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Digg it UP - The Art of Fact-Finding – Turning Needs Into Wants
From postcards on the table at your favorite restaurant to letters after a brief hospital stay tucked in with your prescriptions, surveys represent the most effective way to secure an honest answer to: How did we do? More recently, these surveys have made their way into the workplace, providing a method of gauging employee attitudes at the office.Spending 40 hours or more every week with the same people, there’s no question what type of outlook you want these people to have. A positive employee with a can-do attitude takes the prize every time, and not just because of how pleasant it makes things in the workplace. Happy employees create a more efficient office, primarily by sticking around.Toby Velte, former CEO of FireSummit, Inc., knew the way to his employees’ heart, and it wasn’t increased pay. He recognized that his employees were after more than just compensation; they wanted to be happy while they were at the office. He obliged with supplying a game room, free soda, and network video game
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or towar
Recently lost your job or just looking for a new one?Is there a job opening at the company you have been looking at the last 6 months?The job seeker of today has to be able to present him/herself in a way that stands out from the rest. All to many times reviewers are faced with resumes and cover letters that just are to ordinary to notice. There are a lot of simple ways to present yourself in a cover letter that are bound to catch the attention of any reviewer.Here are the 6 best tips on how to write a resume cover letter that will stand out from the rest. Follow these tips and you are almost guaranteed an interview.Tips - How to write a resume cover letter#1 Stick to the facts! Do not see the cover letter as an autobiography. It should be brief and demonstrate that you meet or exceed the requirements listed in the job description.#2 Avoid negatives! The cover letter is not the place to explain why you left a former employer. These issues are
The reason I do it quickly is that it’s simple and rather boring.
Some things in life are really simple. When we do simple things, such as make the bed, we go into autopilot, in other words we automate it so it takes as less of our conscious attention as possible. That way we can focus on something else. We speed up simple processes because they’re boring. Now fact-finding with our customers in a face to face interview is quite simple. Collecting information to populate a form is not difficult. Hard facts are needed to fill in a form most of the time. Once we have the facts, we as fully trained and educated financial advisers, know the products the customer needs and telling is simple too.
Telling is not selling – especially not rapport selling.
Rapport selling fact-finding involves getting into the tricky bit. Not just asking questions to get facts but asking a variety of questions simulating a discussion to open up opportunities with our customer, finding softer information to help us link our products to them personally. Knowing what drives them to do what they do, get them feeling concerned about their shortfall of cover, excited by a goal they had in the back of their mind.
Above all, get them wanting what we have to sell. Turning needs into wants is the tricky bit but the most rewarding for them and us.
So how do we do this?
You need some skills and some process. Skills come in your ability to ask the right question, make this come over as a conversation and a genuine interest in your customer and to have first class listening skills. The process is this:
• Prioritise the customers needs, and take one at a time
• Discover the situation around the need
• Turn the need into a want
• Gain commitment
Like any process, you can adapt as you go but it’s important to follow some structure. What’s more important is that your customer goes along with you. Ask them to join in your journey. Tell them where you’re going to take them. Explain the process in benefit terms so they know exactly what’s going to happen and what is expected of them.
“I’d like to spend some time exploring your current situation by asking lots of questions. I’ll be doing lots of listening if that’s ok as you talk about yourself, your situation, your goals and dreams and the issues you have surrounding your personal finances. That way I’m able to give you the very best service and advice. Is that OK Mr Brown?”
Prioritise needs
Have a priority of needs which, hopefully, your customer has agreed with and actually prioritised for you. Typically this is the reason for them seeing you or being referred to you in the first place. Companies use all sorts of acronyms to help you decide needs and each fact find page is usually devoted to a particular need.
• PIMPSIO - Protection, income replacement, mortgage, pension, savings and investment, other
• PEPSI – protection, earnings replacement, pension, savings and investment
• SLIM – savings, life protection, insurance, mortgage Above all though, the customer decides the priority, not you. And you take one need at a time.
Discover the situation
Fact finds are usually populated with the usual situation type information. Name, policy details, amount of cover, date of retirement, shortfalls of cover needed etc etc. Now you need this of course, but you also need softer information. You need their feelings about the cover they have, what they know about alternatives, you need their priorities, their objectives, their aims for their family. You want to discover what they thought of their previous adviser, how much the state provides when they retire or die.
These are just examples of their current situation.
Lots of open questions, probes and just good old fashioned silence and listening will give you this information.
Turn the need into a want
The principle here is that people are driven away from pain and problems or towards pleasure. Think about this in your life? What spurs you on? It’s probably one of those two.
