The financial advice sector has been challenged to reconsider its approach towards how it adds value in order to increase its engagement with advised consumers from one-in-five to one-in-two.
This gauntlet has been thrown by 2016 AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award winner, Peita Diamantidis, in her AFA Inspire National Roadshow presentations that wind up later this week.
In the Melbourne Roadshow event, which also served to launch the 2017 AFA TAL Female Excellence in Advice Award, Diamantidis initially conceded that she formed part of ‘the problem’ in her traditional approach towards the provision of financial advice during her 20-year career in the financial services sector. She used the example of a question often asked by advisers near the beginning of a client relationship: “Where do you want to be in five years from now.” She likened this to someone being asked a typically similar question during a job interview – one that her Melbourne audience agreed was a dreaded question.
Diamantidis asked why, if people hate being asked that question during a job interview, do many advisers ask the same question of prospective clients during their discovery meetings.
The diversity of dreams is what can help us connect with the public…
The paradigm shift she advocates is one that challenges advisers to engage with clients on the level of helping them to achieve their dreams; not their goals. Her own dream is that accessing appropriate financial advice needs to become a ‘want’ in the mind of the consumer, rather than its current status of a ‘should.’ She said that when a task sits in the ‘should’ category, people will simply procrastinate and find excuses to delay any action. But if the desire for financial advice becomes a ‘want’, in their mind, then this will lead to a much higher, pro-active engagement from the consumer with the financial adviser.
The way to achieve this, said Diamantidis is for the adviser to engage on the level of the client’s dreams: “The diversity of dreams is what can help us connect with the public,” she said, adding that advisers can consent to become ‘wish activists’ in people’s lives and help them master the art of dreaming and achieving those dreams.
The 2017 Inspire Roadshow, which was presented under the theme of Changing Futures Together, also featured a series of other presentations, all of which delivered excellent, relevant messages to the roadshow audiences around the country, which we will cover in further reporting.
…And click here to nominate yourself or your valued female colleague for the 2017 AFA TAL Female Excellence in Advice Award.
