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The best financial advisers don’t do this…
Have you ever met this person? You know, the self-important one who is more focused on them and not really interested in their client.
I’ve put together these 11 traits of the worst advisers ever. You may have others you want add. They’re a great reminder of what not to do, and how to be the best financial adviser you can possibly be. Read and enjoy!
The worst adviser will
Spend the first half or more of the initial session talking about their own credentials, experience, nice offices, products and solutions, before they ask any questions about their client and their personal and financial goals and challenges.
Go through the fact finding sheet, point by point without any interest in information outside of the form.
Offer advice and solutions without spending any time understanding the client as a person and their goals and objectives
Drop names of other well-known clients they have or talk about how wealthy their best clients are.
Omit to take notes so they soon forget the important details. Clients then have to repeat points, wasting time and losing the thread of their conversation.
Use lots of technical language and terms that the client doesn’t understand,making the client feel inferior and more confused than when they arrived.
Be tempted to help clients when they actually need other professional help such as personal therapy or business coaching. The intentions may be good, but the outcome potentially harmful.
Shy away from challenging clients for fear of sounding critical and offending them. If they simply agree all the time, what value are they adding?
Want to be the centre of attention. When clients talk about something that happened to them, they’ll be quick to share a similar but much more dramatic and interesting story. This one-upmanship makes for interesting conversations in ordinary life, but it’s definitely not appropriate in a professional client meeting.
Have the next question ready before the client has finished answering the previous question. This means they are not really listening to the client or responding to what they say appropriately.
Create goals and objectives the adviser thinks the clients should have.
Of course, whilst we may have met financial advisers with some of the traits above, we’re sure that as a reader of Adviser Lounge, you are not among them! Flip them all around to their exact opposites, and you have the traits of the best financial adviser ever!
This article is of course for fun, and perhaps to offer us a few reminders of how to continue to achieve best practice and deliver an excellent service for our clients every time.