Debunking the Myths of Selling Financial Services
There are two common myths about selling financial services that might be keeping you from building a more lucrative book of business at a faster speed.
Both myths are about value. These myths seem so logical, so self-evident, that few advisors stop to question them. Once you see the myths for what they are, however, you will be freed to sell in a way that is more aligned to your values as a trusted advisor and less like a needy salesperson.
Myth #1: The Value of a Financial Advisor is Financial
When you think about those times a client has thanked you in the most heartfelt way for the difference you’ve made in their lives, it’s never been about how they beat the market or how competitive your fees are, has it?
No. In these most satisfying moments of any advisor’s career, your clients are almost always expressing gratitude for something deeper and more personal. Maybe it’s the lightness of being that arises from turning their portfolio over to more capable hands. Maybe it’s a sense of freedom to focus their precious time and attention on the things they most care about. Maybe it’s the I-still-can’t-believe-it! sense of euphoria when what was once a lofty dream—whether it’s funding a retirement, a college education or a vacation home in Tuscany—is about to become a reality.
Money is easy to measure, so it’s what both client and advisor tend to default to in a sales conversation. You know they’re going to ask about rate of return and fees, so you show up ready to speak to past performance (without making promises about the future, of course) and AUM schedules. They might even be part of your pitch.
Money and value are two topics everyone thinks they understand until they’re asked to explain them. Stripped to their essence, however:
- Money is a measure of value (among other things), but not the value itself
- Value is nothing more than a feeling, a “sense of regard”
Your real value is revealed in those heartfelt moments of client gratitude. The value you provide is the feeling of lightness, of freedom, of euphoria. It is the feeling of safety, security, pride, relief, comfort, responsibility, abundance—and many other possible emotional states your clients desire.
Your value is in helping your clients achieve their desired emotional state, whatever that is. Portfolio performance and net worth are dispassionate homogenized measures of your progress to these deeply personal desires—simple yardsticks of complex value. Don’t confuse the measuring stick for the thing being measured.
Myth #2: You Must Prove or Pitch Your Value
The average financial advisor closes about one prospect in four, with the other three would-be clients choosing another path. 1 So three-quarters of those who might hire you go on to have that heartfelt moment of gratitude with someone else.
Why?
What is in the pitches of the more successful advisors, the ones who steer most of your potential clients into their arms instead of yours?
The short answer is nothing. They don’t pitch at all.
In addition to the myth that the value of a financial advisor is financial, there is the corollary myth that it’s the advisor’s job to make claims of value in the sale. It’s not. It can’t be.
Let’s follow the logic from myth #1. Value is a feeling. Feelings do not exist “out there” in the world, they exist within people. The value the client seeks is inside them, not in you or your services or your highest-performing financial results.
At first read this might feel like a cheap semantic argument. But it’s actually a profound truth that, once understood, will change the way you show up in the sale. It’s not your job to pitch or make claims of value to the client. It’s your job to uncover the unique value the client seeks and then forge a path to that value.
The difference between claiming value and uncovering value is the difference between speaking and listening, between presenting and being present.
It’s the difference between treating your client like the average of a market segment and treating them like a unique individual.
And it’s the difference between closing one in four and closing two or even three in four.
Refocusing Your Sales Approach Toward Real Value Creation
When these two myths of value were dismantled for me, it was like an epiphany.
Up until that moment I thought my approach to selling was customer-centric. I thought I did a great job of listening to the client and uncovering what they wanted. Post-epiphany, it was clear that I was deluding myself. I listened only long enough to decide what my pitch would be. And this was long after I had thought of myself as an expert salesperson.
Going from focusing on the numbers and pitching your value to focusing on the client, uncovering value and not pitching anything is not an easy adjustment to make. It requires some deprogramming of deeply ingrained habits.
Some of these habits are legitimate sales techniques in other domains but have no place in the sale of a financial advisory relationship where the sale is the sample of the engagement to follow.
This is where the Value Conversation comes in.
Mastering the Value Conversation
In an effective Value Conversation, you drop any semblance of a slick sales pitch in favor of leading an open, vulnerable dialogue that gets to the heart of:
- What each individual client cares about
- How they define and measure success
- Their short and long term goals
- What makes them feel secure
By asking good questions and probing beneath the surface, you’ll learn what really matters. Things like preserving family unity so kids and grandkids can gather around the Thanksgiving table with gratitude rather than conflict. Or passing on wealth in a way that sets future generations up for success. Or setting up a smart succession plan that keeps a business in the family while ensuring it continues to grow and thrive.
Win Without Pitching Can Help You Make the Shift
The advisors who overcome the two myths of selling financial services not only reach new levels of performance, they find new levels of comfort and satisfaction in selling. It’s an approach to selling that lets you model for the client in the sale the trusted advisor you will be in the client relationship that follows.
This approach is called Win Without Pitching. It teaches you to sell and price like the expert you are. Here’s how to take the next steps:
- Pre-order my new book, The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise—coming in September
- Register for a Win Without Pitching Workshop
- Self-reported studies tend to show higher closing ratios of around 33%. However, more credible third party studies show a lower average of around 26%, which is consistent with what we see in our pre-training baseline data.
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