We need them to abandon the machine work that has become such a distraction. Oftentimes, smart advisors use less than superior tools to do their darndest to serve their clients and in the meantime have lost human connection. It is time to alter our expectations of financial advisors. We primarily need to expect them to act in human, not machine ways, and in doing so more than earn their fee. What are the human things great advisors do?
Written by: Chelsea Emery | Jeff Motske has one of the strongest ways to tease out client priorities I’ve heard in quite a while.
“What if?” Motske asks clients.
“What if one if your partner needs critical care? What if you want to move to Arizona? What if one of your kids starts a family on the other side of the country?,” the CEO of Trilogy Financial asks.
It’s deceptively simple, but an excellent method for getting at the heart of clients’ values and fears.
“These are critical questions,” Motske told me during a recent visit to Financial Planning offices in New York. “You want to ask them before things happen.”
...Sometimes a cliché is best captured in a picture. On my colleague's phone was a black Bentley, chrome logo glistening in the sun. The car belonged to one of his most successful clients, but it wasn't the presumptive price tag that was jarring. The custom license plate read, “NVSTWME,” surrounded by a frame stating, “My other car is a yacht.”
Photographic evidence of people's worst assumptions about financial advisers: extreme affluence, simplistic value proposition, garnished with a touch of hubris. Truth is, the majority of people in financial services do not carry themselves with…
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