Financial advisors can beat the competition and become preeminent advisors by knowing their clients better than their peers, said Jay Abraham, founder and CEO of the Abraham Group, an international consulting firm.
Abraham said he wanted to help advisors answer the question of why a client should choose them over their rivals during a talk on the second day of The Preeminent Advisor Summit sponsored by Financial Advisor magazine.
“If you are a generic commodity, you have no importance” to your clients, Abraham told the audience of financial advisors. Instead, the successful advisor leads his or her clients to see what is possible in their lives, he said.
Too many people moved from viewing advisors skeptically to outright cynically during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, John Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide, a research and consulting firm, told the audience. But today “people want advisors to lead them to a life of significance,” he said.
To be that preeminent advisor “you want to fall in love with your client, not your company,” Abraham said. “There are two ways to live your professional life. You can hedge your bets and not advance strongly, or you can be an advocate who goes out of your way to make sure your clients do not make suboptimal decisions.”
Advisors should show clients what is possible, even when the clients do not realize the possibilities themselves, he said. “You have the chance to transform lives.”
In order to do that, the preeminent advisor needs to understand what the client values. “The more you can make clients realize the possibilities of their lives, the more powerful you can be,” Abraham said.
Bowen added that many advisors get caught up in knowing a client’s assets and liabilities rather than knowing what is important to the client.
“To be an advisor to a client means you have an enormous responsibility,” Abraham said. “You have an obligation to guide your client to the outcome they want, knowing the immense possibilities that are out there.”
Advisors also need to show certainty and confidence in their work, he added.