Editor’s Note: This article is based on Steve Sanduski’s podcast interview with Ross Levin. To access more than 100 interviews with industry leaders, subscribe for free to Steve’s podcast, Between Now and Success by clicking here.
Imagine you’re sitting down with a potential new client for the initial discovery meeting. What do you see sitting across from you?
Unfortunately, many advisors see a “prospect,” “dollar signs,” or perhaps “a million-dollar account.” The philosopher Martin Buber called this an “I-It relationship,” in which one person objectifies the other.
Ross Levin, the CEO and founder of Accredited Investors, an RIA with approximately $2 billion in AUM, said, “I think one of the things that we unconsciously do in our industry is we make people into objects in the form of prospects or clients. As a result, what ends up happening is the conversation is tilted from an authentic conversation into one that is hoping to lead to an end.” And in most cases, that end is a second meeting.
As an aside, how often have you heard an old school sales trainer say, “The objective of the first meeting is to get a second meeting?” That’s a sales culture that should have died along with “always be closing.”
Yet, this I-It thinking is ingrained in the very language of our business. Almost all advisors segment their clients and the assets they manage into some variation of: As, Bs, and Cs. It’s how many advisors track their business’ health, and segment their level of service to each.
Robo-advisors are perhaps the best example of I-It relationships. And when it comes to treating clients like numbers to be crunched and optimized, the robos are smarter, faster, and cheaper than you are. I-It thinking isn’t just a disservice to clients—it’s a long-term loser for human advisors.
Levin and his team focus on establishing “I-you relationships”: one-on-one, person-to-person conversations that help advisors understand their clients and their motivations. They have a conversation about life. They try to understand the client’s story, and through this conversation, they discern whether or not the person is open to those kinds of discussions. And if not, Levin’s team will happily refer them to another advisor that might be a better fit.
“We want to have discussions with our clients about life, so they have to be open to those kind of discussions, in order for them to have an effective relationship with our firm,” Levin said.