Financial Advisor: Trust and Performance
Edited transcript:
This video is for people who are genuinely looking for a financial advisor or wish to establish an ongoing relationship with an advisor because they want help, or they want to delegate some of their financial lives to someone else that can help them either as a professional guide, and advisor or planner, so forth.
Hey everyone! For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had several phone conversations or in-person meetings with new people coming into the firm or wanting to reach out because they found us online. And one of the recurring themes that is coming up over and over and over again– I’m starting to see a lot of folks who are looking to hire a financial advisor or a financial planner for the very first time. And they are curious about what questions they should even be asking.
Now, I know that if you go to your favorite search engine, you should be able to pull up all kinds of articles about how you should interview with a financial advisor. Or, how you should talk with a financial advisor that you’re meeting with for the first time. You want to learn all about who they are, their background, their business background, their professional designations, their responsibilities, their business model all of these things.
But, I want to share with you something that I think is critical when it comes to the advisor client relationship. So, I want to be very clear about who this is for, if you fancy yourself as a do it yourself or someone who will go and maybe engage with a financial professional to have a systems check every once in a while, this video can be helpful, but it’s not for you. This video is for people who are genuinely looking for financial advisors.
People who wish to establish an ongoing relationship with an advisor because they want help, or they want to delegate some of their financial lives to someone else that can help them either as a professional guide, an advisor or planner, so forth. So, what I want to share with you actually came from a video that I watched from a gentleman named Simon Sinek.
You can go to YouTube, and you can type in Simon Sinek. You will see many, many, many of his talks. He’s a he’s a brilliant guy. He’s a thinker. He’s a fantastic speaker and educator. I always enjoy just about anything that I see him do, the books that he’s written, or the or the videos or the talks that he’s given.
But he gave this great talk, and I want to share it with you. Sinek interviewed with the SEAL teams, and he wanted to find out how they chose the people or they felt like the people that would make it through selection for the SEAL teams would be best for the teams. They shared with him that they have this matrix- performance and trust.
So when you deal with the SEAL teams, right, they are looking for the elite warriors, the best of the best that they could possibly get in the military. They want to have the highest level of discipline, the highest level of athletic ability, the highest level of ability to execute, and the highest level of trust. So it goes without saying that there’s going to be a certain point where these people that don’t fall into this category, they’re never going to make it, right?
They’re never going to make it because the level of performance and the level of trust the team leaders have in their ability is not sufficient enough to make the cut. What we tend to think is (and this is what he was sharing) that he learned in talking with the SEAL team leaders is that it goes without saying that everybody wants the people over here that are high performance, high trust, everybody wants these people.
But, what he found out that he thought was interesting was that some people that had high trust, but maybe didn’t perform at the level of some other people. These people were still more preferable than those with high performance and low trust. For those people who were middle of the road performers but high level of trust, leaders wanted those people on the SEAL teams. These teams are the most elite units in the military. The seals are world renowned for their ability to execute and deal with special operations.
I found that so interesting because I would have always thought that you want the the top, top, top people. Even if they were jerks, you wanted the highest level of performance you could possibly get. What they found out is that you want to have good performance. P And so for folks that are looking to hire an advisor, one of the things that I want to really highlight for each and every person–as you go through the interview process and talk with different advisors, I think one of the things that is going to be just absolutely key for the future is trust.
Can you find a financial advisor that you feel comfortable with opening up and developing a high level of trust in the meeting rooms?
Financial services is is evolving, just like every other aspect of our lives. We have technology, and some of the aesthetics of the apps and the technology platforms that we have now is beautiful. The user experience is really nice, and they’re only getting better. It almost seems like the machines are taking over.
But what we’re starting to find out is that the machines are able to just enhance the human relationship. So, I want you to think about this as you go through the process. As you’re interviewing different financial advisors, there’s going to be a lot of stuff that you see that looks impressive.
You’re going to see beautiful offices and beautiful technology platforms that show they can just do anything. You will probably see published discussions and white papers, along with one sheets on portfolio performance. There will be all the trappings of performance and credibility.
And I’m not saying that that stuff isn’t important–it is important. But you also need to think about the financial advisor (the person) you’re meeting with. How are they when it comes to interacting with you? Do you feel like they’re listening to you? Does it feel like they are asking the right questions? Does the financial advisor make an effort to engage both parties?
If you’re part of a couple, are both members of the couple being engaged? If you plan for your finances as a team, you should be engaging with someone that treats you like a team.
One of the key things to think about is who supports the financial advisor? Do they have a team of support? Do they have assistants or paraplanners? Who else will be involved in helping you do what you need to do?
Will the financial advisor be the one running point? Or, are they simply someone who’s going to take your information, delegate the planning to a team, and then come back to you with a third party’s recommendations? There are so many different business models in financial services. So, it’s really easy to get caught up in the trappings of what looks like performance and credibility. But, I want you to start thinking about the person who you’re going to be dealing with in financial matters.
Who are you going to develop that relationship with? Can they be trusted with your financial life? And will they be the ones that you trust enough to give you honest feedback?
That’s the relationship component of it. And it’s going to be so critical for the years ahead because technology is advancing. It’s going to allow us to do amazing things, but we cannot discount the human side of the relationship. I hope that makes sense to you. Thank you for watching, and I’ll be back with more videos in the future. Thanks!