If you’re a new advisor, it’s easy to make a mistake in the first meeting and lose the opportunity to open an account.
There are some mistakes you may be making that you are not aware of. We will help you identify these mistakes in this post. Do you find yourself frequently doing any of the following? If so, take action to fix these mistakes.
1. Overusing Financial Jargon
If you give potential clients too much technical information, they will get confused and not know what to do. Put simply: People don’t buy what they don’t understand.
Although you are more knowledgeable about financial instruments and markets than your prospects, trying to make this obvious will not make a good impression. What prospects want to hear from you is that you are the right person to look after their money, which means that they trust you.
The one question potential customers will ask is whether they can trust you. So keep things simple or they will walk away.
2. Not Listening to Prospects
If you don’t listen to a prospect’s individual goals and tailor your presentation accordingly, you won’t win their business. And ‘listening’ is about far more than simply ‘hearing’. This means that you should not be thinking about what you are going to say next, or anything else for that matter. You should be completely focused on the person speaking, and taking in everything they are saying.
Prospects will easily spot when you’re not really listening. If you only ask people about their job or their possessions, they will think that you care more about what they have than who they are.
Show your interest by asking open-ended questions. When speaking to others, it is important to maintain eye contact, stay focused, and not interrupt. Let the people you are trying to sell to finish what they are saying before you start talking about what you are selling.
3. Not Demonstrating Enthusiasm
No matter what your day is like, it is important that you do not show negativity to potential customers.
It is important to show passion and enthusiasm in the first meeting in order to make a good impression and impact the lives of those you meet. If you show up with a bad attitude, your presence won’t be beneficial.
If you want people to like you, smile at them, shake their hand firmly, and be positive in your body language and words.
mp3 compilation, Mastering Client Relationships: What Elite Advisors Do.
4. Overpromising
The first client meeting is essential for setting the tone for all future interactions. If you don’t ask the right questions about what prospects believe and what their goals are, you won’t understand exactly what they want from you.
Perhaps they’ve severed ties with a previous advisor. If so, try to find out why. What led to their dissatisfaction? Did this advisor promise too much and not deliver? Make sure your prospects know what your expectations are from them.
Make it clear to them that, even though you can’t do anything about how the market fluctuates, you have a long-term plan that will help them achieve their financial goals.
5. Leaving your Personality Behind
When prospective clients look at financial advisors, they all look and sound the same. They have access to similar products and can spout off numbers and probabilities.
If you want to stand out at that first meeting, you need to be different. To win prospects over, you need to let your personality shine through.
A ‘who I am story’ is a great way for clients to get to know you. Tell them about your upbringing, your education, your experiences, and what led you to your current career. Your story can show that you are a real person who cares about the people you help.
Why do you love your job? Why did helping a couple achieve their dream retirement make you feel great? Making it easy for prospects to engage with you on a personal level will encourage them to work with you.
6. Failing to Create Urgency
If you don’t start an investment plan when you’re first starting out, you may not reach your financial goals. If you don’t make it clear to them that they need to take immediate action, they will leave your first meeting not convinced.
This is not a good outcome for anyone involved. If this happens, it means that the person you were trying to help is now even further away from being debt-free, and you have also lost out on a new client.
Stop them from deliberating by asking the right questions. Make them acknowledge a need for investment advice. To help someone identify their objectives, ask them questions that don’t have a simple yes or no answer. Show them how you can help after they’ve identified their objectives.
Ask the young couple if they plan on their children going to college in the future. If you are speaking to someone about a large project they are working on, you can ask them how they plan to fund it. This shows that you are interested in their project and want to know more about it. With college fees being high, will people have to borrow from family, take out a second mortgage, or go into debt?
This couple will only have 180 paychecks left before they have to start paying for their children’s costly education if their children are currently around three years of age.
When reality hits, people are often spurred into action.
7. Not being Prepared to Overcome Objections
If you are not able to effectively respond to objections during the first meeting with a client, you will not be successful in obtaining new business.
Some people might say that they don’t have the money to do something right now. They may not want to wait to get what they want, or they may be afraid of not having control over their money. Try to understand what is causing them distress and be prepared with a solution.
If someone tells you that they already have a financial advisor, you could say that you think it is great that they are proactive about their finances and that you are sure that their advisor is competent.
But no-one has a monopoly on great ideas. I have a great idea for your specific situation. Is it possible to get your opinion on that idea? It’s important to be ready for any possible objection you might encounter and to rehearse your responses so you’ll be confident when it’s time to deliver them.
