If you had to choose just one activity in your business and relinquish all else, what would that one activity be?
In my experience most advisers would say – client meetings.
It has always been the most enjoyable and uplifting part of my work. Is this true for you?
If so, this article is about how you can leverage your client meetings make them even more valuable, both for your clients and you.
Financial advice is not just about the numbers
Financial advice is so often treated (and taught) as a hard fact, analytical, number crunching, technical, and intellectual process.
And in part, it is.
Yet because this is where most advisers are comfortable, it is what they tend to stick to like glue.
The problem is that it makes it very one dimensional. A purely logical, left-brained, transactional approach creates very little differentiation from any other adviser.
Crucially, it will fail to be engaging for many clients. Some will even find it overwhelming. Certainly not inspiring.
The head and heart of client meetings
For a conversation to be highly engaging for a client it needs to come from the heart, not just the head.
If you want to be effective at exploring softs facts with clients – what they want, what they want to avoid, their values, relationship with money, attitudes – it must be a heart to heart conversation.
If you want to influence a client and have them take your counsel then it stands far more chance of making an impact when it comes from your heart.
And it is our responsibility, as the professional person, to set the tone. But how do you know if you are communicating from head or heart?
Essentially, it is the feeling we’re in.
When I communicate from the heart, I feel calm, clear, and fully present. I feel a strong sense of connection to someone and deeper rapport occurs naturally. I am intuitively responsive to my client because my attention is fully on them, not on my own thoughts.
By comparison, when I am communicating from my head, I feel more distant and less connected. It can feel as though I am talking at them. Another sure sign is being ‘solution mode’. For example, a client shares a problem and I offer up advice. It might be good advice but it’s also a sure sign I’m not really listening to what the client is trying to communicate.
The key to heart-centred communication
The truth is that we oscillate between head and heart. Yet my experience is that the bias of many financial planners and advisers is communicating from the head. Because this is what the training and qualification process teaches you to do.
The intellect, by it’s nature, loves to make things more complex. Heart-centred communication is being willing to go in the opposite direction to this.
It begins with an intention to connect with someone on a human to human level. Then it is developing self-awareness and getting to recognise the difference in feeling between when you’re in your head and when you’re in your heart.
I find it very helpful to spend a few minutes settling my mind and ensuring I am fully present before a client meeting. By doing this it creates the highest and best chance of relationships developing naturally and effortlessly.
Does it work?
Financial planner Paul Tracey describes his experience of heart-centred communication in client meetings:
‘My experience is that having gained an understanding of state of mind and the importance of being totally present at client meetings it meant that I discarded most of my distractions such as meeting agendas so that my focus is on what the clients are telling me rather than thinking about the next point on the agenda. I am more relaxed and calm before and during the meetings due to the fact that I am not busy minded with all of the stuff that I used to be thinking about. In turn that makes be more present, so I can truly listen to the client. This has created a massive improvement in both the clients and my experience of meetings and ultimately and improved outcome for all concerned.’
PS. I highly recommend listening to a conversation I had with Paul. Click here to get the link.
