My Engaging Hook

Recently in class, we were talking about having a hook when it came to selling and I immediately came up with one that sounded engaging interesting. In fact, I will just put it in this post right now: I help people from all stages of life plan for an uncertain future tailored around their personal, professional, and financial goals.

This hook actually came straight from my training at Northwestern Mutual. They were very precise with how they wanted us to talk to potential clients and what way we would sway them due to how we talked. I saw first hand how this approach could work but, more importantly, how it fell short.

See to me, sales always came back to confidence because I am very good at memorizing language and repeating it back to people, but when it comes to going off the book, I freeze. It took me all summer and eventually quitting my internship in November to realize this. I was talking the right way to people, but I wasn’t approaching it the right way. I came off as a nervous 21 year old who had little to know idea of what he was selling instead of confident young man capable and willing to manage people’s money responsibly.

This came to a head a bit when I was meeting with one of my friends who is an AA at Cleveland Clinic. He told me that he made too much money for me to manage since I was just starting out. Sure that makes sense, but it also begs the question of how does one break into that market at such a young age? To me, that came down to confidence. Even in that meeting with a close friend, I was still shy and tentative and made him feel like I was not ready for anything like that. Overall, language is good but confidence is more important.