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Take a walk in your client’s shoes – Peter Welch

by: Peter Welch
  • 25/07/2013
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Take a walk in your client’s shoes – Peter Welch
If you have a 100% closing rate with new clients and you get repeat business from all your existing customers I recommend you stop reading now.

Still reading? Then you’re aware that there is some scope for a better connection with your prospective clients and engendering loyalty from your existing ones. So I’d like to focus on one area which involves very little effort but can make a big difference, and that is empathy.

By being able to generate empathy with customers so their needs and feelings are truly understood, they will feel less anxious, more trusting and crucially more connected to their adviser.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of empathy is ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’. There’s a misconception that this means we need to have shared experience with our subjects, which of course is impossible to do with everyone we meet.

After all, we can’t have lived all their lives with them. The knack is for the people we work with to feel understood from their perspective.

Here are some simple steps to help generate a feeling of empathy:
– Ask your clients how they feel about their current situation and how it will be different if a solution can be found?

– Summarise what you have just heard e.g. “Congratulations. You’re expecting a baby and would like to move to a house with an extra bedroom”

– Now describe the feelings associated with the situation and solution e.g. “naturally you’re anxious about bringing up a small child in a one bedroom flat but with an extra bedroom and a garden you’ll feel much happier that the new family addition will have space to play”.

All obvious and simple I know, but it’s easy to be seduced by the technical stuff we get paid to do. It is so powerful focusing on the client’s needs and their feelings, by doing so you’ll connect with them and increase your chances of keeping them.

Peter Welch is intermediary director for MyTouchstone

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