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Your clients need a hero – one who can help them navigate the uncertain world and keep them on track to living their best lives no matter what circumstances they face. That hero should be their financial advisor.
Consider that the world is facing unprecedented economic uncertainty, and individuals and families are struggling to navigate the financial challenges in their everyday lives. The markets are bleak. Businesses have struggled since the beginning of the pandemic, inflation keeps rising and the word recession is on everyone's lips. Those factors are wreaking havoc on consumer confidence and have anxiety levels running at their peak.
Amid this uncertainty, clients face their professional and personal lives. Owners face difficult business decisions, while widespread layoffs mean many people are losing their ability to support themselves and their families. People are getting divorced and married, having children, losing loved ones, taking care of sick family members... the list goes on. Every one of these life events has a corresponding financial impact on their lives.
The advisor’s superpower is their humanity
During times of uncertainty, individuals are looking for someone to provide stability and give them peace of mind that they will be okay now and in the future. They want to know they can make plans and have someone alongside them to help achieve the goals required to live their best lives.
Yet, most client relationships center around financial performance. As clients get bombarded by news that relays one doomsday scenario after another, they are left watching their portfolios drop while seeking assurances from their advisors that their retirement funds are safe.
This isn’t the guidance they were promised. It’s reactive at best and leaves the advisor constantly communicating with their client base about market fluctuations and the associated impacts. This ensures that the market dictates how clients perceive the value of the advice they receive, meaning performance is measured by the portfolios' results, not by the true impact of the advisor’s counsel on their clients’ lives.
Ultimately, clients want an advisor who knows them better than anyone else. They need support, stability, and guidance through holistic life advice, which looks at each client as a whole person or a couple struggling to make it in an unpredictable world, not just as a number on a spreadsheet.
As such, the advisors’ superpower doesn’t lie in picking the next winning stock, rather it lies in being human and the value of advice.
Being human is your greatest strength
Clients don’t have the financial knowledge their advisor does. They look to their advisor to provide a plan toward financial stability to achieve their plans and goals. While it’s tempting for advisors to focus conversations on market volatility and specific holdings, clients want help defining what’s most important to them and charting a course for how to do more than just survive during these volatile times.
This means taking a holistic approach to financial planning and putting the client's values at the heart of the experience. By focusing on what their clients value in life, advisors can identify goals and tasks that will help their clients live a life aligned with those values. This can lead to a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. They may feel a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives while being able to make better financial and life decisions that align with their beliefs and priorities. Not only does this deliver greater consistency and coherence in their actions, but it creates positive changes in their behavior as they have a decision framework to act on when life throws hard choices their way.
When advisors center conversations on client values, they champion their clients’ needs and bring immense value to them at a memorable time in the relationship arc.
This is why being human is an advisor's greatest superpower. We don’t measure the quality of our lives by the size of our bank accounts. A life well lived is about everything we have achieved along the way. For advisors, it’s about helping, guiding and supporting clients and their families in navigating life’s challenges to ensure they remain on track for the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That means focusing on life first and finances second, to connect with clients on a deeper level and to create relationships that last a lifetime.
You can’t have a relationship with a portfolio or an algorithm. It’s the human-to-human connection that matters and should be at the forefront of the advisor’s value proposition.
Every hero needs a sidekick
Every Batman needs a Robin. Financial advisors are experts in finance, but many still need help creating meaningful connections with their clients. This isn’t their fault – product providers have trained us to focus on financial metrics and performance for years. We’ve become accustomed to talking to clients about numbers, not their lives.
Advice engagement technologies have changed the conversation and enabled advisors to break free from the product trap and engage with their clients on what is truly important.
Technology accentuates the only superpower that matters, the advisor’s ability to connect, discover and guide clients toward their best life. Advice-engagement technology allows advisors to provide better, more personalized services to clients at scale. Beyond benefiting the client, the advisor also benefits through greater efficiencies in the way client information is captured, tracked and measured, therefore giving the advisor more time to spend getting to know their clients.
Advisors have changed the lives of millions of people and will continue to do so if they practice empathy while tapping into their clients’ emotional desires. By leading impactful conversations empowered by advice-engagement technology and driven by the human heart, cape or not, advisors can save the day in the end.
Santiago Burridge, global CEO and co-founder of Lumiant, is a 23-year industry veteran and former financial advisor. Santiago founded Lumiant to support advisors in delivering an extraordinary and engaging software-supported advice experience.
Read more articles by Santiago Burridge
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
