The Buying Atmosphere is one of the most important pieces of our client meetings. Think of it like a pivot point – a before/after marker in your conversation.

When we visit with our prospects, typically they’ve never thought of the risks we can cover for them. They’ve never evaluated if something like this could happen to them and what they would do if they were forced to come up with the money in an emergency.

The Buying Atmosphere allows you to transition the conversation from educating them on everything you’ve just been talking about to them evaluating whether or not they want to consider this coverage for themselves.

If you skip this part, you will end up educating a lot of people, but not helping them evaluate whether they want to apply for the coverage for themselves.

After you’ve done a good Qualifying Intro and given a good overview but before you show any specific benefits, say:

John, that’s the long part of what I show people. The short part is

1. How much coverage could you qualify for?
2. What are your rate choices if you DO qualify?

You know the coverage you have now and the risks in running your business. Over the next few minutes, you’re going to get a solid gut-feeling about whether you need this or not. If you realize you don’t need this – will you do me a favor and just tell me that straight out? Great.

On the other hand, we’re both busy people – it was hard enough to sync our schedules for this meeting, and I know we don’t want to schedule more time on our calendars just for paperwork!

So if you don’t have anything like this, there’s a rate option you like, and you’re 85% sure you’d like to be considered for coverage, let me tell you my process:

I’m going to get some info from you, figure out how you want to setup your payments and get your application ready to send in.

The company will look over your application and decide if they’ll cover you or not.

If they want to offer you coverage, it takes a week or two to get your policies in the mail.

I’ll get with you again in person right after that to go over everything they sent you, make sure it’s exactly what you want and show you how to use it when/if you need it.

During that period, if you need to change anything or decide for whatever reason you don’t want the coverage after all, you can always modify or refuse the policy. It’s no big deal.

Sound fair? Do you have anyone else that helps you with these kinds of things? Do they need to be here to see what I’m about to go over – or can you decide to apply on your own if you want to be considered?

The key to this piece of your meeting is you want them to come out with an objection here if they have one. If you don’t have these three elements, make another appointment and come back:

• Need – they need to agree something like death, disability, cancer, heart disease, accident or hospitalization could occur; and it would be at least inconvenient to their cashflow.
• Money – a functioning, positive cash-flow business.
• Decision Maker – able to make a decision now on filling out an application if they want it.