Too many people who know too little about the day to day job of providing financial advice are placing too much emphasis on finding the ‘magic’ or ‘right’ value proposition that is somehow going to convince your clients to work with you and pay your fees.
“How can you justify your fee?”
“What are you going to charge next year? How will you justify that?”
“How do you best differentiate yourself and your offerings from everyone else?”
“What’s going to attract (and keep on attracting) the right client for our firm?”
Firstly, put aside the obvious that every successful financial advice firm attract their quality new advice opportunities from referrals from their clients, their alliances and their networks. Their web site, their financial services guide, their monthly media article, their blog, their brochures or their advertisements, all might play some for of secondary role as a reinforcement of the client’s purchasing decisions.
The classic problem with bespoke value propositions such as “we are experts at self-managed superannuation”, or “we provide a holistic approach for your whole financial life”, or “we specialise individually managed accounts”, or “we’re fee-based”, or “we send our claims to the claims department not the legal department” (and many other similar propositions) is that these are all becoming a ‘ticket to the game’.
So when someone asks about your offering, how do you explain what you do?
Any readers of Delivering Certainty would know I am fan of Simon Sinek’s thinking.
Taking a leaf from his great book Start With Why, the search for the ‘right’ value proposition turns out to be your ‘approach’ rather than your ‘proposition’.
“Before we can determine what financial advice, service or product may be needed, we first need to understand why we might take that approach.”
From years of working with great financial advisers this is much, much more than a ‘value proposition’.
This is a re-wiring of the thinking and beliefs that both we, and the clients, have about who we are, why we do what we do and why they will pay us.
It’s a tough conversion in approach for both advisers and clients. Really tough, but well worth it.
When trying to describe your approach, always try to start your explanation with the why rather than the what.
Once you really understand why the client needs your advice or service, you won’t have any problems ‘constructing’ your value proposition – it’s what they just told you!
What do you reckon?
About Jim Stackpool
For nearly 30 years Jim has influenced, coached, and consulted to advisory firms across Australia. As founder of Certainty Advice Group, he leads a like-minded team of professional advisory firms seeking to create greater certainty for their clients. As an author, blogger, columnist, and keynote speaker, Jim is regularly called upon for his professional insights into the advice industry. His latest book Seeking Certainty is available now.