According to Chris Anderson, the chairman of popular nonprofit organization TED:

“Before you can build an idea in someone else’s mind, you need their permission. People are naturally cautious about opening up their minds—the most precious thing they own—to complete strangers. You need to find a way to overcome that caution. And the way you do that is to make visible the human being cowering inside you.”

In other words, no matter how sound your financial advice is or how polished your pitch is, none of it matters if you can’t connect with your prospects or clients.

As Anderson said, human beings are social creatures who protect their minds against knowledge that may “pollute” the worldview they depend on.

The names of those weapons?

Skepticism.

Mistrust.

Incomprehension.

As a financial advisor, it’s your job to lower those defenses and build a genuine connection with your clients and prospects. 

This way, you can overcome objections from the get go and make it easier for you to turn prospects into clients or convince the latter to follow the advice you provided.

This way, you can address their objections before those objections ever get in the way of the advice you’re trying to give.

So how exactly can you go about this?

• Make eye contact… and don’t forget to put on a little smile.

  Establishing eye contact and smiling while doing it is one of the simplest ways to build trust with a client or prospect.

  This makes a real difference because people naturally use eye contact to assess whether someone can be trusted, which matters enormously in a field where clients entrust you with their financial well-being.

  Research cited by Anderson suggests that sustained eye contact between two people can trigger a kind of emotional mirroring, where one person begins to reflect the emotional state of the other.

  In other words, if you smile genuinely at a client, there’s a good chance they’ll mirror that same warmth back.

  Done naturally, without feeling forced, making eye contact and smiling at your clients can go a long way toward building real rapport.

• Be genuine.

  One of the best ways to overcome a client’s skepticism is to be genuine.

  Being genuine helps put prospects at ease and makes them more receptive to what you have to say or are offering since this disarms their skepticism from the get-go.

• Use humor whenever relevant.

  Humor is a powerful way to engage clients and prospects, since shared laughter builds social bonding.

  Clients and prospects who laugh with you are far more likely to warm up to you, and once that happens, they become more open to your advice and recommendations.

  That said, be thoughtful about how you use humor, especially in a field where trust and professionalism matter. As Anderson puts it, “ineffective humor is worse than no humor at all.”

  When looking to add humor to a client conversation or presentation, aim for a story that’s genuinely relevant to the topic at hand. Also keep in mind that not every joke lands with every client or prospect, so make sure to read the room.

• Don’t be full of yourself.

  One of the easiest ways to lose a client’s confidence and attention is by coming across as arrogant or overly self-important.

  The worst client meetings and presentations are the ones where an advisor spends too much time talking about their own accomplishments. Self-centered advisors tend to alienate the very people they’re trying to win over, so staying humble matters.

• Tell a story.

  Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools an advisor has for building rapport with clients and prospects.

  The stories that resonate most are authentic and personal, whether about yourself or a past client experience (with appropriate confidentiality in mind), and directly relevant to the point you’re making.

  One word of caution: some stories can come across as boastful or emotionally manipulative, so choose carefully which stories you tell and how you tell them.

Overall, these strategies are meant to help you build genuine connections with your clients and prospects, so keep them in mind as you refine how you communicate.

It’s up to you to decide which of these approaches fits your style and your practice best. Just remember that these tactics only work when used appropriately and with your prospects’ and clients’ best interest in mind.

Best regards,

Joel Litman & Rob Spivey
Chief Investment Officer &
Director of Research
at Valens Research

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