Norm Trainor on the 8 best practices of top-performing advisors

Trainor listed three truths in decisionmaking:

1. All decisions are value-based, 
2. All values are cognizance-based 
3. All values are risk-based

What do your clients value? The best way to determine this is by examining how they spend their time and money. By asking questions, you can better determine what’s really important to their clients. Along the way, they build confidence, while communicating their relevance and uniqueness.

Best Practice 4: Help your prospects and clients to buy 

There are two principles in selling, Trainor said. Focus on the other person and make them the center of the experience. Great advisors are the opposite of Narcissus, Trainor said. When prospects gaze into their advisor’s eyes, they see their own greatness reflected back. Top advisors are able to bring out the best in their clients and help them feel better about themselves. 

There are two types of advisors, according to Trainor: problem finders and problem solvers. Finders focus on the clients’ or prospects’ goals. Solvers focus on the methods for realizing those goals. 

Goal-oriented questions could include: How much income would you require in retirement? How big do you want your income to become? 

Problem finding is the money skill, according to Trainor. The world if full of problems solvers, but problem finding is rare and can be achieved by focusing on what’s important to your client. 

While average producers measure their effectiveness in terms of transaction value and making a sale, top performers measure their success by creating client capital and lifetime value in their relationships with clients.

Best Practice 5: Depth of relationship 

The depth of your relationship with clients is measured by the number of products and services they buy from you and the degree to which they view you as their trusted advisor. 

In addition, the breadth of your relationship can be measured by how much clients refer and recommend you. The real value is added after the sale and top advisors look to add value throughout the relationship. Doing so creates equity and makes them more referable. Top advisors have clients who are evangelists. 

While client satisfaction is an important part of measuring the success of an advisor’s business, it is also ephemeral, Trainor said. Engagement, on the other hand, is a deeper level because clients are involved in helping you succeed. The best form of marketing is word-of-mouth.

Best Practice 6: Obtain introductions 

High-performing advisors put their clients to work for them, according to Trainor. When a client orchestrates an introduction, they bring the prospect to the advisor. They sell the prospect, which, Trainor said, makes all the difference in the world. 

Using social media, an advisor’s staff or marketing consultant can look at a client’s connections before a meeting and come to the meeting armed with a list of ideal prospects and potential professional connections that are prime candidates for recommendations, introductions and referrals.

Best Practice 7: Delegate 

The top advisors are entrepreneurs who happen to have chosen the financial services industry, Trainor told attendees. And the two principles of entrepreneurship are : 

1. Optimization – always work at the highest level possible. 

2. Leverage – Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and I will move the world.” Advisors can apply this concept to their businesses by levering people and technology. 

By building a high-performing team and delegating tasks such as marketing and client services, advisors free themselves to “only do what only you can do,” Trainor said.

Best Practice 8: Utilize resources 

High performing advisors also build scaffolding around their practices, Trainor said, and leverage resources outside of their businesses to elevate the level of their game. 

Many prospects, and business owners in particular, have other trusted sources of information, Trainor said. Top advisors ask their clients and prospects to introduce them to their most trusted sources, who are often accountants and lawyers. Meeting with these professionals before making recommendations to clients provides a big advantage to advisors, because people are most comfortable with their conclusions, not those of other people. If they don’t by in, the process will not proceed, according to Trainor. 

By asking questions and listening, educating and informing the other professionals about the risks their mutual client may have, the advisor partners with them to provide complex solutions that are appropriate for issues business owners and other wealthy people often face. 

The other professionals then become the advisor’s partners in delivering a solution, but also centers of influence who provide introductions to other wealthy business owners and ideal prospects. 

Conclusion 

Trainor left attendees with the following thoughts: Understand that ideas are worth 1 percent; execution is worth 99 percent. By applying these eight best practices, applying vision and strategy and recognizing the importance of day-to day activities, advisors will make more money, do more of what they enjoy, have more fun and better enjoy the fullness of both work and life.

Check out our coverage of MDRT 2015 here.