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Whenever we ask participants for course objectives in our training sessions inevitably someone asks if we are going to cover how you respond to a rate driven client. It’s a very common challenge that many struggle with. What do you do with the client that starts their conversation with you by focusing on rate?

It seems that some questions are difficult to ask. They must be because we see people taking forever to develop that habit of asking their clients more detailed problem questions.
 
What are we trying to do?
Selling is not complicated. There are logical steps that we go through when we buy things:
 
1. We decide were not happy with our current state. Whatever it is we have, or do not have currently, we decide we are not satisfied with it. That dissatisfaction creates a “need”. 
 

I don't know of a financial institution that doesn't need more new business. Everyone is looking to increase their client base and expand upon the number of products per client with the goal being enhanced profitability.

I was in a branch recently speaking with a group of investment people. I asked what sales goals they were working on that week.

There’s something we all know to be an important aspect of the sales process but it’s rarely talked about: Being Congruent
 
Congruent - the quality or state of agreeing, coinciding, or being congruent. 

Do you feel like you’re working as hard as you possibly can to make more sales but somehow you never seem to “close" enough? Chances are you may have developed a few bad habits that you might not even be aware of.

Here are seven bad sales habits that you should drop now:

1. Guessing at what you think the customer wants.

What makes a good sales presentation? Many salespeople get the idea that if they are able to dump everything they know about the product onto the client they have made a good presentation. They try to entice clients with the product hoping they'll see their need as a result of the presentation. They feel that if they have good product knowledge, are able to keep control of the conversation, and give the client every possible bit of information they'll get the sale... right? Wrong.

As people get more and more refined with their sales process they begin to execute on the individual steps of the sale with more confidence.

Consider this ... your personal success has far more to do with you than with market conditions. In good times and bad, top performers remain top performers. Why? There has been an enormous amount of study into what accounts for the huge variances in sales success from one individual to another. We have heard Brian Tracy and others talk about the concept of Winning Edge as "small differences in ability translating into enormous differences in results."