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A reduction in situational awareness occurs in a profession when everyone does the same thing and gets similar results.
Mentors, who succeeded in a prior decade, teach everyone what they know.
But as everyone incestuously follows them, the effectiveness of those methods declines over time.
It’s not a race to the bottom; it’s a race to the middle.
The danger with the middle is the normative effect it has on attitudes and mindsets within the profession, which flow into your practice.
Prospects go through your multi-step sales process, then they ghost you at the end.
Lost opportunities become usual, typical, and dangerously acceptable: “It wasn’t me, it was them, they weren’t a fit.”
In your mind, you’re doing everything you were taught to do, by the book.
The only chance you have to shift your results starts with ruthlessly rejecting the notion that losing opportunities in your sales process is normal and acceptable.
When qualified prospects come to you with a problem you can solve, but don’t hire you to solve it, then the problem isn’t with them... it’s with you.
That’s situational awareness stage one.
Stage two is realizing that the approaches and practices that you’ve adopted as “normal” are the root cause of your lost opportunities.
The issue is systemic and deeper than you may realise. Isolating and treating it may cause you to challenge what you were always told to do.
If you’re trying to build a relationship with your prospect before they’ve done business with you – you’ll keep losing opportunities.
If you’re doing free consulting (known as “giving value”), then ask yourself why your prospects still shop around – this pattern will continue unless you do something about it.
And...
If you think you can build trust in the sales conversation by creating surface-level rapport, not realizing that your prospects now detect and perceive that as “selling” – they won’t commit to you in the first meeting.
It’s shocking to think these widely accepted norms are the very things working against you, instead of for you.
It’s time to defy what the elders have taught you, because your market has changed, you’re being shopped and most of your prospects already have an advisor. Your mission is to de-commoditize yourself and raise your situational awareness.
If you’re open-minded and willing to defy your race-to-the-middle industry norms, then order your complimentary book and consultation below.
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, “Trust In A Split Second” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a Free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “plug up the holes” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
