One business we know did just this.
A request came back from the accountant to takeup the free statement of advice. But it was not for the accountant. It was for the accountants mother.
Following the perparation of the statement of advice the recommendations were accepted and implemented. Within a short period of time (6 months) the accountant referred with such regularity that the main adviser based themselves out of the accountants office 2 days a week (7.30am until 5am) engaging with staff and clients.
That adviser now owns 50% of the accountancy practice (bought at 0.90 times).
All that by asking their top clients who did their tax.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Low Emotional Intelligence = Low Client Advocacy
We are constantly surprised at how the good old sales skills of basic rapport have eluded some of the new entrants into the world of financial services incorporating financial planning and insurance strategy professionals.
What seems to generate ridicule and scepticism with this new breed is what any etiquette book or course will define as basic manners and what members of groups such as the Million Dollar Round Table will define as going deep with a client.
The old breed of salesperson formed deep engaging and long term relationships with clients. These relationships lasted years, they developed into friendships - lifelong and they were not only with the client but the clients family who invariably became clients as well.
We are floored when we hear advisers say "I don't think I need to do any of that client engagement stuff.....I just sell insurance".
Well sir, we shan't be buying it from you.
EI - the ability to know one's self and therefore the ability to place yourself in the other persons shoes, to control your emotions and manage theirs is a fundamental part of sales.
It's about connecting with values, beliefs and respecting them. It transforms relationships and creates advocacy.
This is about leadership.
We'll talk more about leadership and EI in coming posts and how it transforms teams, businesses and lives.
What seems to generate ridicule and scepticism with this new breed is what any etiquette book or course will define as basic manners and what members of groups such as the Million Dollar Round Table will define as going deep with a client.
The old breed of salesperson formed deep engaging and long term relationships with clients. These relationships lasted years, they developed into friendships - lifelong and they were not only with the client but the clients family who invariably became clients as well.
We are floored when we hear advisers say "I don't think I need to do any of that client engagement stuff.....I just sell insurance".
Well sir, we shan't be buying it from you.
EI - the ability to know one's self and therefore the ability to place yourself in the other persons shoes, to control your emotions and manage theirs is a fundamental part of sales.
It's about connecting with values, beliefs and respecting them. It transforms relationships and creates advocacy.
This is about leadership.
We'll talk more about leadership and EI in coming posts and how it transforms teams, businesses and lives.
Saturday, 17 March 2012
$600K in lost super, ETF's, Julia as Morticia..and how advisers assist clients to live the dream
We've been travelling a lot lately and so this morning decided to flick through the last three weekend editions of the Australian Financial Review that we'd missed enjoying.
First priority; was to enter the competition to win a Mont Blanc watch; then cut out an article pointing to data indicating that young Americans are less interested in the environment, less energy conscious and less civil minded than their parents; another article on the mounting number of elections upcoming in the Eurozone; and finally the double page spread on self managed superannuation noting 33% of SMSF trustees were not using a financial advisers as the trustee thought they could do a better job of it themselves.....a point that was attempted to be underscored by the article about an Anglican vicar in Minister Shortens electorate who'd lost $600k in super after following advice.
But none of this (apart from the competition entry) got the blood flowing and more so the frustration building than the "theme" of each weekend.
March 3-4th.....risk appetite up and small caps the way to go
March 10-11th....economy is drowing and the worst week for 2012....time to go with ETF's as your strategy...eurozone looks to have settled
March 17-18th.....super funds overloaded with shares...so corporate bonds the way to go...oh that pesky eurozone with Greece jobless rates at record highs...but don't forget to get your Smart Invester magazine for the feature on the top 601....yes that..six hundred and one....suburbs for property.....
Now, we've always been contrarian investors....but schizophrenic...we are not.
The article reporting on and attacking advisers and fees (once again) contrasted with the change of tact in each weekly edition provides us with somewhat of a conundrum.
How is the average investor meant to succeed in developing, implementing, reviewing and adjusting a total financial planning solution including the foundations of asset protection (not a topic of any of the three editions mind you) when:
1) advice is lambasted as a waste of money or unreliable
2) "expert" opinion is poorly developed, researched and further a commentary on what's past rather than what awaits
3) stories of the need for advice and the positive lifechanging consequences of an advice relationship are not presented
Thank goodness for the watch competition and cartoons of Julia Gillard as Morticia to keep us amused.
The stories that need to be told that need to be written are those stories of:
1) advisers battling industry funds (pro bono mind you!) to provide decent and timely insurance payments to terminally ill members
2) advisers doing pro bono work for groups like the cancer council
3) advisers making a difference in the lives of clients by being advocates and friends during the claims process
4) advisers becoming the trusted family adviser as they work with multi-generations - supporting and facilitating entry into aged care facilities, handling the succession of family farms and businesses, providing the funds for childrens educations, assisting clients to pay down debts, to build for the futurem to start a family to......live their dreams.
Where are those stories?
Those stories are held in the hearts and minds of the too few of the public who get financial advice. Swayed from seeking advice by a focus on the few bad apples reported over and over and over again long after the damage is done. These stories are held in the businesses who deliver value everyday to their clients and do it quietly without fanfare and without the need to publicly seek kudos.
But these stories need to be told. Now is the time to tell your story. Tell it to your clients, get yor clients to tell it. Tell it to your AFSL licensee and let them publicise it. Tell it to your product providers. Tell it to your MP.
