As all advisors know, it’s one thing to provide clients with appropriate advice and another thing to actually get them to follow that advice.
In this series of reports, Investment Advisor columnist and psychotherapist Olivia Mellan and financial behavior specialist Kol Birke of Commonwealth Financial Network address some common scenarios that advisors face in getting their clients to follow through on their advice. This advice for advisors flowed out of a web seminar hosted by Investment Advisor and ThinkAdvisor editor Jamie Green late last year.
As panelists in the webinar, Kol Birke and I discussed several prepared scenarios involving clients who don’t make the choices recommended by their advisor. Then moderator Jamie Green brought up an issue from a webinar attendee that hadn’t been touched on before. Here’s our take on it, in this last installment of highlights from the webinar.
Scenario 7: Who’s in Charge in the Client-Advisor Relationship?
Jamie Green: Here’s another interesting comment from a participant in our audience: “I like the common themes, but we appear to give the power to the client. As the advisor, I should be the one making the decisions rather than giving them choices and allowing them to tell me what they want.”
Kol Birke: Each advisor is going to attract the clients that work best with them. You should definitely run the practice that you want to run. Within that framework, people don’t change their minds when you’re talking; they change their mind when they’re talking.
It’s a really interesting phenomenon. It’s only once you understand an idea, agree with it, feel it inside of you, and are explaining it back to me that you’ve really changed your mind.