When Does A Financial Advisor Become Remarkable?

It’s competitive out there.

One of the greatest challenges financial advisors have is figuring out how to distinguish themselves from the competition. Advisors often ask: What can I do differently to stand out in a crowded marketplace? Should I acquire particular credentials? Should I specialize in a specific service or target a certain market niche? Should I author a blog or hire a marketing firm?

While we understand the desire to be different – and there are many ways to be different – there is a more important question. When you consider how easy it is to publish information, have great websites, author a book and expose your offering to the market, it’s important to understand that while it’s easier than ever to stand up in the market, it’s harder than ever to stand out. Instead of aiming to be different, put your energies toward being remarkable, and the way to be truly remarkable is to demonstrate the difference you make in the lives of your clients and communicate that clearly to prospective clients.

For instance, in approach meetings, advisors often are asked what makes them different. All too often, they make the fatal flaw of answering and spend a significant amount of time presenting their credentials and experience. It’s easy to do and it feels good. In fact, research has shown that talking about yourself activates your brain’s pleasure center. Adrian Ward of Scientific American described it like this,

“…Both talking about the self and talking to someone else were associated with reward, and doing both produced greater activation in reward-related neural regions… Self-disclosure can have positive effects on everything from the most basic of needs—physical survival—to personal growth through enhanced self-knowledge...”[1]

Imagine what could happen if your prospect was doing the talking.   

The Planning Horizon

 That brings us to the heart of the issue. I believe the most dysfunctional element of planning for affluent families is that advisors recommend solutions too quickly. The suggestions they make may be well considered and appropriate, but they solve problems the advisor – not the client – has identified.

This happens when advisors have what we call “Below-The-Line” conversations. The line is the Planning Horizon. It’s a metaphoric horizontal line that distinguishes remarkable advisors from not-so-remarkable advisors. Specifically, it creates two distinct regions – one “Above-The-Line”, and the other Below-The-Line. Below-The-Line conversations focus on strategies, tactics, tools and products that can be used to solve the client’s problems. The region Above-The-Line addresses what the client actually wants and why it’s important to them.

All too often, conversations between financial advisors and their prospects or clients take place below The Planning Horizon. The advisor focuses on problems and potential solutions that may include strategies, tactics, and tools.

For example, imagine meeting a couple that recently inherited substantial wealth. They’re talking with advisors because they’re concerned about the effect that wealth may have on their children.

Many advisors ‘recognize’ the underlying problem and offer a common solution: Put money in a trust and have a trustee scrutinize every withdrawal to make sure distributions fall within established parameters.

It’s a viable solution, but it never gets implemented. Why not?

It doesn’t get implemented because the client doesn’t feel connected to, or empowered by the solution. They don’t understand how it will help them meet their goals and achieve their vision for the future – and here’s the crux. The reason they don’t feel it will help them meet their goals is because they aren’t clear, or powerfully connected to their goals in the first place. 

In an industry that talks incessantly about goals, most advisors haven’t been well prepared to help their clients identify and meaningfully articulate their goals. Further, the advisor generally hasn’t taken time to understand the client’s perspective – they may understand the goal but not the context and emotional impact of it. It’s one of the consequences of having Below-The-Line conversations that are not balanced with Above-The-Line discussions.

When conversations start above The Planning Horizon, the advisor focuses on the clients’ vision, values, and goals.

Consider our fictional couple. They want to engage in financial planning because they’re terrified that significant wealth will rob their children of purpose, drive, or work ethic. An Above-The-Line conversation will help reveal and define the clients’ concerns, and determine what they want to achieve and why it’s important.

Getting to the heart of the matter requires the advisor to ask questions, such as:

·     What are you afraid will happen?

·     What makes you fearful of this?

·     Could the inheritance enhance your children’s lives?

·     In an ideal world, what would this money do for your children?

After listening carefully, the advisor documents what he or she heard and reviews the document with the client. The client may offer feedback and adjustments should be made until the client’s goals are fully and accurately reflected in the written document. Only then, should a detailed Below-The-Line discussion take place.

Building trusting relationships

When a prospect asks what makes you different, I think you should respond this way: Rather than talk about what makes me different, let me explain how I make a difference in the lives of my clients.

When you communicate the importance of beginning planning conversations Above-The-Line, prospects often begin to share their experiences and it becomes relatively easy to transition into a discussion of their current advisors, as well as the solutions that have been deployed previously.

Let’s face it, the strategies, tactics, and tools are table stakes. In our industry, advisors must be good at providing knowledgeable guidance and advice. They have to understand various planning strategies and techniques. They need to know how financial products work and when to implement them. These are the fundamentals. They don’t differentiate one advisor from another.

What makes an advisor remarkable is not only delivering technically brilliant solutions. It’s building trusting relationships by learning what’s important to the client.

When you take time to understand your clients’ perspective, identify the problem(s) they want solved, and pinpoint the aspirations they want to pursue, then you’re building a trusting relationship.  When you can articulate why the problem matters to your clients, confirm your understanding of the matter, and connect solutions to the issue(s) identified, then you’re building a trusting relationship.

Let’s go back to the approach meeting. You’ve focused on the client, explained Above-The-Line conversations, and gathered information about their current advisors and any solutions that have been put in place. Winning the prospect’s business may be as simple as asking these three questions:

1.    How confident are you the things you’re doing and the advice you’re receiving will help you get to the future you want to have?

2.    How important is it for you to know?

3.    Would you like us to help you with that?

In The Right Side of the Table: Where Do You Sit in the Minds of the Affluent, my late brother and I wrote, “Forward progress requires clarity. Clarity requires trust. Trust earns an advisor the right to sit at the table. When the ideas shared at the planning table solve a problem unique to the wealth holder’s thinking, he or she will confidently engage in consideration and execution.”

It was true when we wrote the book and it remains true today.

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About the Author

Todd Fithian is the Managing Partner, Co-founder of The Legacy Companies, LLC, with a proven track record of creating powerful, successful advisors. The Legacy Companies, LLC is a leading training, coaching and consulting company for financial advisors focused on developing high-trust relationships. Two decades of proven work has resulted in thousands of advisors transforming client relationships permanently. think-legacy.com

[1] Adrian Ward. ‘The Neuroscience of Everybody's Favorite Topic.’ Scientific American. July 16, 2013. Accessed December 14, 2018. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-everybody-favorite-topic-themselves/]