Every good salesperson knows the difference between a prospect and a client: Emotional commitment.

A prospect may be interested, very interested, in the opportunities you offer, but a client is absolutely committed to it. For salespeople, this difference starts in their appreciation of the two components of a sale - the emotional reaction and the logical decision.

For Van Mueller, a 35-year insurance industry veteran and a member of Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), an association of financial professionals, this appreciation of the emotional and logical, the right- and left-brain processes, offers the answer for an industry still trying to beat a bad rap.

"We need to take our clients through a process - and the first step is to get them to emotionally commit to becoming concerned about their financial future," Mueller told about 1,000 insurance and financial advisers during the fifth annual Critical Illness Conference, held in Toronto last month.

The ability to help prospective clients understand the need for financial planning - particularly when using preventive measures, such as insurance - is important in this day and age, given the current global aging dilemma and market volatility, he says.

"The key word of the 21st century is control," says Mueller. In order to become successful financial advisers, planners need to "help Canadians get their life back, by helping them get control."

Mueller admits that when helping clients gain a sense of control an adviser has to stop focusing on logic and facts, and start communicating with clients about their fears and their goals - the emotional side of feeling in control and an essential element in any financial plan.

Of course, the emotional side of selling is what initially gave insurance agents a bad rap, says Norman Levine, an industry pundit and another member of the MDRT.

Levine candidly describes how he, as a veteran insurance "salesman," would offer only one product (there was only one product, life insurance) and often his sales pitch was littered with allusions to disaster.

"We used to sell this product based on emotion; we used to sell this product based on fear," recalls Levine. "We would talk to the client and tell them you need life insurance because you are going to die.

"The problem was we were selling need, not providing value. Value comes from listening to the clients and providing them with solutions based on their wants and desires, not on our perceived need for that client."

Levine suggests that advisers need to move away from product pushing.

"Stop being a needs salesperson," he says. "When selling need, I was selling my personal perception of what the client needed - and these were really my needs. Now I have switched from need to want. I talk to the client to see what they want to achieve. That means I stopped talking and started listening. Product pushers talk; great advisers learn to have compassion and listen."

While improvements have occurred in the insurance realm based on product innovation, agents still need to learn how to commit to the client, not the commission, says Duncan Macpherson, an adviser who developed an industry standard method of increasing sales by increasing referrals.

"Eighty per cent of your money is made during only 20 per cent of your work day," explains Macpherson. That means that in order for advisers to create control for their client they must first learn to control their productivity.

Macpherson suggests that advisers lay out a plan - only through planning do advisers achieve success and this is the main message Mueller, Levine and others wanted to convey to industry professionals.

By planning, insurance and financial advisers can lay the foundation to help clients feel and be in control.

This return to desire-based sales strategy could not come at a better time, says Mueller. "The prime minister, the premiers, not even the president of the United States can fix what is going to happen to this world."

Demographic shifts, inflation, falling real estate prices and a volatile investment market, combined with greater access to information, means clients are inundated with information and unable to act to secure their future.

For example, in 2008, 49 per cent of Ontario's GDP went to pay for health care in the province. By 2020, this cost will increase and, by 2020, will demand 100 per cent of Ontario's GDP to pay for the province's health care.

"When it gets to that level, what do you think happens to your health care?" Mueller asks rhetorically. His example tugs at some of the primal fears many Baby Boomers hold.

Yet, despite the growing realities of global aging and the cost of post-retirement living, most Canadians are still not financially protected, says Mueller. This leaves them feeling out of control.

This is particularly true for homeowners, says Mueller. According to Statistics Canada, 83 per cent of people's wealth in Canada is tied up in real estate.

Yet, many economists, including Ted Carmichael, chief economist for JP Morgan, recently asserted that the six-year housing boom, which started in 2002, is about to come to an abrupt end - with many housing prices dropping over the next 12 to 18 months.

Considering that most Canadians have an illogical attachment to the safety of their home and the security of their real estate investment, most citizens then are not in as safe a financial position as they imagined, states Mueller, and this leaves them feeling vulnerable and out of control.

"As insurance and financial advisers, we are becoming even more important than politicians, bankers, accountants, lawyers and trust advisers," says Mueller, "because we are the only profession that can ask the questions and solicit the information" that takes the business of financial planning from a logical need to an emotional want.

"A prospect needs to make that emotional commitment," says Mueller. That's when they begin to feel in control.

(Romana King can be reached at king@businessedge.ca)