Your client reads the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may soon approve bitcoin ETFs and bitcoin futures will start trading on a new platform called Bakkt. She asks you what that means for her investment strategy. You don’t know.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be a cryptocurrency expert to turn the question into an opportunity to get to know your client better and discuss other financial strategies and products.
To start, no one believes you know everything. Clients don’t want a know-it-all advisor but a trusted resource. Let clients know you value their questions. When clients ask questions and you don’t know the answers, tell them you’ll look into it more and get back to them by the end of the day.
Open client conversations and build relationships
By telling a client you’ll research their question and get back to you, it builds relationships, said 27-year MDRT member Brad Elman, CLU, CLTC. “What the client is telling you is that they’re trying to solve a problem. Maybe you can’t solve a problem in the way that they’re asking,” said Elman, of Los Altos, California, but you may be able to find other ways to solve the problem.
Client questions are opportunities to learn more about what they are thinking or feeling. Say something such as, “That’s an interesting question. Tell me more about what’s driving it.” You may find what the client really wants to know is, “Am I still on target with my financial goals?”
Marketing and branding strategies
The topic of cryptocurrency also could be part of your marketing and branding strategy, even if it’s not part of your investment strategy.
“Marketing and branding is very different than financial planning,” said six-year MDRT member Ali Hashemian, CFP, MBA. “Think about marketing and branding as the way that you start the conversation and build relationships with clients.”
When building those relationships, don’t talk about what you find interesting but what your clients want to talk about. “In the past year, we heard a lot of talk about digital currencies and cryptocurrencies,” said Hashemian, who is both a financial advisor and the owner of an in-house brokerage firm in Los Angeles, California. “It’s not that we necessarily believe in that as an investment strategy, but we understood it’s a trend people want to learn more about.”
Once clients start asking Hashemain about cryptocurrency, they also started asking him other financial questions in other areas. This “led to more and more business because we were talking to them about what they wanted to hear, not about what we wanted to tell them,” he said.
By Antoinette Tuscano, MDRT Content Specialist
Watch these videos to learn more how client questions are prompts for information and can build relationships:
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