A couple of days ago I received an email from a financial planner regarding an article I wrote some months ago titled “The Medium, the Message, and the Financial Planner.” The planner brought up a question about the difference between one’s image and the substance of one’s practice and questioned my assertion that a financial planner needs to develop a public image as an expert and that to do that he or she need not be technically the best in their field but rather they only need be competent.
My reader thought that I was way off the mark in encouraging less than the best to become recognized as an expert, and that by becoming so recognized, they would be damaging the profession. His complaint was that:
“(I) have spent years studying tax law, estate planning, investments, insurance, and other areas that are critical to helping a client formulate a financial plan. I’ve invested most of my adult life in becoming a real expert, not an image.
“What you call developing an expert image and reputation I call branding which in my opinion is nothing more than creating a false impression of who the planner is. I see all of this ‘marketing’ to be degrading to me and my profession. I am not a salesperson as you say in your article. I am a skilled, trained professional. I don’t market any more than a specialist physician or attorney markets.
“Certainly, there are financial planners that market their practice and many have very lucrative practices. I equate them more to the ambulance chaser than to a professional. I have no doubt that if I followed your advice I’d make more money, but at the expense of who I am, at the expense of the dignity and respect of my profession, and at the expense of my self-respect. I may not be making a six figure income, but I make a good living and I’ve done it without prostituting myself or my profession. In fact, I believe that if you and the others like you who are advocating financial planners become common salespeople would cease with your self serving attempt to sell your services, I’d be making considerably more because my expertise would come to the surface. As it is with the advice and guidance you and others give on how to market, many of the best financial planners aren’t acquiring the clients we deserve because lesser skilled planners are attracting them through their marketing practices.”
The reader had a few other comments to make, but you get the general drift of his email. Unfortunately, my experience working with thousands of advisors in the financial services industry is that he is not the only one with this view of marketing and sales.
Like most sales trainers, I get a good number of very positive emails and my share of challenging emails, but I’m not sure I get any more honest than this one. This reader is very clear on how he sees himself and his profession—and how he sees salespeople, marketing, and other financial planners who are aggressive in developing their practices.
He is also very clear on his misunderstanding of what sales and marketing is about and how business is acquired. Unfortunately, being one of the best at what you do isn’t going to bring in business. If no one knows about you, then no matter how good you are at what you do, you’re not going to thrive.
There isn’t a dichotomy between selling and marketing and being a professional, one doesn’t exclude the other. Creating an expert image through ethically sound marketing isn’t degrading or deceptive.
However, the arrogance and ignorance to believe that one is above selling and marketing is self-destructive. Being jealous of one’s competition because they are acquiring clientele you don’t think they deserve is self-destructive. Believing you warrant more business simply because you know what you’re doing is self-destructive.
Being technically competent or even being a technical expert is useless if you don’t have clients to practice on. Spending time and energy and using the strategies that create your public image and reputation as an expert is the sign of a true expert; believing you are above marketing is an indication of a lack of understanding of what marketing is and how business works.
Public reputations don’t happen by accident. They have to be nurtured and cultivated. They have to be created.
How many great financial planners are languishing in near poverty because no one knows they exist? If simply being great at what one does was enough, there would be no need for marketing, advertising, and selling. If being good was good enough, there wouldn’t be so many highly proficient technicians in every industry going out of business everyday because they are starving to death.
Success doesn’t happen because one happens to be a highly skilled technician. Success requires the acquisition of a number of skills—from the technical skills of your profession to the skills to get the word out about your existence and how you can serve the potential client. Success happens by intention, not by happenstance. Image doesn’t mean illusion and substance doesn’t mean success. Technical substance must be combined with a public image created through marketing and solidified through selling if you want to create a practice that is both professionally and financially satisfying.
I could not agree more with the article! Great Post…
Comment by Will Fultz — June 28, 2008 @ 6:55 pm |
Paul, I do get to some extent, where your enquirer comes from, in that from a certain perception, marketing could be regarded as a medium that breaks down barriers allowing the public access to companies based on ‘image’ rather than ‘talent’. However, I do think that this is a simplistic view, in that this perception is greatly influenced by one form of marketing – mass media advertising, which favours the financially strong.
I’ll bet that even your financial planner won’t discount the benefits of a good customer service policy and customer retention plan, which yes, is a form of marketing because public perception is largely affected by the customers experience in products and services. I have had plenty of experiences with ‘expert’ individuals whose arrogance and mal-treatment of customers have proved negative to their buiness position.
Nor, would I guess, would he complain at the spread of reputation through word-of-mouth, which based on a customers good experience, will let others know the business. And, yes, this is also marketing, and even the most salesphobic of practitioners will be relying on this.
What you highlight in your other article is forms of information direction (marketing) which aims to achieve the same objectives as those who don’t use marketing. The only difference is that in doing so you are exposing information to a greater amount of people. At no point is the value or ethos of what you offer any different which is what I think your FP thinks happens.
Comment by nesh thompson — June 29, 2008 @ 6:22 am |
Nesh,
You’re right–this gentleman would have no problem with word of mouth and certainly not with quality service. His aversion to marketing and sales is his perception that somehow by engaging in selling and marketing he is lowering himself to what he perceives a salesperson to be–unethical, unsophisticated, charlatan.
Fortunately, I’ve met very few professionals who have this radically negative view of selling, but I have met many who try to hide the fact they are salespeople. They tend to see themselves as professionals who must, at times, condescend to sell rather than salespeople who provide a professional service.
I see this as a duel issue–professionals must understand that they are professional salespeople; and we sales professionals have a long way to go to change our public image. Until we can change our image we’ll be forever viewed by many–including many who sell–as portrayed in films such as Wallstreet, Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room and others that show salespeople as slimy, unethical, do whatever it takes to stick it to the poor suckers.
Comment by Paul McCord — June 29, 2008 @ 5:21 pm |
Having quite a lot of experience with financial advisors, I find it helps to reorient their definition of sales. They think that sales is what they see of average sales people–pushy, unprofessional, feature/benefit regurgitation to uninterested prospects. But I explain that this is not sales. Sales by a master can have the following definitions:
“sales is the asking of appropriate questions so that the prospect sees the proper course of action for themsleves” or more powerfully
“sales is enrolling another person in their vision”
There are not many people who can claim mastery of these skills.
When professionals who think selling is beneath them are provided with the the above definitions, they realize they had no idea.
Comment by Bob Richards — July 1, 2008 @ 3:03 pm |