What to Do With a Client Who Thinks They Know All the Answers

Perhaps the toughest task any adviser faces is challenging a clients’ own thinking, but without getting into a confrontation. Most of us find ourselves occasionally dealing with a client who already thinks they know the answers – they haven’t come to us for advice, they have come to us for validation of their own pre-conceived idea or to give an instruction.

Oftentimes we know that those instructions or pre-conceptions will result in poor outcomes or perhaps require a strategy which involves more risk than is necessary.

It is a challenge to get such a client to think beyond the decision they have already made….but using a very simple brain-storming technique instead of triggering a debate, or reversion to the stock standard fact-finding tools, will often open the thinking up to other possibilities.

So instead of trying to convince a client that they are wrong, or at least haven’t thought it all the way through, try a mini-brainstorming session instead.

Related: Become More Valuable to Clients by Making It Easier

In this quick video I explain an easy technique that you can use anywhere – even on a napkin or serviette – to get clients to become open to some different thinking, and move in a new direction. It is a way of challenging pre-conceived ideas without being confrontational…