Make Yourself Relatable

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

by Matthew Asser, The Covenant Group

It’s a com­mon theme in sales indus­tries: No one likes to be sold, but every­one likes to buy. As a finan­cial advi­sor, how can you be suc­cess­ful in acquir­ing clients with­out mak­ing meet­ings feel like a sales pitch? Make your­self relat­able, lis­ten to the prospect and strive to be gen­uine in every interaction.I recently came across a con­ver­sa­tion on LinkedIn dis­cussing the best prac­tices of sales, and I think a lot of what was dis­cussed can also apply to client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment. The dis­cus­sion kicked off with a note about the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing care­fully and ask­ing lots of ques­tions, two tac­tics that are cen­tral to what we teach finan­cial advi­sors at The Covenant Group.

Essen­tially, the con­ver­sants agreed that it was a salesperson’s duty to help their clients, not sim­ply sell to them. Keep­ing the client’s inter­est in mind and show­ing that you want the best for them will trans­form their per­cep­tion of you from that of another sales­per­son into a trusted advi­sor. Shar­ing details about your­self in con­ver­sa­tions can also allow clients to get to know you as a per­son, which can deepen the level of trust.

Whether you’re sit­ting in the ini­tial inter­view or catch­ing up with a long-time client, give your­self enough time so you can lis­ten and ask thought­ful ques­tions rather than jump­ing right into the busi­ness pur­pose of the meet­ing. Build con­nec­tions with the client, be they shared hob­bies or mutual inter­ests in a cer­tain sport.

While it’s impor­tant to main­tain a pro­fes­sional tone in your rela­tion­ship with clients, strive to be their friend and a source of help. Show them that you care about their over­all well-being, not just their finan­cial health. Be approach­able. Empha­size the fact that clients should not hes­i­tate to call you, and fol­low up on that promise by being avail­able when they need you most.

Facil­i­tat­ing that close­ness and trust can be a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing fac­tor. The major­ity of clients want an advi­sor who will con­tinue to give them just as much (if not more) atten­tion in the years fol­low­ing a sale as they did in the mar­ket­ing stage.

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices train­ing.

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Tags: Asser, Best Practices, Business Purpose, Client Relationship Management, Closeness, Conversations, Covenant Group, Financial Advisors, Financial Health, Hobbies, Initial Interview, Interaction, Linkedin, Mutual Interests, Perception, Professional Tone, Relationship With Clients, Salesperson, Thoughtful Questions, Time Client
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Is Your Focus Narrow or Broad?

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

In defin­ing your busi­ness, there are a num­ber of deci­sions you have to make in order to appro­pri­ately posi­tion what you offer. You can choose to have a nar­row or broad focus to your busi­ness. By choos­ing a nar­row focus, you have opted to spe­cial­ize. A finan­cial advi­sor may choose to focus on a spe­cialty such as invest­ment advice, life insur­ance plan­ning or estate plan­ning and, con­se­quently, offer a par­tic­u­lar set of prod­ucts and ser­vices. Another way to nar­row your focus is to spe­cial­ize in defined mar­ket seg­ments such as retirees or pre-retirees. If you spe­cial­ize in the retire­ment mar­ket, your clien­tele would pri­mar­ily con­sist of peo­ple in their 50s, 60s and beyond.

A case in point is a suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with whom I work. He is 60 and has been in finan­cial ser­vices for 39 years. Through­out his career, he has been a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner and a spe­cial­ist. Today, he spe­cial­izes in estate plan­ning. He works with ultra high net worth clients. His aver­age case size is $150,000 of annual life insur­ance pre­mium and he earns about $3,500,000 per year. He aver­ages about one new client per month, usu­ally acquir­ing them through intro­duc­tions from sat­is­fied clients and col­lat­eral pro­fes­sion­als. The rest of his busi­ness comes from exist­ing clients.

