In a March 2022 webinar hosted by U.S. and Canadian Community Leaders, three members shared what they have done to differentiate their practices from other advisors. 

Members participating:

Jennifer A. Borislow, CLU, 35-year MDRT member and MDRT Past President from Methuen, Massachusetts, USA
Michelle L. Hoesly, CLU, ChFC, 43-year MDRT member and MDRT Past President from Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Pamela J. Sams, CRPC, four-year MDRT member from Herndon, Virginia, USA

Sams: How do you differentiate yourself in business from other advisors? 

Hoesly: One of the struggles I had as I was building my business was I was always really different. I didn’t fit into the normal setup of doing exactly what they tell you to do and doing it with these certain products and doing it in this way. I was always looking at other ways, so because I struggled with not fitting in, it was easy for me to be more individualized. Early on, I believed that tactical money management made a lot of sense when hardly anyone in those days was doing it. They said, “That never works; you can’t do that,” while I said, “Yeah, but it’s a solution.” It was the same thing with 401(k)s (individual retirement accounts in the U.S.) back then. This was just an idea; it wasn’t even a law. So, I think you develop and make yourself different by following your path, if you can figure out what that is. Sometimes you just have to ask somebody else to tell you what makes you different, because it’s easier for somebody else to see it in you than for us to see it in ourselves. 

Borislow: We are often asked how we are different from our competitors. We have an organization built with a team of superheroes who go the extra mile for our clients. It all starts with taking the time to listen to what they need. We’re very thoughtful and pragmatic on how we do business. We spend the time up front asking probing questions that are very thoughtful, so we can learn as much about the client as possible. We also have a follow-through process. It doesn’t make us different, but where we excel is we actually do what we say we are going to do. How many of us have worked with advisors in the past who said they’re going to do something very specific and they never follow through?

It’s critically important to set expectations and then follow through. We communicate often, as we are very dedicated to deliver the right service and products and part of that result is continual communication. We’ve proven it many times and in turn we have our clients speak for us. We invite our clients to share their experience with a brief video testimonial. So, we don’t talk about ourselves, but we allow our clients and prospects to hear firsthand from others. The third-person, outside voice is super powerful. We will often ask our clients, “Would you be willing” — those are four very important words — “to say a few words for some prospective clients to hear about the process that you went through with us?” We always get an enthusiastic yes.

Sams: I do a lot on social media as well. Sometimes I’ll just post and ask, “What is it that you think I do?” You get a variety of different answers, and sometimes they’re right on the head, and sometimes people think you do something totally different, which means you need to craft your message a little bit differently. The way I differentiate myself is I have a niche with women, but within the past few years, I got a designation in behavioral financial advice. I used that in my practice to really understand what my clients may be thinking from a neuroscience standpoint and then really marry that with the traditional financial planning process.

So, especially during the pandemic, you become a little bit of a psychologist when you’re working with that to figure out what thoughts they may be having, why they’re not moving, why they’re not doing certain things. Even before I got the designation, I found with most of my female clients that there was something holding them back on why they weren’t implementing. You can come up with a great financial plan, but if implementation is lacking, it could have been something they learned earlier on — like how they grew up with money, how money was talked about in their household — some of the limiting beliefs they have. So really differentiating myself with that behavioral piece has been beneficial, because no other financial advisors are really talking to them about those soft skills. It’s not just the quantitative, but the qualitative skills they need while they’re dealing with their own finances, because money is emotional as we know. Understanding where people are coming from in that instance really makes it a differentiation.

Log in to view the full archived webinar from this conversation at mdrt.org.