Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
To buy a copy of Bev’s book, The Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors, click here.
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Dear Bev,
I enjoyed your birthday column and appreciate how you are able to combine your own experiences with ideas for advisors. While I don’t disagree with anything you wrote, I wonder about your perspective when a client doesn’t want to get personal with their advisor. I have very good and deep relationships with all of my clients, but three of them are stand-offish and seem uninterested in responding to personal questions.
I have tried asking about their families, what they do for fun and their plans for retirement. I keep the questions open-ended as I’ve been taught to do, but they really don’t care to engage. They will answer with one or two words and then move the conversation back to the financial plan and portfolios we are reviewing.
Is it necessary to be deep with every client? These three different clients seem very happy with what we are doing for them. Although they don’t engage on personal issues, they do come to every annual meeting, respond to emails/texts and generally provide information needed to ensure their plan stays current and up to date. Not one of these clients has ever indicated they are unhappy in any way.
J.T.
Dear J.T.,
This often comes up when we are doing learning sessions and talk about the importance of digging deeper and asking good open-ended questions. Advisors will push back and identify the fact that not all clients want to get deep and real and may push back on probing questions. It’s not an unrealistic point to make. Some clients don’t want to expose everything and may find it annoying to be asked deeply personal questions.
I ask you to think about a few things:
1. Knowing your client is paramount. Recognizing their communication style, learning about their wants, needs and concerns, and spending time seeking to understand who they are and what they care about are all key to a successful relationship. If you do this, over time, and you find out they are people who want to keep to themselves rather than open up, then you’ll approach them a bit differently than you would those clients who want to share everything. But it’s important for you, as the advisor, not to be put off by a client who doesn’t respond, unless you’ve taken the time to know them and understand they aren’t willing to open up for whatever reason.
2. Consider how you phrase the questions. General questions such as, “How is the family?” or “What trips are you looking forward to taking?” or, “What do you enjoy doing in your free time?” could seem like throw-away questions that are asked of everyone. If you are getting resistance, try asking more interesting questions such as, “If you could change one thing about what’s happening with your family right now, what might that be?” or if you don’t want to go negative, “If you could highlight one area for your family right now you define as ‘special’ in any way, what would that be?”
To learn more about their hobbies and their weekends, you could ask, “What are the top two things that happened this weekend that were unexpected and very welcome for you?” or, “If you could engage in any hobby you might find fulfilling, what would that be?”
Sometimes people who aren’t naturally open and talkative react to the framing of questions. They may not like to answer something that seems general and unimportant, so trying to find ways to ask questions that thought-provoking could be a place to start.
3. Acknowledge the lack of intimacy. I enjoy the work of Trusted Advisor LLC, who created The Trust Equation. They talk about the importance of intimacy for client and advisor. When they interviewed clients about this, they found clients want their advisor to ask about “the elephant in the room” when talking with them. This leads to a feeling the client is safe with their advisor and the advisor is caring enough about them to talk about difficult issues.
To get to intimacy, you don’t necessarily need the client to reveal everything about themselves. However, you do need to get to a place with the client where they see you as someone who can hold deeply personal information in a careful and safe manner.
One element of intimacy is acknowledging with a client that it’s missing. It could be okay to note you have asked about personal issues several times and you feel yourself getting blocked by them. Let them know this makes you think perhaps the client doesn’t want to share (your language should be speaking directly to them, of course). Ask how best to engage in a manner that is comfortable for them. You might not get them to open up, but at least you won’t be wondering if you should dig more deeply with your questions.
4. Consider if there is an opportunity to have some personal time with these clients. Could you meet for coffee, or take them to lunch or dinner (separately of course, not all three together)? Sometimes the setting matters. When in your office or at their home reviewing their financial plans and portfolios, they might be all business. But maybe if you got them away from these venues, they would show you a different side.
Of course, these ideas presume you might like to get to know these clients at a different, deeper level. Your note somewhat indicates you are fine with the level you are operating at and want my validation it is fine sometimes to stay surface with clients. If you believe this is the best strategy with these particular clients, I honor your point of view. However, I do think, with some work, everyone can come around to share more about themselves if they are approached correctly. It’s up to you if you want to try anything new and different!
Dear Bev,
One of my partners plays things very close to the vest. She is not a very open person, and she doesn’t like to share personal issues in the office. A friend of hers, who is a client of ours, shared with one of our team members that my partner’s daughter (nine years old) is very ill and the family is going through a lot. We’ve been partners (four of us) for almost 10 years, and I am very unsettled she would not trust us enough to share this vital information with us.
We don’t need to know the details of her daughter’s illness or the diagnosis, but we’d certainly like to be helpful to her and offer either time off or support. Do you suggest we approach her or keep this information to ourselves and hope she will bring it up at some point?
Anonymous
Dear Advisor,
This is definitely a tough one. I think since you were given this information, you do need to act on it. I assume the friend who told you shared this knowing the partner had not told you, or they would not have shared it themselves. This person must have known her friend was keeping it quiet and decided, for some reason, it was her responsibility to let others know. While I don’t think you should breach their confidence, unless they told you that you could say they shared it, I think you can say you “were made aware” of her situation.
Ask whomever is closest in the firm to have a quick conversation just to say you are aware she is dealing with an issue with her daughter. Let her know the partners and other members of the firm would want to be available to help in any way. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. If she needs to talk about it with only one person and wants to keep it confidential from everyone else, that’s fine. If she doesn’t want to talk about what is happening but needs support for time off, coverage with clients and so on, that’s fine too. I think it’s important to let her know you are aware she is dealing with something, then give her these options so she can pick what is most supportive of her during this difficult time.
When someone is experiencing a sadness, a fearful event, a tragedy or a family issue that is scary, they may hesitate to talk because it makes it “real.” Or they may not want to be seen as “weak” in the office because they are preoccupied. Lastly, they may not feel what’s going on with their family is anyone else’s business (no matter how close they are as partners in business). Try and keep this in mind and approach her carefully but in a supportive manner. These issues are not easy, and each person is different.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: Discover something new! Click here to register for our upcoming webcasts.
Read more articles by Beverly Flaxington
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
