Julie Littlechild Dispels the Cult of Satisfaction

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, Client Dri­ven Practice

This will be the first of a series of posts on ses­sions from this year’s FPA Expe­ri­ence, held last week in San Anto­nio, TX.

Julie Lit­tlechild, author of sev­eral stud­ies on client atti­tudes and refer­ral behav­iors includ­ing Anatomy of the Refer­ral, pre­sented “Crack­ing The Refer­ral Code” includ­ing new data soon to be released in this year’s update of Anatomy. In this pro­gram Lit­tlechild explains that to seri­ously drive refer­rals we need to get away from the “cult of sat­is­fac­tion” and to look more deeply at what dri­ves client loyalty.

In her stud­ies, she sorts clients into one of four cat­e­gories from Dis­grun­tled to Engaged. It is impor­tant to under­stand the dri­vers that lead clients into each of the groups because, while over­all sat­is­fac­tion rat­ings are not widely dis­trib­uted, all refer­rals come from the Engaged group. There is a lot of behav­ior that client sat­is­fac­tion sim­ply can­not explain. Advi­sors fail to attract refer­rals because they have sev­eral mis­taken assump­tions about client satisfaction:

·         Sat­is­fac­tion is loy­alty
·         If I focus on sat­is­fac­tion refer­rals will fol­low
·         Clients refer because they want to help my busi­ness grow

Focus­ing on sat­is­fac­tion is a dead end because it is too broad. Engaged clients, hence refer­ral sources, require a closer con­nec­tion. They require a part­ner­ship with the advi­sor. And part­ner­ship arises from sev­eral aspects of the rela­tion­ship including:

·         Shared val­ues
·         Going beyond the port­fo­lio
·         Involv­ing fam­ily
·         Giv­ing clients a voice

The feel­ing of part­ner­ship can be enhanced by focus­ing on clients that have shared val­ues. While this is obvi­ous it is often over­looked. It is a big com­po­nent of “fit.” While Lit­tlechild found that 89% of advi­sors say fit is impor­tant, only 23% have actu­ally incor­po­rated it into their client accep­tance processes.

Giv­ing the client a voice is very impor­tant as well. Littlechild’s most cur­rent data show that 64% of clients believe that an oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide feed­back is critical.

She finds that we can cap­ture much more of the “low hang­ing fruit” of refer­rals by pay­ing closer atten­tion to those activ­i­ties that build part­ner­ship with clients. The pay­off, of course, can be sub­stan­tial. The study revealed that 67% of clients would make a refer­ral if they heard a friend describe a chal­lenge they believe their advi­sor could address, even if that friend did not explic­itly ask to be referred.

Look more deeply at your rela­tion­ship with clients. Go beyond sat­is­fac­tion and you can start gen­er­at­ing the refer­rals you hope for.

I will dis­cuss fit in my next post, report­ing on Tom Reimer’s pre­sen­ta­tion on that topic.

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Tags: Anatomy, Attitudes, Client Acceptance, Client Loyalty, Client Satisfaction, Closer Connection, Cult, Driven Practice, Fpa, Involving Family, Julie Littlechild, Mistaken Assumptions, Partnership, Referral Code, Referral Sources, Referrals, San Antonio Tx, Satisfaction Ratings, Sessions, Sorts
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The Hidden Value Driver in Your Business

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

Recently, I hosted a lun­cheon round­table for top per­form­ing advi­sors. Among the top­ics was what deter­mines the value of an advisor’s busi­ness. First I got the obvi­ous responses — assets, income and recur­ring rev­enue. Other answers included the extent to which you’ve built a strong team and have above aver­age client loy­alty and retention.

There’s another vari­able that didn’t come up that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily drive value in the short term so is often over­looked, but is absolutely crit­i­cal in the mid and long term. That vari­able: The num­ber of qual­i­fied prospects with whom you’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing on a reg­u­lar basis. These prospects aren’t gen­er­at­ing rev­enue today, but are one of the key pre­dic­tors of rev­enue down the road, in the same way that the tal­ent in a base­ball or hockey team’s minor league sys­tem is directly con­nected to its future success.

