You might be an experienced salesman with a successful record in selling everything from cars to pharmaceuticals, but it doesn’t mean that you will also be good at selling Forex. The reason behind this is that unlike cars, TV sets, medications or even airline tickets, Forex is not a tangible product with immediate gratification and reward.
Selling products that clients can physically take home and start using instantly is not the hardest task in the world, especially if your product is good. Many times, the product helps you sell it because you can point out the advantages and even cause clients to begin experiencing the thrill of owning a new product and enjoying it before they even left the store.
Forex is a very different animal that requires a different breed of salesmen. In my experience, Forex salesmen need to be better trained and more charismatic than virtually any other sales professional. The main reason is that although Forex is one of the only products that can actually make money for clients, it is a virtual product that is sold exclusively over the phone and it takes time to start seeing the benefits.
This means that the Forex salesman needs to be more eloquent than his peers, and be not only a master of sales, but also a psychology wizard who can help clients build a mental image of themselves already using and enjoying their new product. So how can you help your sales force reach this level of proficiency?
The Essential Skills
First and foremost, your sales representatives need to learn and employ a technique called NLP, which stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. The underlying concept at the base of this technique is that the human mind organizes information and acts upon key words within a sentence, images in a picture or words in a letter. The mind does so in order to quickly and efficiently process large quantities of information. Originally used in psychotherapy, this technique has also proved itself to be very useful in sales.
In addition, it is highly advisable that everyone in your sales team trade on a demo software as much as possible. While this seems like stating the obvious, many brokerages do not emphasize this, and only demand their salesmen to remember what their platform looks like and what every button does. By trading themselves (on a demo account only), sales reps get a firsthand knowledge and understanding of their users’ experience, and are able to describe the platform more vividly and dynamically during sales calls. In addition, instructing potential clients and helping them earn “demo money” in real time has been proven to improve conversion, which can only be achieved if trading on the platform is second nature.
A third sales skill that is exponentially more important in Forex than in any other niche is language matching. Naturally, the ideal is to speak with potential clients in their native tongue, however in reality most calls are conducted in English and most of your potential clients are not native English speakers. Therefore, it is extremely important to begin by matching one’s language. If you use high language with someone who can barely complete a sentence, you will antagonize them by coming off as patronizing. On the other hand, if you call an educated client who speaks English at an academic level (or even a native English speaker) and speak at a lower level than them, you will come off as uneducated and untrustworthy- as they expect people in the financial sector to have a certain level of education.
Naturally, there are many additional elements that make a huge difference when selling Forex, however these are the building blocks upon which all other techniques are easier to understand and implement. There are many videos and articles online (especially videos) that help teach the basics of NLP and language matching; and we advise you to begin with those. Train your sales force well and you will see the results.
