1:1 with Alan Parisse

In today's Internet wired world investors don’t need an advisor to get market information, trade stocks and bonds, or buy most any type of financial product.

What investors want and need—and the service a great financial advisor provides—is the ability to help them define and achieve their financial goals and dreams.

These days, people want and need caring, knowledgeable advisors to help them deal with the complexities of modern life: a caring and knowledgeable doctor to help them navigate the medical maze; an equally qualified lawyer to ward off or resolve legal problems; and just as qualified an accountant to plot their course through the tax system.

Similarly, people need an expert financial advisor to help them identify and achieve their individual vision of their financial future. That is why clients and prospects need you to take an active role in understanding their particular circumstances, purposes, and goals, and to take a stand and tell them what you think is the best course of action for them.

Understand Your Client’s Investment Wiring

While great advisors are skilled at creating rational investment plans, they know that most investment mistakes are emotional, not intellectual. Often the most difficult challenge is not creating a rational plan, but getting clients to accept it and especially to stick with it through the ups and downs of the various investment markets.

That’s why great advisors develop the skills to uncover their clients’ investment wiring so they can then wring the emotion out of client decision making and behavior.

My colleague, David Richman, and I define investment wiring as the emotional baggage involving money that most every client carries around. It’s the combination of usually irrelevant or obsolete beliefs, attitudes, and prior experiences that impede clients’ freedom of thought and actions regarding money, limit their investment progress, and can destroy an advisor’s ability to help them reach their financial goals.

Great financial advisors do not rush to solutions until they are certain of the issues. That’s why they seek to fully understand both a client’s financial situation and that client’s investment wiring.

Determining a client’s investment wiring takes practice and skill. It requires an advisor to establish the credibility and trust needed to get up close and personal with their clients. Before clients will tell you what they really think and feel, they must know you are good at what you do and have their best interests at heart.

Ask The Right Questions

Competency, credibility, and trust alone are not enough, however. Great advisors are also adept at getting their clients to talk. They ask the right questions, are masters at listening to the answers, and know when to probe further.

While they are rarely formulaic in their approach, at each stage of the process, great advisors use questions. When a prospect won’t give them an appointment because they already have an advisor, they might ask: “Isn’t your financial future worthy of a second opinion?” When starting a relationship with a new client, they don’t rush to sell something. Rather they might begin simply by asking: “How can I help you” or “Where would you like to start?” Of course, great advisors ask lots of questions that reveal information about income, net worth, heirs, etc. However, they go further and deeper by asking questions such as: “Have you ever lost serious money?”; “What was your biggest financial win?”; “Is there any financial mistake you told yourself you will never ever make again?”

Standard questions such as, “What is your risk tolerance?” are important and must be asked but great advisors know they must understand what those words mean to their client. They ask questions like: “What keeps you up at night?”; “What worries you?” and even; “How much money could I lose before you fire me?

Take A Stand

As important as questions are, they are not enough. Once the issues are clear, great advisors take stands. They don’t just say what they think their clients want to hear. As do other professionals, great advisors go beyond merely “asking for the order.” As a caring, knowledgable advisor, they tell their clients what they think they should do.

Copyright 2006 - Alan J. Parisse

---

Alan Parisse’s bi-monthly column for Annuity Super Producer, 1:1, addresses questions to ask clients, ways of establishing crediblity, ideas for building client trust, methods for improving listening skills, and more.

For over twenty years, Alan Parisse has helped financial advisors, executives and managers enhance both their service to clients and their income.
He is internationally respected for his insights into the impact of the changing, global economy on investment cycles and financial marketing. Alan’s clients include a wide variety of industry and governmental organizations. In high demand, Parisse has been a keynote speaker for a long list of securities firms, insurance companies and banks. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at the Stanford Business School, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Business, UCLA Graduate School of Management and the University Of Pennsylvania Wharton School Of Business.

An accomplished author, Parisse’s ideas have been quoted in numerous business publications, including: The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Barron’s.

Parisse’s speeches, webinars, podcasts and landmark audio program, The Great Salesperson, continue to help ease the transition from a product based transaction-oriented system to one based on relationships and value added advice. His new book, Questions Great Financial Advisors Ask and Investors Need to Know, co-authored with David Richman, goes the next step by providing the tools necessary to create the dialogues needed to serve clients in today’s demanding marketplace. Published by Kaplan Trade, it is available at AMAZON.com.

The information and strategies Parisse shares are the culmination of a career dedicated to finding new ways to harness the forces of change and shape the future. Parisse’s insights come from years on the front lines as an executive, investment banker and salesperson. During his career, he was instrumental in the creation, marketing and sales of investments valued in the billions of dollars.

Alan Parisse, MBA, CSP, CPAE
Principle
The Parisse Group
1630 30th Street, PMB 310
Boulder, CO 80301

Ph: 303-444-8080
Fax: 801-382-6308
Website: www.parisse.com

Questions? Call - (303) 444-8080 or Contact Us