Advisers facilitate the dreams of their clients WHEN they understand what it is that is important to the client - what drives them and what it means to the client to live well and look after their family.
Advisers who do this and who truly understand what it means to provide solutions that have relevance and meaning shoudl be lauded.
We hope that in upcoming editions of the weekend AFR, we get to read those stories.
First priority; was to enter the competition to win a Mont Blanc watch; then cut out an article pointing to data indicating that young Americans are less interested in the environment, less energy conscious and less civil minded than their parents; another article on the mounting number of elections upcoming in the Eurozone; and finally the double page spread on self managed superannuation noting 33% of SMSF trustees were not using a financial advisers as the trustee thought they could do a better job of it themselves.....a point that was attempted to be underscored by the article about an Anglican vicar in Minister Shortens electorate who'd lost $600k in super after following advice.
But none of this (apart from the competition entry) got the blood flowing and more so the frustration building than the "theme" of each weekend.
March 3-4th.....risk appetite up and small caps the way to go
March 10-11th....economy is drowing and the worst week for 2012....time to go with ETF's as your strategy...eurozone looks to have settled
March 17-18th.....super funds overloaded with shares...so corporate bonds the way to go...oh that pesky eurozone with Greece jobless rates at record highs...but don't forget to get your Smart Invester magazine for the feature on the top 601....yes that..six hundred and one....suburbs for property.....
Now, we've always been contrarian investors....but schizophrenic...we are not.
The article reporting on and attacking advisers and fees (once again) contrasted with the change of tact in each weekly edition provides us with somewhat of a conundrum.
How is the average investor meant to succeed in developing, implementing, reviewing and adjusting a total financial planning solution including the foundations of asset protection (not a topic of any of the three editions mind you) when:
1) advice is lambasted as a waste of money or unreliable
2) "expert" opinion is poorly developed, researched and further a commentary on what's past rather than what awaits
3) stories of the need for advice and the positive lifechanging consequences of an advice relationship are not presented
Thank goodness for the watch competition and cartoons of Julia Gillard as Morticia to keep us amused.
The stories that need to be told that need to be written are those stories of:
1) advisers battling industry funds (pro bono mind you!) to provide decent and timely insurance payments to terminally ill members
2) advisers doing pro bono work for groups like the cancer council
3) advisers making a difference in the lives of clients by being advocates and friends during the claims process
4) advisers becoming the trusted family adviser as they work with multi-generations - supporting and facilitating entry into aged care facilities, handling the succession of family farms and businesses, providing the funds for childrens educations, assisting clients to pay down debts, to build for the futurem to start a family to......live their dreams.
Where are those stories?
Those stories are held in the hearts and minds of the too few of the public who get financial advice. Swayed from seeking advice by a focus on the few bad apples reported over and over and over again long after the damage is done. These stories are held in the businesses who deliver value everyday to their clients and do it quietly without fanfare and without the need to publicly seek kudos.
But these stories need to be told. Now is the time to tell your story. Tell it to your clients, get yor clients to tell it. Tell it to your AFSL licensee and let them publicise it. Tell it to your product providers. Tell it to your MP.
Advisers facilitate the dreams of their clients WHEN they understand what it is that is important to the client - what drives them and what it means to the client to live well and look after their family.
Advisers who do this and who truly understand what it means to provide solutions that have relevance and meaning shoudl be lauded.
We hope that in upcoming editions of the weekend AFR, we get to read those stories.
Friday, 16 March 2012
The question you need to ask your clients.
We've been lucky enough over the last few weeks to sit down with - financial advisers, leaders of advice groups, industry fund executives and insurance and financial services investment and insurance providers.
The themes that emerge have been consistent.
1) A lack of the number and quality of referrals coming into a financial planning and insurance business from both within the existing client base and from centres of influence.
2) An unhealthy focus on FOFA reforms in regard to the negative perceptions of an onerous imposition in process and in economic terms on financial advisers, dealer groups and planning practices.
3) An admission that industry funds spend very very little - in fact no time - on worring about what retail funds and retail advisers, IFA's are doing.
4) That capturing hearts and minds of clients and engaging with them with that as the focus is the key to success.
IFA's for the most part are (and this is a broad generalisation but one based on 24 years of observation) are asking the wrong questions and focussing on the wrong skills.
We hear comments like:
- we ask for referrals but we don't get any
- i've asked my clients to call me once a year for a review to check in but no-one ever calls
- clients are not interested in what we deliver - they do not see it as part of their lives
- the problem is the clients not us
Does anyone need a mirror here to stand in front of??????
If you want to capture hearts and minds and have a committed growing appreciative client base that provides countless referrals then you need to educate clients, provide them options and connect your solutions to their lives.
And yes PCE have created a range of engagement tools and processes to enable you to do this.
But at the risk of just making things simple for you, here's all you need to do.
The Question
Mr and Mrs Client......what does living well and looking after your family mean to you?
....tell me more.....
....go on....
....how would that make you feel.....
....how would that change things....
...if that happened then what.....
Do you get the picture?
And then......that's what we do here Mr and Mrs Client, our entire business is built on the promise that we create solutions to maximise the possibility that our clients can live well and look after their families.
We have seen this simple question and simple pitch transform businesses into ones that have engaged, attracted and retained clients that are appreciative and willing to pay for services that they see and understand are connected to the way they want to live their lives.
The themes that emerge have been consistent.
1) A lack of the number and quality of referrals coming into a financial planning and insurance business from both within the existing client base and from centres of influence.
