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As an internal wholesaler charged with generating business by telephone, you’ve no doubt experienced some of the challenges associated with phone sales. The brush-off and blow-off are responses many advisors have perfected as their auto-reply to any wholesaler call. The good news, this is a habit that can be broken and it doesn’t pose a permanent barrier to generating real interest over the phone. The key to changing advisor behavior lies in your approach. As an inside salesperson, you have to grab the advisors’ attention and get them talking. Questions, the right questions, are the path to a meaningful conversation and dialogue that buys you time on the phone to actually identify or position an appropriate opportunity. The tips below are important for developing questions that will get your advisors talking.
Move away from auto-response, closed-end, purely factual questions
Auto-response questions are the questions advisors get every day from wholesalers. These questions are so common, they require no thought on the advisors part to provide their response.
- “What products do you use and why?”
- “Tell me about your business”
- “How long have you been in the business?”
You want the advisor to actually have to think about your question and their response. Ask their opinions or beliefs in the markets, their recommendations or portfolio strategies. Ask them for comparisons in timeframes. Ask for interest not factual information. Here are some changes to the questions above.
- “What is your investment selections process and what’s the catalyst for change?
- “Where do you see your practice going and what steps are you taking to get there?
- “How did you get into the business?”
Closed-end questions play an important role as you move towards the close, but early on they are like a dead-end; it’s difficult or impossible to move the conversation forward, so in most cases you end up backtracking. Factual questions are important in the process, but shouldn’t be used exclusively because they too can send you down a path to nowhere.
- “Do you sell Variable Annuities?”
- “What wealth transfer strategies are you using?”
- “How do you meet your clients income needs?”
The structure of some questions opens you up to an answer you may not want to hear. Implementing slight changes to the structure of your questions can provide insight into your topic or product of interest without killing your sales potential.
- “What’s been your experience with Variable Annuities?”
- “What does wealth transfer mean to you and how do you address it in your business?”
- “How do you currently meet your clients income needs and what would be your catalyst for change in those portfolios?”
Write down the common questions you currently ask for your prospecting and product calls – are they conversation starters or conversation killers? The question is the answer!
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