How The Top Financial Advisers Differentiate Themselves?

In a world where the next generation of wealth management clients don’t believe they need a financial adviser, or their services are comparable to that of a robo-adviser, how do financial advisers differentiate themselves?

It seems that the world is ever more keenly aware of their own and global finances. Whilst many may not fully understand what financial advisers do or how finance really works, they recognise the need for help and guidance in some capacity. The difficulty that both sides, client and adviser, face is that investors seem to think that everyone is the same. In a recent survey, 63% of people interviewed claimed that they felt all financial advisers make the same promises, making it hard to differentiate between them. If you couple this with a generally low regard for the financial services industry anyway, it would seem there the task ahead is a tough one for how financial advisers differentiate themselves.

How Can Financial Advisers Differentiate Themselves?

There are in fact many ways that the very best financial advisers differentiate themselves. We have covered a few of them before, but in the following sections we are going to help you paint  a picture of what differentiation means and how you can really separate yourself from the others in the crowd.

Know Your Niche And Your Target Audience

We often speak to advisers and ask them who they work with. The answer invariably comes back as, ‘wealthy Brits.’ Gee, thanks for that. Everyone is after wealthy people, but who are you specifically looking to help and how do you help them? One of the first things we help our clients do is understand exactly who they are looking to help. Who is their ideal client? (If you want to be able to work this out for yourself, download our buyer persona guide here).

The next thing we help them do is to know exactly how we help them. What is that you specifically do that helps your clients more than another financial adviser. Once you know exactly who you are working with, for and how you help them, you are far more able to set yourself apart from the others. One of the most powerful things a financial adviser can do is say no to business. If you are in a conversation with someone and they don’t fit your perfect client type and turn them down, they are likely to be intrigued and also likely to tell someone who is a good fit for them that you are able to help. This is a powerful way in which financial advisers differentiate themselves.

What Service Do You Offer?

This may sound like another odd one in how financial advisers differentiate themselves. Most people would reply with something like, financial services of course. Now, this is true to a degree. You are offering a financial service, but guess what? So is literally everyone else within the financial services sector. 

The really hard thing for many people to get their heads around is the fact that there are only a limited amount of financial services products available. In terms of services offered, your products are extremely limited, which is why it’s easy to see how potential clients find it hard to see the difference between what you do and another financial adviser. 

When we talk about service and how financial advisers differentiate themselves, we talk about things outside of the financial services aspect. How available to your clients are you? Have you created a networking group that your clients can join? Are you providing them insight into what the market does and what this may mean for their portfolio? These are just a couple of examples that your service can go beyond just managing their money and doing a quarterly review of things. 

What Are You Passionate About?

Financial advisers often have a reputation of putting themselves first over their clients. Clients want to know that you really care about helping them to achieve their goals and objectives. If we go back to our niche market and target audience, you should already know who you do the best work for. If you specialise in this and provide an incredible service, it’s quite likely that you will also be passionate about it. Let’s be honest, no one is passionate about pension transfers. However, you can be passionate about helping people to rapidly improve their retirement life by consolidating their pension into one place or helping them to invest it and make it work harder for them. 

Letting people know you care about them and their causes rather than the management of their money shows not only your passion, but that you are passionate about helping people. 

Show Your Results

Showing results within the financial services world seems to be something not many people want to do. Firms and advisers are always happy to say that they manage a certain amount of AUM, but rarely what they do with it and the returns they are getting for clients. This is an easy way to show how financial advisers differentiate themselves as it shows an openness and clarity that many other advisers won’t give. Did you help your client grow their portfolio over a number of years and help them achieve their financial goals quicker? Great! Show prospects the results.

Simple proof of your capabilities as an adviser is pretty hard to argue with and helps to build trust with prospects. Ask for testimonials. People who work with you and have had good results with you are likely to tell people that you have done a good job for them. These are all accolades that you can add to your website.

Final Thoughts

There are plenty of ways financial advisers differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market. The most important thing is to be proactive about it. You cannot expect to stand out from the crowd if you aren’t prepared to show people what you do and why you do it. We have offered only a few ways in which you can start to show your uniqueness and there are plenty of other ways that it can be done. The key question you need to ask yourself is, ‘why?’ Why are you doing what you do? Once you figure that out, you can spend some time trying to articulate that through your messaging, be that in person or through running marketing campaigns.

If you want to learn more about how Adviser Leads can help you to generate new leads for your business within 90 days, download our 3-step guide to exploding your lead generation by clicking the button below.