Building a successful relationship with your client is centred around understanding their goals, developing a long-term plan to achieve these outcomes, and being wholly committed to the process from start to finish. These elements are key to building a trusting and long-term connection. Within this engagement, the ability to explain and advise how the portfolio you have recommended is designed to achieve your client’s goals, and how you intend to evaluate progress and keep the plan on track, are integral elements to encourage your client to adopt your recommendation. Hence, the ability to explain, encourage and, to some degree, steer your client are important skills to develop in your role as a financial adviser.

You may already have some tried and tested processes that you adopt within your position as a financial adviser to enable you to positively influence your clients. Engaging with your client, enabling stronger connections to be forged, developing your relationship with them, and ultimately encouraging your client to undertake the plans you believe will help them to reach their goals are all key elements of the financial adviser’s role.

What are influencing skills?

Influencing skills are the abilities and techniques that a person uses to persuade and influence others. These may include:

• Effective communication
• Relationship and rapport building
• Active listening
• Demonstrating empathy
• Motivating to act
• Demonstrating credibility and trustworthiness
• Nonverbal communication

In this article we will consider the importance of influencing skills, suggest methods on how best to develop them and answer the following questions:

Why are influencing skills important?

Being an excellent influencer brings many accompanying benefits that will boost your business by strengthening your client relationships and setting you apart from your competitors.

Having good influence skills will enable you to:

Build trust and credibility with clients.

Establishing trust and credibility with clients builds long-lasting relationships. When clients trust and believe in you, they are more likely to continue your business relationship long-term, alongside being more open to new ideas and opportunities. To gain your client’s trust you will need to demonstrate honesty, reliability and consistency in your interactions, alongside delivering on your promises and keeping on track with their investment goals.

Persuade clients to take action.

Advising your client so they can understand the benefits of certain actions and overcome any hesitation or resistance they may have is integral to a financial adviser’s role. To do this, you can use storytelling techniques, statistics or examples – whichever method you feel your client may respond to best. Conversely, there may be situations where you may have to advise your client against taking action, so be aware of this aspect too.

Build and maintain relationships through creating clear investment goals.

To continue to provide the best advice and therefore add the most value, understanding your client and building a relationship with them is key. Successful investing begins by setting measureable and attainable investment goals and developing a plan for reaching them. Really knowing your client so that you are aware of their priorities and preferences will enable you to present tailored solutions that align with their goals and risk profile. The production of a well-planned investment portfolio strongly aligned with your client’s wishes should encourage your client to have trust in your ability and knowledge, and therefore if the need should arise to persuade them to take action, this should, theoretically, be straightforward.

Understand client concerns and objections.

Strong influencing skills enable a financial adviser to persuade clients to take action, but it is also important for you to understand and address any concerns or objections that your client may have. You will need to listen to them to understand their needs and goals. Understanding any issues ensures you are better equipped to provide tailored solutions that address them, and it has the additional benefit of building trust and credibility with your client.

What benefits will the ability to influence bring to your business?

Having the knowledge and experience of how to influence is probably something that you have already, even possibly unwittingly, carried out in your role as a financial adviser. But can you see the benefits of being a great influencer in your business outcomes? What are the tangible benefits?

Increased client retention

By knowing your clients so well that your advice is well aligned with their investment goals, your trust and credibility with them will grow. One proven benefit from this is that you are more likely to retain them over the long-term. Fully understanding your client’s needs along with their financial situation can help you to provide the most accurate and personalised advice: advice that they will be pleased to take. This cycle of trust will hopefully enable you to maintain your clients and work with them for many years. A long-term client is always the objective.

Increased client satisfaction

Good influencing skills can lead to increased client satisfaction as your clients are more likely to trust and value the advice of a financial adviser who can communicate effectively and understand their needs. This improved communication is also essential in addressing any concerns that your client may have. Clients who feel heard are more likely to trust and value their adviser.

Increased business growth

Financial advisers who have developed strong relationships with their existing clients, and hence have been able to ensure that they have provided valuable advice that their client has taken, are likely to be able to grow their business by receiving referrals from satisfied existing customers, and expand their client base.

Improved client outcomes

Advisers with the ability to influence can help their clients to make well informed decisions about their investments, which can lead to measurable attainment towards their investment goals. Providing clear, concise and accurate information, highlighting potential risks and rewards, enables your client to feel highly informed and involved with the investment process.

Increasing the potential for long-term relationships with clients

Keeping your clients on a long-term basis is one way to ensure a loyal and trusting advice client base, and a client base who trusts you will, most likely, stay with you and refer others to you. Replacing a client who leaves with a new client is both expensive and hard work, costing anywhere from five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one¹, so there are financial benefits to consider, too.

How can you improve your influencing skills?

Now you have read the benefits of being a good influencer, it is worthwhile spending some time looking at how you can improve the skills you already have to make them work for you.

There are five elements to consider:

• Communication
• Relationships
• Perspective
• Education
• Authority and confidence

Let’s look at these in more depth.

All the above aspects are vitally important to gaining good influencing skills, but what other qualities will help you obtain the best outcomes for your clients?

Let’s consider soft skills.

What additional soft skills should you, or your business, consider developing?

Be empathetic. The ability to listen to clients and understand their needs, putting yourself in their shoes, will enable you to give the most tailored advice, along with connecting with the client to increase trust and credibility.

Be an active listener. Really listening to clients and understanding their needs will enable you to respond correctly. When you are with your client, be fully present, pay full attention to what they are saying and listen. This is a skill that will serve you so well in so many areas of your professional life.

Ensure your communication is clear. The ability to explain complex financial concepts in an understandable way is vital for an effective financial adviser. If clients understand the full information they can make informed decisions, which is, of course, essential.

Understand how to resolve conflict. Financial advisers should be able to stay calm, actively listen and find mutually beneficial solutions to difficult situations.

Be adaptable. Being able to change your approach to suit every type of client is an important skill, as every client is unique.

Be a problem solver. Financial advisers should be able to identify and analyse problems and find solutions that align with the client’s needs and objectives.

Be a storyteller. Whilst some clients respond to logic and mathematical explanations, others will be governed more by their heart, so use skills like storytelling to inspire your clients and bring a personal approach to your plan.

Conclusion

Knowing your clients, developing measurable and attainable investment goals and delivering on your promises are all key to a successful financial advisory practice. To enable these, the ability to influence your clients is a valuable skill that is worth honing and perfecting.

Being a good influencer will bring with it many benefits. These include:

• Increased client satisfaction
• Increased business growth
• Increased client retention
• Potential for increased earnings
• Improved client outcomes

There are many methods and ways to be a good influencer; these are not always innate and can be learned. If you’re not a natural influencer, consider practicing the methods listed above.

It is never a bad time to gain new skills and enhance those that you already have. Gaining influence skills will enable you to progress in so many ways. It is a skill you cannot afford not to perfect.

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