2) An unhealthy focus on FOFA reforms in regard to the negative perceptions of an onerous imposition in process and in economic terms on financial advisers, dealer groups and planning practices.
3) An admission that industry funds spend very very little - in fact no time - on worring about what retail funds and retail advisers, IFA's are doing.
4) That capturing hearts and minds of clients and engaging with them with that as the focus is the key to success.
IFA's for the most part are (and this is a broad generalisation but one based on 24 years of observation) are asking the wrong questions and focussing on the wrong skills.
We hear comments like:
- we ask for referrals but we don't get any
- i've asked my clients to call me once a year for a review to check in but no-one ever calls
- clients are not interested in what we deliver - they do not see it as part of their lives
- the problem is the clients not us
Does anyone need a mirror here to stand in front of??????
If you want to capture hearts and minds and have a committed growing appreciative client base that provides countless referrals then you need to educate clients, provide them options and connect your solutions to their lives.
And yes PCE have created a range of engagement tools and processes to enable you to do this.
But at the risk of just making things simple for you, here's all you need to do.
The Question
Mr and Mrs Client......what does living well and looking after your family mean to you?
....tell me more.....
....go on....
....how would that make you feel.....
....how would that change things....
...if that happened then what.....
Do you get the picture?
And then......that's what we do here Mr and Mrs Client, our entire business is built on the promise that we create solutions to maximise the possibility that our clients can live well and look after their families.
We have seen this simple question and simple pitch transform businesses into ones that have engaged, attracted and retained clients that are appreciative and willing to pay for services that they see and understand are connected to the way they want to live their lives.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
How to positively change your world in 2012
So as we draw close to the next stage of Positive Client Engagement - the specific tools and processes (including process maps) to develop, launch, implement and maintain the positive client philosophy and grow your financial planning and insurance business it is important to understand that one of the critical things you need to change in your business is....you.
This means adopting some key behaviours and processes in how you manage yourself and mentor your staff.
1) Set your success goal
The need for setting goals to aim for and measure yourself again is critical. Just as you need to coach your clients towards the ideal of success for them, you need to to design what success looks like for you.
2) Develop your networks
Nowadays people link through networks more than ever through the speed and depth that technology caters for. How you manage, contribute and participate in networks is crucial. Diary management and setting aside time to network is a success strategy that with only as little as 2 hours per week can build your networks exponentially.
3) Get your own success coach
If olympic atheletes at the peak of their prowess, tennis players at the height of their career seek out coaches - why are you any different? A mentor/coach/professional business consultant is someone to challenge, guide and keep you accountable to the promises you make to yourself and are a vital element of your success plan.
4) Understand yourself
This means assessing yourself, having other assess you and all in all means developing your emotional intelligence and capacity to become a transformational leader.
5) Understand your skills and capabilities
Conducting an audit on yourself and importantly on what it is that empowers and motivates you delivers the will and the attitude and focus that you will need to deliver on your success plan.
In our next series of posts we will take all the discussions so far from Positive Client Engagement and walk you through the process of engaging your clients in real life scenarios.
This means adopting some key behaviours and processes in how you manage yourself and mentor your staff.
1) Set your success goal
The need for setting goals to aim for and measure yourself again is critical. Just as you need to coach your clients towards the ideal of success for them, you need to to design what success looks like for you.
2) Develop your networks
Nowadays people link through networks more than ever through the speed and depth that technology caters for. How you manage, contribute and participate in networks is crucial. Diary management and setting aside time to network is a success strategy that with only as little as 2 hours per week can build your networks exponentially.
3) Get your own success coach
If olympic atheletes at the peak of their prowess, tennis players at the height of their career seek out coaches - why are you any different? A mentor/coach/professional business consultant is someone to challenge, guide and keep you accountable to the promises you make to yourself and are a vital element of your success plan.
4) Understand yourself
This means assessing yourself, having other assess you and all in all means developing your emotional intelligence and capacity to become a transformational leader.
5) Understand your skills and capabilities
Conducting an audit on yourself and importantly on what it is that empowers and motivates you delivers the will and the attitude and focus that you will need to deliver on your success plan.
In our next series of posts we will take all the discussions so far from Positive Client Engagement and walk you through the process of engaging your clients in real life scenarios.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Invaluable Consumer Insights - "How we'd like our financial adviser to engage"
So if you've been a reader of our posts you may be thinking these writings are a bit left of centre, that you have a process for engaging clients in your financial services, financial planning, insurance business and it works just fine.
That's great!
So I need to ask you something.
Can you self assess your process against the following wants of clients?
Recently we conducted some focus groups with consumers on a range of brand recognition issues(in respect to financial services companies) and engagement perceptions by insurance advisers and financial planners.
We found brand recognition high for the 2 major players in the domestic market in respect to the fact that these two AMP and MLC were immediately associated with financial advice. Product recognition was high for BT and Colonial First State but the associated financial planning groups were not recognised.
The major banks had a high degree of recognition for lending services but low recognition with financial advice and the perceived quality of that advice.
