Essential Client Meeting Skills For Financial Advisors

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” – Andrew Grant.

As a financial advisor, your first meeting with a client sets the tone for your relationship and is a critical element of your planning process. Improving your first meeting skills will help you stand out from the crowd, clearly convey your value as an advisor, and improve your conversion ratio.

Consolidated Planning coaches financial advisors follow a comprehensive planning process rooted in your planning philosophy. Our client focused introductory meeting is a cornerstone in this process, and advisors that embrace his approach find building a practice much easier. Different advisors have different styles, but we’ve found several common elements to how the best advisors run their first client meeting. 

This article will share our best practices to make the most out of your initial client meetings. You’ll learn tips to make a great first impression, showcase your value proposition, and increase client conversion. 

Let’s dive in!

Financial Advisors Focus On Understanding The Client

Your first meeting with a prospective client should be a conversation, not a presentation. The focus of the initial meeting is learning about the client and their goals, wants, and needs. To accomplish this, the spotlight needs to be on the client more than on you.

Having a conversation is a more relaxing experience than sitting through a sales presentation. Make the client as comfortable as possible and ask thoughtful questions. 

As a planning focused advisor, the first meeting is not a sales pitch. Only product focused advisors with a premeditated sales agenda make a pitch in the first meeting. Without knowing the client’s situation, how could you possibly know what they need to make a pitch?

Financial Advisors Help Clients Step Into The Future

The first meeting with a prospective client is all about the client and their wants, needs, and dreams. The best advisors help their clients step into the future to answer the questions:

• Three years from now, what is personally and professionally ideal?
• Three years from now, what is personally and professionally unacceptable?

Three years is far enough into the future to remove the complexities of time, money, and relationships that exist in the present but soon enough to remain relevant. We’ve discovered that clients find a great deal of clarity from this exercise, leading to increased buy-in into the planning process.

Guiding a client to clearly define parameters around ideal and unacceptable is essential to the planning process. This step gives you the destination for the client’s plan. Your ability to help the client fully flesh out their vision directly impacts your ability to help them plan.

You cannot skip or rush this step.

Financial Advisors Meet In Professional Settings

You must meet with prospects in a private and professional setting. Period. End of story.

As we shared earlier, your goal in this meeting is to learn as much as possible about the client’s needs, wants, and dreams. This is a very personal and private conversation and needs to take place in an environment that fosters trust and privacy.

If you were wondering, a coffee shop is not a private or professional setting. Could you imagine going to see your physician for your annual checkup at Starbucks? Of course not! So don’t ask your clients to do something just as ridiculous.

Financial Advisors Take Notes

The first meeting with a client is all about the client. The client should be doing most of the talking while you listen and take notes. Note taking has several purposes.

First, taking notes helps you remember important details from your meeting. Again, the client will tell you all about the destination for the plan you create. You’ll want to be sure you have clearly and correctly articulated the client’s goals or else your planning will have no direction.

Second, taking notes shows the client that you are actively listening and interested in them. People want to feel heard. It may be simple, but the act of taking notes visually reinforces to the client that you care. This will encourage the client to open up about their goals and create the clarity needed to do good planning work. 

Lastly, you will use your notes to judge whether the prospective client is a good fit for your practice. Are their needs in line with the services you offer? Do you enjoy spending time with them? Good note taking will help you avoid taking on a bad client.

Financial Advisors Set Expectations

It’s common for a client to be amped up and ready to get started after such a deep conversation about their ideal future. However, they have no idea what “getting started” means so you need to set expectations about how you will work together moving forward. 

Most clients have never worked with a comprehensive planning advisor. It should be clear in the first meeting that you are vastly different from any financial professional they’ve encountered before. After all, you spent most of the meeting asking them about their dreams for the future and taking notes without once trying to sell anything. 

Use this to your advantage when setting expectations. You are different. Your process is different. Let the client know what their role is throughout the process. Assign them homework and tell them why it’s important they complete it. 

Remember, it’s much easier to set appropriate expectations at the beginning of a relationship than to retrain a client’s bad habits later. Take the time to get this step right and save yourself from headache and heartache later.

How Will Improving My First Client Meeting Change My Practice?

Many financial advisors are taught that prospecting is nothing more than a numbers game. Typically, these numbers are: you must contact 10 people to set 3 appointments to close 1 client. These conversion numbers are concerning, particularly the number of introductory meetings resulting in clients.

These numbers may be accurate for the product focused advisors that have traditionally dominated the financial services industry, but we have found that planning focused advisors can improve their initial meeting conversion ratio considerably. Following this guide will help you create urgency in your prospects to take action today because you are getting them to say yes to planning for their goals, not buying financial products.

These tips will help you establish yourself as a planning advisor and establish the groundwork to implement a full planning process in your practice.

Ready to change your practice?

 

 

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