Do Financial Advisors Buy Wants Or Needs?

My November 4^th blog is entitled The 43 Outcomes That My New Clients Want To Achieve.

The blog is a mash up from a number of different lists of what my newest clients want to achieve as a result of coaching and the list starts out with these;

1. Eliminate fear
2. Increase confidence
3. Deepen your understanding or yourself and others to eliminate judgment
4. Increase your focus
5. Release anger
6. Attract more referrals

You can read the whole list by clicking; The 43 Outcomes That My New Clients Want To Achieve.

With the following sales and marketing 101 theory in mind, are the things on The 43 Outcomes List wants or needs?

• Clients buy wants and not needs
• Wants satisfy emotions
• Needs satisfy logic

As the author of Curing The Unmet Needs Disease, please note that I talk about Unmet Needs in the context of psychological needs which is different that the wants and needs when making a choice to buy a product. As an example, you may think you feel hungry, but research shows that you might not really know the difference between thirst and hunger. What you really need is a glass of water or a salad would do the trick but your consumer based mind might have been tricked into wanting a Big Mac and fries … that was until you realized that 34% of the population is overweight and that there are no fat old men – they are all dead.

Psychological unmet needs are different. They must be met it is not optional, when unmet needs are met, we can be ourselves, unmet needs are completely satisfyable but they must be met from within because no person or product can fulfill them and unmet needs will dominate our lives until they are me because unmet needs are the source of all negative beliefs and negative emotions.

One of the issues with financial advisors is many do not have a written vision, business plan or goals. The unmet need of safety drives the negative belief of “I don’t have enough time” and the unmet need combined with the negative belief fuel a negative emotion like anxiety with fuels and fools a financial advisor to be in constant survival selling products versus taking the time to build a business and a financial plan for their clients.

I re-visited The 43 Outcomes That My New Clients Want To Achieve and edited & short listed the list and split them into objective improvements that financial advisors need to invest in to build their business and subjective roadblocks that financial advisors need to remove in order to build their business.

Objective improvements that financial advisors need to invest in to build their business:

1. business planning
2. branding
3. cash flow
4. client engagement
5. client segmentation
6. delegation
7. high net worth clients
8. hiring
9. leadership
10. marketing
11. organization
12. referrals
13. team building
14. time Managment
15. systems

Subjective roadblocks that financial advisors need to remove in order to build their business:

• anger
• fear
• fragmentation
• frustration
• inconsistency
• judgement
• lack of confidence
• lack of focus
• procrastination
• reactionary behaviours

So when it comes to clients buy wants and not needs as needs satisfy logic and wants satisfy emotions …

It appears that:

• Objective improvements that financial advisors need to invest in to build their business satisfy the wants and provide the emotional wins that they will receive as a result of accomplishing the wants.
• Subjective roadblocks that financial advisors need to remove in order to build their business will logically provide the foundation for their wants to stand on and remove the emotional roadblocks that will surely sabotage what they want.

Is it that financial advisors buy wants in a half hearted attempt to manufacture an emotion to disassociate from the psychological unmet needs driven roadblocks that they are facing?

One of my long time clients said “it is hard to help people when their hair is on fire”.

A financial advisor that has their hair on fire is driven by unmet needs combined with negative beliefs fuelling a negative emotion like anxiety with fuels and fools a financial advisor to be in constant survival versus taking the time to build a values based business which creates a foundation of understanding their wants, needs and psychological unmet needs.

One final note, is The Unmet Needs Disease going on with just financial advisors?

Absolutely not! The Unmet Needs Disease is an epidemic that is affecting the entire population.