April 11th, 2012 by Pierre Daillie, AdvisorAnalyst.com

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Last  sum­mer, I talked to a thirty year vet­eran of the busi­ness who’s con­sis­tently ranked among his firm’s top ten producers.

The week before, he’d talked to a group of rook­ies just enter­ing the business.

In the ques­tion and answer period after­wards, he’d been asked about the sin­gle most impor­tant thing he’d learned over the course of his career

He answered with four words: ” Focus on big problems.”

He went on to say:

“When I meet with prospects, I con­cen­trate all my time on under­stand­ing the biggest issues that they’re con­cerned about, the things that are really both­er­ing them. In my expe­ri­ence, there’s no bet­ter use of time when meet­ing with a prospect than dig­ging deep to under­stand their hot but­tons … the more you can get prospects to talk about what’s really bug­ging them, the bet­ter the chances of a pos­i­tive outcome.

When I meet early on with prospects, my key goal is to get to the point that it’s com­fort­able for me to ask this ques­tion and for them to answer it.”

“And the same applies to clients” he said.

“When I’m meet­ing with clients, I make it my num­ber one pri­or­ity to ask what’s caus­ing them the most con­cern, the thing that’s keep­ing them up at night.

“And you don’t always get the obvi­ous answers” he con­tin­ued on.

“These days you’d expect peo­ple to talk about los­ing money on invest­ments, mar­ket volatil­ity and out­liv­ing their money .… and you cer­tainly do hear that.

“But ear­lier this year I met with my biggest clients and asked that ques­tion. This is some­one with over $10 mil­lion dol­lars .… and they talked about how dis­ap­pointed they are about the lack of ambi­tion among their kids and con­cerned about whether this will be passed on to their grandkids.

” My clients said they couldn’t do any­thing about their kids at this point … but still had hope for their grandchildren.

“We talked about what they could do about this … and ended up decid­ing to set aside some money to fund activ­i­ties for their grand­kids to open their eyes to more pos­si­bil­i­ties, things like tak­ing them to Europe or Asia on hol­i­days, maybe fund­ing sum­mer school at Har­vard or Oxford when they were in their teens, per­haps encour­ag­ing their par­ents to look at some­thing like Pear­son Col­lege on Van­cou­ver Island when the kids hit 15 and offer­ing to pay for this.

“We also talked about the clients set­ting up a trust fund for their grand­kids’ edu­ca­tion — so that they could go any­where in the world to study with­out wor­ry­ing about pay­ing for this .… but struc­tur­ing it in a way that that they couldn’t use it for any other pur­pose. While we were in the meet­ing, I actu­ally called a lawyer I work with and booked a meet­ing for them to meet with me and these clients to talk about this.”

The advi­sor fin­ished by say­ing: “Even though I’ve been work­ing with these clients for many years, this is the first time this came up in con­ver­sa­tion. And it wouldn’t have hap­pened if I hadn’t asked about what was caus­ing them the most con­cern these days.”

There are lots of things you can talk about in con­ver­sa­tions with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients. As you think about how you use the time dur­ing meet­ings, con­sider adding a focus on the really big prob­lems they’re grap­pling with to the list.

Read more from the author/contributor here.

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Tags: 10 Million, Ambition, Answer Period, Grandchildren, Grandkids, Hot Buttons, Investments, Key Goal, Market Volatility, Million Dollars, Priority, Producers, Prospects, Question And Answer, Rookies, Single Most Important Thing, Top Producer, Use Of Time, Veteran, Words Of Advice
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One Response to “Four words of advice from a top producer”

1. John Reid Says:
   March 25th, 2010 at 7:42 am

   very good “heads-up” article