Do you want to get financial planning clients faster?
As I am sure you know, there is a huge amount of information available on how to get clients, and that’s great.
But it can also be very confusing because much of it misses the most important and obvious thing of all.
A couple of years ago I was out in Phoenix working with Steve Chandler, who has undoubtedly been my greatest influence in building my coaching practice.
Steve shared a story about a coach who wrote a best-selling book. The book did so well that the coach was interviewed on Oprah and watched by millions of people.
How many new clients did this result in?
None!
How can that be? It does not get any bigger than that, right? You write a best-selling book, are then interviewed by one of the most well-known people in the world, seen by millions of people, and yet no new clients.
With a different focus the coach did successfully fill her practice. It is exactly the same way that you successfully get financial planning clients and fill your practice.
How is that?
The key to getting financial planning clients is conversations
I know that if I avoid having conversations, I will experience a sharp decline in business levels. I also know that when you start filling your week up with conversations you will get financial planning clients.
Why do we avoid conversations?
There is one reason, and it is the most normal thing in the world.
We scare ourselves with our own thinking. We fear making ourselves vulnerable and fill our minds with insecure thoughts about the pain of rejection, feeling awkward, or being selfish.
When we believe our fearful thoughts they become self-fulfilling prophecies. You de-prioritise conversations and find yourself doing lots of other ‘important’ jobs instead, like writing copy for your website!
Yet it always comes back to the same thing.
You cannot avoid conversations because financial planning is not a commodity. It is experiential and conversations are right at the core of this.
Understanding changes everything
When working with my clients I do not give them pep talks, new tactics and strategies, or even try to rationalise the situation with them.
None of that works. Contrary to popular belief you do not need more tools, techniques, or steps to follow.
Theosopher Sydney Banks said:
“If the only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”
That one sentence gets right to the heart of it.
We live in the feeling of thought taking form in the moment, not the feeling of the world outside us.
In other words, no activity, including inviting people into conversations and having conversations, has an inherent feeling to it. A feeling of fear can only ever come from thought, not your circumstances.
And the nature of thought is that it is transient. This means that that a soon as you realise something is thought, it has no power over you, and your mind will clear itself.
Getting financial planning clients then becomes a joy
If getting financial planning clients looks like the difficult part of the business, realise that this is because of the way you are thinking about it. And new thinking is only ever one thought away.
P.S. There is a whole section about getting clients in ‘The Client-centred Financial Adviser. Click here to get your copy.
