Common advisor communications mistakes

Advisors are generally great communicators because they have to be. Yet I see some areas where the majority make the same basic mistakes that hurt their efforts to reach their audience.

Good communicators speak the language of the client. They pay attention to how clients react, they look for clues that indicate that their message is either received or not considered. They are “intuitive advisors” and it is their intuition that makes them great communicators.

However, many advisors feel that they are already good communicators and haven’t thought much about how they can become even better. Sometimes it simply means making a few adjustments to their communications style.

Here are the most common “self-impediments” to effectively communicating with your clients:

1. Talking more than listening.

How many times have you heard this? Yet, if you were to dissect your meetings with clients, would they be spending more time listening to you or sharing their hopes, dreams, concerns and opportunities? A study by the Financial Planners Association in the U.S. found that in the average one-hour interview between client and advisor, the client talked for 11 minutes while the advisor talked for an astounding 49! In the communications courses I teach, I certainly address advisors’ need to talk first and ask questions later. In our coaching sessions, most advisors want to tell the client everything they know before they engage the client in a meaningful give-and-take conversation.

2. Talking to the left brain rather than the right.

If there is one aspect to the “best practices” of strong communicators, it is their ability to reach the emotional right side of the brain rather than the logical left side. This is counter-intuitive for many advisors, who are so used to analyzing markets, insurance proposals or tax issues that they forget they have to speak in terms that clients want to understand. The emphasis on want is intentional. Just because clients understand about left brain issues and financial planning terms doesn’t mean they automatically listen because you are talking. When you speak to the logical brain, you are counting on the fact that the client cares about your information. That is why you want to focus your information on what is actually important to them, which means tying your information to their emotions rather than to their logic.

3. Ignoring the reality of checkout.

You already know that you have to ask more questions to keep your client engaged in the conversation. What you may not have thought about, however, is the impact of checkout on your ability to reach your client. Checkout is the natural inclination to let our minds drift when someone else is talking. Think of the last time you listened to a fund manager presentation or sat through a meeting; how many times did your mind move to other things? When you daydream in a meeting, you are checking out — that is perfectly normal and we all do it (even more as we age).

Did you know that checkout not occurs not only in meetings but also in a one-on-one interactions with clients? Psychologists tell us that adults check out approximately once every 90 seconds in a conversation, with these mental interruptions lasting anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. When you check out, you are actually practising marginal listening — this means you are only listening for those things that are of interest to your emotional brain or something that relates directly to you.

Advisors unwittingly encourage checkout when they talk to clients. Your clients are going to check out anyway, but you don’t want to do things that will actually drive them to leave your conversation. For example, if you talk in sentences that last longer than 20 seconds you are inviting checkout. Here are some other examples where you run the risk of losing your client:

• You use left brain language or a lot of jargon or buzzwords.
• You hand clients a piece of marketing material or prospectus, or get them to look at a computer screen.
• There is ambient noise or other distractions that take your client’s focus away from your conversation.
• You allow your own attention to drift to a quote machine or a phone call or other task.

You can’t avoid all checkouts, but you can mitigate their negative effects. First, since you know that clients are going to drift, take a look at the things in your office that might draw their attention. Utilize items that will somehow reinforce your message. For example, if you are in client discovery, use a visual that will outline your process and give clients something they can “drift” to. If you see clients start to drift, re-engage them in the conversation by asking a question that forces a response.

4. Not appealing to all types of learners.

Often advisors fail to consider how best to impart information to the person sitting in front of them. Not everyone takes in information in the same way; different clients react to or remember things in different ways, based on what type of learner they are.

Your understanding of how to best approach your clients based on their learning type will improve your likelihood of resonating with them. There are four basic learning styles:

• Auditory learners respond to the things they hear.
• Visual learners respond to the things they see.
• Sensory learners respond to the things they feel.
• Tactile learners respond to the things they touch.

Everyone is different, and most people have a dominant motivator and a secondary motivator. You can usually tell what type of learners you are dealing with by how they react to the different ways you approach them. For example, if they seem to perk up when shown a picture or come alive when you talk about their family, it is likely that they are visual learners or sensory learners.

The least dominant style in all age groups is the auditory learner. Generally, the aging process moves learners to respond to emotional stimuli; we tend to become more visual, sensory or tactile. When it comes to reaching the right brain or the emotions of listeners, the least effective way is to speak in left brain terms without engaging their emotions.

To make sure you have covered all the bases, use elements of all four types when you are communicating to an audience or speaking one-on-one with a client.

5. Not paying attention to whether the client is still engaged in the conversation.

Checkout isn’t the only impediment to learning. Often clients don’t connect the dots in a way that would make your message resonate as much as possible. This has to do with your effectiveness in bringing out their implicit needs and making them explicit. Simply put, you want clients to draw out any of those internal needs that they may not have thought about so they can see the benefits of your message.

Teach-back is the act of getting clients to summarize what they heard and then relate what it means to them. This is an important technique that can be used to engage the right brain and assess whether clients are using fluid or crystallized intelligence. The former is when clients consider your information and start a thought process that analyzes “what’s in it for them.” Fluid intelligence is when you or the clients “connect the dots” and it is where the most important learning takes place. Crystallized intelligence is when clients don’t think your information is important or they have already made a decision; it can also contribute to checkout.

The more successful you are in keeping your clients’ light switch in the ON position, the more likely you are to get your message across. Remember that even the best information is lost if it is not received by the audience; a radio station continues to broadcast but it depends on listeners tuning in to hear it.

Barry LaValley is president, The LifeFirst Approach and specializes in working with advisors to help them communicate more effectively with clients, prospects and centers of influence. He is a leading educator in wealth management marketing in North America. His programs are available on an individual coaching basis or through the Canadian Securities Institute’s CH.P Strategic Wealth designation.

(09/02/09)