NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE

How can you tell a newbie from a veteran?  They never stop talking. 

Newer advisors think that they have to have all the answers and they think that they need to show that by burying their prospective client under a mountain of "expertise."  And counterintuitively, the prospect can feel their insecurity by their need to prove themselves. 

Newbies have a tendency to present rather than listen.  They have their pile of material they want to get through and plow forward without taking the time to engage the prospect.  The prospect just nods and smiles and can't wait for the pitch to end. 

Then in comes the veteran advisor.  One who doesn't have anything left to prove.  No one to impress.  They know that they know what they need to know and only pull it out when needed.   They seem to just be chatting, but everything gets done.   The prospect feels heard and genuinely likes the person who just "sold them something." 

When I was a Newbie, I spent a lot of time learning from Bill Bachrach.  He used to talk about your "way of being" a lot.  A Newbie and Veteran can say exactly the same thing, but their way of being changes the way that the words are perceived. 

-A Newbie's way of being can be a little twitchy, too reactive, too eager, just too much of everything. 

-A Veteran's way of being is more still, full of quiet confidence, ready to serve, but not from a place of desperation. 

"The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear." -Rumi 

This quote from Rumi kind of sums it all up.  A newer advisor is so busy filling the silence with their knowledge that they often can't hear what's really happening.  The Veteran asks questions, leaves space and listens.  They answer the questions that are really being asked.  

They build trust when they listen, not when they speak. 

If you suffer from a case of over-verboseness, you are probably wondering how you can learn to be quiet so that you can hear, while also moving the conversation along to where it needs to go. 

The first thing that I would recommend is reading the book Advice That Sticks by Moira Somers, Ph.D.  

-In it, she outlines why it is so important for us to shut up and listen in our client's meetings.   Client satisfaction, it turns out, is directly related to the amount of airtime the client takes up in meetings.  And the longer the meetings last, and the longer you talk, the greater the likelihood that clients will forget what they agreed to do in response (and why). 

-She shares the importance of going slowly and keeping it simple.  Rather than burying clients with our expertise, she points out that the expert's value lies in reducing the volume of information and its associated complexity.  By listening we can avoid prematurely offering solutions before we fully ascertain the client's needs. 

-And she encourages getting consensus early and often.  This doesn't happen when we are "presenting", it happens when we are asking clear questions and listening to their answers.  This significantly increases Adherence which is defined as the extent to which a person's actions align with agreed-upon recommendations from practitioners.  The key is what the client agreed upon, not what we told them to do.  


There are only a couple of books that I come back to over and over as an advisor and Advice That Sticks is one of them.  Advice That Sticks was written for us, for financial advisors, by a psychologist who understands why our clients or potential clients don't follow our advice. 

At the core of everything is that we build trust when we listen, not when we speak. 

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With Purpose, 

-Lucila