Doing more with less

The Tampa Bay Rays are arguably baseball’s most remark­able suc­cess story.

Here’s their pay­roll for the past three sea­sons, com­pared to two teams in their divi­sion that you may have heard of, the New York Yan­kees and Boston Red Sox.

Despite that yawn­ing gap in pay­roll, in 2008 Tampa Bay won the Amer­i­can League East divi­sion title and has made the play­offs in each of the past two sea­sons, ahead of Boston. As for this year, last Fri­day in the five-team Amer­i­can League East, Tampa Bay was sec­ond behind the upstart Bal­ti­more Ori­oles, the Yan­kees fourth and the Red Sox in last place.

How to explain Tampa Bay’s suc­cess? In part it’s attrib­ut­able to its man­ager, Joe Mad­don, twice named Amer­i­can League Man­ager of the year – lead­er­ship truly does mat­ter, in sports as in busi­ness. But the other expla­na­tion is a strate­gic deci­sion by Tampa Bay’s own­er­ship and Gen­eral Man­ager Andrew Fried­man (named Sport­ing News 2008 Exec­u­tive of the year.) Instead of get­ting into pay­roll wars that they couldn’t win, their focus shifted to “doing more with less” by build­ing a pipeline of inex­pen­sive minor league tal­ent. This strat­egy has enabled Tampa Bay to com­pete with teams that out­spend them three and four to one.

Pre­dict­ing future suc­cess for advisors

There are some clear par­al­lels between Tampa Bay and finan­cial advisors.

A few advi­sors have achieved growth by emu­lat­ing the New York Yan­kees and Boston Red Sox and writ­ing cheques to buy books of busi­ness. For most advi­sors, that’s not an option, and they have to emu­late Tampa Bay’s approach of build­ing from within.

And the best pre­dic­tor of the num­ber of new clients you’ll bring on board in the next 12 to 18 months, quite sim­ply, is the num­ber of qual­i­fied prospects you’re cur­rently com­mu­ni­cat­ing with.

A big part of this is due to longer deci­sion mak­ing cycles by investors. This wasn’t always the case – in the 1980s and 1990s, prospec­tive clients often made up their minds fairly quickly after ini­tial conversations.

While there are some cases where that’s still the case, more and more prospec­tive clients are tak­ing longer to decide to work with an advi­sor, in large mea­sure because often build­ing trust is some­thing that takes time and can’t be rushed. That’s espe­cially true when you con­nect with prospec­tive clients through broad based mar­ket­ing activ­ity, but it’s increas­ingly the case even when some­one is referred to you by an intro­duc­tion from an exist­ing client.

That isn’t always true of course — you may get lucky and get intro­duced to a prospec­tive client tomor­row who ends up decid­ing quickly to work with you. That’s the excep­tion, how­ever – more and more, if you aren’t already talk­ing to some­one, the chances of them becom­ing a client in the next nine to twelve months are remote.

There are at least three impli­ca­tions to this for your new busi­ness devel­op­ment activity:

First, you are going to have to be more patient in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospec­tive clients than was the case historically.

Sec­ond, the num­ber of qual­i­fied prospects in your pipeline is a key mea­sure of your future suc­cess – and just like any other key vari­able, you need to set goals for the num­ber of prospects in your pipeline, put activ­ity in place to achieve those objec­tives and track your progress against those goals.

Finally, you need a way to build trust and to stay in front of prospec­tive clients. Call­ing to say “Just check­ing to see if you’re ready to buy yet” may be bet­ter than no call at all, but cer­tainly won’t max­i­mize the chances of those prospects becom­ing clients.

On Thurs­day, I’ll write about how to fol­low up with prospec­tive clients in your pipeline with­out being a pest.

