sales skills Archives

Understand The Buying Journey To Get More Clients

by Tony Vidler The decision-making process – or buying journey as it has become known – that prospective clients go through today is complex, time-consuming for all parties, and is also often an incredibly frustrating affair for all parties. It is less frustrating if we understand what is actually going on and allow the […]

Help Referrers Really Understand Who You Want To Meet

by Tony Vidler One of the reasons referrers don’t give us quite the right quality referral most of the time is that we are often very poor at describing the person we work best with when we are having a referral discussion to begin with. It’s our fault; not theirs for the wrong sort […]

Know and Use the Principles Of Influence Deliberately

by Tony Vidler One of the most important pieces of work for professional advisers in the last 3 decades would have to be Robert Cialdini’s Principles Of Influence. Essentially he has distilled the lessons of human behaviour into a relatively small group of principles which most humans are influenced by. There are exceptions of […]

You get the behaviour that you reward

by Tony Vidler We tend to get the right behaviour when we see it and reward it repeatedly. Kindergarten teachers know it, so why don’t the leaders of professional services firms know it and use it? Here are a couple of real examples of how this plays out: In one instance it was watching […]

How could you make your “Advice” become tangible?

by Tony Vidler Sensory sells…having an intangible become tangible absolutely helps people buy. And when it comes to buying “the tangible”, presentation is everything isn’t it? The most ordinary things become something special when beautifully wrapped and presented. The wrapping and presentation creates intrigue and interest and heightens the anticipation and pleasure…. Is it possible […]

Compliant Advice: Here are the only 3 things that matter

by Tony Vidler Whenever the topic of compliance, or the “advice process”, comes up most advisers see themselves like this: Everyone is throwing everything at you with the sole intention of destroying you, right? As a consequence, compliance is largely considered a burden. As is usually the way of these things a substantial body […]

Financial Advisers Problem? Not doing the One Thing.

by Tony Vidler Advisers have a few problems these days. The biggest financial adviser problem though is getting prospects to engage with us to begin with. Despite a couple of decades of positioning, developing and improving technical knowledge and qualifications, many financial professionals are struggling to get enough clients to engage in holistic planning. We […]

Clients need to be reasonable and meet expectations too

by Tony Vidler It is not unreasonable to have reasonable expectations, is it? Whenever we enter into an agreement with somebody else to work together on anything it is fair to say that we both have expectations about how the arrangement is going to work. That applies whether the arrangement is moving into a […]

You really do have to sell more to your clients.

by Tony Vidler Your clients will stay with you longer and be more valuable to you if you cross-sell more products and services to them. You will be more valuable to them if you sell more of what you do to them. Yes, yes…I know…there is that word “sell” and it doesn’t sit well […]

The 5 Levels Of Professional Competence

by Tony Vidler Professional competence is now a clearly demonstrable thing isn’t it? Or is it? Can an adviser be considered as having competence and incompetence simultaneously? I think so. Competence has been a primary focus of regulatory reform, and that’s fair enough. Consumers have a right to expect it from their advisers and […]

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