Surveys suggest that the average person has ‘contact’ with their mobile phone anywhere between 150 – 2,617 times a day. I don’t know about you, but even the lower figure surprised me! What is less of a surprise is how little ‘contact’ there is between the typical regulated firm and their advisers. Typically, I work with 20-30 experienced professional advisers a year. Often, they will have 20 years or more experience and seeing me as part of a client observation is often a ‘first’ for them. Given how important it is to have quality relationships with clients, it’s a shame how little ‘contact’ their firm has had in observing them with clients; to reinforce what they do well with their client-facing skills, and address the things they don’t.
Here are two key lessons I’ve learned from carrying out observations:
1. Providing financial advice is a lonely job. Sure, most will have para-planners and colleagues back in the office. But given that it’s rare that someone has themselves been observed, it’s even less likely that they will ever have observed a fellow adviser in a client meeting. As a result, irrespective of their experience, they develop their own behaviours and habits. Sometimes these are really good; sometimes not.
2. Many investment advisers still focus on the ‘product’, rather than genuinely exploring the ‘client’s needs’. This is partly because, despite their experience, the lack of any meaningful feedback means that old behaviours haven’t changed. If you talk to them about how holistic advice differs, this comes as a bit of a shock. Not because it requires a different skill set, but because the emphasis is so very different.
As any behaviour is just something we have learned over the years, it is possible to un-learn and change these for the better. It just needs a little effort and the right type of support.
| What they do: | They add value with their advisory skills, i.e. they focus on the client’s goals, probe, challenge and clarify. First and foremost, they are relationship builders (not ‘sellers’, not ‘service providers’, not ‘client educators’) |
| Mindset of adviser: | ‘I need to fully understand what is important to this client and establish their full circumstances before I talk about products’ (not ‘the client has a need so I’ll gather the information I need to advise on this’) |
| Who does the client trust? | The adviser. The reputation of the adviser’s firm and any product provider are both secondary or incidental |
| Characteristics of the overall relationship with the client: | – Long meetings which necessarily involve in-depth wide ranging discussions
– Regular needs-based contact initiated by the client (not the adviser) – Multiple needs solutions – A deep and trusting relationship between planner and client – Deep understanding of the client’s needs and family circumstances |
| Adviser behaviours in an initial meeting: | – The focus at the start of the initial meeting is to establish their goals, and understand what might stop them from achieving these
– Consultative skills – asks predominantly open questions, listens and actively responds – Client does 70% of the talking in the initial meeting – Plenty of soft facts recorded on meeting notes – Focus on clarifying and prioritising the client’s goals; showing how goals can be met by relevant solutions – the subsequent use of cashflow analysis is often positioned with the client to allow them to see how different scenarios will impact on the client’s objectives, e.g. the impact of making gifts |
Most advisers are surprised to hear that they are too product focused. As I say, changing is often just a matter of emphasis once advisers are aware of this. Here are some brief ideas.
| Do more of: | Do less of: |
| – Listen more. The balance of talking in a discovery meeting would be around 70% in favour of the client.
– Acknowledge that the client will have a reason for the meeting, but don’t dive headlong into addressing it. – Before talking in detail about this, establish what is important to the individual and their goals at the outset of the meeting. You will get a real understanding about the client if you ask open and probing questions, e.g. “what do you value most about money?”. – Have more of a conversation, less of a fact find. |
– Talking about products or your services in the first 10 minutes.
– Asking lots of questions to gather facts (ask the right questions up front and you’ll get this information anyway). – Focusing on just one area of the client’s needs. – Review meetings that feel more like cross-selling opportunities. – Meetings that feel ‘process driven’, i.e. getting it done feels more important than understanding the client. It’s almost impossible to avoid it feeling ‘transactional’ if you complete a fact find in front of the client (instead of writing meeting notes). |
This is a key concept. As an adviser, how do you believe you ‘add value’ to clients? Someone who focuses extensively on products and solutions (especially in a discovery meeting) is saying to the client that the ‘value’ they get is primarily based on the adviser’s knowledge and problem solving ability. Holistic financial advice involves the adviser investing time at the start of a client relationship. This adds value by showing the client that understanding them is important; ‘getting to know the person behind the detail’. This then naturally develops into discussions around a range of different client needs. The ‘value’ is in the relationship. The end result will sometimes be the same but the client experience is very different.
It’s very clear that high net worth clients are becoming increasingly selective about which advisers they choose to use. Sometimes it’s cost driven; often it’s not. Most experienced advisers have good relationship-building skills so most clients will ‘buy’ the adviser. The real question is about the advice process. Does the process actually add sufficient ‘value’ to be worth the client paying for it? They are more likely to do so if they have received holistic financial advice.
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Ian Patterson
Ex-examiner, financial adviser and author
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