Is it possible we are the biggest group of victims of groupthink on the planet?
The theme has popped up recently in a number of my coaching engagements. I have found myself referring to marketing and management books from outside the financial services business when addressing issues advisors are dealing with. I referenced the works in conversations with clients and found those advisors had not heard of them before. Given the number of business books published in a year, that’s not overly surprising. But it got me thinking.
It occurred to me that virtually all the articles published in our trade journals and the studies conducted in our industry attempt to find the best solutions to the pressing issues of the day by asking the most successful advisors how they do it. Okay, fair enough. If you want to copy someone else it makes sense to emulate the ones who are getting the best results. But what if no one in the industry really has it nailed. What if someone in a different business (or even an entire other industry) has found a much better approach?
Take my area of expertise as an example – marketing. We all know that attracting referrals is the most effective way financial advisory firms market their services. Is that because referral marketing is the best possible way or could it be because financial advisors generally are just so awful at marketing? (I happen to believe that referral marketing is at least the most cost-effective although, especially watching the growth of social media, it may not be the best. And the vast majority of advisors are just awful at marketing, so those industry surveys in search of the best marketing strategies for advisory firms that simply poll advisors on how they do it always make me smile. And cringe.)
Is it possible we are the biggest group of victims of groupthink on the planet?
The theme has popped up recently in a number of my coaching engagements. I have found myself referring to marketing and management books from outside the financial services business when addressing issues advisors are dealing with. I referenced the works in conversations with clients and found those advisors had not heard of them before. Given the number of business books published in a year, that’s not overly surprising. But it got me thinking.
It occurred to me that virtually all the articles published in our trade journals and the studies conducted in our industry attempt to find the best solutions to the pressing issues of the day by asking the most successful advisors how they do it. Okay, fair enough. If you want to copy someone else it makes sense to emulate the ones who are getting the best results. But what if no one in the industry really has it nailed. What if someone in a different business (or even an entire other industry) has found a much better approach?
Take my area of expertise as an example – marketing. We all know that attracting referrals is the most effective way financial advisory firms market their services. Is that because referral marketing is the best possible way or could it be because financial advisors generally are just so awful at marketing? (I happen to believe that referral marketing is at least the most cost-effective although, especially watching the growth of social media, it may not be the best. And the vast majority of advisors are just awful at marketing, so those industry surveys in search of the best marketing strategies for advisory firms that simply poll advisors on how they do it always make me smile. And cringe.)
Do you want to find a better way to influence clients’ behavior? I am a lot less interested in what even the most successful advisors do then I am to try out the ideas from Switch by Chip and Dan Heath or Instant Influence by Michael Pantalon. Want to get some kind of idea what the World Wide Web and social media is affecting how we market our services? Some of the most interesting ideas are in The Invisible Sale by Tom Martin even though the book makes no mention of financial services.
The article was first published on www.theclientdrivenpractice.com
