Advisor Today - March 2010

sales and marketing

| By Julie Britt

SALES IDEAS
Winning Tips From the NAIFA Conference
Focus groups, leaving a legacy and making good use of a business card are some of
the top sales ideas shared.

How many effective sales ideas could you come up with in an hour or so? A few? Several? How many could you list if you asked a large group of NAIFA members to throw in their suggestions?

That’s what happened at the popular Two Minute Sales Ideas session during last year’s NAIFA Convention and Career Conference in Orlando. Here are the top vote getters from the session led by Van Mueller, LUTCF, a registered representative with the Wisconsin agency of New England Financial Services. Advisor Today will feature other ideas from the session in upcoming issues.

Ask for feedback

Adam Kilborn, CFP, CLU, a member of NAIFA-Southern Nevada, found inspiration for his idea in a recent presentation on focus groups by Dan Allison, an industry expert in behavioral psychology.

If anyone doesn’t know what a focus
group is, think Kirby Vacuum Cleaners,
Kilborn told the audience. Before the
company spends money on a new prod-
uct, it does a test case of the product
with a group of housewives—or house-
men nowadays, said Kilborn, a financial
representative with Orgill/Singer &
Associates in Las Vegas. “All these ideas
that you’ve heard today can be used in a
focus group, or any idea that you’ve got
out there.”
The key to the power behind a fo-
cus group is someone telling you how
you come across, he said. “I’ve got
this little voice in my head that says
I’m the greatest person in the world. I
think you might have one, too.”
But other people reviewing exactly
how you do something in life and
then coming back and giving you
feedback is one of the most valuable
tools you can have, he said. How do
you know what you’re saying is get-
ting across, and how would you know
that you’re being effective?

Grandmother’s heartstrings

Bill Williams, CSA, CLTC, of Allstate Financial Services LLC in Perrysburg, Ohio, a member of NAIFA-Toledo, taps into the unique bond grandparents have with their grandchildren.

“I know you frequently encounter
grandparents as potential clients,” he
told the audience. “Talk to a grand-
mother and ask if she loves her grand-
children. She’s going to say yes. Ask
her if she sends them a birthday card or
present on their birthday. She’s going
to say yes. Ask her: When you’re gone,
who’s going to send them that birthday
card? She’ll say, ‘Nobody, I guess.’”
Then ask her: “How would you like
to be able to continue sending your
grandchildren a card and a present for
the next 50 years? ‘That’d be nice,’”
she replies. Next, you say, “What we
need to do is set up a life insurance
policy for you, put it into a trust, have
the trustees send a birthday present in
your name to your grandchildren ev-
ery year and, if you like, you can write
letters to go along with them so that

they will be able to receive them and think of you long after you’re gone.”

Play the disability card

Ed Zabielski, RFC, LUTCF, CAP, a past NAIFA trustee, demonstrated his idea with a little help from Mueller.

“OK. You hand somebody your business card face down. Now, Van, I’d like you to write down the names of three people who will pay you your income if you become disabled. Name three people,” said Zabielski, president and owner of Edward A. Zabielski & Co. in Newark, Del.