We pay more for brand names. We pay more for and are advocated of brands that have emotionally connected with us. The richer the emotional content of a brand’s mental representation, the more likely the consumer will be a loyal user. This thinking is just as relevant for financial advice as it is for toilet tissue and car tyres. Puppy dogs chasing a roll of toilet paper and the piece of mind of safety on a wet road have less to do with the end product and more to do with feelings and emotions.
Understanding, therefore, how people think is a critical factor in building consumer loyalty and advocacy. So just how do we make decisions and what occurs in peoples minds to help them evaluate situations? What do we need to know about how peoples minds work?
“Cognitive control and value-based decision-making tasks appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex,” says Jan Glascher, lead author of the study and a visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, referring to the seat of higher-level reasoning in the brain.
In normal brain functioning people : a valuation network in the brain auto computes what's good and what's bad, before the person concerned has a chance to consciously understand the decision making process has occured. It is quick. It is intuitive and it is automatic.
This highlights the complexities in dealing with customers where you need them to make a considered rationale choice. The choice has less to do with the rationalities of your proposal and more to do with how they feel about you and your brand. In short they have a gut feel about what is good and what is bad for them: and if you have not connected with them then that good choice (rationally) seems the uncomfortable one.
Most people believe that the choices they make result from a rational analysis of available alternatives. In reality, however, emotions greatly influence and, in many cases, even determine our decisions. In a book, Descartes Error, Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, puts forth that emotions are necessary ingredients to almost all decisions. What occurs is that emotions from previous experiences attribute value and impact how we consider the options in front of us. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision. Damasio’s view is based on his studies of people whose connections between the “thinking” and “emotional” areas of the brain had been damaged. They were capable of rationally processing information about alternative choices; but were unable to make decisions because they lacked any sense of how they felt about the options.
Values
So if you are not using some method of assessing past experiences and values and hierachies in a clients decision making you actually leave so much of your process to chance. When it comes to money: we have values associated with our experiences and these values have been passed to us from our parents. If you are not questioning clients about these experiences your process is like waiting for a magic eye picture to appear.
Psychologist Valerie Wilson tells us that troubled relationships with money stem from childhood. Research shows that money habits are formed between the ages of 6-8.
Consequently these lessons (which we have learnt from our parents) shape the way we feel and act about money and money issues. Our attitudes to money bring with it a range of emotions and behaviour: they can be positive but they can also range from greed and arrogance, to jealousy and fear.
What all of this means is that that you need to embed in your process:
• a means of uncovering a clients values
• questioning on past experiences
• determining a clients hierarchy of choice assessment
• looking at a clients goals and the why of their goals so you can elevate a simple statement of a goal or objective to a highly functional progression and pathway that you indeed can influence
• a show casing of you as an individual and your brand
Dr Peter Noel Murray reminds us that the influential role of emotion in consumer behavior is well documented and studies show that positive emotions toward a brand have far greater influence on consumer loyalty than trust and other judgments which are based on a brand’s attributes. Only by building process in your business that is cognisant of: how people are drawn to brands, make decisions and order their values; can you truly expect to drive customer loyalty and advocacy.
Showing posts with label Values bases selling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Values bases selling. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 April 2015
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Connecting with a Clients Values
We love this one inspired by an award winning financial adviser in Melbourne, Australia.
This is about connecting the strategy solutions to what is really important to a client.
If you can do this and demonstrate it in the SOA not only do you maximise the possibility of the prospect becoming a client, but you have also built a framework for choices the client makes that you can always revisit especially at review time to ensure that financial decisions are always in line with the identified values of the client.
Why is this important?
This is because money habits form very early on in our lives. It’s actually between the ages of 6-8 : s we have learnt most of our lessons from our parents and this shapes how we feel and act when it comes to financial affairs.
If you don’t question a client about these feelings you really can not truly know how a client will react to certain strategies, economic events, future financial decisions.
Some simple techniques are:
- Asking a client the three key words that come to mind when you mention a financial topic : superannuation, shares, investing
- Using lifestyle questionnaires that have a list of areas for the client to consider : they can be superannuation, investing but also : main residence, holidays, kids schooling, career, etc and asking them to rank how they feel about it now 1-5 and what they would like in the future
- The use of values cards
Irrespective of the technique : you need then to include a section in the SOA about what you’ve uncovered and connect your advice to these idenitified feelings and values.