In regard to engagement this is what the consumers said they wanted:
- "I want an adviser that shows they are interested in my situation and what I need"
- "I want to understand how what products they recommend are actually going to make a difference to my family"
- " I do not want off the shelf advice, I want it personalised"
- I want the adviser to know what is important to me, before they give me advice" - " I want them to know me, not just my financials"
- "If they can't connect the strategy to my life goals, then I think they miss the point"
- "I feel like I'm being sold something that's standard I don't understand how it's for me"
- "I don't care about generic newsletters in a service offer, I want something that is relevant to me"
- "I got some advice, I couldn't understand it, the report was 100 pages long, it was just a computer programme with my name on the front. Then they asked me to refer family and friends, they are kidding themselves"
-"My mortgage guy knows more about me and my family than my adviser ever could. The guy who did my loans has been to my house, he knows how I live and what sort of people we are"
So, how much do you know about your clients? How relevant and meaningful are your recommendations? What does you advice - written reports - statements of advice - look like, read like?
Still comfortable with your process?
That's great!
So I need to ask you something.
Can you self assess your process against the following wants of clients?
Recently we conducted some focus groups with consumers on a range of brand recognition issues(in respect to financial services companies) and engagement perceptions by insurance advisers and financial planners.
We found brand recognition high for the 2 major players in the domestic market in respect to the fact that these two AMP and MLC were immediately associated with financial advice. Product recognition was high for BT and Colonial First State but the associated financial planning groups were not recognised.
The major banks had a high degree of recognition for lending services but low recognition with financial advice and the perceived quality of that advice.
In regard to engagement this is what the consumers said they wanted:
- "I want an adviser that shows they are interested in my situation and what I need"
- "I want to understand how what products they recommend are actually going to make a difference to my family"
- " I do not want off the shelf advice, I want it personalised"
- I want the adviser to know what is important to me, before they give me advice" - " I want them to know me, not just my financials"
- "If they can't connect the strategy to my life goals, then I think they miss the point"
- "I feel like I'm being sold something that's standard I don't understand how it's for me"
- "I don't care about generic newsletters in a service offer, I want something that is relevant to me"
- "I got some advice, I couldn't understand it, the report was 100 pages long, it was just a computer programme with my name on the front. Then they asked me to refer family and friends, they are kidding themselves"
-"My mortgage guy knows more about me and my family than my adviser ever could. The guy who did my loans has been to my house, he knows how I live and what sort of people we are"
So, how much do you know about your clients? How relevant and meaningful are your recommendations? What does you advice - written reports - statements of advice - look like, read like?
Still comfortable with your process?
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Connecting with Your Clients
Some of the final check points you should be able to tick of in your client pitch involves the ability to have your client say of the interaction that you " understand them" and "answered all of my concerns".
You can only do this if you do actually understand your client, how they feel about issues facing them and then can speak with them about what it is that they truly care about.
Most financial strategy solution pitches do not resonate and cut through the audience as they are delivered in a sequential agenda driven format.
You only need to attend a presentation from an investment house to understand this. The summary is flashed before you and the speaker however articulate moves through the topics in sadly most cases without capturing the attention and recruiting the passions of the audience.
You financial strategy and insurance solution pitches face the same problems because of the way we have been taught to write and present them.
The best method of delivery encompasses:
- providing a structure without the formal method
This means it needs to be personal.
In her book "Say It Like Obama and Win", Shel Leanne, writes of the method employed to speak to the needs of people.
Recognises, Remembers, Responsive.
She emphasises that listeners want to hear that the presenter realises the issues they are facing, references those issues and is responsive to thoe issues.
By connecting your sales pitch in this way, you are able to not only demonstrate that you understand, but you transcend further your competitors by illustrating that you care.
Taking this a step further involves you demonstrating that not only have you tailored your solutions for the specific concerns of the client in front of you but that you also have experience dealing with the same situations either yourself (in you family - revisit the family tree conversation) or with other clients.
This shows the client that you "have been there yourself" or you "really get" the client through your experiences.
This is far more powerful than you brochure on all of your technical experise and the credentials on your wall.
Next time we'll look at the use of imagery in closing your pitch.
You can only do this if you do actually understand your client, how they feel about issues facing them and then can speak with them about what it is that they truly care about.
Most financial strategy solution pitches do not resonate and cut through the audience as they are delivered in a sequential agenda driven format.
You only need to attend a presentation from an investment house to understand this. The summary is flashed before you and the speaker however articulate moves through the topics in sadly most cases without capturing the attention and recruiting the passions of the audience.
You financial strategy and insurance solution pitches face the same problems because of the way we have been taught to write and present them.
The best method of delivery encompasses:
- providing a structure without the formal method
This means it needs to be personal.
In her book "Say It Like Obama and Win", Shel Leanne, writes of the method employed to speak to the needs of people.
Recognises, Remembers, Responsive.
She emphasises that listeners want to hear that the presenter realises the issues they are facing, references those issues and is responsive to thoe issues.
By connecting your sales pitch in this way, you are able to not only demonstrate that you understand, but you transcend further your competitors by illustrating that you care.
Taking this a step further involves you demonstrating that not only have you tailored your solutions for the specific concerns of the client in front of you but that you also have experience dealing with the same situations either yourself (in you family - revisit the family tree conversation) or with other clients.
This shows the client that you "have been there yourself" or you "really get" the client through your experiences.
This is far more powerful than you brochure on all of your technical experise and the credentials on your wall.
Next time we'll look at the use of imagery in closing your pitch.
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Passion, Flow and Meaningfulness - Your Business Plan for 2012
We've taken a deviation from the latest series of topics (which have been focussed on sales pitches and presentations using the engagement techniques we've promoted).
The reason is that there are no techniques, no presentations, no silver bullet to sales, and the development of your small business in the professional insurance, financial planning and financial services space if you do not have the motivation and well-being suited to managing your work efforts and direction.
