6 Ways to Help Clients Save and Invest More
Helping clients save and invest more isn’t just about growing their wealth - it’s about securing their comfort and stability over the rest of their lives. This requires guiding them to prioritize long-term financial health, even with all the pressures and temptations to spend instead. Here are six techniques that can empower you to encourage your clients to make that all-important commitment to saving and investing more now.
Have them visualize their “future self”
Ask clients to imagine how they want their life to look in 10, 20, or 30 years. Where are they living? What hobbies are they enjoying? Are they still working? This visualization can create an emotional connection to a desired future state and help them pinpoint motivating goals. It can make it easier to take the saving and investing steps that are needed today to make that vision come true, and also help them stay on track over time.
Tell stories
Share relatable success stories of clients who have benefited from consistent saving and investing. Stories resonate with a deep part of the psyche and can evoke vivid emotions. This can enable clients to see themselves in similar situations and help them feel motivated. Try asking clients how they would like to see their own story play out.
Use peer benchmarking
In your storytelling, it can be helpful to share how much others in a similar income bracket and age group are saving and investing. Humans are naturally attuned to status signals and comparison within our social group. Knowing that our peers are taking action and achieving goals can inspire us to want to do the same.
Handle objections with “feel, felt, found”
“Feel, felt, found” is a simple story structure that allows you to be empathetic yet persuasive when you encounter clients who have reservations. For example, if a client says, “I can’t see myself setting aside that much each month,” you could respond by saying, “I understand how you feel, many of my clients felt the same way at first. But what they found is, after a few months, they adjusted to their new budget and felt much more financially secure knowing they were moving closer to their goals.”
Let them choose good, better, or best
Consider presenting clients with three options: “good” could be a minimal monthly savings amount, “better” could be a mid-range option, and “best” could be a more ambitious option with the potential to surpass their goals. Often, clients will choose the middle option, which might be higher than what they initially intended.
Prioritize benefits, not features
To you, the features of an investment might be very important - the asset class, the portfolio manager, the long-term performance. But to a client, what matters most are the benefits - the house they could buy, the vacation they could afford, or the retirement that could potentially start sooner than planned. Features can be boring, especially to a client who is not excited about saving and investing. Benefits can change the energy of a conversation.
All of these communication strategies can help clients reframe saving and investing more from ideas that could be difficult or undesirable to concepts that feel beneficial and attractive.
Keep in mind that financial advice is a high-trust professional service, and even the best persuasive techniques are no match for the hard work of building relationships. It takes patience, persistence, active listening, and a real desire to understand each client and their individual motivations.
However, once you are in a place of trust with clients, a good mix of visualization, storytelling, and subtle reframing can help you respectfully nudge them towards the decisions that will serve them best in the long-run.
When the time comes to build professionally-managed investment portfolios that will guide your clients to their goals, you can count on Beneva for high-quality investment solutions to get the job done.