How much impact am I having?
This is a great question to reflect upon when it comes to your client relationships.
Whether you have just met someone new or have been working with someone for a decade or longer the amount of impact we are having in that person’s life seems really important to me.
Ultimately, when we look back it will not so much be the amount of money we made or how much success we achieved that will be most important of all – it will be the amount of difference we made.
The foundation of difference making
In ‘The client-centred Financial Adviser’, I wrote on the first page,
As a practitioner you can be:
*Product and investment centred
*Problem and solution centred
*Client centred
This distinction points to your primary intention. Is it to sell products and investments? Is it to solve financial problems? Or is it to have a deep human connection and thorough understanding of your client and what they want from life and then to collaborate in accomplishing what is most important to them?
Arranging products and investment and solving financial problems all make a difference to people.
Yet magic can happen when we are willing to let go of our preconceived ideas of what a client wants or needs from us.
Barbara Patterson talks about a client of hers and how things changed for him once realised there is something deeper at play. Click here to view (6m 11s)
P.S. Over the past few weeks I have had several clients share how much difference going into client meetings with a completely open mind has made.
You can experiment with this yourself and I would love to know how you get on.