Should Salespeople Have a Sales Coach?
For instance, if you’re talking with a couple in their late 60s, chances are they are approaching retirement or have already retired.
A coach can guide you toward the right questions to ask, leading the couple to realize that, for most, income holds greater importance in retirement than assets.
Product Presentation
At some point, you might want to talk to prospects like that couple about specific solutions.
A coach can teach you how, for example, to show the couple that an income annuity can generate more income than CDs while providing greater reliability than a diversified portfolio.
Suppose that prospects have experienced losses in the market but still want to invest.
In that case, a coach can advise you to show the prospects how to transfer some of the market’s downside risk to an insurance company, through a variable or indexed annuity.
Strategy Discussions
You can learn from a coach about sequence-of-returns risk, and about the importance of showing clients that losing money just before or after retirement can significantly impact their plans. You can also learn about how explaining sequence-of-returns risk demonstrates the value the prospect is receiving by allocating time with you.
Individuals in their 60s are often tempted to claim their Social Security benefits at age 62.
A sales coach can teach you the most effective way to remind them that, in general, the primary breadwinner may want to delay claiming, to secure a larger guaranteed monthly paycheck for both spouses’ lives.
And you can learn from a sales coach why you should show couples how life insurance on one spouse can protect the other spouse’s Social Security benefits.
A sales coach will give you ideas about how to explore family dynamics, given that the clients’ parents’ plan could have implications for their own plan.
Once you’re talking about the clients’ parents’ plan, the conversation could turn to long-term care planning, and then to leaving a legacy and estate planning.
A sales coach can help you develop the framework and pivot questions to ensure that clients have wills, and to explain to the clients why a trust is the most tax-efficient method for wealth transfer.
The Execution
Several products could help these types of clients, but if you can’t get in front of the clients, do those products matter?
If you can’t help clients identify the problems they want to solve, will you ever be able to talk about those products?
If you aren’t effective in your sales presentation, will you close any sales, ever?
After a football coach relays the play to the quarterback, the responsibility falls on the professionals. It’s up to you to execute.
A sales coach can help you time your warmup perfectly, so your client arrives when you’re fully focused.
Athletes must have athletic talent and an extensive knowledge of their sport, just as salespeople must have good people skills and an extensive knowledge of their products.
Like athletes, salespeople typically get their knowledge through years of practice and experience at lower levels of competition.
A sales coach should be a source of inspiration and guidance for you.
They should provide support in the face of defeat and reinforcement in the face of victory.
They should actively assess your strengths and weaknesses and fight to help you improve in any way they can.
Lloyd Lofton is the founder of Power Behind the Sales and the author of The Saleshero’s Guide To Handling Objections.
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