Are You Selling The Future To Your Prospects?

By Ari Galper, the world’s #1 authority on trust-based selling

As an advisor, it can often seem like your prospects don’t share the same passion about their financial situation as you do.

They seem interested, but after the discovery meeting, analyzing their documents, and giving them a financial plan, they often want to “think about it”, ending the momentum they started.

You just handed them a solid financial plan for their future, based on their own data – what is there to think about?

Did you not provide enough value?

What was it about your financial plan they didn’t agree with?

This pattern happens for many advisors every week: discovery meeting – free financial plan – follow up meeting – delayed decision.

The average conversion rate in the industry is one to three new clients out of 10 qualified prospects.

Why is this so low?

Because this model of selling, which is based on providing free value, de-prioritizes the sale in the prospect’s mind.

It’s a priority for you because you’d like them to onboard as a paying client.

But your sales process doesn’t clarify how it’s a priority for them.

Providing value before the sale, usually in the form of information about potential solutions, is called “selling the future”.

That was a very effective model up until a few years ago, before the industry became commoditized.

It worked great, when you have a different offering from everyone else.

Selling future benefits has a low priority compared to something that is determined to be an impactful issue now.

With a “now” perspective, the immediate need to find a solution, overrides future pacing.

Selling the future prioritizes thinking instead of action, because it doesn’t express the full gravity of your prospect’s financial situation at present.

It doesn’t alert them to the possibility that they’re not ok – that they have a problem that’s costing them in the present – and that each day spent not solving it will cost them more.

This is why you can build the most sophisticated financial plans and provide your prospect with immense value in your sales process, but still find them indecisive about moving forward with you as a client.

The typical advisory sales process doesn’t clarify urgency.

The key to eliminating this indecisiveness in your sales process, is to become a Trusted Authority in your prospect’s mind.

An advisor who is a Trusted Authority is more successful because:

  • They base their sales and marketing process on the prospect’s current problems and its immediate impact, not the future benefits of the solution. (Most people these days can’t think past the next week, let alone the next five to fifteen years)
  • Their sales process doesn’t conform to advisory industry norms that their peers follow, so they’re perceived as different, without needing to invent new or unique products/solutions and give away “free samples” (it’s rare to create a genuinely new or unique solutions in a commoditized industry)
  • The diagnostic focus of their sales process confirms the prospect’s priority level before investing any energy in them, and this drastically reduces the time it takes to establish whether they will move forward or not (allowing them to see more qualified prospects in less time and for less effort)
  • The simplicity of their sales process instils the prospect with confidence and trust that they’re the best person to solve their problem (they just “get them”) – and quite often this is the missing final step that shifts the prospect out of wanting to think about it, or comparing them to others, to instead, just making a decision

To learn how to become a Trusted Authority, rather than being compared to other advisors, order your complimentary book and consultation below.

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