Do you want to know the hidden secret of where you find financial planning clients?
Most of the advice on how to find financial planning clients is prescriptive. It tells you what to do or where to look.
Yet how helpful is this?
If it were simply a case of following instructions, then everyone would have all the clients they want and would never worry about it. Yet for many financial planners getting clients is the area where they experience most difficulty.
If this is you, would you love that to change?
Where do opportunities come from?
My friend Barb Patterson shared a story in one of her blog posts a while back.
Back in the day, two shoe salesman from competing companies are sent to Africa to assess the potential market for shoes.
The first salesman looks around for several days and then goes to the telegraph office to report back to company headquarters. He wrote:
“Research complete. Unmitigated disaster. There is no market for our products here. Nobody here wears shoes.”
The second salesman, from Bata shoes, also looks round for several days and goes to the same telegraph office to report back his findings. His message back to headquarters was:
“Research complete. Glorious opportunity. There is a huge opportunity for our products here. Nobody here wears shoes!”
Bata shoes are now known as the shoes of Africa and advertising for them appears all over, even in the most remote places.
What is the lifeblood of finding financial planning clients?
The two salesmen each realised something completely different. Yet both went to the same place.
This is precisely why prescriptive advice does not help a lot of people. Because seeing opportunity is something that happens within.
When do you get your best ideas?
In ‘The Client-centred Financial Adviser’ book I wrote about a survey conducted with CEOs of global companies. One of the questions they were asked was, “When do you get your best ideas?”
The top three answers were, when having a shower, on the drive to or from work, and when on holiday.
Seeing opportunity works in precisely the same way. Ideas tend to come to you when your mind is free, present, and relaxed.
Two minds
This is only a metaphor but just imagine you have two minds.
Your personal mind produces thinking that is based in insecurity and fear. It worries, gets anxious, and sees only limitation and scarcity. It is far more difficult to see opportunity and act upon it when you are operating from your personal mind because it is always primarily concerned with its own gain.
Your impersonal, or universal mind, on the other hand, has no limits. It is infinite intelligence and delivers a never ending and constant flow of new, fresh, thinking and ideas. Your interactions with people will be completely different from this place too.
Why do financial planners often experience finding clients as difficult?
Not because it is inherently difficult, but because of the state of mind they bring to it.
The science
In the field of quantum physics, they are realising that the universe is one giant, single, interconnected energy field. This means you are already connected to what you want.
It is the personal ego mind that creates the illusion of separation and, therefore, fear. Yet the ego itself is an illusion. It is just a bunch of thought and is only a hindrance when we identify with it.
Neale Donald Walsch wrote:
‘Quantum physics tells us that nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer. That statement, from science, holds an enormous and powerful insight. It means that everyone sees a different truth because everyone is creating what they see.’
Where do you find financial planning clients?
Opportunity always arrives as a thought, an insight, a flash of inspiration, a feeling, or an idea.
How do you get more of this?
By deepening your understanding of how your mind really works. When I am working with my clients, I point them towards the infinite source of intelligence because this is available in equal amounts to everyone. No one is excluded. To keep looking outside of yourself for answers is simply reinforcing the illusion.
P.S. If you want to listen to a short (10m) audio on ‘Letting wisdom do the work for you’, you can download it by clicking here.
