Good Question, Glad You Asked #3: How Do You Take A More Consultative Approach To The Initial Advisor Meeting?

Recently Rob Shore, CEO and Founder of Wholesaler Masterminds®, was asked to field questions from a group of aspiring wholesalers who are enrolled in their firm’s training and development program.

The questions they asked are, likely, on the minds of many current and/or future wholesalers.

For that reason, we thought we’d share the questions, and his answers, with you.

Question

Taking a consultative approach to initial meeting, what are some open ended questions you would ask advisers?

Audio Answer:

Transcribed Answer:

So while all the questions on the list are not open-ended, you will find, and maybe have already seen, the 76 Great Questions Wholesalers Ask Advisors. So in the interest of being efficient with our time, I’m not going to read the 76 questions to you.

But being consultative… let’s take the bigger notion of being consultative. Being consultative, to me, means that you approach meetings with yes, an agenda in mind of what you wish to accomplish, but you also have a willingness, and more importantly, an ability, to understand when what you have in mind is not going to work.

Let me give you a perfect example: I have a small group of wholesalers that I coach that are all less than one year of field experience. And we’re just now working on developing our PVP, our Peerless Value Proposition®. And one of the wholesalers has a Peerless Value Proposition® of behavioral finance, and as a subset of that, better understanding body language, and being able to read that body language efficiently. He’s a very bright, insightful young wholesaler.

He relayed a story this morning about an advisor he was sitting with, and while he was going through his more standard appointment-type of interview opportunity, he noticed that the advisor kept tapping on his keyboard with his pen. And it was at that moment that he stopped the conversation.

He said, “I certainly have a lot of things I want to talk to you about today, but it’s clear to me that you have some other things on your mind, and I’d like to be able to uncover what those are in an effort to have the most productive appointment possible.”

Why do I bring that story up to you?

Because number one, it was brilliantly insightful for a wholesaler with less than one year of experience.

Number two, it is the quintessential definition of consultative. So consultative means you are consulting with someone. You are not walking in, opening up your briefcase, and emptying the contents of it (and your brain) on their desk. It’s being mindful of what is going on around you inside of the meeting, and adjusting how you approach the meeting in what you say and what you do to honor the person that’s sitting in front of you; in this case, the financial advisor.