Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Readers,
I just completed a coaching call with an advisor I have worked with for many years. In his honor, I will profile a bit of the journey we’ve had together to illustrate how every advisor (yes, every single one) can learn how to sell effectively and do so in a comfortable manner.
I haven’t asked his permission, although I did mention wanting to do a case study on him because the journey has been so fascinating, but for purposes of this column, we’ll call him “John.”
John’s firm hired us to implement the Advisor’s Sales Academy, wherein we provide full training, small group practice, and then individual coaching. As with many firms, the program was rolled out as a sales initiative. Hearing the words “sales” and “selling” often strikes fear and loathing in the hearts and minds of many advisors, and John was not immune to this. He is one of the nicest, most engaging, and most endearing people I have ever worked with. So he phrased it very pleasantly when he told me he didn’t really want to talk with me 1:1 on how he could sell more effectively.
John eventually agreed to come to meetings with me, and we’d talk about how to think about selling differently, and the importance of doing so in a way that feels genuine and noninvasive. He is one of the most ethical people I’ve ever met, and he needed to know that what he was doing was also staying true to who he is as a person. In today’s meeting, John shared that he has implemented a plan we talked about many weeks ago, and has garnered $20 million in net new assets from doing so. He told me “…next time we talk, I hope I am telling you I have doubled that number!” John is now not only an enthusiastic “salesperson,” he is selling (or he and I would say it is “not selling”) in a manner that works for him.
In this article, I’ll unpack some of the important points John and I discussed and see if there might be something here for you if you are a resistant selling advisor, or that you might share with colleagues and team members who don’t see themselves as salespeople:
- If you believe in what you do and you sincerely care about helping people meet their financial goals, you are not selling anything. You are offering an important life-changing service that transforms someone’s entire world. Unfortunately, when advisors think of sales, they think of the used car salesperson or the insurance rep sitting at the kitchen table. (In fairness, these people also have an important job to do.) They don’t think about the fact that unless someone is educated about the choices available to them, they don’t actually have a choice to do anything. Making people aware of what you do, and why you are passionate about doing it, is key.
- Think of talking to prospects and clients as telling stories. With enough experience in solving problems, meeting needs, and changing lives, you have many stories to tell about what you did and how you did it. Stories are fairly straightforward, and you don’t have to use complex situations to make your point:
- Why did a client come to you -- what was the need they had, and what did they share?
- How did you understand their needs more deeply -- what process did you take them through?
- What outcome was achieved?
I often tell clients their stories should always have happy endings. Life doesn’t always have happy endings, but the work the advisor does for the client should make them more confident and less worried, and put them in charge of their financial life and decisions.
- Think about what you know about your clients. In John’s case, he cared a lot about each and every person, and knew what they were struggling with and what was important to them. He could develop ideas and solutions that were tailored to what he knew.
He is such a genuinely good person that, at first, he told me this bothered him. John felt he was “using” his knowledge of his clients as a sales tool. After we unpacked it, he was able to see he was doing his clients a service by actually solving for what they were struggling with, and he became more confident about selling.
This is what I often teach advisors: reframing. Reframing is simply looking at a situation and putting a different lens on it. It’s not being dishonest; it’s seeing there is always another way to interpret the facts of a situation that is more positive and encouraging. Once John saw that he was legitimately helping his clients and offering them an option that they cared about, he was able to expand a number of existing client relationships.
- There are a lot of things your clients care about that you aren’t tapping into. John and I talked about family dynamics, for one thing. In many cases, the patriarch and matriarch are working with their advisor and making good decisions, but they aren’t engaging the rest of the family. John showed one of his clients how some changes in the tax laws around different investment types could impact legacy giving. He was able to engage the entire family by (again) being helpful to them about decisions they would need to make and how these changes impacted them. He met the clients’ children and grandchildren through this discussion process.
- You do need to ask and show interest in either expanding an existing relationship or finding individuals in the family or extended relationships who might be interested in working with you. The sales adage “ABC” -- which means, “always be closing” – infers you should be trying to close the transaction with someone at every step. This isn’t true in our business, but you should be closing with someone regarding what needs to happen every time you engage.
Financial advice is a long-term business, and cultivating relationships can take time. At some point, however, the advisor does have to say, “It seems we have a good basis here for working together. Let’s take that next step.” Or, “I see some opportunities for us to broaden and deepen our relationship. As a first step, let’s do this …”
If you leave things open-ended for too long, you might find you have engaged the person in considering what they need to do or who else they know who needs help, but they might then go on to the next advisor who actually asks them for the business!
John is on a path for continued success. Given his genuinely kind and caring nature, and his interest in doing the right thing, he will continue to scoop up assets. In addition to bringing in the assets, however, John wants to put his clients on a path to financial success. It’s important to remember you are not selling a product. Rather, you are selling a service that, at the heart of it, supports one of the most important aspects of anyone’s life — their money.
After all, money can buy happiness in the sense that it makes it easier to take care of family, stay healthy, and enjoy a fulfilling life. The field of financial advice is a noble profession. Rather than thinking of it as “selling” someone on working with you, think of it as providing someone a life-changing and life-enhancing experience.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022 and 2023. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News, and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 