Research has shown that advisers’ relationships with their clients is actually more important to client retention and acquisition than their money management skills, according to Amy Florian, who will be a keynote speaker at Financial Advice New Zealand’s National Adviser Conference in April.
Speaking ahead of the two-day conference in Christchurch, Florian says that in times of crisis and stress clients look to their financial adviser for understanding, support and answers.
“You need more than financial smarts. You need to understand your clients’ emotional experience and you need the skills to be able to communicate effectively through the crisis,” she says.
Florian, who is the CEO of US-based Corgenius, is an author, lecturer, and respected expert in life transition.
Through personal experience, becoming a 25-year-old widow with a seven-month-old baby boy, Florian realised that people didn’t know how to behave around grief and healing.
Working on what she missed through professional dealings through her own grieving process she founded a widow support group, worked on seminars, and reached out in any way she could, refining her support skills while she listened to, cried with, taught, and encouraged more than 2,500 grieving people.
At the National Adviser Conference Florian will be using her experience to provide advisers with the skills and language to use in difficult situations. For instance, what to say (and not say) when:
- There’s a death in the family
- A home burns down
- A parent is diagnosed with dementia
- There’s a serious or terminal diagnosis
…In times of crisis and stress clients look to their adviser for understanding, support and answers…
She told Financial Advice NZ that in times of crisis and stress clients look to their adviser for understanding, support and answers.
“We find it so hard because our society denies death, pain, illness, or disability,” Florian says.
We don’t talk about it, know how to face it, or ever learn effective ways to support people through it. Instead, we pick up what everyone else does and perpetuate the mistakes.
“We think we’re doing a ‘good job’ of supporting people when usually we’re wrong. Or if we are doing a good job, we can raise the bar and do even better with some simple tweaks to our language.”
She notes that if you don’t know what to say and do to guide clients through the toughest times of life “…you will lose assets to someone who does.”
“And at the same time that you’re improving your bottom line, you’re also doing the right thing for your clients on a compassionate, human level.”
…The worst thing is to tell the person what they should do or feel, how they should act, or that they should put this behind them …
“The worst thing is to tell the person what they should do or feel, how they should act, or that they should put this behind them and get on with life now.
“The next worst thing is to say all the standard, uninformed platitudes like ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ which ends up alienating the person rather than bringing true comfort.”
Key Takeaways
Florian says people tell her that the most valuable takeaways she offers are:
- A deeper understanding of what grief is and how often they have a grieving client in their office
- Several practical tips, skills, and language tweaks that they can put into practice immediately, both professionally and personally (note that the same skills that apply to clients also apply to friends, family, and other personal relationships)
- Inspiration for living better lives because of all they learned
Click here to register for Financial Advice New Zealand’s National Adviser Conference.