Soft skills the cherry-on-top for advisers, planners seeking next-level sales

Active listening, communication and empathy stand out as three top skills for financial advice professionals seeking to differentiate their service offerings in the competitive advising discipline. These soft skills, also described as people skills or interpersonal attributes, are must-haves for people-facing hires regardless of industry.

Paying close attention to…

For a demonstration, imagine a financial planner sitting down with a client who is anxious about their retirement savings. Active listening involves the planner paying close attention to the client, making sure to go beyond financial considerations to explore and understand the client’s fears and aspirations. Communication skills come to the fore in explaining complex financial strategies in simple, relatable terms. In combination, soft skills take the planner beyond knowing the right investment options to making the client feel understood, valued and confident in their decisions.

Your writer started thinking about soft skills following the two-day-long 2024 FPI Professional’s Convention, which was packed with touchy-feely topics like communication, corporate culture, human connection and mindset. These skills are so valued among Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI) members that the institute invited Brian Parsley, founder of The Constance Group, which owns The Human Factor? among other trademarks, to present two hour-long sessions to first ‘unlock the power of connection’ and second, decode communication styles. PS, these short titles hardly do the content justice.

“We teach The Human Factor? because in a world of Zoom and ‘everything online’, we have to bring back that human interaction: shaking hands and being able to connect in a way that is deep and meaningful,” Parsley said. He expanded on the concept as the ability to connect with people and to build credibility, likeability, rapport, respect and trust. The presenter opined that mindset is everything and warned that biases were everywhere:

Every decision you are making within your business is based on a bias that you believe to be true based on evidence that is supported by what you focus on

Harris v Trump and the bias conundrum

Never a truer word, dear reader. A great way to illustrate your biases in action is to reflect on your feelings about the 2024 US Presidential Election candidates before stepping away from the noise to reflect on how these feelings were formed. Most of us vehemently hate one candidate and zealously love the other; there is no middle ground. Sadly, our emotion is fuelled by the fleeting, opinion-laced snippets that some-or-other algorithm feeds you. We dismiss one or the other, and place one or the other on a podium, without completing the most basic due diligence.

It is also worth understanding that your worldview is deeply influenced by a psychological construct known as the ‘locus of control.’ This concept refers to the extent to which individuals believe they have control over the events that affect their lives. As Parsley explained, those with an internal locus of control tend to take ownership of the challenges they face and accept responsibility for the outcomes they achieve. On the other hand, individuals with an external locus of control are more likely to attribute their business and personal shortcomings to external factors such as the economy, government policies, loadshedding or some other event outside of their control.

The advice flowed thick and fast, with attendees encouraged to address the myriad obstacles that prevent them from excelling in their personal lives and professions. Examples include stopping delaying ‘action A’ until ‘outcome B’ is achieved, and being prepared to operate outside your comfort zone. “Your greatest growth occurs when you make yourself uncomfortable,” Parsley said. On the flipside of this argument, comfort destroys progress.

If you are feeling ‘stuck’ in what you do, dear reader, then it is quite possible you have lost the enthusiasm that existed when you started on your current life or career path.

Gifting advisers, planners a competitive edge

Parsley explained how his firm’s The Human Factor? and Sales Funnel? give financial advisers and planners an edge over their competition.

He contended that in the context of limited product differentiation across South Africa’s main financial product providers, advisers keen to stand out from the crowd needed to develop a deeper understanding of soft skills like behaviour, human connection, negotiation and relationships. “We teach human behaviour and relationships because we know that is what moves the needle,” he said, before adding the ‘gem’: "You cannot pitch successfully if you do not know the game your client is playing, and the rules that apply."

The presenter favours a modality called WITY (What is Important To You) to assist financial advisers and planners in learning more about the game and the rules of the game from their clients’ perspectives. In practice, this involves a three-stage process of first determining or identifying factors that are important to your client, then encouraging clients to define or describe the criteria, and finally diagnosing the real motivation behind that criteria. “Slow down to speed up the sale,” advised Parsley. “Truly seek to understand from your client’s perspective what is important to them.”

Armed with this background, the challenge becomes to ‘close on the WITY’. According to Parsley, the WITY process works because the adviser-client discussion that occurs before moving to agreement, contract, or price is just part of a conversation; once you try and close the deal, objections become more confrontational. He suggests drawing out the objections by framing an open-ended question along the lines of: “I am not sure if I can do this yet, I need to ask some more questions; but if I can meet or reach the goals that you just said are really critical for you, could I be your financial partner?”

Deficit selling; addressing objections

You need to address objections during the sales process without escalating the discussion into a confrontation over agreement, contract, or price. You need to meet these objections head-on, even if the process feels uncomfortable; in so doing, you build trust and avoid challenges later in the cycle.

Parsley also shared an example of how persistence and strategic questioning can lead to success. “Human behaviour is predictable,” he said. “People either have a problem they do not want or an outcome they do not yet have but desire.” The key takeaway from the approach is that effective sales require a combination of credibility, rapport and strategic discomfort.

The presentation closed with a plea to financial advisers and planners to be authentic in their engagements with clients and potential clients. The audience was encouraged to step out of their comfort zone, step up to the plate, and to sell with purpose.

Your job is to uncover the problem that your clients face, to figure out their unfulfilled desires and to leverage your ‘deficit selling’ skills to lock in the sale.

And it goes without saying that ‘sale’ goes beyond product to setting out on a life-long, sustainable adviser-client relationship.