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.
After all, if people know precisely what their financial problem is, they can often find the information they need to make a decision without any assistance. Therefore, the services of a financial planner are far more valuable when people are mistaken, confused, or completely clueless about their true problem.
Via Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
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In those situations, the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding.
It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship, which often sets the financial planner apart from others in his field.
This more compelling view of the nature of problems has enormous implications for creating a meaningful financial planning service. To be engaging today, you need to depend more on right-brain problem-finding skills than on the left-brain problem-solving skills of financial planners.
Only a short time ago, your clients faced several obstacles to solving problems on their own. So they relied on the PSFP’s: the “product-selling-financial-planner”. Because the PSFP’s had access to information that the client did not.
But today, when data is flooding our lives and is also only one swipe away, this development is reshaping what your clients can do for themselves and therefore what financial planners must do to avoid irrelevance.
For instance, suppose your client is in the market for a life insurance. Ten or fifteen years ago, your client had to hire an insurance advisor or financial planner. Because your client could talk to someone who was much better informed than your client ever could be. And then your client relied on the advisor to provide the product he needed at a price that was fair.
Today, your client can solve his “life-insurance-problem” himself. He can go online and check out specs and ratings of various types. Your client can post a question on his Facebook page and seek recommendations from friends. Once he has settled on a few possibilities, he can compare prices with a few keystrokes.
And he can order his choice from the vendor offering the best deal. He doesn’t need a financial planner or insurance advisor at all.
Unless he’s gotten his problem wrong.
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Your Client Doesn’t Want A Solution
After all, his ultimate aim isn’t to acquire a life insurance policy. It’s to be freed from worries that his family won’t have a proper life after he passes away.
Maybe his real problem is he doesn’t feel at ease about the well-being of his family when he’s gone.
Or maybe his real problem is that he feels responsible for his family and that he thinks he has to purchase a life insurance, so that he has shown “another act of responsibility” to himself. While another life insurance may not even be necessary.
So maybe he shouldn’t buy a life insurance. But instead visit a financial or estate planner that shows him exactly how his financial situation looks like after he’s gone.
He’ll discover that someone who can help him achieve his main goal (feeling at ease) in a smarter and cheaper way, is someone he’ll listen to. And perhaps even buy from.
If your client knows his problem, he can solve it. If he doesn't know his problem, he might need help finding it.
What does this mean?
This means that people are less interested in “what to buy” than in learning “how to improve all facets of their finances”. People are looking for unbiased business partners. And that changes which type of financial planners are most highly prized.
No, those aren’t necessarily the PSFP’s.
No, those aren’t the ones who can offer an immediate solution and secure the signature on the contract.
The PSFP doesn’t have the client’s interest in mind. Because the PSFP’s passion is selling. Their primary concern is profiting with every promotion. The PSFP tests aggressively, judge failures quickly, and move on to the next product that they can sell to satisfy their passion. They have a natural ability to sell (and derive a great pleasure from it).
On the other hand, selling doesn’t come as easily for the MFP’s: the “meaningful-financial planner”. They get their kicks from moving others… from transforming lives …from seeing the ah-ha look of understanding in the eyes of their clients. These planners are the ones who want to matter.
And yes, they also have to sell. But for the right reasons: because it’s the path to impacting more people and changing more lives.
MFP’s don’t usually like the sales part of financial planning. They really just want to matter, teach and transform, and the hard hitting sales tactics used by the PSFP’s don’t sit well with them. Because of their discomfort with the sales process, the impact is sometimes small. Their business unfortunately never really see the wide reach they hoped to achieve to support their passion to change the world (or at least a larger part of it).
Does this sound like you?
Well, I’m one of those too. I love to be the one making a difference for the financial planners who want to make a difference. Influencing the influencers. Changing the game for the game-changers.
And yes, I believe the future is yours.
Because the planners “who can brainstorm with people, who uncover new opportunities for them, and who realize that it doesn’t matter if they close at that moment” …those are the planners who will thrive in this new age.
This means that financial planners don’t think of their profession as selling products but as selling insights about their client’s financial situation.
Today, when information is everywhere, the premium is now to clarify what's going to happen next.
This means that the most important things financial planners do, is finding the right problems to solve. This also means a transition from problem-solving to problem-finding for most financial planners.
Identifying problems as a way to move others takes two longstanding skills and turns them upside down.
First, in the past, the best financial planners were adept at accessing information. Today, they must be skilled at curating it. Sorting through the massive troves of data and presenting to others the most relevant and clarifying pieces.
Second, in the past, the best financial planners were skilled at answering questions (in part because they had information their prospects lacked). Today, they must be good at asking questions. Uncovering possibilities, surface latent issues, and finding unexpected problems (such as how your clients want to feel).
And one question in particular sits at the top of the list.
Do you want to know The Most Essential Question You Can Ask?
If you want to receive this essential question, all you need to do is to answer this simple question of mine:
What is your most valuable question you ask in your financial planning service?
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Let’s make financial planning matter,
Ronald Sier
Are You a Financial Planner? Do You Want to Know Why People Don't Buy Financial Planning?
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