This bit is the clever bit and most tricky too. There’re three avenues you can explore that’ll get the customer thinking of wanting some solutions. They can discover the problems they face if the current situation stays put, they can see that some goals might be out of balance or off target and this can cause a problem or they might re-discover or re-ignite a goal that spurs them into taking action.
Take life and protection needs. Having a lack of this can cause people problems especially when the cause happens. They die or are off work long term with an illness. Your questions should let them consider the problems for them personally and the consequences too. Your questions can allow them to think about what sort of solution will solve these problems and turn the need into a genuine want for the products. A good mixture of questions – open and probes, summaries, pauses will bring dividends here.
Careful about going in like a bull in a china shop. You’re dealing with personal information so we do need to be sensitive. Care with your question style and tone. Use lots of “tell me…” and “I’m curious” and “I’m wondering”. Also make sure your question tone rises slightly in the sentence. Really important that because the opposite, a falling tone, suggests a command and will be interpreted as an attack or an interrogation.
And you don’t want that do you?
Take savings or investments. Having these or wanting this need area requires an end results. Why are they saving? A rainy day, a holiday of a lifetime, an income on retirement, a new car, a house. This list goes on. Your questions will let them explore these goals, vision the goal clearly, discover the pleasure achieving this goal may bring. This will be enough to turn this need into a want.
What about re-mortgages? This is big business these days. Is this a need motivated by getting away from pain or towards pleasure? That depends really. You might ask what their concerns are with the mortgage they already have. They might be anxious about paying a higher rate of interest than other people or having to make payments for longer than they wanted. Here we have a problem.
Explore this further to see how it affects them personally and you might find them driven by the desire to get a better rate of interest or the prospect of paying the loan off earlier than planned. You could explore the problems of remaining with their existing lender and maybe the personal consequences. This getting away from the pain might be their motivation. So to bring success in the fact-find we turn the need into a want. A yearning desire for some advice. Maybe this is a little utopian, but this process armed with the right questions and acres of listening will get you along the road.
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or toward
I witnessed some interesting behaviour from one of our premier management schools this summer. A behaviour that I have since discovered is not uncommon.This summer I met the PA of an emminent professor at a business school.I had met her on several occassions before and knew her to be a bright chatty woman who always enjoyed passing the time of day.On this occassion when I asked her how her week was going she looked at me and I could see that she wanted to smile but the muscles in her face would not work and after a few twitches she gave up trying and looked back at the ground.I asked her what was the matter and she told me that her department was undergoing change.I asked her what that actually meant.She told me that a "Change Manager" had appeared in the department and everybody was waiting to see who got the sack.This was a woman, who is normally a capable and confident administrator, had been reduced to a nervous wreck because she perceived that an anonymous arbi
• Prioritise the customers needs, and take one at a time
• Discover the situation around the need
• Turn the need into a want
• Gain commitment
Like any process, you can adapt as you go but it’s important to follow some structure. What’s more important is that your customer goes along with you. Ask them to join in your journey. Tell them where you’re going to take them. Explain the process in benefit terms so they know exactly what’s going to happen and what is expected of them.
“I’d like to spend some time exploring your current situation by asking lots of questions. I’ll be doing lots of listening if that’s ok as you talk about yourself, your situation, your goals and dreams and the issues you have surrounding your personal finances. That way I’m able to give you the very best service and advice. Is that OK Mr Brown?”
Prioritise needs
Have a priority of needs which, hopefully, your customer has agreed with and actually prioritised for you. Typically this is the reason for them seeing you or being referred to you in the first place. Companies use all sorts of acronyms to help you decide needs and each fact find page is usually devoted to a particular need.
• PIMPSIO - Protection, income replacement, mortgage, pension, savings and investment, other
• PEPSI – protection, earnings replacement, pension, savings and investment
• SLIM – savings, life protection, insurance, mortgage Above all though, the customer decides the priority, not you. And you take one need at a time.
Discover the situation
Fact finds are usually populated with the usual situation type information. Name, policy details, amount of cover, date of retirement, shortfalls of cover needed etc etc. Now you need this of course, but you also need softer information. You need their feelings about the cover they have, what they know about alternatives, you need their priorities, their objectives, their aims for their family. You want to discover what they thought of their previous adviser, how much the state provides when they retire or die.
These are just examples of their current situation.
Lots of open questions, probes and just good old fashioned silence and listening will give you this information.
Turn the need into a want
The principle here is that people are driven away from pain and problems or towards pleasure. Think about this in your life? What spurs you on? It’s probably one of those two.
