Trust officers should get serious about financial planning.
At least, that’s what consultant Michael Dixon believes.
“All of them say they want to offer financial planning,” he said. “All of them are paying for financial planning software. But relatively few of them actually do it, and even fewer succeed.”
Dixon is Director of Organizational Development with Pohl Consulting and Training, Inc., with expertise in sales, sales management, and integrated sales and service leadership models. Dixon has offered consulting through Pohl for more than 20 years and is an expert at leading organizations through growth and organizational change. Before consulting, he served as executive vice president of wealth management at a community bank.
Appealing to left brain, right brain
Dixon warned that incorporating financial planning into sales pitches with prospects is tricky, especially for trust officers. The reason is that consumers on the hunt for a trust officer are almost always making decisions based entirely on emotion and personal connection.
They are thinking about who they can trust to care for their loved ones.
On the other hand, choosing a financial planner is a much more logical process often based on perceptions of professional aptitude.
Dixon compared the two to right-brain/left-brain dynamics, and he said there’s no easy way to merge the two appeals, especially when interacting with prospects.
“Financial planning is about numbers,” he explained. “It’s about monte carlo simulations, and probabilities, and rates of return, and dollars and cents. All of that is important for financial planning, but you’re not going to convince someone to use you as their trust provider and take care of their mom by talking about numbers.”
Make it a service, not a sales pitch
Instead, the key to growth, he said, is to offer holistic financial planning – including insurance planning, real estate planning, charitable planning, estate planning, and more – as a service to existing clients.
Most wealthy people have multiple financial advisors. When a trust officer proves that he or she is also a skilled planner, they can strengthen client relationships and consolidate more assets into their business, Dixon said.
“This can really motivate a buyer to go from three advisors to having one advisor,” he said. “But you need to think about financial planning as a process instead of a task.”
Furthermore, providing financial planning dovetails relatively easily into the existing operations of a trust provider. Offering both can result in big jumps in revenue with minimal increases in workload.
Cheetah users have a unique advantage in that the trust management platform integrates with Moneytree financial planning software, and both companies are owned by Accutech Systems.
