“You can get anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want” – Zig Ziglar, “Secrets to Closing the Sale,” 1984
What Kind of Trusted Financial Advisor Should You Be? There is a lot of discussion in our industry on this topic. Russ Allan Prince, a private wealth industry expert and president of the market research and consulting firm Prince & Associates, has done a considerable amount of research on this topic. Among other things, he discovered that most people want their broker to be a “wealth advisor.”
One of his studies found that investors will give more of their assets and refer four times as many people to the advisor who takes a more holistic approach to his or her practice compared to the “product salesperson” who takes a narrower view of a company’s finances. customer. image. The counselor who inquires about the client’s hopes and dreams for the future and develops a strong working relationship with that client will reap the rewards on several fronts. Prince’s survey showed that once he makes this holistic connection with his members/customers and prospective members/customers, he will discover member assets he didn’t know existed. As a result, your member becomes more successful in his or her financial life, you reap the financial and psychological rewards, and the credit union retains a happy member who contributes additional assets, takes advantage of other credit union products and services and recommends friends and acquaintances to you and the credit union. Sounds crazy? Reread the above quote.
Let’s take a closer look at Prince’s poll. 4,106 runners participated in the survey. Runners fell into three distinct styles of managing their practice:
heritage manager – comprehensive holistic approach to managing your clients’ financial lives, including your clients’ assets and liabilities; a planning orientation to solve financial problems.
product specialist – in this model, the broker focuses on a niche product, i.e. managed accounts, fixed income, etc.
Investment Generalist – brokers offer a wide range of products to solve clients’ financial problems. They do not use a comprehensive approach to financial planning.
65.5% of the brokers surveyed fell into the general investment category. The next largest segment is the product specialist, 22%. The smallest group was that of wealth managers (12.3%). The survey found that brokers who took a more holistic approach to their business enjoyed the largest year-over-year increase in revenue for their financial planning practice. Because? The “wealth manager” takes a holistic planning approach to their proactive finances and creates integrated, customized solutions for their clients. They take advantage of customer relationships, cross-selling, and the supply of products and services not tied to markets. The more products and services you can offer, the less affected you will be when there is a market downturn because you will have a variety of products to offer, such as insurance or estate planning. Also, the deeper your relationship with your customers, the more opportunities will develop to help those customers.
By comparison, the investment generalist and product specialist typically do not perform as well as the wealth manager year after year. Typically, a product they specialize in will fall out of favor due to regulatory or market conditions and their production revenue will drop accordingly. Also, they haven’t deepened their client relationships, so they don’t discover opportunities to help their clients in other ways like the wealth manager does.
How do we become a wealth manager? Without a doubt, having the necessary resources to help your clients is critical, whether it’s financial planning software, estate planning resources, or a CFP designation (or other educational opportunities), it takes a commitment to expand your comfort zone. and his practice. It also takes a commitment to get to know your customers. Are you asking the right questions? When was the last time you asked your customers or prospects the following questions?
- If you could relive a vacation, what would it be? Because?
- Who influenced you the most in your views on money?
- What three checks would you like to write when you retire?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how confident are you in your investment plan?
- What is going on in your life right now that could affect your financial future?
Typically, our members will not volunteer the answers to these questions unless we become a trusted financial advisor and deepen our relationships by asking the right questions and getting the answers that will enable us to solve our members’ financial problems. Only then will we become true “wealth managers” for our member clients.
