/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Most clients hire a financial advisor because they expect him or her to know more than they do about planning their future. They willingly pay you to leverage your expertise to educate them and guide their financial decisions based on your understanding of their circumstances, goals, and concerns. They expect you to help them navigate obstacles that pop up unexpectedly.
Most clients don’t know what they don’t know, which is their greatest vulnerability. That means they don’t know enough to ask their financial advisor about things that could potentially impact them. If they’re left in the dark about such things, the financial advisor takes the blame when bad things happen. What is their defense when a client asks, “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
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Transitioning Conversations: How to Change the Subject without Offending Your Client
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
In a recent post, we highlighted the importance of maintaining control over conversations with prospects and clients—that your value as a financial advisor diminishes without it. Part and parcel of maintaining control of a conversation is being able to switch gears when a client takes it in a direction you don’t want to go. Getting trapped in a tangent is a time waster, but how do you change the subject without making it awkward or alienating your client?
People go off topic for many reasons. Whatever the reason, they feel that what they have to say is important, so if you’re going to try to change the conversation, it needs to be done delicately and gracefully to not make them feel as if what they have to say is not important.
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