I understand that financial advisers have targets. You have bills to pay, families to support and careers to build. There is nothing wrong with wanting to succeed.
But the client should never feel that your success matters more than their welfare.
Clients may not understand commissions, persistency ratios or production awards—but they can often sense when they are being treated as a person and when they are being treated as a number.
Here are four questions every adviser should be willing to face.
1. Are you recommending what I need—or what helps you hit your quota?
As a client, I may not know which product gives you the highest commission or helps you qualify for an incentive. But I can feel when you have already decided what to sell before you have understood my situation.
If every conversation leads to the same product, the same amount or the same urgent recommendation, I may begin to wonder whether the advice was truly designed for me.
Before presenting anything, ask about my responsibilities, existing protection, debts, dependents, priorities and fears. Then explain how these facts influenced your recommendation.
And if the right answer is a smaller policy—or even no purchase for now—will you be honest enough to say so?
Your recommendation becomes credible when I can see the connection between what I told you and what you are asking me to buy.
2. Will you respect my budget—or pressure me to buy more?
Please do not mistake my ability to make the first payment for my ability to maintain the commitment.
I may say yes because I trust you, because I do not want to disappoint you or because you have made the need sound urgent. But after you leave, I still have groceries, tuition, rent, medicine and other obligations to pay.
A responsible adviser does not ask only, “Can the client afford this today?” The better question is, “Can the client continue paying for this during an ordinary difficult month?”
Help me choose an amount that can survive my real life. Give me permission to start smaller. Do not make me feel irresponsible simply because I cannot afford your preferred solution.
A smaller plan that stays in force will protect me better than a large plan I will eventually be forced to surrender.
3. Will you still serve me after the sale is credited to you?
During the presentation, you may respond immediately to my questions. You follow up, explain the forms and make time for me.
But what happens after the application is approved and the sale appears on your production report?
Will you still answer when I need to update a beneficiary? Will you remind me when an important payment is due? Will you help me understand changes in my circumstances? Most importantly, will you stand beside my family when it is time to make a claim?
I do not need constant messages. I need to know that your concern did not end when your commission began.
The true value of an adviser is often revealed after the transaction—when there is no immediate reward for providing service.
4. Do you see my life—or only my numbers?
To a production report, I may be one policy, one premium or one case toward a target.
But behind that number is my life.
The premium may come from money I could have used for my children, my parents or my household. The beneficiary names on the application represent people I love. The protection you recommend may one day determine how my family continues after a tragedy.
Remember what matters to me. Ask whether my circumstances have changed. Review my plan when I get married, have a child, change jobs, take on debt or experience financial difficulty.
Do not reduce me to the amount I bought from you. See the responsibilities I am trying to protect.
Production matters because an adviser must remain productive to continue serving. But production should be the result of helping people—not the reason people are pressured into buying.
All the best my friends!!
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