So in our last post we looked at how you can get refferals of the ideal client from an ideal referral source.
The idea at it's core was a meet and greet to determine which businesses have a similar raison d'etre to yours: that is a great client experience and true value and partnership and collaboration with clients. (stop reading now if you don't want that as an outcome!).
So who do you invite and how do you structure it?
Here are 6 steps that work!
1) Who to invite:
- existing referral contacts
- ask them to bring a peer
- ask them to bring key staff
Next layer of invitation:
- your local business networking group contacts : ask them to refer to the event their accountant / solicitor/ mortgage / general insurance broker
Next layer of invitation:
- any business contact who could add value in engaging on the night ie: they have a service that the attendees could utilise
Next layer of invitation:
- local businesses that you think could refer to you : check out websites to see if they offer in house services like yours
- then call them and see if they do lets say you make a discrete inquiry as if you were a potential client
Next layer of invitation:
- existing clients : who are their accountants etc? : ring your best 10 client and ask
2) Speaker: who are you going to get that will be free!!??
- local politician
- travel / lifestyle sourced from local business
Remember you are positioning yourself as a facilitator so getting a local memberof parliment is a great coup.
3) Invitation
- as per our previous post ......the key aim is "meet local businesses who face similar issues/challenges"......and secondary "our special guest(s)......."
4) Format
- no business pitch
- know who is coming
- strategically introduce people on the night
- let the evening flow
5) Location
- room / side room / adjoining area of bar/ local hotel - somewhere with atmosphere and sight and sound that does not drown you out but layers the senses
6) Follow up
- we can discuss that later in our next post
Showing posts with label Service Proposition Differentiation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Service Proposition Differentiation. Show all posts
Monday, 14 January 2013
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Business Plan Template : A Guide to Pro-Active Client Engagement
So the end of the year is nigh and if you are really serious about making 2013 a success, then it is highly likely that you have already thought about your key client engagement plans for next year and quite possibly planned out the first three months of 2013.
No?
What are you waiting for??!!!
Imagine ending 2012 knowing exactly what the next twelve months looked like from a client engagement point of view in regard to a series of set plays.
Activity and responsiveness are of course key, but having a structured plan to support your day to day, business as usual activity can provide a clarity and preparation that your competitors just have not got around to doing.
The attached template is not an answer to your client engagement dreams but what it is, is a simple yet powerful tool to illustrate just how well planned your year is, or conversely highlights that your client engagement planning is not up to scratch.
So in 2013 give yourself, your team and your clients the gift of leadership, pro-activity and positive client experiences that will should you be disciplined enough to follow through deliver success in 2013.
You can access the template from the attached link.
No?
What are you waiting for??!!!
Imagine ending 2012 knowing exactly what the next twelve months looked like from a client engagement point of view in regard to a series of set plays.
Activity and responsiveness are of course key, but having a structured plan to support your day to day, business as usual activity can provide a clarity and preparation that your competitors just have not got around to doing.
The attached template is not an answer to your client engagement dreams but what it is, is a simple yet powerful tool to illustrate just how well planned your year is, or conversely highlights that your client engagement planning is not up to scratch.
So in 2013 give yourself, your team and your clients the gift of leadership, pro-activity and positive client experiences that will should you be disciplined enough to follow through deliver success in 2013.
You can access the template from the attached link.
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Why people buy from you
PCE has often written about how to enhance the buying process using positive psychology that taps into human motivation.
The ability to do this is reliant on your understanding of what drives human behaviour and in particular why it is that people connect with you and your offering.
PCE and others have written about the work of Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria whose theory on human behaviour can be adapted to the sales process in financial planning and especially insurance sales.
As a recap the theory suggests that humans have 4 insatiable drives being the drive ti acquire, to bond, to learn and to defend.
In financial planning and insurance solutions we have at our core a desire to help our clients and in fact meet these needs.
Success therefore should you subscribe to the theory is dependent on having a deep understanding of what it is that your clients truly identify with as needs and wants.
In the new world of financial planning and a future insurance world what people will buy from you is dependent on how deeply they feel that they need your services or your offer or your solutions when balanced against these drivers.
In fact the greater your ability to explore these motivational forces with your clients ergo the greater your success at positioning your solutions.
This then transcends the need for niche marketing or specialisation. Inter generational advice techniques become irrelevant along with the marketing materials to tap into and converse with multi generations.
Rather these needs and drives work across demographics of age, culture, sub culture and social class.
Skilled practitioners using these drives can predict human behaviour and hence anticipate needs into the future making sure that they are always one step ahead of their competitors.
In a new world of financial services such foresight is invaluable.
Most of all utilising and designing your business to tap into these drives does one very important thing. It allows you to connect and engage with your clients on a deeply emotional level. Not only a differentiator this emotional connection is incredibly important in decision making. Despite the temperament of the client the emotional feedback internally provided to the client becomes positive buying signals that drive rational decision making. Whether someone just feels right doing business with you or whether they feel it is a sound rationale decision the truth of the matter is they will buy from you because you have emotionally connected with them.
The way you've done it is by leading them to the path to either acquire, bond, learn or defend or better still......all of the four.
The ability to do this is reliant on your understanding of what drives human behaviour and in particular why it is that people connect with you and your offering.
PCE and others have written about the work of Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria whose theory on human behaviour can be adapted to the sales process in financial planning and especially insurance sales.
As a recap the theory suggests that humans have 4 insatiable drives being the drive ti acquire, to bond, to learn and to defend.
In financial planning and insurance solutions we have at our core a desire to help our clients and in fact meet these needs.
Success therefore should you subscribe to the theory is dependent on having a deep understanding of what it is that your clients truly identify with as needs and wants.
In the new world of financial planning and a future insurance world what people will buy from you is dependent on how deeply they feel that they need your services or your offer or your solutions when balanced against these drivers.
In fact the greater your ability to explore these motivational forces with your clients ergo the greater your success at positioning your solutions.
This then transcends the need for niche marketing or specialisation. Inter generational advice techniques become irrelevant along with the marketing materials to tap into and converse with multi generations.
Rather these needs and drives work across demographics of age, culture, sub culture and social class.
Skilled practitioners using these drives can predict human behaviour and hence anticipate needs into the future making sure that they are always one step ahead of their competitors.
In a new world of financial services such foresight is invaluable.
Most of all utilising and designing your business to tap into these drives does one very important thing. It allows you to connect and engage with your clients on a deeply emotional level. Not only a differentiator this emotional connection is incredibly important in decision making. Despite the temperament of the client the emotional feedback internally provided to the client becomes positive buying signals that drive rational decision making. Whether someone just feels right doing business with you or whether they feel it is a sound rationale decision the truth of the matter is they will buy from you because you have emotionally connected with them.
The way you've done it is by leading them to the path to either acquire, bond, learn or defend or better still......all of the four.
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
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