It’s hard to care for someone you don’t respect.
Following on from Part 1 of How to Identify an Ideal Advice Client, when you are delivering ‘tough’ advice it really helps if you genuinely CARE about the individual(s) you are advising.
Because when you care, it matters.
When parents care about their kids, when speakers care about their audiences, when footballers care about the game, when doctors care about their patients, when advisers care about their advice clients, it adds tremendous weight to the outcomes you are seeking.
Don’t confuse caring with selling.
Selling in this context is caring more about your outcome (i.e. the ‘sale’) first BEFORE caring about their outcome, which is their outcome.
Make sense?
Professional caring (and/or professionally respecting) the individual(s) you are advising is the second attribute of identifying an ideal advice client. If you can’t respect or care for your advice cleint, it will show and they possibly are NOT an ideal advice client. No matter how much money your client may be worth to your firm, if you can’t respect them (for whatever reason), it will be professionally difficult to build consistent returns for your firm with these clients for whom your advice is delivered on a ‘take it or leave it’ approach.
Be wary – Your firm isn’t in the business of rapport-building to ‘win over’ new client to ‘like us’ (think Facebook) and then they’ll buy from us.
If you can’t care enough to ensure your clients implement, if you can’t care enough to help them overcome or better manage years of negative financial behaviours, if you can’t care enough that they ‘get it’ (i.e. your advice), then your brilliant financial advice may be falling too often on seemingly deaf ears. It may not be that they are ‘financially deaf’ to your brilliant, logical and rational advice, it might be more that they have not yet understood how much you professionally care about helping them attain the financial outcomes they aspire to.
Caring isn’t about being fanatical, over-the-top, ‘full-on’. It’s not about ‘faking care’. It’s about being professional, commercial, rational and emotional about your clients achieving the best possible financial futures and desired outcomes.
Caring is a basic ingredient in most of the ambitions in our lives.
If you can’t care or respect your advice clients, they can’t considered ideal.
What do you think?
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Remember the previous trait? Here’s the first.
Ready for the final three traits? Here’s the third, the fourth and finally, the fifth.
About Jim Stackpool
For nearly 30 years Jim has influenced, coached, and consulted to advisory firms across Australia. As founder of Certainty Advice Group, he leads a like-minded team of professional advisory firms seeking to create greater certainty for their clients. As an author, blogger, columnist, and keynote speaker, Jim is regularly called upon for his professional insights into the advice industry. His latest book Seeking Certainty is available now.