During your meetings with a prospect, you are interested in the facts, but not just the facts. You want as much information as you can get in addition to the facts. This crucial, additional information you need can only be obtained if you have successfully built a rapport with the prospect. One of the major causes of failure to make the sale is not paying enough attention to your prospect's attitudes, feelings, and his or her unique needs and wants and goals. The formal, organized development of all pertinent information about a prospect is one of the key factors that separates you, an insurance and financial services professional, from other salespeople or order-takers.

Many experts believe that the "close" starts when you begin talking with a prospect. Certainly the confidence, trust and rapport you earn have a major impact on the outcome of the sale. In that respect, you are building your "close" from the minute you meet your prospect. However, there comes a time in every sales presentation when the salesperson must ask the prospect to act on his or her own recommendations. In this unit, we will look at this narrow, yet crucial, part of the sales presentation.

We have stressed the importance of needs and wants selling. It is impossible to practice needs and wants selling without information about the prospect's actual needs and wants. Insurance and financial planning needs and wants are based on a variety of personal and business factors. Therefore, you must gather as much information as possible about your client's needs and wants, so that you can recommend solutions that will meet those needs and wants. In this unit, we will examine the techniques that will help you gather the information you need to recommend effective solutions.