The 10 Biggest Landmines for Advisors to Avoid

I was also taught that you should market, market, market yourself to anybody and everybody. False. The real purpose of marketing is to repel: to keep the wrong prospects away from you. If your marketing system is not filtering out the wrong kind of prospects, guess who's doing it? You're doing it. And you're wasting your most valuable asset: your time.

To keep our shower drain from constantly getting clogged with hair, I put a small screen in the drain to act as a filter. Picture what that screen looks like when it's changed. That's you…if you're meeting with the wrong kind of prospects, you are clogged up! Your marketing system needs to filter out the wrong prospects.

? And this leads to the third mistake: not discriminating and qualifying every prospect. Traditional training for financial advisors equips them with an interesting prospecting tool: a mirror. If someone can fog the mirror, they are a good prospect. Make 100 people who can fog the mirror your clients every year and you'll be set.

What a lie! You'll be insane. And you'll have to hire someone to create a plan to transition you from the 80% of clients you shouldn't be working with.

Why not discriminate up front and take the time you save to target the right clients you want to spend the rest of your life being with, helping and serving. Every prospect must know that while they're interviewing you, you are also interviewing them.

? The fourth mistake is not letting prospects beg you to tell them what you do. Have you ever been to an auction? Flinch and you own an item. That's what the average advisor is like. The minute a prospect flinches, the advisor rushes into telling them what they do.

Take out a piece of paper and write this down: If a prospect believes that what they're currently doing is going to get them to where they want to go, it doesn't matter what you do. You're wasting your time talking to them about what you do before they're convinced they can't get to where they want to go without doing something different.

Here's my three rule: an affluent prospect has to ask me three times before I'll tell them what I do.

? Mistake number five is not understanding the power of take away. Traditional advisor training teaches you the 73 ways to close people. Closing may work with the average client, but it doesn't work with the affluent. It must be more like a dance. Think about it. If I lean into your face, what's your natural reaction? Lean away, right? You must learn the skill of leaning away at the appropriate time.

? Mistake number six is not allowing prospects to own their problems, circumstances and consequences. I coach advisors to take the phone booth out of their office. What's that mean? The phone booth is the place where you rip off your suit and become Superman or Superwoman and come to the rescue of your prospect–too soon. Don't be so quick to "show 'em your cape!"

? The seventh mistake is not getting your fee (even if you don't charge fees) on the table quickly and in such a way that puts the pressure on the prospect. Every real problem requires a commitment, an investment of something, to fix. Even if you don't charge a fee, your prospect must be willing to make a commitment (three really) or you're gambling away your time.

? Mistake number eight is not disempowering their current decision authority. Many advisors believe that prospects will dump everything they've been doing and instantly make a change.

That doesn't make sense. There exists what I call the "mantle of authority." Your prospect has given that mantle to someone. It may not even be a financial person. You must help them figure out who that is and determine if your prospect is open to handing that mantle of authority to someone else–you. If not, you're wasting your time.

? Not using laser-guided questions is the ninth mistake. Advisors have "itchy trigger fingers." They're too quick to tell. Truth is, people don't even know how to think about this area of their life. So when they ask you a question, they usually don't really know what they're asking. In my latest book, "Double your Affluent Clients," I quote Blaise Pascal (a mathematician and inventor of many things, including the vacuum cleaner and public transportation) about this issue: "We are more easily persuaded, in general, by the reasons we ourselves discover than by those which are given to us by others." You've got to have a laser-guided, question-based process that leads a prospect through self discovery.

? The tenth and final mistake is not educating prospects on how to buy…you! Prospects, even affluent ones, have no idea how to discern the difference between you and every other advisor. Unless you can educate your ideal prospects on how to discern the difference, they'll default to the only thing they know when every alternative looks the same… price. At that point, you become rock salt… just a commodity.

Rating Yourself

Ten mistakes, or landmines, to avoid. There are more and I'd love to share them with you in the future. In the meantime, take a minute and rate yourself on each one of these. Pick just one to work on this week–the one with the highest payoff to you.

Then tape this article on your computer; revisit it each week and focus on the next highest payoff for maximum leverage of these concepts.

Follow this guide and it will lead you successfully through the land mine field and help you grow to the next level of success with affluent prospects and clients!

Scott Keffer is the founder and CEO of Wealth Transfer Solutions, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pa. You may e-mail him at [email protected].