The deci­sion to have a broad focus in your busi­ness implies that you pro­vide a broad range of finan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices. In effect, you seek to become a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner for your clients and assist them in real­iz­ing finan­cial health and well being. Typ­i­cally, this involves a finan­cial plan­ning process that takes into account the var­i­ous life stages your clients will expe­ri­ence and the strate­gies and tac­tics required to real­ize finan­cial secu­rity and inde­pen­dence through­out each stage. The intent is to pro­vide access to a broad array of finan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices to address the needs, wants and val­ues of clients through­out their lives.

One of the finan­cial advi­sors whom I coach entered the busi­ness in his 40s and wanted to work with more mature and afflu­ent clients. His ideal client is 50+, a mil­lion­aire who is retired or approach­ing retire­ment and con­cerned about the growth and preser­va­tion of wealth. Ini­tially, the finan­cial advi­sor focused on man­aged money and annu­ities. Recently, he added life insur­ance and liv­ing ben­e­fits to his prod­uct mix and began to offer fee-based finan­cial plan­ning. He works closely with other col­lat­eral pro­fes­sion­als such as lawyers and accoun­tants to pro­vide a com­plete range of finan­cial man­age­ment, tax and estate plan­ning ser­vices to address the myr­iad finan­cial and life plan­ning needs of his clients. He encour­ages his clients to turn to him for advice on any mat­ters related to their finan­cial health and well being. He views him­self as a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner who is able to serve a large clien­tele and draw upon a strong pool of spe­cial­ists to assist his clients in main­tain­ing finan­cial health and prosperity.

The deci­sion to be nar­row or broad reflects your pref­er­ences with regard to the work you enjoy and your com­pe­ten­cies. The core com­pe­tence for advi­sors who choose a broad focus is rela­tion­ship man­age­ment. A nar­row focus puts more empha­sis on the core com­pe­tence of knowl­edge and exper­tise related to the advisor’s specialty.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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Tags: 50s 60s, Array, Case In Point, Case Size, Clientele, Collateral, Financial Advisors, Financial Health, Financial Planning, Financial Security, Financial Services, General Practitioner, High Net Worth Clients, Insurance Premium, Introductions, Investment Advice, Life Insurance, Market Segments, Narrow Focus, Norm Trainor, Retirement Market
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What Makes You Different?

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Joel Goodhart.

I asked Joel, “What makes your advi­sory firm dif­fer­ent?” He answered: “Expe­ri­ence”.  Joel and his part­ners, Stu­art Lei­bowitz and Den­nis Freed­man have 90+ years of expe­ri­ence. It was a good answer, but not the right one.

The right answer is rooted in the val­ues that define how the part­ners approach their careers.

When I first started coach­ing Joel Good­hart, he was a Top of the Table Advi­sor and a peak per­former. Yet, like many suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sors, Joel has a burn­ing desire to be the best that he can be and to make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ples’ lives. His father was a doc­tor and a gen­er­ous man. In col­lege, Joel wanted to be a lawyer. His inter­est in pol­i­tics led him into finan­cial ser­vices. A friend who was involved in pol­i­tics per­suaded him to become a finan­cial advisor.

Even in the early stages of his career, Joel adopted a pro­fes­sional approach to work­ing with prospects and clients. One of the things that attracted Joel to finan­cial ser­vices is that he is a born teacher. With his clients, he forms a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship. They want to learn in order to make informed deci­sions about their finan­cial health and well­be­ing and Joel loves to teach. Joel’s goal is to pro­vide each client of the firm with the knowl­edge and under­stand­ing they need in order to make an informed deci­sion. How­ever, Joel and his part­ners are also stu­dents of human nature. They real­ized that clients often only want the Cliff Notes ver­sion when a prod­uct or solu­tion is being offered. Com­pli­ance wants the com­plete dic­tio­nary descrip­tion. While clients respect the due dili­gence involved, they want to enter into a dia­logue and make their own decisions.

So, what does this have to do with the ques­tion: “What makes you dif­fer­ent? We live in an “Expe­ri­ence Econ­omy”. In afflu­ent soci­eties like ours, peo­ple have choice. Prod­ucts have become com­modi­tized. Star­bucks is a good exam­ple. It had become an iconic brand by chang­ing the “cof­fee” expe­ri­ence. Joel, Stu­art and Den­nis real­ized that their suc­cess is based upon cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence for their clients.

