Today, I want to spend some time talking about an overlooked skill that every advisor needs to master to fulfill your full potential.
In our space right now we have a ton of technology. We have new tools from automated financial planning tools to communication tools to presentation tools. You can literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on just tools.Now whether you use them or not is a whole different scenario. A lot of times what happens, especially for the younger generation because they grew up with technology is we rely to heavily on these tools. It’s easier to send a text or email than to call and have a conversation. It’s easier to sit in a boardroom meeting, put a
financial planningtool up and just start showing pie charts. Then you just go into presentation mode.Now the problem I have with that and what I see in our industry is that we are losing our interpersonal communication. The bottom line is we’re relying on our tools to get us to a yes, with a client or prospect. If you’re a race car driver and I give you a great car, but you’re a crappy driver, you’re not going to get a good result. If you play golf and I give you the number one driver, but your swing stinks then your results will be terrible. Well, this same scenario plays true in our world, all these wonderful technology tools are great, but if you are flawed or your psychology is I don’t deserve to be successful then it’s irrelevant. If you’re just here to sell people and you don’t have the right skill set then it’s also irrelevant.The question becomes what do you need to do to pull this off. I’m going to share with you a process, which I’ve developed through The Magellan Network to get someone from prospect to client. What does it take to get the yes? We are in the people business, you as an advisor and I as a coach. You and I both have similar challenges. I need to build enough love rapport with somebody in order for them to trust me and to get the truth. If I don’t get the truth I cannot make recommendations to help them.
What do you have to do as an advisor?You have to build massive amounts of rapport to get the truth. I have to so they trust me to get the truth. Then, I go ahead and make the right recommendations. You deal in planning and money directly in life. The basis of all that is that we must build rapport. If you’re not building rapport you have no influence and for some of you you think of influence in terms of Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. That’s vocal social influence on people whether that is with them physically in the room, video chat, GTM, Skype, or FacetTime the same rules apply.
Physical rapport is the foundation of all trust. Physical rapport is the foundation of all trust.
Now, let me ask you, how much time do you spend consciously checking on that? How much time do you spend constantly building physical rapport? Physical rapport breaks down into body language and physiology. For those of you who are doing a podcast or videos you need to pay attention to how you’re connecting with your audience including your body language. For instance, how you stand, how you balance your feet, what you do with your hands will all be perceived by your audience. If I don’t have my hands going, I don’t communicate really well.If you want to double check on this and play with this go to a network event next time check whoever it is your chatting with their body language. See where they’re at. Are they using hands, do they swing backward and forward, do thy lean a certain way? Build that physical rapport with them. The same applies to video conferencing, watch and pay attention to how they roll with you.The second thing you need to pay attention to is voice qualities. When I say voice qualities I don’t mean to speak in accents because it will not work and it will sound stupid. However, pace matters, right? Are we talking fast, are we talking moderate, are we talking slower. By the way, do not confuse pace of voice with intelligence. That’s a broad misconception people have. There are different communication styles, so what I want you to first do is check their pace. Then check if there’s any kind of rhythm or cadence to it. Some auditory people have a flow or rhythm to their voice quality. If you focus on voice qualities look for favorite words. People have habitual words. There’s always some term that you’ll hear out of somebody on a regular basis. If you could repeat those back in your sentencing, you will also build rapport provided, it is authentic.If you’re thinking that your financial plan will win them over you may need to reconsider. Unless you built up enough rapport with them where they’ll trust you. Then, how will you know how you got the right information?
Remember, most human beings are emotional decision makers.If you don’t have that emotional roadmap, that emotional blueprint, it is impossible to tie in your recommendation to their needs, their wants, or their wounds. Until you can do that, you’ll only be working with the intellectual information that you have with the person, not their emotional information, which is going to drive their behavior.You can be a brilliant planner, but if you don’t master the people skills you will be highly frustrated your entire career. You’re going to be scratching your head and wondering how you sat down with these people, asked the right questions, put together a rockstar plan and they STILL wanted to think about it.They weren’t sure they wanted to make any changes right now.Then you know they’ve decided to stay with their current advisor, even though that person has ignored them, mistreated them, overcharged them, underserved them, but they’ll stay. Because you didn’t go deep enough and create enough pain for them to see why it’s best for them to switch.What is it that you represent to any human being in general? Here’s the bottom line, you, as an advisor need to represent change to another human being. They hire you because it represents change in their own lives. Now they have an advisor where they did not have one before. We all know how much human beings love change. Right? Not. What I tell the people that come in my world is I ask them specifically if they’re read to change. Are they ready to get uncomfortable?My job, if I’m doing it properly, is going to make you highly uncomfortable. Because change is about being uncomfortable.
There is no evolution without discomfort.
You cannot solve it with more logic, another pie chart, another portfolio tweak is not going to get you over that hump. That’s why a lot of you are scratching your head saying you don’t understand because you’re thinking logically and not talking to them emotionally. Since the advent of all this technology, I see the gap getting bigger, not smaller. All the people out there with all these wonderful tools which I embrace because my children will be coming into this business, but they need to have people skills.Hire great people and be a great person with people and you will dominate and create a rockstar business. Remember, send me questions I’m happy to answer them. If you have not done so, I invite you to apply for a 30 day free Magellan Network membership. Zero cost to you, I take all the risk. Be grateful and be uncomfortable!Related:
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