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For years, advisors were regarded as trusted experts whose knowledge was unique — holding a similar status to doctors.
Those were the good old days, now gone with the commoditization of the profession. The barriers which used to shield the profession from being “shopped” have disappeared.
In this new and highly competitive market, the traditional advisory sales process has becomea race to add more value than other advisors can provide.
“No sale? Give more value!”
Of course, allowing your prospects to “sample your services” through a demonstration of your expertise has been done many times. The race to get new clients is at a feverish pace, diminishing the leverage the term “advisor” once held.
You're still knowledgeable and experienced, but most other credentialed advisors are also knowledgeable and experienced. As a consequence, your prospect wants to know what makes you different, what makes you special. Why should they trust you?
That’s a hard question to answer when you’ve never been confronted with it. You’re the one now being qualified.
In this new economy, your prospect is assessing you, the opposite of the way things should be and used to be. The advisory industry is now officially in a trust recession.
In this epic trust recession, it’s important to realize that educating your prospects about what you do and how you do it (the typical advisory sales process) no longer works as a trust-building model.
Your competence keeps you in the game, but it’s no longer a competitive advantage. To stand apart, you need to base yourself on something other than your competence and use a sales approach that no one else is using.
You need to be more than a financial advisor. You need to become a financial trusted authority.
The way to do this is not to follow what your peers and elders are telling you to do. They built their business in a past era that will never return. Instead, as a trusted authority, you need to be positioned as a specialist (general practitioner versus surgeon) to your ideal client’s problems, creating an in inbound model, not outbound.
Your marketing should read like you lifted a page straight out of their diary, and you’re not promoting yourself either. They don’t really care about your “why” or your story — they care about theirs.
It’s a totally different approach from what your firm is used to.
Your prospect shouldn’t need to ask you what makes you different. They should be experiencing that difference embedded in your sales process. In turn, they should trust you as a result of your approach, not your expertise.
It’s time to recognize that the market has shifted and the old methods, which worked before the trust recession, don’t work now.
Stop giving value pre-sale by focusing on your solutions. Focus instead on positioning yourself as a trusted authority, occupying your own unique category in the market by creating your own, custom, inbound trust-based marketing system.
It’s the only way to stay ahead of the curve. And if you’re not open to challenging your own thinking, you’ll feel the brunt of the market — one way or the other.
To learn more about this unique and contrarian approach to acquire high-net-worth clients, order your complimentary book and consultation below.
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, “Trust In A Split Second” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a Free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “plug up the holes” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.