Scripted Sales Training Is Over. Here's What Advisors Need Instead.

Since 2016, RIA firms have represented the fastest-growing segment of the wealth management industry. However, as digital transformation continues to accelerate the shift to independence, the financial industry will need to evolve to meet changing norms regarding technology and infrastructure and how firms and advisors market, sell and deliver their services to prospective clients.

When I started training and consulting in the industry 30 years ago, the focus was squarely on selling proprietary products. But with the shift to holistic, fee-based advice, the equation has changed. Clients want to know that their professional advocates understand their goals and pain points — that their advisor will be there through all their significant life events, from births and deaths to starting a business and leaving a legacy.

Advisors who want to take advantage of changing consumer expectations must move beyond old-school, scripted sales training programs to ones that emphasize soft skills such as relationship-building, communication, problem-solving, empathy and financial coaching. To achieve this level of mastery, advisors must graduate from simple, transactional sales training to sales enablement.

What is sales enablement? It’s about taking your skill set to the next level, creating consumer-focused, not advisor-focused processes, and aligning all relevant tools and technology into training efforts to create the most realistic environment for advisors to practice and succeed.

Sales enablement creates a level of refinement that will take you from proficiency to mastery. For example, when I started training to fly a plane, I first learned the basics on the ground and in the air.

As soon as I was proficient enough, I completed a check ride with a Federal Aviation Administration examiner and earned my pilot’s certificate. But the training didn’t end there. I started working towards my instrument rating so that I could fly in bad weather. Years later, I still continue to hone my skills, participating in training programs with some of the best pilots in the business.

In the same way, for wealth managers, mastering sales requires the integration of three seemingly separate areas: people, processes and tools.

Move Beyond the Script

We all have different life experiences. As such, when a client sits down with an advisor, they don’t expect you to have lived the same experiences, but they do expect you’ll listen with a sense of understanding and empathy.

As an advisor, you must learn to be comfortable discussing some of the most intimate aspects of a person’s life. This won’t always come easy to advisors who have spent their lives steeped in facts and figures. As sales professionals, we also want to complete transactions quickly to be as efficient as possible with our time.

Often, advisors aren’t fond of challenging clients and having difficult conversations, which are seen as sales inhibitors. But when you sit down with a prospective client, chances are, the issues you’ll discuss will have little to do with the S&P 500.

Like lawyers and doctors, wealth managers must build trust through empathetic communication. Converting a prospect into a client requires demonstrating value, acumen and a commitment to serve others within the context of their circumstances.

The best sales training programs allow advisors to practice, role-play and explore communicating with clients from different walks of life. How you interact with a 65-year-old executive approaching the twilight of their career will be different from the way you connect with a young parent looking to grow a nest egg.