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Tags: Andrew Friedman, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, Client Loyalty, East Tampa, Gap, Hockey Team, Last Friday, Luncheon, Minor League System, New York Yankees, Payroll, Pip, Prospects, Remarkable Success Story, Roundtable, Sporting News, Tampa Bay Rays, Three Seasons, Two Seasons
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The Surprising Way to Deepen Client Relationships

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

A lot has been writ­ten about how to increase client loy­alty, and cer­tainly I’ve made my own con­tri­bu­tions to that body of work.

Despite the vol­ume of ideas on this topic, many advi­sors still have bet­ter rela­tion­ships as a key goal, par­tic­u­larly in light of the extent to which the mar­ket tur­moil of the past few years has tested client goodwill.

That’s why it’s worth con­sid­er­ing a sim­ple approach to deep­en­ing client rela­tion­ships. That approach, quite sim­ply, is to high­light in an appro­pri­ate fash­ion some of the things you do in terms of com­mu­nity involve­ment and activity.

Increas­ing your like­abil­ity quotient:

When I talk to clients who are really happy with their advi­sors, it’s remark­able how often I hear some­thing along the lines of “I sim­ply like her (or him.)” In fact, one of my most read arti­cles last year related to how to increase your “like­abil­ity quotient.”

Some of the qual­i­ties that make advi­sors like­able will be no sur­prise: An upbeat opti­mistic out­look, ask­ing ques­tions to engage clients in con­ver­sa­tion and demon­strat­ing that you’re lis­ten­ing closely.

But oth­ers are less evi­dent. Amer­i­can civil rights leader Jesse Jack­son has been quoted as say­ing “You have to bring more to the table than your own appetite.” And com­mu­ni­cat­ing that qual­ity to clients, that you bring more to the table than your own appetite is one of things that helps make advi­sors like­able and deep­ens client relationships.

“Bring more to the table than your appetite:”

That’s why I’ve come to the view that many advi­sors would ben­e­fit from incor­po­rat­ing a sig­na­ture char­ity into client com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Quite sim­ply, peo­ple like to work with peo­ple they like. By hav­ing clients feel that your moti­va­tions extend beyond your own mate­r­ial well-being, you often become more like­able in the process.

Hav­ing a sig­na­ture char­ity doesn’t have to entail writ­ing big cheques, or for that mat­ter writ­ing cheques at all. One advi­sor has pro­filed vol­un­teer efforts by him and his fam­ily at a food bank and has got­ten a great response from clients.

It doesn’t mean you have to select high-profile char­i­ties; to the con­trary. I’ve had advi­sors tell me about ter­rific feed­back to their efforts to sup­port small, grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions. Here are four guide­lines to mak­ing a sig­na­ture char­ity work for you:

Find a cause you can truly com­mit to:

First and most impor­tant, the sig­na­ture char­ity has to be some­thing that you are truly pas­sion­ate about. To achieve the desired effect, your com­mit­ment has to be gen­uine and one that you would sus­tain for an extended period, even if you get zero ben­e­fits in terms of client goodwill.

Note that many advi­sors already pro­vide exten­sive sup­port to great causes, but have sim­ply not incor­po­rated this into client communication.

Take the view that any mar­ket­ing ben­e­fit is secondary:

You need to truly take the view that any mar­ket­ing ben­e­fits are sec­ondary to the pos­i­tive impact that you make through your efforts. Rec­og­nize that fairly or not, in today’s skep­ti­cal world some peo­ple will see any com­mu­ni­ca­tion about your good works as self-promotion. In a per­verse way, the more you try to draw atten­tion to your­self and get credit for your good works, the less the good­will that creates.

