As a new agent, you may feel overwhelmed by your lack of experience and product knowledge, and if you are veteran in the industry, you may not have a high closing ratio or generate many referrals. Despite if you are new to the business or have been a financial professional for decades, all top advisors need to have a compelling and repeatable process to be successful.

In this episode of Money Script Monday, Marcus presents 3 concepts you should implement in your unique process to help retain your high-income clients.

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Video transcription

Hello, my name is Marcus Kiel. Thank you for watching another Money Script Monday.

Today, we're going to talk about how to effectively communicate with high-income clients.

With high-income clients, as a newer agent, you may feel overwhelmed by the wealth of your client. You may feel that you don't have enough product knowledge or that you haven't done enough reps to be successful.

And for all you experienced advisors out there, you may not have the desired closing ratio that you would like, and maybe you don't generate enough referrals.

What we've seen here is that our top advisors consistently use an effective and repeatable process when dealing with high-income clients.

And today, I'm going to go over three areas that I believe should be in every process that you present, especially, when we're dealing with high-income clients.

The three areas are, compatibility, emotional attachment, and solution.

Let's get into it.

Compatibility

I'm sure you've heard of the old saying, "People buy from people," and that can't be further from the truth when dealing with high-income clients.

You could have the best illustrations, know the product knowledge in and out, you could be a genius.

But if the high-income client doesn't like you, for whatever reason, you may lose the sale to someone that doesn't know half of what you do and just really couldn't hold a candle to your overall product knowledge.

They had a good vibe, they meshed well, and they were able to find kind of a common ground.

Speaking of common ground, I've been in sales for over 20 years. And when I first started out, I was working in stores, dealing with store managers.

My old boss would say, "You know, Marcus, you gotta find out what the store manager loves, find out what they enjoy, and brush up on it, and make sure you talk about those before you talk about the pitch or the sale for that particular day."

I would go into the store early, head over to the magazine aisle. For this particular manager, he loved hockey, and I don't know anything about hockey.

I didn't know it then, I don't know anything about hockey now, but I knew that his favorite team was the Boston Bruins.

So, I would go over to the Sports Illustrated, this is before smartphones, and read up on the Boston Bruins, and use it as an icebreaker, and always start, with that particular manager, with hockey talk.

I was able to find that common ground to build that rapport.

So, that's definitely one area that you need that I believe should be in every process.

Emotional Attachment

The second area is an emotional attachment. As you see here, we have the iceberg here.

What a client may have is a surface-level fear or problem. Remember, they're coming to you for a reason.

They have an issue that they need dealt with and it's your job to find out exactly what it is.

It could be a surface-level fear, but we need to dig deeper to find the pain there and dig deep or dive deep, in this case, to uncover the real pain.

For example, there's a high-income client, and they want to leave a legacy for their grandchildren.

So, you meet with them, you come up with what you think is a great solution, a fixed indexed annuity, and they can protect against stock market volatility, and they could think it’s great, you show them the illustration.

And the client, for whatever reason, says, "You know what? I'll think about it," or they decide not to move on. Why?

Well, maybe their surface-level fear was at legacy planning, but their real pain was they had missed out on a business opportunity years ago because their funds were not liquid.

They were tied up and possibly in annuity, but you didn't dive deep enough and ask enough questions to get to the pain.

Then once you got to the pain, ask even more questions to really get to the bottom of the issue.

It turns out, in this particular hypothetical situation, that an IUL would have been better because it has liquidity.

They can borrow against their death benefit when there's cash accumulation. Having that liquid, they could not miss out on future business opportunities.

The emotional attachment is very important because people buy with emotions, and there's no greater motivator than pain in the present, followed by pain in the past.

So, that's the second area.

Solution

The last area is going to be the solution.

The last area is going to be the solution.

I'm sure that you're all saying there, "Okay. Of course."

You present the illustration, and they sign on the dotted line or nowadays, it's the e-signature, because we want you to apply online, but you have to make sure that you're presenting to the decision-makers.

With a high-income client, they're going to have a whole financial team. They're going to have either a spouse, of course, that's definitely a big part of their financial team.

They're going to have their CPA or accountant, their money manager, they're going to have their estate planner and a few other lawyers.

It could be a whole financial team of people, and if you're just presenting to the one client and not these other important people, objections may come up that you have to keep going back and answering to the different parties involved.

It's very important that you present to the decision-makers so that you only have to really meet once because a lot of high-income clients don't have a lot of time.

It's very hard to get ahold of them. You want to make that meeting count. That's why you want to present to the decision-makers all that are involved.

And then lastly, you want to focus on the uncovered pain that you found out about in the emotional attachment.

This pain that you uncovered, to dig deeper for, revisit it. Bring it back up in the solution, because that's how they're going to move.

They're going to move towards that pain, so you want to refresh them on it so that we can get to the solution.

Your presentation, you're fulfilling that uncovered pain.

To review, to effectively communicate with high-income clients, you need to have a process, repeatable and effective, and you need to have, I believe, definitely three aspects in that process.

Not limited to, but this needs to be a part of it.

You need to have compatibility, you need to have rapport and bond with your high-income client.

You need to have an emotional attachment. We have to get to that deeper pain and not just settle for the surface-level fear problem.

And then lastly, have a solution that you present to the decision-makers and revisit that pain.

Remember people buy from emotions.

That's it for today. Thank you, definitely, for watching Money Script Monday.

Contact your Field Support Representative at 888-LIFEPRO, to go over your process today. Thank you.