Good financial planners, we’ve long been told, are skilled problem solvers. They can assess people’s needs, analyze their predicaments, and deliver the optimal solution.
But today, when information is ubiquitous, the ability to solving problems matters relatively less.
Imagine yourself buying something from the internet. How long do you want to wait before enjoying your purchase?
A day, an hour, a minute, a second?
Now, imagine your client buying your financial planning service. How long does your client want to wait before enjoying the benefits of reaching his goals?
Half a century, 25 years, a decade?
In today’s instant-gratification-world, it takes a behavioral shift to move your clients to think about their future.
So, how do you do that?
Yes, it sounds crazy, I know.
You might think it’s about more leads, fees, AUM, or commissions. But no, it’s not.
The real reason is far more interesting. And it’s something most financial planners don’t know.
So before I’ll tell you the truth about how you are able to double your income while having highly satisfied customers, let me first tell you a story.
It has become obvious, in retrospect, that organisations with superb knowledge economy credentials – companies such as Microsoft, General Motors and big Wealth Management Companies, for example –weathered the global economic crisis little better than companies based on the industrial age economics they superseded.
A study done by a pair of Canadian psychologists uncovered something fascinating about people at the racetrack.
Just after placing a bet, they are much more confident of their horse’s chances of winning than they are immediately before laying down that bet.
Of course, nothing about the horse’s chances actually shifts: it’s the same horse, on the same track, in the same field.
But in the minds of those bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased.
What has this got to do with financial planning?
There are a couple of things I strongly believe in when it comes to the future of financial planning.
Once upon a time, before you learned to be more objective, you thought you were important and that people around you were important. Chances are you asked questions that made people uncomfortable. To protect you from a life of narcisstic, emotional waywardness, you were sent to school to learn how to be useful.
You learned you aren’t important.
Few financial planners enjoy the services of a full team of social scientists to create a great value proposition for their services. So what do you have to do to create one by yourself?
Most financial planners sell advice. Because people are willing to pay for it. It’s as simple as that.
This system worked in the old world. Because there was no alternative.
Fortunately, we now live in the age of DIY.
Do It Yourself.
Fortunately, because now, people have the (free) online tools to create their own, new financial planning experience. Which ignites innovation in our profession.
Is this a threat for your financial planning business? Yes, it can be.
Yet, there is an alternative.
When you enter a poker room usually there are many different choices of tables that you can sit down at. Each table has different stakes, different players and different dynamics that change as the players come and go, and as players get excited, upset or tired.
In poker, people spend a lot of time learning the best strategy to play once you’re sitting down at a table. It’s like the financial planning business. Financial plannners spend a lot of time to get better when they’re in the business.
They think the game starts when they are at the job.
They think the game starts when sitting at the poker-table.
But does it?
