The Big Disconnect Between
Advisors and Prospects Part I

Everyone wants these benefits:

- To have more income

- To pay less tax

- To protect their assets

- To provide financial security for their family if their income is interrupted

- To maintain their financial and physical independence in retirement

Products and service you offer provide these benefits:

• You have products that provide more income than bank accounts (bonds, bind funds, mortgage funds, bank loan fund, annuities)
  
  
• You have products that reduce income taxes (annuities, tax free bonds and funds)
  
  
• You have products or services that help people protect their assets (any product with a guarantee, estate planning advice)
  
  
• You offer life and disability insurance in the event the wage earner is disabled or dies
  
  
• You provide long term care and health insurance to maintain physical and financial independence when illness strikes

Your prospects have desires and you have the solutions. It’s a perfect match.

Then why isn’t your phone ringing off the hook? So why is it that you have a chronic shortage of new business, you spend much of your time prospecting and you need to persuade people to do business with you? You have a constant need to find people who you can interest in your offerings. Obviously, there is a disconnect between what they want and what you provide.

These are three possibilities that cause the disconnect:

1. Prospects don’t trust your products to perform

2. Prospects don’t trust you

3. Your communication is inconsistent with what the prospect needs to hear such that prospects don’t realize that you can provide what they want

In all three cases, the issue is you. The issue is that you communicate your service so that you either leave the prospect with a lack of trust, a lack of understanding or a cloudy perception of how you can help. Fortunately, there is a solution.

Your communication is so riveted to your agenda, that the prospect neither trusts you or understands how your agenda coincides with their agenda. Sure, you say you’re “client centered” but I will prove that’s not so.

Have you ever sent a product brochure to a prospect or done a mailing campaign that featured a product and its benefits? This is being product centered. Any type of sales or product information screams to a consumer “MY AGENDA.” But people are not interested in your agenda. Not surprisingly, they are interested in their agenda.

Here’s the difference. If Mrs. Smith receives a seminar invitation titled “All About Annuities—how to save taxes and gain safety,” it is obvious this is your agenda to sell annuities. I understand that you think this is her agenda because the annuity is a tool that helps her get what she wants. Surgery is also a tool that helps you get what you want (good health or better appearance), but do you have a desire for surgery?

You want the payoff—you don’t want involvement with the means, the tool or the service that produce the payoff. And your communication is all about the means, the products and how they work. In the next post, we show you how to start communicating about what the prospect wants—the results.