Have you ever said something to a prospect that was a little (or not just a little) condescending?
We were in a third close meeting with a large number of decision makers from private colleges regarding their qualified retirement plan management. The CFO of one of the smaller schools was the only one really making a fuss about the proposed transition, but others were keen to follow her lead. Her husband was the plan manager of three of the schools' 403bs.
It didn't look like things were going our way, so my last ditch effort was to say "everyone, I'm really sorry if there has been a misunderstanding on our part. The last time we all met about opportunities to improve the qualified retirement plans performance and fee structure I know we all agreed that we believed in math. I believed it when you said it last time, so I thought we were coming together again today because we were going to make data-driven decisions for the benefit of all your employees and staff, not emotional or self-serving decisions. We have misunderstood the goal here completely and I'm embarrassed that we have wasted your time today."
Fast forward 10 minutes and we have transfer paperwork signed for hundreds of millions of dollars for management takeover.
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