Richard Sisely, New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 35(2), 28-40, looked at the issue of motivation and the facilitation of autonomous motivation and its impact on well being.
Sisley wrote that intrinsic motivation had a high connection with relationships built on trust, empathy and stability.
Hang on a second. Isn't that what you are trying achieve as a professional financial planner and insurance adviser?
Tell me more!!
Sisely also then expanded and suggested that striving for self-determined goals (such as your plans for 2012 in your business) is connected with well-being and a determinant of a daily positive mood.
I'm liking the sound of this especially in the current economic climate!
Because this has implications for your business and in turn your clients.
First in your business this has implications for staff selection and for the assignment of roles/tasks in your business.
If you've read the E -Myth, or done a sticky note exercise where you look at all the tasks in your business and who does them.....and who should be doing them...then you understand where this is heading.
You need with these tasks as Sisely describes to assign a value identification with them. You need to take your staff on the journey of the validity of the task and the impact on the client.
This leads to better client engagement and outcomes.
What about you and your motivation and your passion?
Passion according to Sisley has a correlation with work satisfaction, well-being, and less stress.
Passion is critical. What in 2012 are you passionate about? Share it. Document it. Write it on a wall (or whiteboard). Share it with your clients. Make yourself accountable to your passion.
Flow, or the optimal experience (read effectiveness and efficiency) brings with it positive moods. You are far more likely to take on those tasks that you already have attached validity to and that are assigned correctly when your passion is driving you. It's that feeling of, well for want of a better word....flowing.
Meaningfulness. My favourite of Sisely's writings, meaningfulness depends on your own values and that also means having a high enough emotional intelligence quotient that you can respect others values. EI is that ability to not only be aware of your own feelings and emotions but to then use that information to guide your actions (Hur et al, 2011).
And that's where a transformational leader can create a service climate of exceptional quality.
It is a palpable feeling that you get when you walk into a business that delivers excellence in the customer experience.
Can you learn EI? Yes there are courses. Maybe you can improve. It is said it improves with age...so you can wait I guess.
But if EI houses the qualities of empathy, motivation, self-awareness, trust, emotional stability and these are all qualities of a transformational leader then there is one thing you need to do.
Get up, walk to the mirror and ask yourself a few questions.
- what are you passionate about?
- are you ready to share that passion?
- what are your values?
- do you live them?
- what are the values of the people around you?
- do you know - do you ask them?
- do you act in a way that is true to your values?
- what can you do daily to develop empathy, motivation, self-awareness, trust, emotional stability
But most of all - get passionate!
Back to the presentation pitches next time
The reason is that there are no techniques, no presentations, no silver bullet to sales, and the development of your small business in the professional insurance, financial planning and financial services space if you do not have the motivation and well-being suited to managing your work efforts and direction.
Richard Sisely, New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 35(2), 28-40, looked at the issue of motivation and the facilitation of autonomous motivation and its impact on well being.
Sisley wrote that intrinsic motivation had a high connection with relationships built on trust, empathy and stability.
Hang on a second. Isn't that what you are trying achieve as a professional financial planner and insurance adviser?
Tell me more!!
Sisely also then expanded and suggested that striving for self-determined goals (such as your plans for 2012 in your business) is connected with well-being and a determinant of a daily positive mood.
I'm liking the sound of this especially in the current economic climate!
Because this has implications for your business and in turn your clients.
First in your business this has implications for staff selection and for the assignment of roles/tasks in your business.
If you've read the E -Myth, or done a sticky note exercise where you look at all the tasks in your business and who does them.....and who should be doing them...then you understand where this is heading.
You need with these tasks as Sisely describes to assign a value identification with them. You need to take your staff on the journey of the validity of the task and the impact on the client.
This leads to better client engagement and outcomes.
What about you and your motivation and your passion?
Passion according to Sisley has a correlation with work satisfaction, well-being, and less stress.
Passion is critical. What in 2012 are you passionate about? Share it. Document it. Write it on a wall (or whiteboard). Share it with your clients. Make yourself accountable to your passion.
Flow, or the optimal experience (read effectiveness and efficiency) brings with it positive moods. You are far more likely to take on those tasks that you already have attached validity to and that are assigned correctly when your passion is driving you. It's that feeling of, well for want of a better word....flowing.
Meaningfulness. My favourite of Sisely's writings, meaningfulness depends on your own values and that also means having a high enough emotional intelligence quotient that you can respect others values. EI is that ability to not only be aware of your own feelings and emotions but to then use that information to guide your actions (Hur et al, 2011).
And that's where a transformational leader can create a service climate of exceptional quality.
It is a palpable feeling that you get when you walk into a business that delivers excellence in the customer experience.
Can you learn EI? Yes there are courses. Maybe you can improve. It is said it improves with age...so you can wait I guess.
But if EI houses the qualities of empathy, motivation, self-awareness, trust, emotional stability and these are all qualities of a transformational leader then there is one thing you need to do.
Get up, walk to the mirror and ask yourself a few questions.
- what are you passionate about?
- are you ready to share that passion?
- what are your values?
- do you live them?
- what are the values of the people around you?
- do you know - do you ask them?
- do you act in a way that is true to your values?
- what can you do daily to develop empathy, motivation, self-awareness, trust, emotional stability
But most of all - get passionate!
Back to the presentation pitches next time
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Laying the Ground For The Perfect Sales Pitch
The perfect sales pitch delivery doesn't happen on the day of the pitch. The fertile ground that is sown during the initial discovery meetings with your clients AND how exactly you sow that seed will determine your success.
