Financial advisors who clarify existing information and understand their client’s perspective can be more persuasive as they build client portfolios, said a best-selling author.

Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human, said with so much more information available now, just offering data to clients is not the way to persuade clients to act. Instead, he said, advisors should help clients separate appropriate and inappropriate information. Additionally, financial advisors can use available information to help solve problems clients may have not realized they had.

“If your clients know their problem, they don’t need you. They need you when things go wrong or don’t know their problem. Help them find existing problems,” Pink said. He spoke Thursday afternoon at the HighTower Apex conference in Chicago.

To know what clients need, financial advisors have to be attuned to their client’s perspective. By being able to take their client’s viewpoint, it helps financial advisors to become more persuasive when offering services.

“You can’t force someone to be your client, or force employees to do something. ... You need to see (issues) from their point of view and … eventually you will find common ground,” Pink said.

This is where listening comes in, and it’s not easy to do so because, in general, people haven’t been taught how to listen well. But it can be learned.

“A lot of people think the opposite of talking is waiting. It’s not. It’s listening. In a commercial setting … you want to understand someone’s interest, what’s in it for them. Focus on listening and responding, and you build the attunement muscles,” Pink said.
When interacting with people, whether it is getting new clients or working with established ones, one aspect is dealing with rejection.

“People who flourish find a ‘why’ to understand why they were rejected,” Pink said. Often, people will give themselves a self-talk ahead of a meeting to go in with a positive attitude. Pink said take that a step further.

“Instead of saying, ‘You can do this,’ ask yourself, ‘Can you do this? How?’” Pink said. “How” questions usually get a response, he said. Practice and rehearse the answers that explain how. Those answers then can be given to clients, he said.

Questions are a good way to get clients thinking about their needs and eventually having them align with the advisor, he said, and questions can be more persuasive that statements. However, he added, financial advisors should only ask a question when the facts back up what they are trying to accomplish.

“Asking a question gets you an active response. They come up with their own reason for agreeing with you. They believe those reasons more deeply and adhere to believe more strongly,” Pink said.

Being transparent about a product’s features is another way to build trust. That includes adding minor negative details in an otherwise positive description. He said studies show that after talking up the positive aspects of a product, and then including a small negative detail, increases the saliency of the positive information.

Also, being specific on why a product is appropriate for a client and putting it in context of their current situation is much more effective than trying to predict what they might do based on their personality.

Finally, he said, financial advisors should make it easy for the client to do what the advisor wants them to do. “If I want people to do something, make it as easy as you possibly can. You might not need to change their minds,” he said.