Now values cards are used by recruitment agencies, training agencies eg: the “Training WA Career Centre) and it’s all about making better decisions on the premise that life and work decisions are always most satisfying when they fit with the values most important to you.
Mostly we act in accordance with our values to maintain a sense of well-being. But often our values are compromised by circumstances or events and we do things that don’t feel right. When we do things that are at odds with our values, we feel uncomfortable. Living in a situation where it is a constant struggle to act according to our values can cause stress, anxiety and depression.
Being able to align our lives with our values helps us make important decisions and feel grounded and focused. It inevitably leads to more happiness, achievement and contentment. At a team or organisational level, shared values keep the members focused on achieving their outcomes
The Values Cards can assist individuals, couples, teams and organisations to explore what is truly important in life, their relationships or work.
So what happens with this adviser is that you as a client (or each member of a couple) is given a deck of 250 values cards. The kind of words on them are things like : compassion, connection, creativity, achievement, adventure, challenge, health, family.
The client has to select 5.
This then leads to a discussion that is wide ranging and starts to encompass how the financial decisions the client needs to make fit with these values.
So imagine one of the cards is “family” (invariably that one does get selected).
Insurance has to become a key plank of a discussion or at least estate planning and hence then trust structures, business succession, continuity etc etc.
So it becomes the client that actually instigates the direction that the strategy conversation takes rather than the adviser initiating the discussion without being able to tie it into something the client has highlighted is important.
What needs to happen though is this conversation is reinforced and highlighted in the SOA and that each strategy recommendation is connected to a value or values.
This is about connecting the strategy solutions to what is really important to a client.
If you can do this and demonstrate it in the SOA not only do you maximise the possibility of the prospect becoming a client, but you have also built a framework for choices the client makes that you can always revisit especially at review time to ensure that financial decisions are always in line with the identified values of the client.
Why is this important?
This is because money habits form very early on in our lives. It’s actually between the ages of 6-8 : s we have learnt most of our lessons from our parents and this shapes how we feel and act when it comes to financial affairs.
If you don’t question a client about these feelings you really can not truly know how a client will react to certain strategies, economic events, future financial decisions.
Some simple techniques are:
- Asking a client the three key words that come to mind when you mention a financial topic : superannuation, shares, investing
- Using lifestyle questionnaires that have a list of areas for the client to consider : they can be superannuation, investing but also : main residence, holidays, kids schooling, career, etc and asking them to rank how they feel about it now 1-5 and what they would like in the future
- The use of values cards
Irrespective of the technique : you need then to include a section in the SOA about what you’ve uncovered and connect your advice to these idenitified feelings and values.
Now values cards are used by recruitment agencies, training agencies eg: the “Training WA Career Centre) and it’s all about making better decisions on the premise that life and work decisions are always most satisfying when they fit with the values most important to you.
Mostly we act in accordance with our values to maintain a sense of well-being. But often our values are compromised by circumstances or events and we do things that don’t feel right. When we do things that are at odds with our values, we feel uncomfortable. Living in a situation where it is a constant struggle to act according to our values can cause stress, anxiety and depression.
Being able to align our lives with our values helps us make important decisions and feel grounded and focused. It inevitably leads to more happiness, achievement and contentment. At a team or organisational level, shared values keep the members focused on achieving their outcomes
The Values Cards can assist individuals, couples, teams and organisations to explore what is truly important in life, their relationships or work.
So what happens with this adviser is that you as a client (or each member of a couple) is given a deck of 250 values cards. The kind of words on them are things like : compassion, connection, creativity, achievement, adventure, challenge, health, family.
The client has to select 5.
This then leads to a discussion that is wide ranging and starts to encompass how the financial decisions the client needs to make fit with these values.
So imagine one of the cards is “family” (invariably that one does get selected).
Insurance has to become a key plank of a discussion or at least estate planning and hence then trust structures, business succession, continuity etc etc.
So it becomes the client that actually instigates the direction that the strategy conversation takes rather than the adviser initiating the discussion without being able to tie it into something the client has highlighted is important.
What needs to happen though is this conversation is reinforced and highlighted in the SOA and that each strategy recommendation is connected to a value or values.
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