I didn’t know what I signed up for when I launched into a career as a financial advisor. Well, that’s not entirely fair. I obviously knew I would be speaking to clients about things with “dollar signs” in front of them. I knew we’d discuss insurance, cash flow, and retirement planning. As I progressed in my career, I realized that I was more than just a financial advisor. In fact, when analyzing this notion, I realized that I wore, we wear, many hats.
As advisors, we carry out many roles in the lives of our clients, and these roles significantly impact their long-term financial success:
Listener
Market volatility can create significant emotional swings in client moods. Top advisors listen. They identify client fears and anxiety, try to understand the issues driving those feelings, and then provide a plan that will work for them.
Calibrate: Active listening helps to avoid misunderstanding and improve your long-term client relationships. Start by asking an open-ended question, then carefully listen to their answer. Paraphrase and summarize what you heard. When we show we’re listening, it’s much more rewarding for clients.
Educator
Top advisors educate clients about the relationship between risk and return, asset allocation, rebalancing, diversification, and investor discipline.
Calibrate: Source or create financial concepts for those meetings so you have a story to tell about the benefits and pitfalls of a strategy. These concept pieces help you explain why you thought of the strategy for the client and empower them to decide either way.
Caretaker
Advisors are likely among the few professionals who take a long-term view of a client’s financial health and welfare. In this role, advisors look long into the future for things that may impact the client’s wealth and keep them abreast of such news.
Calibrate: Reflect on your client’s short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. Map it out on a continuum, demonstrate what you do with this information, and reiterate why you take this “caretaker” custodian position.
Wealth Coach
It’s human nature to doubt a plan when circumstances begin to attack it. This is when the mentor role kicks in. In this instance, the advisor puts on the “wealth coach” hat and reinforces why staying the course is essential and what is needed to do so.
Calibrate: Your clients hired you to be their overall wealth manager. You have short-term, medium-term, and long-term focus. When clients call with irrational decisions during volatile times, you put the “Coach” hat on and help them get back to rational, fact-based decision-making. Much like an athletic coach, you help educate clients about the discipline of investing.
Architect
Once the advisor has everything needed to create a plan for the client, plan construction commences. Working with the client, a long-term strategy emerges that matches the client’s specific goals and risk profile.
Calibrate: Once you’ve gathered all your discovery information and materials, it’s time to design the overall plan for clients. This is when the Architect hat is worn: Your task is to ensure the plan delivers on the client’s needs and is functionally sound and well-articulated.
Expert
In a world of free and easily accessible information, clients need the wisdom and experience of their advisor. They need an expert to help them understand what’s happening in their country and worldwide and develop strategies to meet goals. They need someone to filter the “news” and stay the course.
Calibrate: In your practice, clients rely on your expertise to assist them in getting where they want to go. Your expertise is put to work to help them. Feel confident that you have a perspective based on facts and past history despite market volatility and uncertain times. Experts also reveal your process for filtering the “news” to ensure your clients get accurate, unbiased information.
These roles, which we play in the service of our clients, combine our technical knowledge and experience of how dollar signs relate to our client’s lives.
How we carry ourselves when wearing these various hats creates our unique advisor brand. We uniquely guide clients through their specific financial journey. And it’s this that will have clients speaking about you, your process, and your accomplishments.
