sales skills Archives

How do you create an “Act Now” mindset with clients?

by Tony Vidler One of the ongoing challenge in marketing professional services is simply getting people to “act now”. We have to overcome their lack of urgency. Our service will still be there tomorrow, right? And usually the need to be addressed is a future need, and maybe well into the future….so there is […]

Lost Sales Skills: How to “get down to business” without drama

by Tony Vidler The advice industry has lost a lot of sales skills, and it needs them. If we are to help consumers make better decisions and change behaviour then we have to be able to help convince them to change. The first tension point for today’s professionals is how to transition from the […]

New Thinking In Professional Development For Financial Advisers

by Tony Vidler One of the positive changes for financial advisers in this part of the world in the last year was a broadening of what can be considered Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Now, instead of solely focussing upon technical learning, we are entering a regime where advisers have to map out their own […]

This Is The Sensible First Step In Taking Charge Of Your Time

by Tony Vidler Without doubt the most precious resource we have in professional services is our time. For many practitioners it is all they have to sell, and derive income from. It follows that when it comes to trying to determine how to improve business efficiency or profitability, or personal earnings, that the allocation […]

It’s Prime Networking Time!

by Tony Vidler There are two types of advisers at this time of year: 1. those who begin finding it tough to close out the game 2. those who are already started on a new game. Typically in December & January most clients are trying to close out their own business games….get THEIR jobs […]

Top Of Mind Awareness: Being Present Without Being A Nuisance

by Tony Vidler Promoting our personal professional brand is essentially all about creating top-of-mind-awareness. Being the person that our target market thinks of, and then calls, when they recognise a need or desire is our goal. We want to be “top of mind”. To achieve that we must master the art of being present, but […]

Is this why prospects ignore your networking effort?

by Tony Vidler Networking often seems to be harder than it should. It is amazing how many people forget, or ignore, basic social skills and common courtesies when trying to network – especially in online networking platforms such as LinkedIn. Speaking personally, I ignore people trying to network with me on a daily […]

Why we get price resistance

by Tony Vidler Whether we like it or not there is nearly always price resistance in delivering financial advice, and how we present our service is a large part of that problem. It doesn’t have to be…we just need to think through the differences between “what we say” and “what they hear”. I often […]

Question: What’s the worst that could happen if you asked this?

by Tony Vidler Great questions are integral to client engagement, but what is a really GREAT question? One of the keys to success for any professional is having strong sales skills, or to put it another way, the ability to influence clients to shift their thinking. Is that “selling” though, or is that just […]

Want Prospects To Open Up? Take a tip from the professional interviewers

by Tony Vidler Once upon a time everyone was taught the difference between open and closed questions as the key to engaging prospects…and it worked for a fair while. In today’s world with it’s much greater emphasis upon individual opinion and with our professional focus having shifted entirely onto what the client cares about rather […]

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