That’s why com­mu­ni­ca­tion about your sig­na­ture char­ity should be low key, espe­cially ini­tially. In fact, a case can be made that you should only start telling clients about your efforts after you’ve spent at least a year or two in active sup­port. It adds to your cred­i­bil­ity to say: “For the past sev­eral years, my fam­ily and I have been supporting ….. “

Smaller is better:

When it comes to the cause you select as your sig­na­ture char­ity, beyond the rule of thumb that it is one you are per­son­ally pas­sion­ate about, the other con­sid­er­a­tion is it being some­thing that clients can relate to in terms of the impact it makes. Every­one rec­og­nizes that there are tons of great causes that do ter­rific work. That said the ones that seem to get the best response from clients are small in scale and grass­roots in nature, where the impact is tan­gi­ble and immediate.

Any cause that you’re pas­sion­ate about can be a can­di­date for a sig­na­ture char­ity. One advi­sor gave back by spend­ing four years rais­ing money to help build a local hik­ing trail. That said, the most com­mon sig­na­ture char­i­ties seem to revolve around chil­dren; here are some examples:

• Pro­grams tar­geted to chil­dren in lower income areas: I’ve talked to advi­sors who help spon­sor break­fast clubs at schools and after school and sum­mer programs.
• Char­i­ties that help chil­dren with can­cer or other child­hood dis­eases achieve their dreams or par­tic­i­pate at sum­mer camps.
• Causes related to help­ing chil­dren in the devel­op­ing world. Exam­ples are Plan Because I Am a Girland Amani Chil­drens’ Home in Tan­za­nia (an orga­ni­za­tion I’ve sup­ported since 2008 as my own sig­na­ture char­ity with clients.)

Get your clients involved:

Let’s sup­pose that for the past few years you’ve sup­ported a cause that you’re pas­sion­ate about, that is small in scale with a tan­gi­ble, imme­di­ate impact and that is mak­ing a real difference.

To make this your sig­na­ture char­ity, one final step is required; and that’s to let clients know about this.

Some ways to do this:

• Ensure you have a promi­nent photo in your office that pro­files the charity
• Incor­po­rate news about the char­ity into client newslet­ters and other forms of client com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For exam­ple, con­sider let­ting clients know that instead of gifts and cards at Christ­mas, you have made a con­tri­bu­tion on behalf of all of your clients.
• Invite clients to get involved. The advi­sor who vol­un­teers at a food bank has an annual evening where he encour­ages any clients who are inter­ested to bring out their kids and join him and his fam­ily. Other advi­sors have invited clients to buy tick­ets to fundrais­ers for their sig­na­ture charity.

The law of unin­tended con­se­quences at work:

Let me close with a word of cau­tion: If you embark on this with the moti­va­tion of impress­ing clients and per­haps attract­ing new ones, you will almost cer­tainly fail. In my expe­ri­ence, the advi­sors who’ve had the best suc­cess are those whose pas­sion for the cause they sup­port is evi­dent. The more pas­sion­ate you are the stronger clients tend to feel about this.

One final ben­e­fit to hav­ing a sig­na­ture char­ity has noth­ing to do with clients and every­thing to do with how you and your staff feel about the work you do. In con­ver­sa­tion with advi­sors who’ve made ongo­ing com­mit­ment to a sig­na­ture char­ity a core part of their life, I’m struck by how often they talk about the impact this has on their own moti­va­tion and sense of satisfaction.

And in the cat­e­gory of unex­pected con­se­quences, I spoke to one advi­sor who invited select clients to a fundrais­ing lunch for girls in devel­op­ing coun­tries; where par­ents often strug­gle to fund their daugh­ters’ basic edu­ca­tion. This advi­sor got a great response at the time, but was aston­ished by what hap­pened after­wards.
When she met with these clients in the months that fol­lowed, often they wanted to take the first five or ten min­utes to talk about the lunch and work the char­ity was doing, and what had hap­pened since. Even though these clients had writ­ten cheques to attend the lunch, the advi­sor felt that her rela­tion­ships with many of these clients had been fun­da­men­tally deepened.

