1.
Do You Facilitate Decision Making
or Do You Sell?
Client and prospect decision making is the crux of new business development. Clients are overwhelmed by
the choices available. Because they are unsure of whom they should trust, they often abandon the decision-
making process by taking refuge in the status quo - even when they feel less than satisfied with the process
and service they are receiving.
Financial advisors who develop the facilitation skills and apply them with prospects and clients do more new
business. Expertise in decision making enables financial services professionals to earn trust and facilitate
clients’ and prospects’ decisions based on the prospects or clients burning concerns. With a focus on the
challenges that really matter, and a client favored process for prioritizing and actualizing their decisions,
advisors help their clients to make progress toward their goals.
Advisors learn how to develop more new business with both prospects and established clients. Advisors who
work with us have typically invested in other rainmaking programs and found that at least one piece of the
puzzle was missing: the changes they needed to make in themselves in order to successfully implement what
they had learned. To illustrate how advisors get the results they want from new business development efforts,
here are some primary outcomes of consultative sales conditioning:
Confidently manage the flow of interviews with the most demanding prospects and clients
Clients and prospects can be impatient, demanding answers for which they have no frame of reference. Many
a potentially productive client meeting has been derailed by premature questions and demands on the part
of the client or prospect. In addition, once a meeting is derailed, it can be very difficult to get it back on track.
RainmakerDNA offers effective methods that help advisors manage these potentially derailing moments and
the flow of the meeting in a way that both advisors and clients find satisfying.
Differentiate shoppers from buyers - people not ready to make a decision, from people ready to make a
decision now.
Time and effort lavished on shoppers could be invested productively in those who are ready to make a
decision. Determining who is shopping and who is really committed to solving a problem, and then allotting
the appropriate time to each can reduce frustration and energy drain and increase productivity and
effectiveness. RainmakerDNA champions a process that makes the shopper/buyer determination early in
the relationship and points the way toward the most effective action in each case.
Help the prospect feel the pain and find the motivation to act
‘Better closing skills’ are a glib answer, but rarely an effective solution to missed opportunities. Most of the
time the real problem has its roots early in the client interface. When clients who don’t feel the urgency to fix,
accomplish or avoid something, they don’t act, they ‘think it over.’ RainmakerDNA shows advisors how to
make the need to act urgent for the prospect or client.
To learn more, visit www.RainmakerDNA.com or contact:
Bob Cohn: bobcohn@optonline.net, 914-763-5358, Northeast Region
John Comer: john@jcomerconsulting.com, 877-540-0711, Northwest Region
Maria Forbes: maria@firepowerteams.com, 770-315-6297, Southeast Region
Barbara Stewart: barbara@acceluspartners.com, 713-623-2808 South Central Region
© The Amigos February 2012