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10 Commitments You Must Gain to Win Deals
Source: https://thesalesblog.com/2014/02/15/10-commitments-you-must-gain-to-win-deals/  |
It’s often been said that people buy with emotion and justify with logic. Your customers may take time to educate themselves, shop and compare products, but often the decision of when to buy is triggered by impulse and emotion, and as salespeople there are some excellent ways we can help stir that emotion and increase our prospect's buyer intent.
As consumers ourselves we often make buying decisions on impulse. As a matter of fact, our impulse to buy a product can be so easily triggered that retail stores use merchandising displays known as “impulse aisles” to tap into it. Their displays are attractive and inviting; they’re designed to stir our emotion and position the product as something we can’t do without. They frame it with big, bright signs stating “Last Chance Sale” or “While Supplies Last”, all in an effort to engage our emotional state and encourage us to make a buying decision now.
FIGS aren't the Low Fruit
While insurance sales isn’t retail sales, we can still engage those same emotions in our prospects to help them justify the need to buy today. And we can do this by incorporating the Four Factors of Impulse or FIGS for short. Now, this isn’t new; many of you have probably seen this before. But these four concepts are fundamental in building effective sales conversations with our prospects, and if we learn to properly use them we can truly increase our closing rate as well as our overall production and profitability. Otherwise we're left just picking up the low fruit.
Fear of Loss
No one likes to miss out on a good deal or the right opportunity, and that can be a great motivator in inducing someone to buy insurance, today. This is commonly used in life insurance sales where the premium is only going to be higher if you attempt to buy later when you’re older. So to avoid losing out on a good deal, the lower premium, you should in fact buy today. Furthermore there is also the risk of not qualifying at all should you continue procrastinating an important decision as your health declines; and this can be applied in both life and health insurance products where underwriting is a factor in determining the applicant's eligibility. Using fear of loss properly is not to fear monger, but rather to emphatically convey to your prospect why it's important to act now. "Mr. Jones I understand your reluctance but we all know as we get older our health declines, and you're nearing the end of your six-month window to enroll in Plan G without having to qualify medically. Basically, this is your one shot to guarantee you get the coverage you need. Think of how great it's going to feel knowing you're nest egg is secured and not at the mercy of high healthcare costs."
Indifference
I is for Indifference. Indifference by definition means to show a lack of concern or interest. As a salesperson you use indifference to relay to the customer that you’re not concerned with whether he purchases or not. You exude an air of confidence knowing that you’ll be successful with or without this prospect as a client. Let’s face it, no one likes the overly aggressive sales person anyway, and the more you press a customer, the more he will feel that your only concern is making the sale. And if your product truly has value and solves a need for your prospect then you can be confident that ultimately your prospect needs you more than you need to make that sale. However, indifference can be a fine line as you also don’t want your customer to feel you have no sympathy for them. Thus, the key to indifference is to have a balanced sales presentation that properly presents, doesn’t oversell, and empowers your prospect by giving them the authority to make that buying decision. One of the best ways to maintain indifference in your sales conversations is to keep your sales funnel full. You'll find yourself more easily moved to desperation to make the sale when you only have one prospect and not multiple appointments to run.
Greed
Now greed sounds like such a dirty word, but the truth is people are greedy. Everyone wants what their neighbor has, hence the expression "keeping up with the Jones'". One of the best ways we can make use of this principle as sales people is to provide some type of social proof to our customers. You’ll commonly see this done through testimonials in marketing pieces, or Google reviews for example, but it can also be done during your intimate conversations with your prospects. When I worked door-to-door I would often namedrop any clients I had in the neighborhood. Truthfully it didn't matter if they even knew that person; the statement itself is a powerful claim, and it can be gently slid into your presentation in a variety of ways. “A feature your neighbor Betty Jones liked is…”. “Using this same plan, I was able to save your neighbor Betty $1000.” “You’re not alone; most of my clients including your neighbor Fred prefer Plan G as well.” You get the idea. In probably one of the best examples of greed as a buying signal, a life agent friend of mine recently shared a story about a string of referrals he received where each new referral based their purchase on the friend who had referred them. "How much did Pete buy? $1000? Give me $2000." "How much did Ed buy? $2000? Give me $3000." While this is no time to argue with your prospect's choice, using greed effectively doesn't involve gouging your customer's pocketbook with the biggest premium you can sell them, but rather provides social proof of the value you and your product or service bring to your many clients, and why this prospect should therefore become one of your clients today.
Sense of Urgency
Finally, Sense of Urgency is one of the strongest motivators, and similar to Fear of Loss, it again stresses to the customer that time is of the essence. A decision is needed. If they don’t act now, the deal may go bust. I’ve seen this used often with agents who may travel and work small towns from time to time where they have to stress to their prospect that “I’m here today – I cannot come back.” A more obvious use of this within the Medicare space would be based on the various election periods. If its December 7th, the last day of the Annual Election Period, you best be conveying a Sense of Urgency to your MAPD prospect. “Today is the last day Mr. Jones.” Combine that with the other three impulse factors and you might have a statement such as, “Mr. Jones I’m sorry, but today is the last day, and I actually have four more appointments for people needing to turn in their applications. I’d hate to see you lose the opportunity but we need to act now. I’m ready to do the application with you now, but if you’re not ready, I need to get going to my next appointment. Do you have your Medicare card handy?”
Practice Makes Perfect
Now these four concepts are great, but they will not work if you can’t also properly present the value your product brings to the table. They also won’t work if you fake it - you must be authentic. Start by practicing one concept at a time; slowly bringing it into your pitch. Take some time to outline some key phrases that apply to each of the four factors and think about how and when you can incorporate that into your sales conversations. Pretty quickly you’ll find there are places to uses these concepts in your introduction, your discovery, your presentation, your close and even how you ask for referrals. With practice you’ll be using them regularly and I promise you’ll soon find your sales, and your commissions increasing.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/increase-buyer-intent-close-more-sales-tony-merwin/
I don’t know many sales people that enjoy making prospecting calls. It’s definitely one of the most difficult parts of the job. There are so many things to consider. How quickly are you responding to your leads? What time and Day are you responding? How long are your average calls?
