If you think that a good sales rep is a smooth-talking professional with years of experience, think again. While experience and strong verbal abilities are important for success in sales, they are not the be-all and end-all of what makes a good Forex sales representative. In fact, the nature of the product, as well as it’s inseparable relationship with the world of finance, stock markets and more, contributes to its uniqueness and makes it so that a different breed of salesmen is needed in order to demonstrate its benefits to potential clients.
There is a general axiom in sales, which claims that a good salesman can sell anything, and that training them to sell a certain product or service is merely a technical issue of acquainting them with a product. With most products this holds true, but Forex is a different animal for a few reasons. Firstly, it is not a tangible product which you can place on your shelf at home like a new TV, therefore it is not merely a matter of convincing them that you offer a better price and quality. Secondly, due to regulation limitations, a Forex sales rep must reliably present the opportunity to profit from trading without presenting it as an investment. Thirdly, the sales rep must refute the bad reputation that the industry has gained, and fourthly, they must be able to present themselves as financial experts, a task which is easier said than done.
So if being a slick smooth-talker is not enough, what makes for a good Forex sales rep?
First: you want people who are eloquent, rather than slick. Choose someone who speaks properly and comes across over the phone as being highly educated and versed in finance. Slick talkers often tend to beat around the bush and contradict themselves, and in our business, this is more detrimental than beneficial. Just put yourself in the clients’ shoes: if someone called you and presented himself as an account manager from a respectable brokerage, you would expect them to speak properly and at a certain level, and you would expect them to be able to make a clear and consistent argument for why you should join.
Second: choose people who are hungry for money. While this holds true for most sales jobs, it is exponentially important in the Forex industry because the product is intangible, which makes for a harder sales call. In addition, the competition is tough, the clientele is often skeptic, and the work environment is often fairly monotonous. By this we mean that there are no face-to-face meetings, no client visits, and the work usually entails phone call after phone call for long hours, with bathroom breaks being the main change of scenery. This means that people who just want a steady income are most likely to settle for the base pay and some bonuses. They are also likely to work at a slower pace and take more time to recover between calls – resulting in reduced productivity.
Third: Choose multi-lingual sales reps. Whether your brokerage is focusing on Asia or Europe, you are entering a global business with a diverse clientele, and most tier one countries have populations that speak several languages. A great example of this is the EU, whose union allows citizens from one member country to relocate to another member country as easily as American citizens can relocate from state to state. This means that you can find German speakers in England, Polish speakers in France, Spanish speakers in Austria and so on. And while the primary international language is English, the ability to speak with someone in their native tongue is more likely to make them feel at ease, trust the agent on the phone, and result in a deposit.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but keep these three traits in mind when choosing your sales force. It is an effort that pays off in the long run.