8. Delivering a Lack-Luster Presentation
Your presentation is your opportunity to showcase yourself. People looking at your business will be observing closely to see if you meet their standards, look like someone they can trust, and if you’re suggesting the best option for them.
You can excel or you can stumble. You can demonstrate professionalism, or you can hesitate. If you want to let your personality shine, don’t be afraid to be yourself. You might appear uncomfortable at first, but eventually people will warm up to you. It’s important to take advantage of the short time you have in the first meeting to make a good impression.
When requesting a large commitment from a potential customer, it is essential to be as outstanding as possible. Your presentation doesn’t have to be long, but it should be easy to follow and memorable.
The most important part of giving a presentation is figuring out what you want your audience to take away from it. Once you know that, you can build your presentation around it. Keep to the point and don’t waffle.
9. Sharing Too Many Details
The goal is to find a balance between what the client needs to know and what they will be able to understand.
” Telling your client too much information that will only make them more confused is a quick way to make the meeting last longer. You can save your clients a lot of time by not giving them unnecessary details about the backend.
This means that you should only give your client the information that they need to know and nothing more. This will help to avoid any confusion or misunderstandings.
10. Not being Prepared
If you’re not prepared enough for a client meeting, it could be detrimental. You need to have all the information ready and be able to answer the client’s most important questions.
How much time should you take to prepare for a client meeting? Based on the survey, business owners will need to spend 1-3 hours preparing for each individual client.
If you don’t prepare properly, you might not present the statistics that the client wants you to, or you might not explain the insights that they are interested in, as Umarah Hussain from Surge Marketing Solutions explains.
What are the benefits to your company of having client reporting meetings that are well prepared? ” Hussain goes on to say that the Surge team has a monthly meeting with their clients where they go over reports, as well as having weekly catch-up calls.
This success has helped us grow our turnover by 45% in 2021. It usually takes a few hours for each team member involved in the account to extract the necessary information for the reports.
Our clients always have access to performance data, and we try to send them a report before we call them, so they have time to process the information.
” If you want to impress your boss in a client meeting, don’t come unprepared, according to Timmy Yanchun of LTHR Shaving.
A lot of people assume that they can just wing it if they don’t have time to do extensive research or look at supportive data. A client will quickly realize that you are lacking the information needed to give them specifics, plans, and more.
A client may realize that you are not fully prepared for a meeting if you simply read off the report without providing additional information.
This kills the whole buzz of making the presentation interactive and engaging.” Anthony Chen from PaidSearch.Pro expands on this by saying that if you don’t send the report in advance and just read from it during the presentation, it will make the presentation less interactive and engaging.
In a world where numbers are important, it is more important to make eye contact with the client while presenting, than just reading the slides in front.
After all, your client can read the slides themselves! Mentioning key details and emphasizing their importance to the company will help the client understand the full scope of the report. Using voice-over can help paint a more complete picture.
Is there a way to be even better prepared for your next reporting meeting? Keep track of your most important project management KPIs by using these client tracking dashboard templates.
11. Not Knowing what’s Important to The Client
Do you know what the client is looking for before you enter the meeting? Is it PPC clicks, website traffic, or sales numbers? The report should include the metrics that are most important to them.
” Nate Tower from Perrill costs that it is grave to not fathom what is momentous to your client when you are affording them a report.
If you talk about the wrong metrics, you will fail to tell the right story. Your data should support your goals and purpose.
Keep your explanation of the numbers clear and concise, or your client may feel overwhelmed.
If you don’t know what information the clients are interested in, you might be tempted to include everything in the report. This will only confuse the client further.
I have learnt to focus on the key details and then leave the unnecessary ones.” Sudhir Khatwani from The Money Mongers elaborates on a mistake he has made in the past, saying that he has a tendency to draft unnecessary details that just end up elongating the report without adding anything meaningful. He has learned to focus on the key details and leave out the unnecessary ones.
This could make the client less interested and stop them from reading even the important information.
“ Make sure that all of the data in your report is relevant to what the client wants and needs to know.
Clients want to track the progress being made and see how the relationship is benefiting their business. Can everything be measured and quantified? No.
A consultant’s work is valuable because it shows how their consultative work and deliverables are supporting goals and objectives.
Conclusion
There are some mistakes you’ll want to avoid making when you’re putting together client reporting meetings, no matter the size of your organization or which industry it’s in.
To make a positive impression on your clients, avoid these things and they will look forward to the next meeting.
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