What is professionalism?
Professionalism is fitting in.
Fitting in the corporate culture of targets, AUM and commissions. Fitting in the accepted belief that more is better. Fitting in to not challenge the status quo in the financial services industry.
Imagine that Steve Jobs was a professional. Would there be an iPhone?
There are three types of financial planning businesses.
All three have its own style, it’s own structures and measurements and it’s own strategies.
The question is: are you in the type of financial planning business you really want to be in?
There’s a myth about the success of setting goals.
The myth says that back in 1953, Harvard University conducted a study on the graduating class. They discovered that only 3% of the graduating seniors had definite predetermined objectives.
Twenty years later they did another survey of those same people, and of the 3% that had set those goals and committed them to paper and had made a commitment, they had accomplished more in their lives than the 97% who had not written it down.
However, there seems to be evidence that this myth isn’t true.
Now, you can call me pigheaded, but I strongly believe that this myth most certainly is true. Here’s why:
Marco van Basten
When I think of people who made the biggest impact in my life, it was not their expertise or their accomplishments that provided me with direction, guidance and reassurance I needed to accomplish my goals.
It was their sincere belief in me. They let me know through their words and actions that I mattered.
Your clients want that same validation.
In fact every single person you meet, shares this common desire. As I wrote last week, the largest part of a financial planner’s target audience want to know they matter. Mattering is a universal human need. And it’s one you have the opportunity to satisfy.
But it’s not only the people who believed in me which had an impact in my life.
There’s one other person who totally influenced me. He didn’t believe in me. Actually, he doesn’t know me.
But although he doesn’t know me he still means the world to me. He mattered to me in the past and he matters to me now. No matter what he does or doesn’t do, I believe in him.
This person is Marco. Marco van Basten.
Picture this: a technique to seduce people which makes them do the things that you want them to do. In his best selling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)
, persuasion-professor Robert Cialdini presents 6 scientific based seduction techniques from social psychology. The book gave me ideas a financial planner can use to make their clients say ‘YES’ to the service financial planners are offering.
Imagine that girl in fifth grade.
The one you really like, that special one. You’re having eye contact for a while now. Mostly at lunchbreak.
You want to talk to her, but you don’t know what to say.
But one day you finally got yourself together. You finally got the guts to walk up to her.
You are standing in front of her. And then you say:
Many financial planners act as if they cannot be trusted. Because they only appeal to the left side of the client’s brain. Are you this kind of financial planner? Check this article if you are.
Picture this: a new client made an appointment with you and comes to see you in your office. So you think: “This client has a financial problem that I probably can solve.” You’re right. But be aware, your client has another problem first. He doesn’t know if he can trust you. So the question is: how do you let your client know that he can trust you, without you saying: “Don’t worry, you can trust me”.
In my previous blogpost (A Vision Of The Future of Financial Planning in the New Age) I explained why you have to master right brain thinking to succeed in the new relationship age. It’s necessary to complement our logic (left brain) reasoning by mastering 10 essential right brain aptitudes. Together these 10 aptitudes can help develop our profession this era demands.
And help you to be successful.
Most people hire a financial planner because they have a problem. A problem that you have to solve for them. Many financial planners think that their client only wantw their advice. But your clients also have another problem. If you ignore that problem you’re missing a huge opportunity. Chances are that you don’t take this into account. You should. Because you can miss sales if you don’t.