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Tags: American Civil Rights, Appetite, Better Relationships, Charity, Cheques, Civil Rights Leader, Client Communication, Client Loyalty, Client Relationships, Community Involvement, Extent, Goodwill, Jesse Jackson, Key Goal, Likeable, Market Turmoil, Motivations, Optimistic Outlook, Quotient, Signature, Volunteer
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The Magic Question For Growing Your Business

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Here’s a sim­ple idea to help you build a great business:

• Every time you need to make a deci­sion about your busi­ness, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• Every time you spend money for your prac­tice, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• Every time you make a staffing change, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• After a client meet­ing or inter­ac­tion, ask your­self, “What did I do in today’s meet­ing to improve client sat­is­fac­tion for this client?” and “What should I do in our next meet­ing to improve client satisfaction?”
• Every time you are pre­sented with a client com­plaint, ask your­self the ques­tion “Did I seize the oppor­tu­nity to turn this client com­plaint into an oppor­tu­nity to improve client satisfaction?”
• At the end of the day before you go home, ask your­self, “What did I do today to improve client satisfaction?”

Fred Reich­held is a thought-leader in the areas of client loy­alty and sat­is­fac­tion. In his book, The Ulti­mate Ques­tion (“How likely is it that you would rec­om­mend us to a friend or col­league?) states that if you can increase your Net Pro­moter Score ((Per­cent­age Pro­mot­ers (9 or 10 scores) – Per­cent­age Detrac­tors (0 – 6 scores)) by 12%, you can dou­ble the growth rate of your business.

If you refer to our blog enti­tled What’s the Com­pound Growth Rate of Your Busi­ness and What’s That Cost­ing You? and use the embed­ded spread­sheet, you can cal­cu­late that a $50 mil­lion busi­ness at a com­pound growth rate of 10% will grow to approx­i­mately $130 mil­lion AUM over the next 10 years. At a 20% com­pound growth rate, it will grow to $310 mil­lion AUM. If you were to sell your busi­ness at the end of 10 years, the dif­fer­ence in total pre-tax income is just over $6 million.

By focus­ing on your processes for improv­ing client sat­is­fac­tion instead of results, like rev­enue or assets under man­age­ment, you will achieve greater results.  Focus on the process and let the results take care of themselves.

What’s the first step in achiev­ing and main­tain­ing sus­tain­able growth of 20%? Increase client satisfaction.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: 10 Years, 50 Million, 6 Million, Ask Question, Assets Under Management, Aum, Client Loyalty, Client Satisfaction, Colleague, Compound Growth Rate, Detractors, Focus, Fred Reichheld, Interaction, Magic, Net Promoter Score, Promoters, Satisfaction Client, Spreadsheet, Thought Leader
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How to Turn a Down Market into Client Loyalty

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Dur­ing the last month stock mar­ket have dropped and gyrated; some days by a whop­ping 5%, and in the case of many clients, wiped out this years gains. While this is bad for port­fo­lios, it doesn’t have to be bad for your client rela­tion­ships.

Will the mar­ket bounce right back, or con­tinue going down? Is this the begin­ning of the next bear? Who knows.  In terms of the growth of your prac­tice, it may not mat­ter. You do not have to be slowed down by the direc­tion of the mar­ket. The fact is the best and most suc­cess­ful advi­sors add clients in down markets.

I don’t mean to sug­gest that it will be pleas­ant. Is going through a down mar­ket easy? No. Can it be reward­ing? Absolutely.  Every­one looks like a genius in an up mar­ket. The pro­fes­sion­als stand­out when things are rocky. How do you build and strengthen client rela­tion­ships when the mar­kets are bad? Here are some suggestions.

