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As a financial advisor, you wear many hats. Besides managing your clients’ finances, you have to stay in touch with them on a regular basis, keep up with managing money, stay on top of new regulations and, indeed, grow your practice.
Social events are often a perfect opportunity to connect with people – but invariably when someone asks you, “So, what do you do?” and you respond, “I’m a financial advisor”, you feel they want to head for the door – and it’s frustrating because you know they just don’t understand the value of the services you provide.
But how can you respond to, “So, what do you do”? There are any number of websites offering advice on how to “craft” your perfect intro. They suggest, rather than talk about what you do – use a two-step approach – outline the problem the client might face and provide the solution. While this is a reasonable approach – we have one more to add – if you hate the resistance you get when you introduce yourself, and you want to close 90% of the people you meet – focus your efforts on women!
There are a number of great reasons to consider women:
- women are most likely to listen to you without interrupting
- women are looking for help investing their money
- women have more investible assets than at any time in history
- women are currently not well served by the industry
- Women are looking for an advisor they can connect with
By all means, craft your two step response, outline the problem and offer a solution, but be careful to make what you say relevant to her.
The absolute best way to ensure that what you say resonates is to engage with her on a human level – ask about her life, what she does, her family, hobbies, etc. – it’s the only way you can be sure you can tailor your response specifically to her needs.
For example, if you discovered that she is approaching retirement you could say something like,
“Many women don’t feel 100% confident about their financial future as they near retirement – for that reason, I work with them to create a roadmap so they can get exactly the retirement they’ve been dreaming about by making good decisions for themselves and their family.”
So, when you approach a woman follow these tips – before your pitch:
- Always listen more than you talk
- Respect her point of view
- Speak her language – the language of life – about family and friends, not investments
- If she ask questions, resist the urge to show off your knowledge
- Make her feel confident by showing her that she knows far more than she thinks
Of course, all this advice begs the question – if women are potentially great clients, why don’t more advisors bend over backwards to learn how to connect with them? Actually, we have spent several years trying to untangle this riddle ourselves and it seems to come down to the fact that many advisors find it challenging to pivot from what they’ve been doing for years.
But before you decide that rethinking how you do business is too difficult, consider this, women are happy to talk to someone who appreciates and understands them and, when you show you are ready to deliver service on their terms, you won’t have to justify the value of the service you provide – it will be evident.
For more information on working with women who invest, visit our website www.strategymarketing.ca, sign up to our mailing list and order our book INVEST(in)HER – The Smart Financial Advisor’s Guide to Winning Female Clients in 6 Easy Steps.
Related: Are Your Conversations Winning or Losing You Clients?