Tag Archives: financial advisors

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Wealth Managers: The 3 Keys To An Elevated Client Experience

What you’ve done in the past isn’t enough for the future. That which has differentiated you enough to become successful thus far in your career likely isn’t sufficient to set you apart and perpetuate your success going forward.

At one point, pushing product for a recognizable company gave you an edge. Then, being an asset manager turned some heads. Evidence-based investing gave you an even better story to tell. Offering comprehensive advice as a Certified Financial Planner™ practitioner was once novel, and full-time fiduciary status made you a more evolved advisor.

But now some recognizable names are offering a version of the above for less than you pay for your streaming television subscriptions, all while one of the most recognizable names in finance just announced the end of a sales practice for which it is legendary. The net result is that there will only be more—and lesser priced—competition for financial advisory services. What, then, will it take to continue to set you apart?

A comparison of how experience goes beyond service
Experience Over ServiceBUCKINGHAM STRATEGIC WEALTH
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Financial Advisors: Decrease Distraction With A Personal Kanban System

For most financial advisors, no one ever sat down and told us, “Here’s how you should go about your day.” Too many of us started our careers being judged by one single metric—new revenue generation—and the only tools we were given were a booklet in which to write down the names of as many friends and family members as we could conjure and a phone. The rest was up to us.

Day one, everything we did (in life, not just work) was designed to generate new business, and everything else was sublimated to that aim, including servicing those new clients, learning how to better serve them, and actually managing the business of a financial advisory practice. As long as you subjected yourself to one meeting per week with a dude doing his impression of Alec Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” speech, the rest was up to you.

If you were one of the fewer who entered the business through a less sales-oriented route, you were still likely inserted into a system driven by someone else’s once-manic approach to achieving the singular goal of new revenue generation. Then the ubiquity of email, shared calendars, instant messaging, smart phones, and social media sprayed lighter fluid on the dumpster fire that was most of our days.

Man at work with many distractions
The Hyperactive Hive MindGETTY
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Financial Advisors: How To Talk To Clients About Politics

The last time I put a presidential campaign sign in my front yard was 2004. We lived on a small court, and we had just moved in that September. One of our neighbors was another young couple, but the other two families had lived there since the houses were built in 1960.

My political convictions were (and are) important to me, but one day, as I pulled into the court and saw the sign, it struck me that while it may have been a bridge to one neighbor, it could almost certainly be a stumbling block for another. I hadn’t even met all my neighbors in person yet—did I really want my vote to be the first impression I made?

I pulled out the sign, and I haven’t raised another since.

Politics sign
GETTY

Sometimes I have to pinch myself, because as a financial advisor, my job is to meet people, learn about what’s most important to them, help them articulate those values as intentions and goals, and then help create and follow a plan designed to reach them. What a gig, and what a privilege!

One of the greatest gifts of my 20 years and counting in the business is the wide variety of people with whom I’ve been able to engage. While you might tend to think that there is a stereotypical financial advisory client, my experience has been anything but uniform. From teaching college students—one of the best educations I’ve ever received—to advising individuals and families, it’s the striking differences between people that have left an indelible mark on me.

Sure, aside from the college students, they all had something in common—they were blessed with means sufficient enough to hire someone to help in its stewardship—but that’s where the similarities stopped. And their political proclivities have ranged across a vast continuum.

Especially over the last decade, and increasingly over the past four years, I’ve also seen these political opinions manifest as convictions so gripping that I’d describe them as visceral. People seem increasingly concerned with the potential for politics to shape their lives externally, and these concerns are so deeply internalized that I can see, hear and feel the weight of them in the faces and voices of my clients.

These feelings seem just as strong across the political spectrum. It’s not uncommon for us, as advisors, to have a conversation with someone who is convinced that their livelihood is doomed and the very fate of our nation sealed if so-and-so wins only to find, in the very next conversation, that another person is convinced of something equally cataclysmic if such-and-such wins.

So what are we advisors supposed to do? How do we navigate these intense emotions with our clients? And how should we navigate the opinions we hold, knowing that our convictions are rarely, if ever, going to be entirely aligned with those of our clients?

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Financial Advisors: Differentiate Yourself By Being Yourself

The most freeing day of my career was when I sold my golf clubs.

Different

Although the transformation had been under way for several years, it was a moment of symbolic importance. It signaled an official decision to permit myself to be something other than what I had come to believe the financial industry wanted me to be. I was officially granting myself permission to be myself.

Conformity

I apologize in advance for stereotyping, but the sales managers I had worked for had personified the industry for me. Not fond of nuance or implication, they simply had expressed that I was to be, among other things, a golfer. So I bought a set of new clubs outfitted with a nice bag, and I hired an instructor to help me master the gentleman’s game.

After several lessons, my laidback instructor told me he’d never seen anyone grip the club quite so hard. We discovered that I had complemented my less-than-elite athleticism with heavy doses of intensity and hustle to remain competitive in sports while growing up. Unfortunately, as it turned out, these traits were counterproductive to success in golf.

Instead of investing thousands of dollars in psychotherapy to try and loosen my grip on a golf club, I sold my clubs and bought a used road bicycle. I grew to love the sport, which rewarded my overcompensation of will and desire.

But I wasn’t just dumping golf at that moment. I was dumping it all—the notion that I should only wear dark suits, plain white (or light blue on Friday) shirts, power ties, hair that is neither too long nor short and a clean shaven face. Eureka—I could even wear a pair of jeans to the grocery store now!

Differentiation

Paradoxically, as long as I lived inside of the industry’s box, I was taught to differentiate myself professionally—to become “the guy” for orthopedists or cosmetic dentists or corporate attorneys. Everything I did in life, work and play, was supposed to send a message that would presumably attract a specific niche of people who are known for making especially profitable financial advisory clients.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with golfing, differentiating yourself or serving a niche. In fact, each of these pursuits can be beneficial for you and your clients when practiced in earnest. What is wrong—or at least unhealthy and more than a touch manipulative—is becoming someone you are not for the benefit of purposefully differentiating or conforming.

What if the Holy Grail of finding your niche and setting yourself apart from the crowd was found simply in permitting yourself to be yourself?

Being Yourself

If you always wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot but got turned down because you’re too tall or your eyesight was worse than 20/20, you could develop a niche serving military officers. If you aspired to be a surgeon but threw up all over the cadaver on the second day of medical school, you could serve the medical community. And of course, if you’re passionate about golf and enjoy the simplicity of uncomplicated garb, you should be entirely free to live up to the stereotype of the financial advisor.

There’s only one caveat, but it’s a big one: When you give yourself the freedom to be exactly who you are, you might disappoint other people. It’s easier for companies and managers—even parents, spouses and, in some cases, kids—to put you in a predictable construct that may best serve their needs and wants.

What if you want to help social workers navigate the world of personal finance and thereby would likely have to take a pay cut? What if it means you’d be working with clients less and drawing more? What if becoming fully you means moving to Latin America to manage a micro-finance operation and teach English? What if it means educating advisors more than investors?  What if it means designing a practice that conforms to your family instead of the reverse?

You might have to change ZIP codes, companies or professions altogether.

Unfortunately, being who you are—especially in the financial industry—may not be the easiest thing to do, but choosing to be yourself is simple because it’s natural, and incredibly liberating.