Asking Great Questions To Get Great Answers
Getting your client to open up. When profiling your client, if you ask great questions, you’ll get those great answers you are looking for. The key to asking great questions is realizing it’s not only what you say it’s how you say it. What are these questions you might ask? These questions are open-ended questions.
Open-ended questions are one of the most efficient ways to get your client to open up and share their financial and personal information with you. Open-ended questions encourage your client to talk and helps build your relation- ship. Open-ended questions should begin with ‘who, what, where, when, why, how and tell.’
To make this easy, here are some great profiling questions worth memorizing using the key words mentioned above.
- Who have you used for investment advice?
- Who else do you consult when making financial decisions?
- What do you like most/least about your current investment portfolio?
- What sources of information do you currently turn to for financial information and advice?
- Where else do you invest your money (have a banking relationship)?
- Where have you found the most useful information about investing?
- When do you expect to start taking income from your investments?
- When do you plan on retiring?
- When do you plan on using this money?
- Why do you currently bank here?
- Why are you in the bank today?
- How have you gone about making financial decisions in the past?
- How would you describe yourself as an investor?
- Tell me about your best/worst investment and why.
- Tell me about your last investment advisor.
- Tellme about how much risk you are willing to accept.
Take the time to memorize these effective profiling questions. Select the open ended questions that best fit the client you are working with at any given time. As soon as you put them to use, you will see how helpful they can be to your profiling skill.
TFS Training & Consulting, Inc is a premiere consulting and sales training company that has been at the forefront of the financial services industry for over 18 years. Partnering with financial institutions nationwide, we have built a solid reputation based on innovative training programs, unsurpassed service, and consistent support. With a proven track record of increasing sales in platform programs, TFS is committed to building your success. Your sales performance and productivity are paramount in the training programs we create for you.
For more information on how TFS can partner with you email us at
solutions@tfsedge.com or contact us at 1-866-719-3131.
Creating Effective Branch Relationships
One of the most important aspects of the Licensed Bankers job is to work effectively with the branch team, especially with the branchs Financial Consultant. It is also an advantage to receive the Branch Managers buy-in to any joint activities and plans between the LB and the FC. Following is a useful form that you can download, print, run by your Compliance department, and use to create a mini-business plan with your Manager and FC. Having a 3 way meeting each quarter to discuss this Agreement will give all of you an opportunity to both analyze the previous quarters successes and disappointments, and to thoughtfully plan ahead for the next quarter. Remember that a lot of the goals and activities will be negotiated between you and your FC, hopefully with your Branch Manager as an enthusiastic participant!
Download Branch Partnership Agreement Template (Word format)
3 Proven Ways to Increase Your Referrals
by Bruce Stava
President: LicensedBanker.com
As a Licensed Banker, one of the greatest benefits of your job is the number of prospects you encounter every day at work. This flow of prospects is the envy of brokers and insurance agents everywhere, who understand just how difficult it can be to find a qualified prospect even once a day. However, studies have found that the average platform rep often does not do enough on their own to create the absolute best kind of prospect-the referral. Everybody knows that referrals are the most effective way of growing your business, and most everybody has some explanation why they don’t have an organized system to create more referrals (“I’m too busy with branch customers: I don’t feel comfortable asking my customers for their friends’ names” etc.). Read the entire article.
Make LicensedBanker.com your default homepage. Click here.
Partnership Opportunities Find out how you can become a LicensedBanker.com partner.
Program Managers Customize this site for your bank program.