Skip to main content

Good Pressure Sales Part 2


As I mentioned in the previous post, we have to give clients a friendly nudge sometimes. There's an old saying that "be backs aren't greenbacks". One of the important elements in sales is creating a sense of urgency because your prospect will continue to stall. "I need to think about it" or "Let me talk to my wife" will always be those annoying comments that can kill your sale.

In my workshops and seminars I give my definition of sales, which is persuading, urging or convincing someone to do something that they probably weren't going to do at that moment. For example, people know they need life insurance, but they put it off, and often it is too late. I don't want to sell you a policy in 10 years, I want you to buy now.

This definition works for anything really. Consider trying to get your child to eat spinach. We know that at some point in the child's life he or she will try spinach, but we made spinach for tonight and want this kid to eat it. Not tomorrow or a week from now. Now!

Image may contain: 1 person, sitting, possible text that says 'YOU WANT TO EAT WELL? SELL SOMETHING'

So we put on the pressure. We convince this young person (our prospect) that spinach is delicious and good for us. We even try selling on the approval of others (another technique I teach) by invoking the name of Popeye. Note: Have you ever noticed that Popeye never starts off eating the spinach, but waits until he's had a proper 5-minute ass kicking first? He should seriously rethink this strategy.

When I talk to a prospect about life insurance, I have to get their emotions involved. "How will your family survive if you die tomorrow? Will they be able to stay in their home?" Some people call that "high pressure", but I think of it as a reality check. Cars cross the center line all of the time. People die unexpectedly everyday.

And unlike the timeshare seller who will scream, "We just got an opening that's only going to last for a few minutes so you better jump on it!", I'm illustrating for my prospect something that can make or break a family's financial future. That's not high pressure, that's "good pressure", because I genuinely care. And hopefully I can prevent one more GoFundMe page due to lack of planning.

Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Telemarketer's Leads - A Dumb Story

For a brief few months I worked as a telemarketer for a small firm owned by a young married couple. The husband was a bit of a hot head and kind of a jerk on occasion, but his wife was nice and had to put up with the guy.  One of their clients was a mobile home company that wanted people to come to the lot and see how awesome their singlewides and doublewides were. As telemarketers we offered incentives like a cooler and camera (back when they weren’t part of your phone) and other assorted giveaways. We got a small commission if we could book the client. My coworkers and I would call from a list of leads that our employers had purchased from someone. These leads were supposedly “qualified” ahead of time, meaning that they had been vetted to meet the needs of the client, the mobile home company. Unfortunately, most of the leads were useless. The people we spoke to didn’t live in the right geographical areas or their incomes were too low.  “Why aren’t you guys closing anyone?” t...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Prevent (Or Lessen) Momentum Killers

Have you had a great sales run, with the wind at your back as you continue to sell and make money, only to have some event or holiday slow down your momentum? It's happened to all of us. I compare it to running at full speed down a field, and out of nowhere comes a patch of mud and tar, designed specifically to slow you down and make you work harder.  An example of this is the holiday season. For some industries, the end of the year is a great time to make those last minute sales and thin out inventories. But for others, it can be horrible. Let's face it, the holidays are about spending money on fun stuff, like electronics and clothes. No one is even thinking about buying insurance, unless they have to.  "I can't spend any money on life insurance because I have to buy Christmas gifts," is what I hear each year. (Nice priorities, by the way!) Having been through this for a few years I now plan ahead. Instead of beating my head against a wall trying to get people to...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Short Post On Social Media

Are you leveraging social media to help your business? Are you posting daily and creating content like the "experts" say to do? Most importantly, are you getting results? I've tried using most of the more popular platforms for my insurance business, as well as my writing and speaking business. To say the results are "mixed" would be generous. This may be because I really haven't invested much into advertising on these platforms.  The way I see it, when Facebook, for example, allows me to set up a free page for my business, that is like a "free trial" to see if I can get any interest in my product or service. After nearly 15 years of this trial period, I have garnered little to no business.  One can come up with two arguments here. The first is why would you throw money at advertising when you haven't seen any returns. The other side is that "you could have done better if you had quit being a tight ass penny pincher." Fair enough. But ...
Post a Comment
Read more