1. Review your client port­fo­lios and make sure you are pre­pared for a mar­ket down­turn. Con­firm that posi­tions and allo­ca­tions have not got­ten out of whack because of mar­ket gains over the past cou­ple years. Eval­u­at­ing how those port­fo­lios might respond if mar­kets or inter­est rates changed sud­denly or sig­nif­i­cantly, and make any adjust­ments you think appropriate.
2. Be ready to describe to your clients how you have pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­ity of a mar­ket change. If the mar­kets begin mov­ing against you, have a com­mu­ni­ca­tions plan that includes mass e-mails or let­ters and the con­ver­sa­tions you will have indi­vid­u­ally in client appointments.
3. If the mar­kets con­tinue their slide, send out a com­mu­ni­ca­tion to all clients. Let them know you are watch­ing what’s going on, and are pre­pared to make any changes that are appro­pri­ate when the time comes. One of the more inter­est­ing things I have learned from work­ing with client groups is that they have lit­tle under­stand­ing of all the work you do on their behalf when they are not in front of you. Let them know. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to see them more fre­quently when times are bad but they need to under­stand that you are always dili­gently look­ing out for their best interests.
4. Bring your clients together. If you have put off or neglected an advi­sory board, or have been con­sid­er­ing start­ing one, now is the time to get it on the sched­ule. Engage your clients to tell you what they worry about. It may not be what you think. Get there guid­ance on the best ways of keep­ing in touch with the mar­kets turned bad again. What­ever their con­cerns, get them to tell you what kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with most effec­tively addresses their wor­ries. Would it be let­ters, indi­vid­ual reviews, or group meet­ings? Should you be dis­cussing their port­fo­lios, or show­ing them the impact of a down­turn on their finan­cial plans?
5. Act on their advice. When you imple­ment your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy, refer to your advi­sory board. Let all clients know that there is a group of clients you are actively engaged with to help you under­stand what kind of response would most effec­tively address what’s on their minds.

Many of the advi­sors I worked with in 2001 and 2008 were drained and exhausted by those dif­fi­cult mar­kets. The ones who kept in touch with their clients most effec­tively were rewarded for all that addi­tional work with larger prac­tices. Engag­ing your clients when things are bad will make your exist­ing client rela­tion­ships stronger and attract new ones.

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Tags: Allocations, Bad Relationships, Bounce, Client Appointments, Client Groups, Client Loyalty, Client Portfolios, Client Relationships, Communication, Communications Plan, Conversations, Direction, Genius, Interest Rates, Interesting Things, Little Understanding, Market Downturn, Market Stock, Standout, Stock Market, Whack
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New research from Harvard Business Review: “Focus on relationships is costing you money”

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

The past 10 years has been called the “rela­tion­ship decade.” In indus­try after indus­try, the focus has shifted from sell­ing prod­ucts to meet­ing clients’ needs, and away from trans­ac­tional sales to ongo­ing rela­tion­ships. It’s hard to argue that everyone’s not bet­ter off as a result; not just cus­tomers but also advi­sors and the firms they work for.

Today’s con­ven­tional wis­dom says that when it comes to client loy­alty and prof­itable busi­nesses, deep rela­tion­ships are what counts. But a Sep­tem­ber Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cle raises some impor­tant ques­tions about whether this is the case.

Five cat­e­gories of salespeople

Three years ago, the Sales Exec­u­tive Coun­cil launched a global study of top per­form­ing busi­ness to busi­ness sales­peo­ple. They looked at 6000 reps in 100 com­pa­nies across mul­ti­ple indus­tries. Since the find­ings relate to busi­ness sell­ing sit­u­a­tions, they will not apply exactly to finan­cial advi­sors, but at a min­i­mum will raise some thought pro­vok­ing questions.

The first find­ing was that every sales­per­son has one pre­dom­i­nant persona:

1. Hard Worker: She shows up early, stays late and goes the extra mile.

2. Lone Wolf: He’s the rule breaker who does things his way or not at all. (Com­pli­ance hates this guy.)

3. Reac­tive Prob­lem Solver: Extremely detail ori­ented, she focuses on post sales fol­low up and can be relied on to ensure ser­vice issues are addressed promptly.

