Gibson: Always put the next appointment in your diary before you leave the current appointment. I personally use an agenda. The last point on the agenda is the date of the next meeting.

The reasons for this are important. First, you are proving to your clients that you want to see them again, that you are there for them, that this is a relationship, not a transaction.

Second, you can set the time frame, perhaps depending on what you’ve been discussing. We need to review this in three months, six months, sometimes 12 months is fine. It doesn’t matter whether you use a real diary or an electronic diary; agree on the date of the next meeting.

And then there is a final benefit. When the client rings up five months later and says, “Is it time we had a chat?” you say, “Absolutely. We’ve got something in four weeks’ time.” It’s already in the diary. You don’t have to run around and reorganize your diary. It is a fantastic way of engaging with clients.

Batchelor: I’m going to cover a couple traditional closing techniques. The first one we are going to talk about is the alternative close. Clients need help. They need help making decisions. Some clients find it very difficult to just say yes. So sometimes we have to close the meeting, close the sale in a different way, rather than just asking for the order.

And perhaps the most traditional way of doing that is using the alternative close. This is where at the end of the meeting, when you are asking for their business, instead of asking, “Would you like to do business with me?” you’ll give them two alternatives to choose from.

You might say, for example, “Would you like to start this on the first day of the month or the 15th of the month?” or “Would you like to have a waiver within this product, or would you like to have a double waiver on the product?” There are various ways that you can have alternatives at the end, but the client is asked for an alternative rather than asking simply to close.

The next alternative is thinking about the affirmation staircase. I don’t know if anyone has heard of Dale Carnegie, but Dale Carnegie in the U.K. does many seminars.

When you go to one of these seminars, they’ll teach you memory techniques and sales techniques at the end, and they’ll give you a small card, just a small Post-it card, and say, “Can you write the numbers 1, 2, 3 on it?” So you write, “1, 2, 3.” And then they say, “Answer this question; just write the answer on the card for us: Did you enjoy today?” To which everybody goes, “Yes.” Second question: “Did you find at least one idea that you could use in your business today?” To which everyone writes, “Yes.” And then they say, “Would you like to meet someone from the institute?” It’s really hard to write, “No,” when you said, “Yes and yes.”

So, when you are talking to clients, you can use the affirmation staircase to lead them on to saying yes to the close. For example, you might say something like “In talking about your finances today, do you have a much clearer idea of what you need in the future?” “Yes.” “Do you and your spouse see how putting some of these things in place will actually help you in the future?” “Yes.” “Would you like to go ahead?” “Yes.” It’s very difficult to say no when you’ve got one, two, three or four yeses. The affirmation staircase, again, is very traditional but a nice way of closing a sale.

Gibson: Let’s talk about cross-subsidy. I love this idea, and this has been very useful to both David and me over the years.

Let’s say we are looking at something with a life insurance premium, maybe $50 a month. The client’s only real objection is they are not sure whether they’ve got the funds to pay for this. And we are pretty sure we’ve done all of our work; we are obviously doing this because it’s the right thing for them and their families.

What we do is we cross-subsidy. We get the premium — the $600 a year, the $50 a month, however you do it — from other assets. And because we know all their details, we say to them, “Yes, well, you’ve got $38,000 in the bank; we know you like to keep a steady amount of cash. $600 is just 1.8 percent of that money that you are really not using.” Indeed, sometimes you are using the problem to pay for the solution. Imagine that they’ve got a lot of money, and they are trying to meet an inheritance tax or estate tax situation.

The next idea is called “You might have read.” I love using this with clients. You are perhaps talking to them about an idea. We have not received particularly any objections; we are just trying to put an idea across to them. Because I read voraciously, we know that there has been recently something in the press, in the media, maybe it’s social media, that relates to the topic that we’re discussing with them. So, we say, “You might have read …”

What we are doing here is we are not saying to them, “We know you haven’t read it.” We’re not saying to them, “We know a lot more than you do.” But we’re putting across the idea that if they haven’t read it, we have. We are putting across that we are the specialists. We know what we are doing. We are allowing for the fact that the client comes back and says, “Oh, yes, absolutely. I was just reading that in the Sunday paper.” Fantastic, you can have a little bit more of a conversation. It probably helps. It’s even better if they haven’t read it.

The next one is similar but a little bit more specific, and, again, something David and I have used, certainly for the last 20 years, in our own practices. It is this: “What do you want to happen when?” And then you follow it up with the point of discussion. So, for example, “What do you want to happen when you retire? What do you want to happen when you die?” And, again, have that uncomfortable quiet. The only person who is going to fill that gap is going to be the client. Let’s take “What do you want to happen when you die?” Sometimes the first thing a client says is “I want to be buried.” That might not be the answer we are looking for, but write it down. We make sure we understand that that’s what they want.

We can then come back with further questions. “What do you want to happen when you die as regards your estate? What do you want to happen when you die as regards your children? What do you want to happen when you die as regards your red car?” “I can’t stand it. I drive a blue one.” Whatever it is, “What do you want when?” It works really, really well.

Batchelor: This one will make you money next week: Run next generation workshops for your clients who are older, say in their 60s or 70s. Ask them whether they would like their children to learn how to inherit from workshops. And for your client’s children, explain to them how to inherit when their parents die. They come into the room as a group event, as ready-made prospects. Those people will be in their 30s and 40s ready to do the work because no one tells them how to inherit.