Annuity Selling Guide : Understand The ClientSelling of annuities should be much more than selling a financial product. It should be the result of building a trusted relationship between you and the client. The work you do together will determine how successful they are in meeting their retirement goals. The advise you give your client in achieving those goals should be based upon a deep understanding of the way your client thinks. Your annuity selling guide should not be based upon how much they have to invest, but on the kind of a person they are. The first step, then, in developing your annuity selling guide is determining what kind of personality the client has. You should already know what kind you have and how you operate. Many authors have devised titles for groupings of personalities. The book, The Financial Professional's Guide to Persuading 1 or 1,000 by Mitch Anthony and Gary Demoss identify four such personalities. They are the Togetherness Personality, The Enterpriser Personality, The Analyzer Personality, and the Motivator Personality. And when you put them together you get the acronym T.E.A.M. By determining your clients personality you can then develop the approach that will best meet their needs in getting to a retirement plan that will work for them. Each personality speaks their own language and responds best to that language. With a little study on your part, your annuity selling guide will include the vocabulary and body language of each member of the T.E.A.M. Your annuity selling guide should include a page for each client you have and for each prospect you talk with. On each page put down their T.E.A.M. letter and a brief summary of why they have that designation. Then before your meeting review your analysis and decide if you are still on the right track. You should also include personal items in your annuity selling guide. Does your client have a child that is a student? Does your client have a military pension or any other pension? Do they have debts that will run past their forecast retirement age? Could they possibly consolidate any unsecured, bank or auto loans and get an earlier pay off? Do not overlook the fact of your client's marital status. Include the spouse in your annuity selling guide. Never forget that a couple, married or not, functions as a team. When you are working to find the product for one, it also has to meet the needs of the other. This should not be looked at as a manipulative approach to selling. In fact it is laying the groundwork for a deep and lasting relationship. Out of relationships comes the trust necessary to create an annuity and a retirement plan to meet their ever changing needs. |