Before we get started, we should cover the fact that many wholesalers like to blame their failure on a variety of factors. These may be items such as poor performance, lack of product, bad marketing materials, terrible management, etc.... The excuses can go on and on. I have placed about 400 wholesalers personally with over 50 different companies and there is no "perfect" company (except maybe American Funds). In fact, there is no company that is even close to perfect.
All companies have faults, all companies have product issues, and all companies have some challenge that they are dealing with. Therefore, the first step to your success is that you MUST put aside the excuses and realize the grass always seems greener but it is not. Embrace what you have and give your current company 100% of your focus and energy because without that you cannot be successful no matter what you do.
"You have to increase your activity." We hear it all of the time from sales managers but what does that mean? We have broken down activity into four critical components. The first is that you must have a lot of face to face meetings. A standard should be 3 to 4 meetings per day with 2 to 3 people at each meeting 4 days per week. This will give you 24 to 48 High Value Touches each week. A big lunch and learn does not count as you do not have the opportunity to qualify and sell in lunch and learn environments.
The second component of activity is you must have a high level of phone calls each week. You need to have 10-20 outbound phone calls for every meeting that you do not have. In other words, if you only have two appointments today, you should then place 20-40 outbound phone calls that day in lieu of your meetings. Just because you are an external wholesaler does not mean you can ignore the phone. It is a great way to reach out and touch a lot of prospects and producers every day.
The third critical component of activity is that you must have an efficient rotation. Ideally, this would consist of 4 primary zones that you visit twice per quarter and 2 secondary zones that you visit once per quarter. You should then have at least one floating week per quarter to go wherever you need to be. You should have your rotation planned out at least for the current quarter and upcoming quarter.
It would be nice to have it set for the entire year but for newer territories this is sometimes difficult as new zones may come into play as your territory becomes developed. The final critical component of activity is that you must be accountable to someone beyond yourself. This may be your boss or it may be a co- worker but whoever it is it must be at least weekly. If you are not accountable beyond yourself, you will have a natural tendency to slip.
The second piece to ensure your success as a wholesaler is to become fundamentally sound. It is not enough for you to show up and be very active. I know a lot of wholesalers like this and they are constantly changing jobs because they are not fundamentally good wholesalers. Therefore, what does it take to be fundamentally sound? We could spend days dealing with fundamentals but I am going to focus on just three simple stages and provide an outline of what needs to happen in each stage to ensure your success. These three stages are before the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting.
The first stage involves your meeting preparation. There are three preparations that you must conduct. The first is before you head on the road. This should be done the day before you hit the road. You should ensure that you have all of the files for each of your meetings and enough materials as handouts for all of your meetings plus 20%. That means if you are meeting with 20 people, bring enough materials for 24. Do not ever get caught short while on the road. The second preparation is the night before your meetings.
You should lay out all of your materials for each meeting, review the file for each meeting, and ensure you know what the "commitment objective" is for each meeting that you will be conducting the next day. A commitment objective is simply the commitment that you are going to require to ensure the sale is moving forward. A meeting without a commitment is a failure.
The final preparation is what you do before you leave your car. This where you ensure that you have the commitment objective down cold and you know what questions you are going to ask to get the conversation rolling.
Now you are in the meeting, what now? There are five keys to your success in the meeting. The first is that you must ask questions. These questions must be the right type of questions. A great resource on the right type of questions is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham (I recommend the SPIN Selling Field Book as it is more user friendly).
Second, you must bring some sort of value added to the meeting. In other words, how can I help this person solve a critical business issue of theirs?
Third, take notes. Unless you are a freak of nature then you will not be able to remember everything said two meetings after you current meeting. It is a fact that by the end of the day you will have forgotten 50% of what was said during your meetings that day and 75% by the next day.
If you simply take notes, you will be well on your way to building a deeper relationship with your reps. Fourth, you must get the commitment objective. You have to move the process forward. Finally, you should get the next meeting scheduled now. You have your rotation set for the next quarter so this should not be a problem and it is a great way to ensure that your activity stays at a high level.
Finally, you are done with the meeting but you are not done with the process. There are three simple items that you need to take care of. First, get all immediate to do's done. If there is a form or materials that need to be ordered, order them. Whatever it is get it done immediately after the meeting. Second, review your notes and add any details that you feel appropriate.
The best time to add to your notes is immediately after the conversation with the rep. Finally, evaluate the success of the meeting. You can simply do this by reviewing whether you obtained the commitment objective you were targeting. If not, did you obtain any commitment? If not, the meeting was a FAILURE!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Becoming a Better Wholesale (Part II) – 10 Ways to Guarantee your Failure
I thought that it would only be appropriate for us to do the flip side of the above article. Now that we know how to guarantee our success what are the mistakes that we must avoid in order to ensure our success. I found a great list in the book The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer. If you don't have this book, it is an excellent one to have on your shelf as he writes in a very interesting way...he loves lists. Here is the list of common mistakes that many in the sales profession make.
Mistake #1 - Prejudging the prospect. We make up our mind about a prospect too early in the process.
Mistake #2 - Poor prospect qualification. We don't ask the right questions to uncover the prospects needs.
Mistake #3 - Not listening. We concentrate on telling our story or selling a specific feature without trying to understand what the customer is looking for.
Mistake #4 - Condescension. Talking down to the prospect and making them feel stupid.