This bit is the clever bit and most tricky too. There’re three avenues you can explore that’ll get the customer thinking of wanting some solutions. They can discover the problems they face if the current situation stays put, they can see that some goals might be out of balance or off target and this can cause a problem or they might re-discover or re-ignite a goal that spurs them into taking action.
Take life and protection needs. Having a lack of this can cause people problems especially when the cause happens. They die or are off work long term with an illness. Your questions should let them consider the problems for them personally and the consequences too. Your questions can allow them to think about what sort of solution will solve these problems and turn the need into a genuine want for the products. A good mixture of questions – open and probes, summaries, pauses will bring dividends here.
Careful about going in like a bull in a china shop. You’re dealing with personal information so we do need to be sensitive. Care with your question style and tone. Use lots of “tell me…” and “I’m curious” and “I’m wondering”. Also make sure your question tone rises slightly in the sentence. Really important that because the opposite, a falling tone, suggests a command and will be interpreted as an attack or an interrogation.
And you don’t want that do you?
Take savings or investments. Having these or wanting this need area requires an end results. Why are they saving? A rainy day, a holiday of a lifetime, an income on retirement, a new car, a house. This list goes on. Your questions will let them explore these goals, vision the goal clearly, discover the pleasure achieving this goal may bring. This will be enough to turn this need into a want.
What about re-mortgages? This is big business these days. Is this a need motivated by getting away from pain or towards pleasure? That depends really. You might ask what their concerns are with the mortgage they already have. They might be anxious about paying a higher rate of interest than other people or having to make payments for longer than they wanted. Here we have a problem.
Explore this further to see how it affects them personally and you might find them driven by the desire to get a better rate of interest or the prospect of paying the loan off earlier than planned. You could explore the problems of remaining with their existing lender and maybe the personal consequences. This getting away from the pain might be their motivation. So to bring success in the fact-find we turn the need into a want. A yearning desire for some advice. Maybe this is a little utopian, but this process armed with the right questions and acres of listening will get you along the road.
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or towar
At first glance, this question may seem a little silly. Of course I know what my job is. But in my experience, from both sides of the fence, many of us find out the hard way just what is expected of us. So here’s a blueprint for any new leader that wants to make sure they focus on the right areas.First of all, refer to your written job description. Read it several times and make sure you understand each area. Make notes for the areas that you need more clarification on. Make additions where you feel it is necessary.Next, request regular one on one meetings with your manager. So often I hear about managers that never have the time or feel it is necessary to meet. Don’t let your manager determine if this happens. Be proactive and ask for the time.Once you have a regular time scheduled, sit down with your manager and discuss what she expects from you. Be specific. What information do you need? When do you need it? How often? Hand her a copy of your job description and go over each area to make sur
Discover the situation
Fact finds are usually populated with the usual situation type information. Name, policy details, amount of cover, date of retirement, shortfalls of cover needed etc etc. Now you need this of course, but you also need softer information. You need their feelings about the cover they have, what they know about alternatives, you need their priorities, their objectives, their aims for their family. You want to discover what they thought of their previous adviser, how much the state provides when they retire or die.
These are just examples of their current situation.
Lots of open questions, probes and just good old fashioned silence and listening will give you this information.
Turn the need into a want
The principle here is that people are driven away from pain and problems or towards pleasure. Think about this in your life? What spurs you on? It’s probably one of those two.
This bit is the clever bit and most tricky too. There’re three avenues you can explore that’ll get the customer thinking of wanting some solutions. They can discover the problems they face if the current situation stays put, they can see that some goals might be out of balance or off target and this can cause a problem or they might re-discover or re-ignite a goal that spurs them into taking action.
Take life and protection needs. Having a lack of this can cause people problems especially when the cause happens. They die or are off work long term with an illness. Your questions should let them consider the problems for them personally and the consequences too. Your questions can allow them to think about what sort of solution will solve these problems and turn the need into a genuine want for the products. A good mixture of questions – open and probes, summaries, pauses will bring dividends here.
Careful about going in like a bull in a china shop. You’re dealing with personal information so we do need to be sensitive. Care with your question style and tone. Use lots of “tell me…” and “I’m curious” and “I’m wondering”. Also make sure your question tone rises slightly in the sentence. Really important that because the opposite, a falling tone, suggests a command and will be interpreted as an attack or an interrogation.
And you don’t want that do you?
Take savings or investments. Having these or wanting this need area requires an end results. Why are they saving? A rainy day, a holiday of a lifetime, an income on retirement, a new car, a house. This list goes on. Your questions will let them explore these goals, vision the goal clearly, discover the pleasure achieving this goal may bring. This will be enough to turn this need into a want.