4. Rela­tion­ship Builder: He focuses on build­ing strong per­sonal and pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships and is well liked by customers.

5. Chal­lenger: Tend­ing to the assertive side, she uses a deep under­stand­ing of cus­tomer busi­nesses to push client thinking.

The for­mula for outperformance

The study found that aver­age sales­peo­ple are evenly dis­trib­uted across these five categories.

How­ever, top per­form­ers were a dif­fer­ent story; of star pro­duc­ers, four in ten used a Chal­lenger approach, push­ing client think­ing beyond con­ven­tional bounds. And the more com­plex the envi­ron­ment, the bet­ter those sales­peo­ple in Chal­lenger cat­e­gory did. In com­plex, solu­tion sell­ing envi­ron­ments, over half of star sales­peo­ple fell into the Chal­lenger cat­e­gory, com­pared to 4% who were Rela­tion­ship Builders.

Three things make Chal­lenger sales­peo­ple different:

1. They focus on new insights and teach­ing customers

Chal­lenger reps make it a top pri­or­ity to bring new per­spec­tives to every sales meet­ing. They look for con­crete ideas that will leave cus­tomers bet­ter off, often rais­ing issues that cus­tomers had never thought of.

2. They tai­lor their mes­sage to the peo­ple they’re talk­ing to

Being able to adapt your mes­sage to indi­vid­ual cus­tomers has always been the mark of out­stand­ing sales­peo­ple, but it’s never been more impor­tant than today.

Aver­age sales­peo­ple take a sim­i­lar approach with every­one and thus only tend to be effec­tive with those cus­tomers who fit their approach. By con­trast, excep­tional sales­peo­ple are remark­ably ver­sa­tile at tai­lor­ing their mes­sage to the indi­vid­u­als they’re talk­ing to.

3. They take con­trol of the sale

Chal­lenger sales­peo­ple are com­fort­able with ten­sion and don’t give in to every cus­tomer demand. Where appro­pri­ate they push cus­tomer think­ing; not just on what they need but also on price.

If the last ten years was the rela­tion­ship decade, today we’ve entered the value era. We were already down that path before the global finan­cial cri­sis; if any­thing today’s eco­nomic slow­down has accel­er­ated this trend.

Just to be clear, it’s not that rela­tion­ships aren’t crit­i­cal. Arguably, they’re more impor­tant than ever. What’s changed is what dri­ves those rela­tion­ships. More and more it’s not just about being respon­sive and well-liked or mak­ing the client feel val­ued; instead it comes down to deliv­er­ing dis­cern­able, crys­tal clear, tan­gi­ble outcomes.

In sophis­ti­cated and com­plex sit­u­a­tions, the most suc­cess­ful sales­peo­ple will be those who con­sis­tently drive con­crete value for clients. A key way to do that is tak­ing the Chal­lenger approach; mak­ing it a pri­or­ity to bring impor­tant new insights and ideas into every conversation.

As I said at the out­set, find­ings from the busi­ness to busi­ness world aren’t going to trans­late to finan­cial advi­sors per­fectly, but the direc­tion in B to B sales will inevitably cross over into your world. This is espe­cially the case among clients whose deci­sion mak­ing is more dri­ven by rea­son than emo­tion. These clients often have the largest accounts and also tend to be in their for­ties to six­ties, rather than their sev­en­ties or eighties.

Click below to read the full arti­cle from the Har­vard Busi­ness Review web­site. Note that you may have to reg­is­ter at no cost for the HRB​.org website.

http://​blogs​.hbr​.org/​c​s​/​2​0​1​1​/​0​9​/​s​e​l​l​i​n​g​_​i​s​_​n​o​t​_​a​b​o​u​t​_​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​.​h​tml

To take a 10 ques­tion self-assessment of your own sell­ing style, click below.
http://img.en25.com/Web/CEB/The%20Challenger%20Sale%20Challenger%20Test.pdf

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