Chris Unwin ‘Chrisisms’

Failure cannot live with persistence

So what is the only thing you have to do to guarantee your success as a financial adviser?

In order to answer this question, you first need to consider what it is that makes you successful as a financial adviser — and I’m sure you would agree that what makes you successful as a financial adviser is a quality client base, a quality client being someone who is looking for a long term business relationship with regularity and continuity of service and who is generally happy to refer other likeminded people to you.

Slightly harder to define is what constitutes “success”, and of course this will vary from individual to individual depending on their goals and aspirations. However, I think we can agree that you are successful once you have a client base that will generate the level of revenue you require simply by looking after your existing clients and continuing to offer a high quality ongoing service.

The number of clients required for you to achieve a position of total financial security will not only depend on your goals and aspirations, but also on the profile of your client base especially with regard to average age, earnings, net wealth etc.

However, for each and every one of you, there will be a magic number of clients that you will need to acquire to achieve total financial security, and this magic number could be as low as 100 or as high as 500, but whatever the number is, the same principle will apply:

The only thing you have to do to guarantee your success as a financial adviser is to STAY IN THE BUSINESS, because as long as you stay in the business you can’t fail to acquire the number of clients required for you to be successful.

The only people who fail as financial advisers are people who leave the business, so the only question becomes “How long it will take you to acquire the magic number of clients?” and that will simply depend on how much of a hurry you are in and therefore how hard you work.

Knowledge is Power (as long as you don’t share it!)

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea – I definitely agree with the adage “Knowledge is Power”, but not for the reason that you may think. More often than not knowledge is most powerful if you resist the temptation to share it with your clients.

In my experience the majority of clients want to feel comfortable that you have the knowledge, but at the same time there is a little voice screaming in their head saying:- “But please, please, please, please, please don’t share it with me!” Once you have been in the business for a number of years, you will have obviously acquired an awful lot of knowledge about all sorts of technical and product related issues. Ask yourself this question: – “What percentage of all this knowledge that I have acquired does my average client want me to share with them?” I would suggest to you that typically the answer to this question would be less than 10%.

The 2 most common reasons why business doesn’t happen when it could and should are either because you have not given enough information to a client for them to make an informed decision (and how likely is this when most of financial planning is common sense?!) or because you have given too much information to a client and they are suffering from information overload otherwise known as confusion. I would suggest to you that giving too much information is a much more common occurrence than not giving enough information, but whether that be the case or not, the more important issue is this: – which of these 2 potential problems is solvable and which one isn’t?

The client having too little information is solvable – you simply have to provide more information as required, whereas information overload is not solvable because you can’t take back information you have already given! My recommendation therefore is to keep things as simple as you can for your clients and only share enough information so that your client is able to make an informed decision. If they are more technically minded and need more information, then they will tell you and can provide the extra information they require.

So knowledge is power primarily because it gives you more confidence because, if asked a question, you will probably know the answer. However, what I have also discovered is that not knowing the answer to a question presents a great opportunity for you as well: – “That’s an excellent question and I don’t know the answer to it off the top of my head. However, I will find out the answer and get back to you.” Then make sure you do this in a timely fashion, and this in itself will make a positive impression and have the effect of differentiating you as someone who can be relied upon.