Mistake #5 - Pressure to buy today. Desperation does not sell and it also is bad for the relationship. You should ask for their business at the appropriate time.
Mistake #6 - Not addressing needs. Sell something that addresses their needs. Sell in terms of them not you.
Mistake #7 - Telegraphing closes and hard selling. When you close don't make it obvious. The best soft close is "What would you like to do next?"
Mistake #8 - Making the buyer doubt your intentions. If you change your demeanor from friendly and value added, to high pressure the buyer will lose confidence in you and you will lose the sale.
Mistake #9 - Lack of sincerity. Sincerity is the key to building a relationship with a rep. If you truly care about their business, then you will build trust and you will get a customer/producer.
Mistake #10 - Poor attitude. There is nothing worse than having someone with a bad attitude trying to sell you something. Bad mouthing your company or others is a great way to show your bad attitude.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Meeting Preparation
It is amazing how many meetings that wholesalers go on every week. It is further amazing how many of these meetings result in absolutely nothing! Why is this? The primary reason is that there is very little focus during these meetings. A wholesaler goes in with little plan except to give a presentation, drop off some material, introduce themselves, etc... I have actually been told by some wholesalers that if they just keep showing up, eventually they would get business. That is pretty incredible.
What's the solution? The solution is to ensure that you have a clear and focused game plan prior to entering the office. What should be your focus? There should be three primary goals when you enter a reps office.
1. Qualifying the advisor - Can they do business with you?
2. Developing Pain - Do they have a reason to do business with you?
3. Getting a Commitment - Will they do business with you?
Sounds easy enough. Then why do so many appointments lead to nothing? The reason is that none of the above are even focused on during the pre-meeting planning nor covered during the course of the meeting.
Let's get right into the specific ways in which you can make your meetings more productive immediately. First, you must spend at least 5 minutes conducting pre-meeting planning for EVERY meeting that you go on. Why waste your time in a one hour appointment when you did not spend at least 5-10 minutes preparing for the appointment.
What should you do during this planning session? Very simply you want to cover three items. First and most importantly is determining the commitment objective you want to achieve when you walk out of that office? Is it a ticket, is it another meeting, is it a referral, what is it specifically that you want to achieve? Second, you need to be prepared with several thought provoking open-ended questions to get the prospect talking about his business and his concerns.
Finally, you need to be prepared to deal with the likely objections the prospect may raise during the meeting. These may be things like, "we only use American funds" or "just have some literature sent to me". That's right sending literature is an objection/stall. You had better be prepared to deal with it when it comes up.
The next area that you must deal with to ensure that you have a successful meeting is in the discovery of pain. This is where you develop the need of the prospect. An interesting solution to developing pain/need that I saw having tremendous success was the homework solution. Prior to the meeting, call the prospect and say, "Mr. Advisor, so that our meeting is as productive as possible, would you make a list of the two or three most challenging issues you are having with respect to your business right now? Then we can really focus our discussion on you issues and try to develop a solution. Does that make sense?" I like the idea and think that it is worth a try. Think about how quickly you can get to the heart of their issues.
Finally, you are left with the commitment objective. Did you get the commitment you were looking for? Did you even ask for a commitment? The easiest way to get a commitment is to ask for one. Very often you can get a commitment by simply asking, "Where should we go from here?" What a soft way of closing with very little pressure created.
The above is just an overview as to how you can make all of your meetings much more productive, but it does you no good to read this stuff and not implement it. Use it!!!
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"When performance gets measured, performance improves"
This old adage remains true year after year. The question is will you do the measuring that can get you the improved performance that you desire this year?
We see time and time again in the sports world how records are broken. They constantly measure past performance in order to set new levels of expectation.
During the year, if you want to achieve improved performance, set up a system to measure all your activities that will insure success for yourself and your organization. It is much like a dashboard on your car.
The dashboard measures the activity of the car to insure that it is performing at its expected levels. So if you want to perform at the levels that will achieve success, set up a dashboard that will measure how you are doing.
The first step in setting up your dashboard is to determine what is important to measure. What sort of activities should you be measuring? The answer is every significant activity that will help you achieve your goal. As an example, if you are in sales and you make cold calls to generate prospects, then you would want to track the number of phone calls made, the number of times contact was made and the number of appointments generated.
Once you have determined the activities to measure, set up your dashboard using a simple form to track your progress. You can use an electronic spreadsheet or simply make tic marks manually.
Don't get hung up on what type of method to use, just use a method that works for you. Keep it simple and easy. Remember, the purpose of maintaining the dashboard is to improve performance. So you'll need to set benchmarks to measure your actual activity. If you need to make four sales appointments a day, then measure it every day and keep track daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. On a regular basis, review your results to determine if you are performing at the level necessary to achieve your goal.
So in summary, if you want to be your best, begin today by keeping track of those activities that will get you there.
TA
Dan Baccarini has been in the financial industry since 1993. He has worked inside of the industry as a Retail Broker, Wholesaler, and National Sales Manager. Additionally, Dan has served the industry from the outside as a Consultant and Executive Recruiter. He has personally placed nearly 400 candidates in the financial industry in a wide variety of positions. Currently, Dan is the President of J.C. Trident, Inc. (www.jctrident.com) a premier recruiting and consulting company in the Asset Management field. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York and an MBA from The University of Phoenix