What about re-mortgages? This is big business these days. Is this a need motivated by getting away from pain or towards pleasure? That depends really. You might ask what their concerns are with the mortgage they already have. They might be anxious about paying a higher rate of interest than other people or having to make payments for longer than they wanted. Here we have a problem.
Explore this further to see how it affects them personally and you might find them driven by the desire to get a better rate of interest or the prospect of paying the loan off earlier than planned. You could explore the problems of remaining with their existing lender and maybe the personal consequences. This getting away from the pain might be their motivation. So to bring success in the fact-find we turn the need into a want. A yearning desire for some advice. Maybe this is a little utopian, but this process armed with the right questions and acres of listening will get you along the road.
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or towar
Many times one feels as if his/her career is not moving anywhere or is not taking a desired shape. There is may be no sight of a promotion; and as if to rub salt into your wounds, there may also appear to be people who move fast up the career ladder. This is the time that you should you realize a couple of facts as to where could you have possibly gone wrong and what should you do in order to put your career back on the fast track.Now don’t expect any magic or short cut formula that will regain lost glory of your career. Don’t think that tuning up your career is easy. There are certain steps to be followed to tune up your career and derive satisfaction out of it.1. Revisit Your Life's Goals to find out whether you need to restate your goals again. Considering that the goals you had set for your career as a teenager have now lost significance, you need critical examination so that you will not repeat the mistake of setting smaller goals. Your responsibilities have probably gone up over the years and th
Careful about going in like a bull in a china shop. You’re dealing with personal information so we do need to be sensitive. Care with your question style and tone. Use lots of “tell me…” and “I’m curious” and “I’m wondering”. Also make sure your question tone rises slightly in the sentence. Really important that because the opposite, a falling tone, suggests a command and will be interpreted as an attack or an interrogation.
And you don’t want that do you?
Take savings or investments. Having these or wanting this need area requires an end results. Why are they saving? A rainy day, a holiday of a lifetime, an income on retirement, a new car, a house. This list goes on. Your questions will let them explore these goals, vision the goal clearly, discover the pleasure achieving this goal may bring. This will be enough to turn this need into a want.
What about re-mortgages? This is big business these days. Is this a need motivated by getting away from pain or towards pleasure? That depends really. You might ask what their concerns are with the mortgage they already have. They might be anxious about paying a higher rate of interest than other people or having to make payments for longer than they wanted. Here we have a problem.
Explore this further to see how it affects them personally and you might find them driven by the desire to get a better rate of interest or the prospect of paying the loan off earlier than planned. You could explore the problems of remaining with their existing lender and maybe the personal consequences. This getting away from the pain might be their motivation. So to bring success in the fact-find we turn the need into a want. A yearning desire for some advice. Maybe this is a little utopian, but this process armed with the right questions and acres of listening will get you along the road.
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or towar
So much has been written and said about the current prospects for the investment property market in Bulgaria now that the nation has joined the European Union; opinion ranges from those who believe the hike in property prices prior to EU accession represented the majority of the positive adjustment due in Bulgaria, to those who are certain that property prices could now mirror those of other recent EU entrants where prices doubled following accession.Some emerging hotspots are Veliko Tarnovo, which is a stunningly beautiful town with amazing architecture and great tourism interest; located in the north of Bulgaria, it is a definitely one of richest cultural locations in Bulgaria.The city of Stara Zagora occupies a strategic and important location in the country and is one of the most important economic hubs in Bulgaria. Located in central southern Bulgaria, Stara Zagora is a central hub for regional, national and cross border transportation. Varna, on the Black Sea coast is a major port and tourist
Gaining commitment
Along the way of exploring needs with your customer, you’ll want to get little dollops of commitment along the way. Subject to affordability, they’ll be interested in having a look at more detail shortly. Enquiring about affordability at an early stage is a brilliant way of preventing an objection later down the line.
All the time you’re building a vision of a package of options that will take away this pain or give them the pleasure they definitely want. At the end of the formal fact find process, we need to announce that this is what we’ll show them and they can look at the options and make some decisions.
There’s not much more I can do to turn the bed-making process into a more interesting and stimulating task, unlike fact-finding. But I think I’ll stick with the 1? minutes and keep quiet. The pain of having other jobs to do around the house is too intense.
The next time you carry out a fact find, focus on the trickiest and more stimulating part – that is to turn the needs you’re discussing into wants. Remember away from pain and problems or towards pleasure.
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