Make my clients fund their trading account

Fellow sales people,

I recently joined an online trading company as a sales executive.
My main job is to open account and to make client fund their account (at least $400).

Opening new account is pretty easy. The funding part is more challenging. Client tend to delay the funding of their account after opening it. I think that the emotional ressort that make them delay to fund their account is decrease of excitment or maybe fear (rationalization of the risk of trading). Or I least this is how I see it (comment welcome...)

This is still their money as they can withdraw it easily whenever they want.

I'm working on a strategy to make them fund their account straight away when I call them to confirm that their account
is now open. I really believe that this is in their best interest to fund their account ASAP (they get a educational DVD and the more they wait, the less they will have the courage to start trading).

Do you guys have some ideas on the framing, script or incentives I should test to achieve this outcome and respect my client deepest need ?

Thank you -RyanH

What will the client lose by not funding today? -AZBroker

Excelent question...

Nothing really when I think about it. This is a huge breakthrough for me to be honest :dun -RyanH

Why do most people open the account Ryan? What is their motive? -Marcus

We offer the trading of CFD* (contract for differences) that allow you to trade the stock market without buying the underlying instrument. So I would say:

For experienced trader: Extremely lower commissions that normal shares trading and tax-free profit. Leverage from x10 to x100.

For a new trader: Make money on the stock market with extremely low commission and tax-free profit.

CFD are not available to US residents that's why some of you may never have heard of them. -RyanH

Ryan, why do you think it's easy to get prospects to open their account? Why are they reluctant to fund the account? In response to Marcus's question, you say the reason they open the account is:

For experienced trader: Extremely lower commissions that normal shares trading and tax-free profit. Leverage from x10 to x100.

For a new trader: Make money on the stock market with extremely low commission and tax-free profit.

Yet, that can't be if they're not funding their account, right? They aren't paying extremely lower commissions if they don't fund their account, correct? And a new trader isn't going to make money on the stock market with low commissions if they aren't going to fund their account, right?

So, why are customers opening an account? And then not funding it? -Skip Anderson

I believe that they got excited by the lower comissions and the tax-free profits but at some point they realize that they don't really understand what CFDs are and how they works.

Even myself when I joined the company it took me few weeks to understand the concept of trading CFDs. A CFD mirror the performance of an equities offering the benefits of trading these without having to physically own the underlying instrument itself.

Client go on our website, got excited by the benefits of CFD, apply for a trading account but then may think "But how this stuff really works ? ", "Am I trading the stock markets or not ?".

They may get confused and didn't grasp the pratical subtility between trading a normal share and a share as a CFD. If they would it will probably maintain their initial excitment. Because at the end, the concept and benefits are really amazing. It's really a no-brainer for anybody who want to trade on the stock market... -RyanH

So it sounds like the opening of the account isn't really helping you achieve your sales goal. Is there a way to package the opening of the account with funding the account?

I'm wondering if it's too easy to open the account. It sounds like it's easy and perhaps free, so there's really no commitment when the customer opens the account...therefore, perhaps your sales focus has to be on funding rather than opening. Does that make sense? -Skip Anderson

This is a good point Skip. The process is usually:

A client submit for free an application on our retail website. We open the account but he can't use the trading plateforme and analytics tools until he fund his account.

The company use to offer a mobile when you open an account AND fund it. But it's not the case anymore.

I talked with one of our trainer yesterday and he said that I can tell the client to fund his account and withdraw the money the next day if he is not ready to start trading now with the incentive that he would be able to benefit from the analytics tools offered by the trading platefrom. (I'm a little bit perplex about this idea...).

By the way, we never cold call. All account application come from our retail website. So basically my sales role is more to make sure that as many clients as possible fund the account, the earlier possible. -RyanH

So Ryan, from the sounds of it, the opening of the account is a non-issue. It sounds like you have people who open an account with no intention of funding the account. Therefore, your sales efforts should not be focused on opening an account, they should be focused on getting your prospects to commit to using your service and funding their account.

Does that make sense? -Skip Anderson

Yes Skip, I just can agree...For now I really see nothing. I'm going to (innocently) talk with my manager tomorrow and try to have his point of view on this... -RyanH

Skip, I had a talk with my manager and he presented the figure below:

A sales exe receive an average of 30 account applications every week.

- 10 of theses accounts are funded during the opening of the account.

- 8 are funded within 1 month (after 2-3 follow up phone call from the sales executive)

- 12 will never be funded (even after 2-3 follow up phone call from the sales executive)

I asked him what they think they can do to make theses account funded. He said that this is just the way it is... but in my opinion there should be a better way.

They got their leads from google. We don't do cold calling so we take theses open account and must make the most of them.

Or maybe the real question is: how I filter the one who will never fund their account anyway ?

Any comment ? ;st -RyanH

At least that gives you clarity: your clear sales goal is to get people to fund their sales account, so you need a sales strategy to help you do that efficiently and effectively.

Other questions:

Do you have anything to do with the 10 clients who fund their account during the opening of the account, or is that something that is done without the assistance of a sales rep?

Do the numbers you were given jive with your experience? And with the experience of other execs? -Skip Anderson

1. The 10 clients who fund their account during the opening of the account do it by themselves. This can be done throught the application process on the website.

2. TBH I never really counted. I didn't dare to expose these figures to the other exec as it really was an offline talk and I suppose that there is a big chance that they are not tracking their numbers too...

Maybe the clue would be the see what are the similiraties that share the people who fund their account during the account application.

If I find out and that they create a system to only target theses peoples, i can start looking for another job ;st -RyanH

I think it would be worth your while to start tracking these things on your own regardless of what other reps are doing. I'm doing my own kind of tracking and it has improved our company's performance overall. -Andrea

i was an equities trader. now is not the time for people to start funding trading accounts. market is very difficult to trade on the long and short side.at least it is currently. -vinyl_sales

Believe it or not but the company is exploding their sales target!

Probably because our product (CFD and Financial Spread Bet) allow short selling...

You are a pro but in the eyes of a retail clients the opportunity to make money on falling markets is very attractive.

Ryan -RyanH