{"id":29693,"date":"2015-05-19T16:27:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T06:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/?p=29693"},"modified":"2015-05-26T16:19:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T06:19:01","slug":"the-power-of-file-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/2015\/05\/19\/the-power-of-file-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of File Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life insurance industry elder statesman, Russell Collins<\/strong>, has sent a reminder to all advisers about the powerful role that file notes can play within the sales process.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a>
Former specialist risk adviser, sought-after speaker and now author, Russell Collins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While some advisers may consider file notes primarily as a compliance requirement, Mr Collins advocates a different approach. Coinciding with the launch of his book,\u00a0Skills that Succeed<\/em><\/a>, Mr Collins says he attributes much of his success to the way in which he used his client file notes.<\/p>\n

In an extract taken from his new book, he tells his peers that “…if I could point to one thing that increased my closing rate to 9 out of 10, it was the file note. This in effect acted as a pre-presentation vehicle and … motivated people to really look forward to our next meeting.”<\/p>\n

…the fact-finding meeting is where the biggest sale of all is made – the sale of you!<\/h6>\n

Continuing on the theme of using file notes as a pre-presentation vehicle, Mr Collins says: “…the fact-finding meeting is where the biggest sale of all is made – the sale of you! … In this meeting, the focus is on asking questions that require people to think before they answer, and when they do answer, they are actually providing the information for solutions to problems which – at that point in time – they they are probably not even aware exist.”<\/p>\n

Mr Collins believes that giving clients the ability to review a written summary of their meeting with their adviser, which includes the key points about any possible gaps in their life insurance needs, helps to draw the client’s attention to these potential problems. “Within those major points was all the information I needed to prepare my eventual recommendations for inclusion in my sales presentation,” he says.<\/p>\n

Mr Collins emphasises that at the file note stage, there are no recommendations, but only suggestions; and he also drives home the importance of having clients sign-off the file notes as an accurate representation of the fact-find meeting.<\/p>\n

“I discovered that when people signed off on those needs – they were not going to argue or raise objections to my eventual recommendations at presentation time because they had already agreed to them in principle.” He continues, “Also, when people said ‘yes’ to my [file notes] summary, it was hard for them to say ‘no’ to my eventual recommendations.”<\/p>\n

…the file notes allowed them to make informed decisions based on logic, rather then emotion<\/h6>\n

While this process proved highly successful for Mr Collins during his long career, he makes the point that each adviser must develop a process that best suits them. In his own case, Mr Collins said he never progressed to the next step in the sales process until he had received written sign-off or verbal confirmation of the content and accuracy of his file notes.<\/p>\n

An insight shared with Mr Collins by one of his clients may offer one possible explanation for the reason why his file notes process has proven so successful. In relating how his client would use the file notes in discussion with his wife as a basis for reviewing and making decisions, Mr Collins notes: “He said the file notes allowed them to make informed decisions based on logic, rather then emotion.”<\/p>\n

Russell Collins is launching his book, <\/em>Skills that Succeed<\/a>, in Sydney on 27 May. Russell says he believes one of the major reasons for the unacceptably high level of underinsurance in Australia lies in the communication skills of many financial advisers…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life insurance industry elder statesman, Russell Collins, has sent a reminder to all advisers about the powerful role that file notes can play within the sales process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}