Advisers should be using social and digital media to reinforce their ‘bedside manner’, instead of highlighting their technical skills, according to Zurich.
Research commissioned by the AFA and Zurich earlier this year found that while advice customers valued technical skills and qualifications, these were viewed as ‘hygiene factors’; what differentiates good advisers from their peers is strong interpersonal skills.
The study found that 82% of advice clients valued interpersonal skills as the most important attribute of their adviser, well above reputation (19%), quality of information (17%) and product knowledge (11%). Among these skills, communication was rated the highest, at 38%, followed by building rapport (24%) and caring and being genuinely interested in the client (15%).
For this reason, says Zurich, advisers should demonstrate their soft skills and emotional intelligence (EQ) through channels like social media and their own website.
“There are simple ways you can demonstrate listening skills, empathy and rapport building through social media,” said Phil Kewin, Zurich’s General Manager of Retail Life and Investments, who added that those advisers who do will unlock a very powerful combination which can give them a significant competitive advantage.
“Many leading advisers are using video to achieve this goal, producing professional quality ‘why?’ videos, which can be used on websites and are easily shared via social media and email,” said Mr Kewin.
He also warned against adopting a ‘cookie cutter’ approach when developing a website.
“The vast majority of homepages emphasise advisers’ technical skills and suite of services, often using industry jargon.
“The research proves they should instead be focusing on revealing more about themselves; why they do what they do, and what their outside interests are,” he said.
Social media allows you to grow effective relationships with hundreds of new people at a time
According to The Social Adviser’s Baz Gardner, one of the problems advisers have when engaging in social media is that they focus on the ‘media’ rather than on the ‘social’ part of the equation.
“Social media allows you to grow effective relationships with hundreds of new people at a time rather than a few, and digital channels provide the tools to solve know, like and trust 24 hours a day without you having to be present,” Mr Gardner explained.
“With just a little investment of time and the use of some simple tools, you now have the ability to know when your clients are changing jobs, selling their houses, contemplating life decisions and be right there delivering service in the highest value way possible.”
To help advisers leverage these tools, The Social Adviser is hosting the AdviserEdge Summit in Melbourne from 14 to 16 July. As media partner, riskinfo will be tweeting regularly from the event. We will also be talking with keynote speakers, and will bring you some of the best tips and case studies from other ‘social advisers’. Click here to follow @riskinfonews on Twitter.
Social media is talked about a good bit lately. It seems to me to be more hype than reality though.
Practitioners promoting social medial may talk it up as if it’s the be-all-to-end-all, but in my view that isn’t reality. At best it might be another string to an adviser’s prospecting bow, but is not an end in itself.
A lot will disagree with me on this and that’s their prerogative. Time will tell.
Paul,
There is a BIG difference between Social Media as a surface level component and how most of the so called ‘experts’ talk about it (which IS mostly hype) and the Socialisation of Business and subsequently Advice.
What you need to understand is that digital communication (which includes Social Media but is not limited to) is changing the way that potential and existing clients make decisions. Ignoring these changes mean you will be missing vital components of a clients decision making process.
However what is mostly missing from the Hype is an understanding of exactly how the process of Advice works. Digital Media can not only bring hundreds of thousands of Additional per Adviser yearly revenue (within the first two years) it can also give Advisers the tools to manage FAR more clients but to do so with much greater levels of connection and client satisfaction.
Hit me up in a few weeks if you like and I can explain with examples in half an hour via phone or skype. I will of course be running AdviserEdge next week and will take a week off after that :-).
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