Four Blind Spots In Your Lead-Qualification Process
One of the tenets of effective selling is never make it hard for your prospect to buy from you.
Many advisors whom I speak with, say they get this idea.
But when we look at their average monthly conversion rate of prospects to paid clients, the numbers say otherwise.
The truth is that most prospects who go through an advisor’s intake process do not commit to a paid client relationship.
They show a high level of interest initially and it seems easy to build rapport with them.
But somewhere along the way they lose interest and disengage with the process, and you never hear back from them again.
This is a huge source of frustration, because the intake process demands a lot from you and it’s free for them, yet they don’t respond to it like you expect.
You’d think that providing all that upfront value for free (discovery meeting, detailed analysis of their financial documents, a financial plan, and another meeting to explain it all) would give them the reassurance they need to want to move forward.
But that assumes the free value somehow removes the barriers to the sale.
It doesn’t.
What you’re actually doing by providing free value is removing the ability for your prospect to buy into your process – and they need to buy into your process before they can buy into you.
Think of how a private school operates a reservation system for new enrollments.
You must pay a non-refundable reservation fee and go on their waiting list before you’re given a spot.
As a result, everyone who enrolls is serious about their intention and ability to attend that school.
Or consider how attorneys require upfront payment, before they’ll go on record and give you legal advice.
Why do they do this?
Because their time is valuable, their advice has consequences, and they need to ensure their clients can compensate them for it.
In their world, every prospect who ends up “wanting to think about it”, costs them a potential paid client they could’ve got.
The same is true for advisors.
Here are the four blind spots inside of the typical advisor’s intake process:
1.) It has multiple steps and meetings
There are too many points where the competing priorities of everyday life can kill momentum and break the process completely
2.) It removes the consequences for disengaging
Because it’s free the prospect knows they can exit any time. They never buy into the process and so have little motivation to follow through with it
3.) It makes the prospect do work
They don’t want to do work (especially not paperwork), they just want someone to solve their problem
4.) It devalues your perceived value as a professional
People only value advice and information that they pay for. If it’s not valuable to you to be able to give it away for free, then it’s not valuable to them
My suggestion is to shift your mindset away from value-based selling, it’s become commoditized, everyone’s doing it.
It’s the wrong approach for the type of selling that advisors need to master, which is called the “expert consultant sale”.
Your prospects need to buy into your process (pay you for it), by the end of your the very first meeting, based on your ability to build trust with them.
If you’d like to learn how to transition your intake process into a paid model, then order the Trusted Authority book below and learn about a new process through your complimentary consultation.
If you're an ambitious advisor, with a defiant streak (following the crowd isn't your thing), who is overly reliant on referrals, with limited time and resources, but willing to grow and challenge your own thinking -- and you'd be happy with 1 – 2 new high-net-worth clients per month...
Then it's time to upgrade your skill set to a "category-of-one" new inbound high-quality sales/lead model (no prospecting), that defies traditional industry thinking and norms...
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Meet The Author
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is one the most sought-after sales conversion experts for Financial Advisors.
He is the creator of Unlock The Game®, a completely new revolutionary sales approach that overturns the notion of selling as we know it today.
Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, SkyNews, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Australian Financial Review.
His newest book, “Trusted Authority”, has become an instant best-seller among Financial Advisors worldwide.
With clients in over 35 countries, his global sales systems have become the most successful Trust-Based Selling systems of our time.
In a day and age where technology rules the selling world, for many growth-oriented advisors, deep trust has taken a “back seat” to the sales process.
Ari’s personal insights on how to build trust between buyers and sellers continue to break new ground in the financial services industry.
Ari has been on a mission for the last two decades to change the financial services world through trust.
Through his sold-out talks all over the world and his in-house trainings for high-producing advisors, Ari has become the global ambassador to businesses all over the world.
He regularly connects with global business icons and leaders of industries seeking his counsel on how to infuse trust in their organisations and across their teams.
Ari is a true “disruptor” in the financial services industry. He has been endorsed by legendary sales mentors like Brian Tracy who said: “Ari Galper’s trust-based selling approach is the greatest sales breakthrough in the last 20 years”.
Ari’s sales growth consulting firm has a growing waiting list of financial advisors wanting access to his unique Trusted Authority lead generation models and sales conversion strategy advice.
Ari is also the author of “Lessons From Toby”, a special book about his son Toby who has Down’s Syndrome, who has made a major impact on Ari’s approach to teaching authenticity and trust in his Trust-Based Selling approach.