Great advisors start on the inside.
You build a great practice on great culture and great people. What you want to do for your clients, you have to first do for each other, which is advocate for each other. Be concerned and care, be a human.
Great advisors avoid selling products.
Advisors who build great practices don’t rely on product superiority alone. Great advisors develop superior emotional connections with their clients, and by doing so, they know and understand what motivates their clients.
Great advisors stage a consistent customer experience.
I am not referring to the experience of great service; I am referring to the experience as a separate and valued economic offering. Experiences are as different from services as services are from goods, and great advisors understand this. I suggest you read The Experience Economy by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore.
Great advisors don’t chase clients.
It can be tempting to cast a wider net and take on clients who do not match your ideal client profile. Great advisors resist this temptation. When you are a generalist, you end up compromising your identity, and your messaging gets all messed up. Great advisors know who they are and who they are for and constantly strengthen this brand to their chosen audience.
Great advisors focus on sacrifice and not satisfaction.
Making customers happy isn’t enough. Great advisors focus on decreasing pain, personalizing the experience and transforming their clients. What are two areas where your customer has to make a lot of sacrifices? How can you decrease it?
Great advisors are committed to a much bigger goal for their clients.
Great advisors understand that financial planning is just another essential commoditized service that is available anywhere, including virtually. Great advisors don’t hide from this fact. They know that investors choose advisors (and everything else) they buy based on how these things make them feel or the identity these things help them experience and express. Great advisors focus on who their client is trying to become.
Great advisors connect.
They connect clients to solutions outside of financial planning. They connect clients to clients and clients to ideas. Great advisors are connectors who share freely.