In fiancial planning and insurance sales this involves you as the professional adviser enaging the client on:
- areas of discomfort for a client and doing this early in the engagement process removes/reduced barriers to change
- sharing commonalities, shared experiences, shared values and aspirations
- winning their heart and mind by showing that you understand their point of view AND that you have had experience dealing with the situations they face
THIS IS NOT THE TIME to share with them a diatribe on your education, experience and your financial services guide. (We expect of course there is some compliance requirement that has been met appropriately).
THIS IS THE TIME TO:
- question them on why they have not taken action before
- their experiences with the provision of advice
- sharing your story with them about what you have done to insure and plan for your family
- what experiences your other clients have had and NOT how you dealt with and provided solutions BUT rather how they felt when the solution you crafted was put in place
You NEED THEREFORE
- to adopt the techniques described in how to use the family tree technique
- to tell your own story
- to tell compelling client stories - insurance claims are key here
- to engage them on values
- to verbally acknowledge the barriers they may have and respect them
A well crafted client questionnaire such as those now available from Positive Client Engagement will be a success guide and tool for you and an assessment for a client that can lead with your help to outcomes that are transformational.
In fiancial planning and insurance sales this involves you as the professional adviser enaging the client on:
- areas of discomfort for a client and doing this early in the engagement process removes/reduced barriers to change
- sharing commonalities, shared experiences, shared values and aspirations
- winning their heart and mind by showing that you understand their point of view AND that you have had experience dealing with the situations they face
THIS IS NOT THE TIME to share with them a diatribe on your education, experience and your financial services guide. (We expect of course there is some compliance requirement that has been met appropriately).
THIS IS THE TIME TO:
- question them on why they have not taken action before
- their experiences with the provision of advice
- sharing your story with them about what you have done to insure and plan for your family
- what experiences your other clients have had and NOT how you dealt with and provided solutions BUT rather how they felt when the solution you crafted was put in place
You NEED THEREFORE
- to adopt the techniques described in how to use the family tree technique
- to tell your own story
- to tell compelling client stories - insurance claims are key here
- to engage them on values
- to verbally acknowledge the barriers they may have and respect them
A well crafted client questionnaire such as those now available from Positive Client Engagement will be a success guide and tool for you and an assessment for a client that can lead with your help to outcomes that are transformational.
Friday, 3 February 2012
Writing a Great Sales Pitch - Statements of Advice written by your client
So last time we promised that the next step was to discuss what to say in your sales presentation and importantly how to say it.
Well it's a little more involved than that BUT it's paradoxically simple.
Great sales presentations in financial planning and insurance do not depend on being a great presenter. Rather you need to have a great presentation as a base.
This point should instantly ease the minds of those insurance and financial planning professionals who HATE "presenting".
Even a poor presenter can make a few lines from Shakespeare sound good. Who couldn't?
It's the content of your pitch that is critical.
This means it's the right story for the client to hear and see. Using the right words that will resonate with the client. It's about using their words - the very words they've used when answering your lifestyle questionnaire. By doing that you capture the emotion of the core motivating drivers that are in play for the client.
So what's the lesson here when writing your pitch:
1) Use the clients words to show that you appreciate and respect thier values and dreams
2) Connect your financial planning and insurance solution to those values and dreams
3) Do it with a mix of visual, audio and text content
4) Describe it in broad terms
5) Make sure that what you are saying has a structure around it
6) Make sure that you repeat the core essence of the outcomes of your recommendations over and over and over and over again throughout your presentation
Do this in a cover letter, in a visual slide show and in words. Three ways of communicating the same message. Punctuate your Statement of Advice with bold double font quotes from the client lifestyle questionnaire as the "sub-headings" for each relevant recommendation.
The Statement of Advice will then be transformed from a document that is disconnected financial planning jargon to a document that is signposted with the clients words, thoughts, hopes, dreams and ambitions.
It will become a document that they have immense ownership of and when you own something .....you protect it.
In otherwords - they become your client and your advocate.
Next Time:
- keeping it simple
- and the power slide/page in your pitch
Well it's a little more involved than that BUT it's paradoxically simple.
Great sales presentations in financial planning and insurance do not depend on being a great presenter. Rather you need to have a great presentation as a base.
This point should instantly ease the minds of those insurance and financial planning professionals who HATE "presenting".
Even a poor presenter can make a few lines from Shakespeare sound good. Who couldn't?
It's the content of your pitch that is critical.
This means it's the right story for the client to hear and see. Using the right words that will resonate with the client. It's about using their words - the very words they've used when answering your lifestyle questionnaire. By doing that you capture the emotion of the core motivating drivers that are in play for the client.
So what's the lesson here when writing your pitch:
1) Use the clients words to show that you appreciate and respect thier values and dreams
2) Connect your financial planning and insurance solution to those values and dreams
3) Do it with a mix of visual, audio and text content
4) Describe it in broad terms
5) Make sure that what you are saying has a structure around it
6) Make sure that you repeat the core essence of the outcomes of your recommendations over and over and over and over again throughout your presentation
Do this in a cover letter, in a visual slide show and in words. Three ways of communicating the same message. Punctuate your Statement of Advice with bold double font quotes from the client lifestyle questionnaire as the "sub-headings" for each relevant recommendation.
