Using soft skills in client interactions

Using the same interpersonal skills across all your clients is not likely to work, as people respond differently to various approaches.

“We ascribe the same level of importance to interpersonal and behavioural skills as to the technical knowledge of our financial planners,” explains Marie Calvin, 1825 national academy manager.

“While technical expertise is clearly a crucial element of a good financial planner, interpersonal and behavioural skills help our advisers create the right solutions to meet our clients’ goals.”

For chartered financial planner Claire Walsh, of Aspect 8 Financial Planning, soft skills allow her to draw information out of her clients, rather than client meetings being a purely transactional process.

One of the things I’ve noticed is people often have some explicit reason why they’ve come but there are other things at play.Claire Walsh

“What I’ve found is the more you can make people feel comfortable and empathise with them, the better you’re going to build a relationship with them and they’re going to feel comfortable opening up to you further,” she notes. 

Reading between the lines

One of the challenges is being able to determine what it is a client has come to see their adviser about.

Ms Walsh explains: “One of the things I’ve noticed is people often have some explicit reason why they’ve come but there are other things at play and it’s often [about] trying to read between the lines quite subtly.”

Darren Smith, head of the Financial Adviser School, agrees it is as much about understanding what the client is not saying as what they are saying and suggests: “it involves reading their body language and listening beyond words alone”.

“This understanding can help engender trust, which is at the heart of financial planning,” he continues. 

“Money is an emotive subject and people need to be certain that their financial future is in the hands of someone they can trust.”

Listen and learn

Listening skills are vital in a job like counselling – a career that financial advice is often likened to.

Tom Hegarty, managing director at New Model Business Academy, says one of the most important skills is the ability to listen to clients.

He explains: “We do surveys quite a lot and one of the strongest results that came back from the survey around soft skills was listening to clients and exploring exactly what they want. 

“What it involves is an adviser genuinely listening to a client without any kind of fixed or pre-determined agenda or outcome, which is very difficult to do.

"Because when an adviser is sitting there and they speak to a client, a lot of the time they have their own agenda, in terms of they think they already know what the client wants, what the client needs and they already have an idea in mind of how to help that client.”

Mr Hegarty suggests: “But actually, the true skill of listening is to put all those pre-determined thoughts aside and focus unconditionally on what the clients’ objectives are and then fully engage with that client around what they need.”

He insists there is just as much in it for the adviser as there is for the client, with advisers getting an “enhanced sense of wellbeing and satisfaction around their job”, knowing they have listened to their clients carefully and understood exactly what they want.

Ms Calvin suggests there are four key skills that advisers can use in interactions to help meet client needs:

• Emotional intelligence helps financial advisers and planners move a surface-level conversation about clients’ wants to a deeper discussion of their needs and goals over time.
• Self-awareness and a solid understanding of different types of clients helps to tailor meetings so that the adviser can be as effective as possible with clients. Clients interpret and absorb information in a variety of ways, so solutions need to be presented clearly and compellingly to them.
• Assessment of clients’ non-verbal communication helps to understand whether or not clients are getting what they need from the relationship and are confident in their decision-making.
• Conflict management and diplomatic skills help financial planners to highlight key financial shortfalls and needs over wants.

Getting feedback

Should advisers actively encourage their clients to give them feedback? Might it help them identify the areas within their soft skills that need working on?

Ms Calvin confirms: “We use client satisfaction surveys and conversations to ensure we regularly gain feedback from clients on our interactions with them.”

This might be a little more difficult at a smaller advisory firm, where even an anonymous survey may still make it obvious who the feedback is from, or because there are simply fewer resources to be able to conduct these types of surveys.

Ms Walsh admits: “I should probably do it [encourage client feedback] in a more formal way and explicitly ask for feedback.”

But she does pay attention to the reactions of her clients.

“People have said to me: ‘you’ve really helped change my life, I really see things differently and it’s made me evaluate where I’m going’,” she reveals.

“I’ve had people [for whom] it can make massive life changes after what I’ve helped them do and helped them see, which I think goes beyond just the monetary side of things.”

Mr Hegarty insists most financial advisers are already good with their soft skills and knowing how to use them.

“But it is about getting advisers to understand, the younger and older age groups, these things can be improved and they would make a significant difference to your business if you are open-minded and you listen to ideas, and you analyse yourself – work out what it is about those soft skills you can improve and embed into your business,” he adds.

eleanor.duncan@ft.com