Their Mis­sion State­ment expresses the essence of the expe­ri­ence they are try­ing to create:

“We help our clients expe­ri­ence finan­cial secu­rity through informed deci­sion making.”

The Mis­sion State­ment has evolved into what Joel and his part­ners call, “the first talk”. Joel high­lights the fact that the part­ners’ com­bined expe­ri­ence is 90+ years. They have the knowl­edge and exper­tise to help their clients make informed finan­cial deci­sions. Ulti­mately, the client has to drive the process and feel com­fort­able with the finan­cial decisions.

That is where the informed deci­sion mak­ing comes in. Joel describes the process this way: “Our role is to help clar­ify the expe­ri­ence the client wants. We are not “hard sell” artists. Our clients typ­i­cally come to the meet­ings pre­pared. They bring their impor­tant doc­u­ments. Some­times, the doc­u­ments reveal prob­lems that need to be addressed. For exam­ple, a cou­ple who came into our office had a will that had not been updated for 12 years. The will was set up for one child. They now have two.” Joel was able to sug­gest an attor­ney who could help to pre­pare these doc­u­ments. It is about doing things right.

Another client story illus­trates the impor­tance of doing the right things. Joel had an attor­ney as a client. He was mar­ried to an attor­ney. Joel was intro­duced to them by another client. They did every­thing that was asked. Later, they sep­a­rated. This required a re-working of the finan­cial plans and the imple­men­ta­tion of a num­ber of new ini­tia­tives. About six months after the divorce, the client called and said he had just inher­ited $1.2M. Joel now has in excess of $2M of his money. The client is now a part­ner in a large law firm and an impor­tant cen­ter of influ­ence. He would not con­sider mak­ing an impor­tant finan­cial, career or lifestyle deci­sion with­out talk­ing to Joel.

The expe­ri­ence of mak­ing informed deci­sions even in a very stress­ful period of his life cre­ated a bond of trust. When you do things right, trust = loy­alty. Joel and his part­ners take the time to edu­cate and coach their clients through the often dif­fi­cult process of mak­ing the right finan­cial deci­sions. Their clients’ expe­ri­ence of finan­cial secu­rity through informed deci­sion mak­ing con­tributes to their firm’s 20% + annual growth. What makes them dif­fer­ent is the client’s expe­ri­ence of finan­cial secu­rity through informed deci­sion making

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

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Tags: Advisory Firm, Affluent Societies, Born Teacher, Burning Desire, Choice Products, Cliff Notes Version, Due Diligence, Experience Economy, Financial Advisors, Financial Health, Freedman, Generous Man, Good Answer, Health And Wellbeing, Interest In Politics, Leibowitz, Norm Trainor, Peak Performer, Professional Approach, Symbiotic Relationship
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How do your clients refer to you (when you’re not around)?

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Matt Oech­sli writes in Reg­is­tered Rep that sud­denly afflu­ent clients trust finan­cial advi­sors, and asks, “how are you posi­tioned to take advan­tage of that?”

• new norms have already changed the afflu­ent client/financial advi­sor relationship
• the afflu­ent do not blame their advi­sors for what has hap­pened the last 12 months
• fewer afflu­ent clients trust stock­bro­kers and insur­ance agents
• the finan­cial cri­sis has forced finan­cial advi­sors to dra­mat­i­cally increase their lev­els of knowl­edge based com­mu­ni­ca­tions with afflu­ent clients
• for the first time, afflu­ent clients rank their finan­cial advi­sors higher than accoun­tants and finan­cial plan­ners (unprecedented)
  • Two impor­tant ques­tions to ask yourself:
    • How do your clients refer to you (when you are not around) to their fam­i­lies and associates?
    • How are you posi­tioned in the minds of your afflu­ent clients?
• you bet­ter not be posi­tioned as a bro­ker or insur­ance agent
• you bet­ter walk the walk, and be knowl­edge­able in all facets of per­sonal finances and have the resources to fully coor­di­nate the var­i­ous com­po­nents of your clients’ finan­cial affairs.
• Accord­ing to a recent study, only 5% of all advi­sors had excel­lent skills at pen­e­trat­ing their afflu­ent clients’ cen­tres of influence.
• 9/10 afflu­ent clients would con­sider get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion on their finan­cial health, but NOT from some­one they per­ceive to be a stockbroker.
• This is an oppor­tu­nity for advi­sors who prac­tice com­pre­hen­sive wealth management.
• Trust in finan­cial advi­sors is on the rise — it doesn’t get bet­ter than this.

