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If you’ve been around long enough as an advisor, you’ll be familiar with the “fishing-expedition” approach to selling.
This is where you prepare your bait, sail to where your prospects are swimming, and hook as many of them as you can.
But this sales approach is now ineffective.
In this new economy, your prospect is skeptical and doesn't trust you.
And if you come across like you’re fishing for clients -- whether verbally or through your body language -- then they’ll react by trying to evade you.
They’ll want to “think about it” or speak to others first before making their decision.
And even if you follow up with them afterwards, providing immense value (free consulting), it won’t shift them out of their indecision.
In fact, it’ll make them evade you even more.
Because from their sceptical perspective, if you have to chase people for business, then perhaps you’re not the calibre of advisor you claim to be.
Fishing for clients is the wrong way to conceive of selling as an advisor, and you’ll need to shift your mindset if you want to survive in this new era.
You can no longer base your approach on “hooking” new opportunities, because no one likes the idea of being sold and today’s advisory prospect is hyper–sensitive to anything that resembles selling.
Your new approach to getting clients must be based on building trust.
However, building trust has been misinterpreted as building rapport or trying to have a presale relationship with your prospect.
And these are misguided for two simple reasons:
Your prospect isn't looking for a friend, nor are they interested in your solution per se... They're looking for someone they can trust to solve their problem for them.
A business relationship comes after the sale, not before.
Building trust in selling is about portraying yourself as the best person for the job.
And you don't need your prospect to know or like you, or to understand how your solutions work, to do that.
You just need to come across as someone who understands their problem better than they do.
And this means that your sales process must be problem–centric, not solution–driven or dependent on rapport.
To help illustrate what being problem–centric means, think of how a doctor diagnoses a patient.
They don’t spend time on chit–chat trying to get to know them.
Nor do they attempt to explain the complex biochemical processes involved with their potential treatments.
They focus on diagnosing their patient’s problem only, pin–pointing the root cause of their issue, so they can tell them the truth of what needs to happen if they want it resolved.
This diagnostic process, where the patient is under the microscope not the doctor, produces two vital ingredients for building trust:
The patient feels like they’re in the hands of someone who genuinely cares about them.
The patient feels like the doctor knows more about their issue than they do.
The result is that the doctor is seen as an authority, not just a medical treatment provider.
And the patient doesn’t need proof of their credentials, nor education about how their treatment will work.
The doctor’s authority status is enough for them to trust the process and get the prescribed treatment without hesitation.
If you’ve been struggling to get new clients using the traditional advisory sales approach of building rapport, free consulting, and selling your solutions, then it’s time to consider this sobering fact:
These methods worked in the past, but they no longer work today
Times have changed and your prospects have changed, so you need to adapt your sales approach and process accordingly.
Trust is the universal language of human interaction and cooperation at any level, and if you focus on building trust in your sales process, you’ll never need to “sell” or “fish for clients” as an advisor again.
You’ll become a trusted authority, and your clients will come to you.
To learn more about trust–based selling, order your complimentary books and consultation below.
Related: Why Non-Ideal Clients Keeping “Shopping” You
Get Ari’s 6 best-selling books for FREE here and you’ll also receive a Complimentary Sales and Lead Generation Consultation (value $995.00). Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net-worth new client acquisition expert for financial advisors. His latest books "Are You Chasing Ghosts", "Trusted Authority" and "Trust In A Split Second" have become instant best-sellers among financial advisors worldwide, get your free books here.