The Statement of Advice will then be transformed from a document that is disconnected financial planning jargon to a document that is signposted with the clients words, thoughts, hopes, dreams and ambitions.
It will become a document that they have immense ownership of and when you own something .....you protect it.
In otherwords - they become your client and your advocate.
Next Time:
- keeping it simple
- and the power slide/page in your pitch
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Sales Presentations That Win!
We hope you've started 2012 ready to embrace the opportunity that awaits those financial planning and insurance businesses that have developed the capabilities to positively engage clients with depth relevance and meaning.
That means you'd be familiar with the concepts around client engagement that are regular features of our writings:
- using smart questionnaires that embed communication models within them
- you have a great story
- you use a family tree in your dicussions with clients
And most of all you have developed capabilities in your business to engage the client throughout the buying process and made the financial planning and insurance strategies, relevant by using techniques that ensure the client projects and assesses the future and can see what your strategy looks, feels, even sounds like to them, thus providing compelling reasons for action.
Now you just need to make your final pitch.
In the financial planning and insurance business - you need to present your Statement of Advice.
The next phase of our writings in the coming months will be focussed on making sales presentations.
A good reference for anyone making any sort of presentation is a wonderfully engaging book by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity - "Life's a Pitch: How to Sell Yourself and Your Brilliant Ideas" (2008).
As Bayley and Mavity point out, "when you are pitching to someone, you're asking them to judge the future.....their judgement won't be based on logical fctors, but on emotional factors, trust, confidence, hope, ambition, desire".
In the financial planning and insurance world this point is incredibly relevant.
If you have not engaged clients for example with an understanding of the four drive theory - then you have not engaged your client with emotion, trust, you have not inspired confidence, demonstrated the ability to deliver hope and the ambitions and desires they have.
Your sales pitch is doomed.
Re-read our previous articles for help if you have no idea what we're talking about at this point!!!
Next time we'll look at what it takes and how to write a great presentation and over the coming weeks, we'll discover:
- what to say and how to say it
- keeping things simple
- the power "slide"
- where to put your executive summary
- the power of practice
- language that resonates, is remembered and illicits a response
That means you'd be familiar with the concepts around client engagement that are regular features of our writings:
- using smart questionnaires that embed communication models within them
- you have a great story
- you use a family tree in your dicussions with clients
And most of all you have developed capabilities in your business to engage the client throughout the buying process and made the financial planning and insurance strategies, relevant by using techniques that ensure the client projects and assesses the future and can see what your strategy looks, feels, even sounds like to them, thus providing compelling reasons for action.
Now you just need to make your final pitch.
In the financial planning and insurance business - you need to present your Statement of Advice.
The next phase of our writings in the coming months will be focussed on making sales presentations.
A good reference for anyone making any sort of presentation is a wonderfully engaging book by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity - "Life's a Pitch: How to Sell Yourself and Your Brilliant Ideas" (2008).
As Bayley and Mavity point out, "when you are pitching to someone, you're asking them to judge the future.....their judgement won't be based on logical fctors, but on emotional factors, trust, confidence, hope, ambition, desire".
In the financial planning and insurance world this point is incredibly relevant.
If you have not engaged clients for example with an understanding of the four drive theory - then you have not engaged your client with emotion, trust, you have not inspired confidence, demonstrated the ability to deliver hope and the ambitions and desires they have.
Your sales pitch is doomed.
Re-read our previous articles for help if you have no idea what we're talking about at this point!!!
Next time we'll look at what it takes and how to write a great presentation and over the coming weeks, we'll discover:
- what to say and how to say it
- keeping things simple
- the power "slide"
- where to put your executive summary
- the power of practice
- language that resonates, is remembered and illicits a response
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Closing Sales Questions That Matter - Managing Client Sales Psychology
It's time now to take your closing skills to the next level.
You can only use the techniques we'll talk about today in engaging your clients in the sales process to provide fantastic client outcomes if you have successfully and expertly identified:
- the areas of the clients financial and insurance solution that are lacking, and these have been clearly identified to the client and importantly to the referral source that ideally these clients have come from due to the success of the use of the wealth management index questions (as dicussed in our early posts)
AND
- you have engaged the client on a psycho-emotional level and discovered invaluable information about how they feel about specific areas of their lives, how they rate those aspects now and what they would like to see in the future around those specific areas
AND
- you have explored what success looks, feels, sounds like to the client and what are the regrets the client would have should time escape them and they do not fulfil their dreams
By doing this you would have positively engaged your clients in a manner and depth that few sales professionals in financial services do.
You would have clearly differentiated yourself from competitors and you would have developed an incredible level of rapport as a consequence of taking the time to understand your clients values and showing respect towards those values.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR PROSPECT / CLIENT WILL BUY FROM YOU.
You now need to make a great attempt at pre-closing.
After you have followed all the above you have earned the right to ask questions about the clients final decision making process.
The range of questions you need to ask will cover:
- the types of financial and insurance decisions they have made in the past
- how and from whom that advice was delivered
- the experience the recollect in the delivery of that advice - their perception
- what stage they are at in the buying process
- what stops them making decisions
- who do they involve in the buying process decision - which voices do they listen to including the ones in their head
- what they expect from you
All of this combined with what you have learnt, from using the techniques we've discussed previously, about how they process information, will enable you to make the pitch of your life and win the deal.
And if you don't view every client presentation of the solution that you have invested so much time, education, professionalism and emotion is as the pitch of your life......the client/prospective client will know that.