Matt Oech­sli is author of, How to Build a 21st Cen­tury Finan­cial Prac­tice.

Source: Reg­is­tered Rep, Chang­ing Afflu­ent Norms, Matt Oech­sli, August 1, 2009

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Tags: 12 Months, Accountants, Affluent Clients, August 1, Facets, Financial Advisors, Financial Affairs, Financial Crisis, Financial Health, Financial Planners, Insurance Agent, Insurance Agents, Management Trust, Norms, Personal Finances, Registered Rep, Second Opinion, Stockbroker, Stockbrokers, Wealth Management
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The Importance of Financial Management

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

I have a friend and men­tor, George Gold­smith, who taught me a great deal about finan­cial man­age­ment. George is a CA and MBA who spe­cial­izes in mer­chant bank­ing and the use of life insur­ance to address busi­ness con­tin­u­a­tion. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

Finan­cial man­age­ment is crit­i­cal to the ongo­ing health and vital­ity of your busi­ness. Your finan­cial state­ments are the vital life signs that tell you how the busi­ness is doing.

The devel­op­ment of the finan­cial state­ments in the busi­ness plan is the final step in the busi­ness plan­ning process. At this point, it is impor­tant to look at the finan­cial ele­ments that are going to have to come together to ensure the suc­cess of the business.

Since the finan­cial state­ments are the vital signs of the health of the busi­ness, it’s impor­tant for every entre­pre­neur to take the time to under­stand the finan­cial mea­sures of his or her business.

Finan­cial state­ments include the var­i­ous forms of income that your busi­ness gen­er­ates, and the expenses asso­ci­ated with oper­at­ing the business.

Your busi­ness can take many forms. It can be a pro­pri­etor­ship, a part­ner­ship, a cor­po­ra­tion, or an indi­vid­ual. The finan­cial state­ments tell the reader where your busi­ness stands finan­cially and how it got there.

Finan­cial state­ments are used by a vari­ety of peo­ple to assess the business’s finan­cial health, the value of the busi­ness, and its future prospects. Those peo­ple could include the income tax depart­ment (your silent part­ner), your accoun­tant who uses them as a basis for the prepa­ra­tion of the tax return, a bank who uses them to assess your abil­ity to secure and repay a loan, or investors who use them to assess the safety and value of their investment.

How­ever, the pri­mary user should be YOU — the busi­ness owner or oper­a­tor. Finan­cial state­ments are a report card that mea­sure what you are doing right and where you need to make improve­ments. With­out them, you’re fly­ing blind.

Sum­mary

One of the para­doxes in finan­cial ser­vices is that many finan­cial advi­sors strug­gle with finan­cial man­age­ment. It does not come eas­ily for them. In part, this reflects the his­tor­i­cal approach of attract­ing “sales­peo­ple” into the busi­ness and the focus on top line growth. In fact, when I came into the busi­ness, I was encour­aged to spend more than I made as an incen­tive to make more money. Finan­cial man­age­ment was not a con­cern. How­ever, we know the cost asso­ci­ated with this type of think­ing. For entre­pre­neurs, finan­cial man­age­ment is a crit­i­cal com­pe­tency. Apply­ing these lessons will make your busi­ness more viable and give you greater con­trol over its growth trajectory.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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Tags: Business Continuation, Business Owner, Business Plan, Business Planning, Financial Elements, Financial Health, Financial Management, Financial Measures, Financial Statements, Future Prospects, George Goldsmith, Health And Vitality, Income Tax Department, Life Signs, Merchant Banking, Norm Trainor, Paradoxes, Proprietorship, Silent Partner, Tax Return, Vital Signs
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