Wowing your client with some fabulous features

This is my favorite part. This is what clients are always thinking about when they're in your office or you are in their home: "What's in it for me?"

It is now time for wow with "FAB."

"I have discovered that most of the great salespeople in the world – are the top 1 percent who make close to $1 million a year or more – are all solution-based salespeople.

"A friend of mine from the Carolinas, Richard Berry – who was a 2007 finalist for SMA's Advisor of the Year – sells $30 million of fixed annuities a year by selling solutions, not products. When you bring up your solutions, the client always wants to know, "What's in it for me?"

I like to use what I call "FAB" – Feature, Advantage and Benefit. Products will have unique features; one example would be fixed index annuities. A feature of an FIA may be something like tax deferral. The advantage to the client is to make gains, not showing them as income. The benefit is to pay less taxes, and money compounds faster.

Another example is a variable annuity. You have annual lock-ins for income or monthly lock-ins, in some cases daily lock-ins. So what does that mean to the client? The feature is they get the gains locked in, or they have a guaranteed growth rate at 7.2 percent that they can take income from down the road. The advantage to the client is that the money is guaranteed to grow.

The ultimate purpose (and what annuities were originally designed for) is to have something to take income from. Then at some point, their money is guaranteed to double. The advantage and benefit to them is that they will always have an income stream they will be able to take income from and never outlive. They can now invest and still get a good night's sleep. Remember this part of the sale is all about the client and what problems they have and what product that you can provide to solve their problem. When you are done with this part of the sale, the client should say, "Wow ? that will do all that for me?" Now you are closer to the completed sale.

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