After all what you do on a daily basis is make the lives of your clients better ....that's worth getting passionate about.
Follow Positive Client Engagement over the next few months and we'll show you how to deliver the best pitches possible.
Till next time
You can only use the techniques we'll talk about today in engaging your clients in the sales process to provide fantastic client outcomes if you have successfully and expertly identified:
- the areas of the clients financial and insurance solution that are lacking, and these have been clearly identified to the client and importantly to the referral source that ideally these clients have come from due to the success of the use of the wealth management index questions (as dicussed in our early posts)
AND
- you have engaged the client on a psycho-emotional level and discovered invaluable information about how they feel about specific areas of their lives, how they rate those aspects now and what they would like to see in the future around those specific areas
AND
- you have explored what success looks, feels, sounds like to the client and what are the regrets the client would have should time escape them and they do not fulfil their dreams
By doing this you would have positively engaged your clients in a manner and depth that few sales professionals in financial services do.
You would have clearly differentiated yourself from competitors and you would have developed an incredible level of rapport as a consequence of taking the time to understand your clients values and showing respect towards those values.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR PROSPECT / CLIENT WILL BUY FROM YOU.
You now need to make a great attempt at pre-closing.
After you have followed all the above you have earned the right to ask questions about the clients final decision making process.
The range of questions you need to ask will cover:
- the types of financial and insurance decisions they have made in the past
- how and from whom that advice was delivered
- the experience the recollect in the delivery of that advice - their perception
- what stage they are at in the buying process
- what stops them making decisions
- who do they involve in the buying process decision - which voices do they listen to including the ones in their head
- what they expect from you
All of this combined with what you have learnt, from using the techniques we've discussed previously, about how they process information, will enable you to make the pitch of your life and win the deal.
And if you don't view every client presentation of the solution that you have invested so much time, education, professionalism and emotion is as the pitch of your life......the client/prospective client will know that.
After all what you do on a daily basis is make the lives of your clients better ....that's worth getting passionate about.
Follow Positive Client Engagement over the next few months and we'll show you how to deliver the best pitches possible.
Till next time
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Selling with assurance - letting your clients know they've made the right decision
We've spoken previously about generating referrals from yoru ideal clients and giving your newly engaged clients great comfort that they have made the right buying decision.
A client engagement letter is an ideal technique to increase your sales conversions and enhance the referrals you get from client advocates.
Here's a quick example that you can use as a base.
Enjoy the sales uplift!
1 January 2012
Mr X and Mrs Y Client
1 Smith Street
Smithsville VIC 3000
Dear X and Y,
Congratulations, you’ve made the right choice
Thank you X and Y for entrusting ABC Financial Services, with the development of your financial planning / insurance solution that serves to enhance/protect your lifestyle and the people and dreams that are important to you.
We are responsible for the service you receive
I as the principal adviser of ABC Financial Services am solely responsible for the service you receive during this process from my team. This means that any matter you need clarified or wish to ask questions about can be directed to me personally.
We are here for you
Accordingly please find enclosed our corporate brochure/my business cards/ our contact sheet for our office/ a handy fridge magnet so you have at your disposal the appropriate contact details for the office.
We value your feedback
As our business is a referral only business/ is built on referrals our existing clients are our biggest advocates. The constant source of referrals from our clients means we can spend less time on activities to find new clients and more time developing and servicing the solutions for the clients that find and stay with us.
Any feedback during and after the development of your solution will be greatly appreciated so that we can strive to have you as another client advocate and have a positive influence on not only your situation but for the people you value in your social and family circle.
Next Steps
Attached is our service schedule tailored to your situation that documents the process involved, time line for delivery and our service package/fees/charges/costs solution that you have chosen.
Please take the time to ensure that this reflects your understanding of our discussions and complete the section that requires your signature, and return in the envelope/by email and our work with you will commence.
Yours Sincerely
ABC Financial Planning
A client engagement letter is an ideal technique to increase your sales conversions and enhance the referrals you get from client advocates.
Here's a quick example that you can use as a base.
Enjoy the sales uplift!
1 January 2012
Mr X and Mrs Y Client
1 Smith Street
Smithsville VIC 3000
Dear X and Y,
Congratulations, you’ve made the right choice
Thank you X and Y for entrusting ABC Financial Services, with the development of your financial planning / insurance solution that serves to enhance/protect your lifestyle and the people and dreams that are important to you.
We are responsible for the service you receive
I as the principal adviser of ABC Financial Services am solely responsible for the service you receive during this process from my team. This means that any matter you need clarified or wish to ask questions about can be directed to me personally.
We are here for you
Accordingly please find enclosed our corporate brochure/my business cards/ our contact sheet for our office/ a handy fridge magnet so you have at your disposal the appropriate contact details for the office.
We value your feedback
As our business is a referral only business/ is built on referrals our existing clients are our biggest advocates. The constant source of referrals from our clients means we can spend less time on activities to find new clients and more time developing and servicing the solutions for the clients that find and stay with us.
Any feedback during and after the development of your solution will be greatly appreciated so that we can strive to have you as another client advocate and have a positive influence on not only your situation but for the people you value in your social and family circle.
Next Steps
Attached is our service schedule tailored to your situation that documents the process involved, time line for delivery and our service package/fees/charges/costs solution that you have chosen.
Please take the time to ensure that this reflects your understanding of our discussions and complete the section that requires your signature, and return in the envelope/by email and our work with you will commence.
Yours Sincerely
ABC Financial Planning
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