Best Practices followed by Top Advisors

In the last several months, while we built the Community Connect Marketplace, we realized that some advisors excelled in helping clients make decisions.

We worked closely with these advisors to understand what exactly they do to ensure that a long-term rapport is built with the clients based on the fundamentals of trust.  How do these advisors demonstrate value so that the client prefers the advisor, despite availability of online discounts. 

Difference in the nature of the lead vis-a-vis Referral Leads.

One interesting thing we saw they understood well was that the treatment and process required for Beshak leads generated from the internet is quite different from referral leads received through their network. 

For referral customers generally trust is established. Referral customers are usually known to blindly follow what has been bought by their network or whatever the advisor recommends. 

On the other hand, internet leads from Beshak are out in the market. They are explores most likely to lookup various options, one of tabs is the one designed by Beshak, and executed by advisors. While Beshak heavily pitches the advisor and their services strongly, they still want to see the differentiation in live action. 

Here are the top 5 key things top advisors use today that help them differentiate with other advisors: 

1. Differentiation from Call Centres: Top advisors establish and demonstrate credibility while they speak to the customer. They talk about their credentials (background, achievements, team, number of clients etc.). They especially talk about their efforts when claims go wrong. The fact that they have disputed and won back rejected claims. This helps customers get confident about the advisor's long term service. What's more, it also helps them differentiate with other salesmen, call centre agents in the market. Yes, the profile is available on Beshak - but it is always better to hear from the advisor.
2. Human Connect: Beshak is largely a tech company. Our role is focused on ensuring we build tech that helps deliver research and enables the community. The human connection will always be the advisor. Top advisors are excellent at establishing a strong human connection. They would, for instance, send a personalized email and/or Whatsapp message as soon as the connect request has been received. A warm message coming from a human to another human does create magic connections that no tech can match. 
3. Getting customer to open up: Once there is a connect, active listening can do the trick - making the customer speak through open-ended questions, to understand their deep said and unsaid requirements and constraints, and then, after taking all of this into account, providing personalized quotes. For instance, no one wants to talk about budget constraints openly, but providing examples of the different products and sharing ball park pricing can help the customer open up.
4. Personal/Firm Branding: Customers will look the advisor and their firm up - search their name on google or Instagram. Top advisors strongly work on the business information, reviews, etc. that appear on Google search. What's more every material that is sent - text messages, the emails, the documents sent, the quotes - every content is professional, consistent, and branded well. For instance, the quote template shared by Beshak has a space for your logo - you must ensure you have inserted it.  This also results in establishing #2.
5. Proactive service: Customers require follow-up to make decisions. Insurance is never a top priority amongst their other tasks, top advisors are able to skilfully and respectfully follow-up with their customers without making them feel spammed or chased. For instance, one good practice is to set a deadline before which the customer will take a go-no go decision, i.e., take a buy or drop decision. This helps both get closure.

That's it. Would love to know how many of these you are already following in your business with Beshak.