4 Ways to Prepare Young Advisors to Manage More Wealth
With over three decades in this business, I am aware of the increased focus on investment training. It is critically important to understand markets and how investments interact to deliver a successful long-term investment experience, but we can’t forget what I think is the most important act: listening.
Clients aren’t looking for robots crunching numbers, but instead, empathetic and relatable financial advisors who they can build trust and a sense of mutual understanding with. I learned this valuable lesson during my first sales training and haven’t forgotten it since.
I spent hours practicing, listening to what someone would say, and then repeating it back to them using their words to make sure I heard them correctly. By confirming what I understood to be the most important goals to my clients, I was able to successfully determine what they were trying to achieve with their money.
This lesson still holds true today. I was recently at a forum where a panel of investors who have experience working with financial advisors were asked whether they’ve changed advisors before, and if so why. The answer was always the same; they didn’t feel their advisors truly understood their goals and investment needs.
This is an avoidable issue. Before teaching young professionals how to define products to clients or provide advice to investors, we need to teach them how to listen and show emotional ownership and responsibility towards their clients’ needs and wants. Most importantly, we need to help our clients make better financial decisions.
Financial advisors have a greater purpose beyond raising assets; it’s about helping people define the purpose of their money, and then make better portfolio and planning decisions that result in aligning the best financial instruments to achieve their goals. How would we achieve this without truly understanding what our clients are looking for?
3. Attract and prepare the next generation of advisors via hands-on programs.
To best prepare our industry, we must identify and build the next generation of financial advisors from early on. I urge my peers to join me in advocating for implementing and strengthening programs that are geared towards training up-and-coming advisors – including those currently in high school and higher education institutions.
Educational programs will provide valuable hands-on, real-world opportunities to aspiring financial advisors through internships and work-study programs. A notable example is the FinServ Foundation, which offers a training program for college seniors who want to enter the finance industry.
Through coaching, mentorship and networking opportunities, this program provides students with tangible opportunities to truly understand the core of the business, and I’m proud to have played a small part in the development of this program.
4. Consider more ways to help our industry help our clients.
The shifting dynamic of our society’s wealth and the growing influence of the millennial generation both provide a huge opportunity and a challenge for the financial services industry. To help investors achieve a healthy financial future, the first step is to ensure financial advisors are equipped to properly advise and partner with them.
We must remember advisors’ responsibilities start even before the first client meeting. New and experienced advisors alike must build a solid foundation — through constant education, training, and diversification of the field — to prepare for the future of our business.
Michael Lane is the head of iShares US Wealth Advisory at BlackRock.
(Image: Adobe Stock)
