Becoming and Being a trusted advisor can be one of the most rewarding relationships you can have with your clients.
In our fast-paced, ever-changing professional industry, we know you are working hard. You’re striving to keep up with new strategies, ideas, tools, and a ceaseless flow of information, while at the same time overseeing the day-to-day operations of your practice. But there’s one aspect that remains a timeless aspiration for many advisors: becoming the trusted advisor.
The term “trusted advisor” is a catchy phrase, what does this mean, how do you get there, and what are the potential benefits?
Becoming a good advisor takes more than having good advice to offer. You don’t get the chance to employ advisory skills until you can get someone to trust you enough to share their problems with you.
Here are some guidelines on how to be a trusted advisor:
- Give genuine attention. You build trust with clients by showing them you put them first, not yourself. Sounds easy, right? It’s actually incredibly hard and requires real discipline. After all, human nature is to try to get attention and worry about ourselves before anyone else. If you switch and start giving attention to your clients, they will trust you for the long-term. So always think of your client, their challenges, their priorities, their concerns, before your own.
- Ask relevant questions. As a trusted advisor, you have to keep asking questions to understand why the client think and act the way they do. Defining the problem will help you create more and better value for your clients.
- Develop the confidence to admit what you don’t know. In my opinion, there is nothing more powerful than admitting when you do not know that “you do not know”. This is authentic behaviour and it shows honesty and trustworthiness.
- Share your knowledge. Learn to be generous with your knowledge. It’s very unlikely that you know any secret information that makes you a better professional. Correct? Instead, you become trusted by sharing your knowledge instead of hoarding it. Share it consistently.
- Get closer to clients. One of the best ways to develop trust is through spending time together. That means finding any opportunity to meet snd speak to your connections. Do not fear “over-communication”. When it comes to building trusted relationships – more is better than less. Share your ideas, your thoughts, your plan on how you will help them, your action plan etc. That is the only way to get closer to your clients by adding value.
- Build reliability over time. Keeping your promises and doing what you say you’ll do is important for building trust. Embrace all opportunities to deliver on your promises, as a stepping stone in deepening your trusted relationships.
- Actively listen. I know this skill is easy said than executed. This means listening out for what isn’t being said by the client, as well as what is. What did the client really mean? What can you learn from their non-verbal communication? What do they avoid sharing with you? What are their real pain points?
As many in our professional industry are finally recognizing, a professional needs to be more than a technician simply delivering outstanding professional advice. The ideal professional needs to be more—to be a trusted advisor—by putting that outstanding advice into the context of what it means for a client’s business and delivering it in a manner that helps the client’s business goals.
Active listening, proactive and creative problem-solving, anticipating client needs, focusing on the business goals and effective communication: These attributes will make you not only an outstanding professional but also a trusted advisor to your connections and relations.
If you’re ready to start learning how to become and maintain your trusted advisor to your connections and relations, check out this Master Class within our SWITCH membership now!
