Today’s ‘crazy’ financial services market presents flexible, forward-thinking financial industry players with an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and grow their business.  This is the time for change. This is the time for those responsible for client contact to stand back and take another look at how they influence their clients.

To date, banks have emphasized product over relationship by offering what seemed like good returns on a whole host of financial products to a hungry audience. The time has now come where, like a guilty husband who has cheated on his wife, they have to re-seduce their clients. They have to be sensitive, caring and patient, all the time approaching their clients gently and testing the water.

This style of influence emphasizes the relationship first and foremost and the product a relatively distant second. But true relationship-building requires more than knowing how to ask the right questions to uncover recognised and unrecognised needs, and present a tailored solution. True relationship-building requires authenticity on the part of the Relationship Manager. And a client can sense when a Relationship Manager is inauthentic, however smoothly he runs through the sales process. 

This means there needs to be a focus on the second-by-second human behaviours passing between people. Relationship Managers need to learn to ‘calibrate’ effectively, which means paying attention to the many small signals their client is sending through their face and body language, their tone of voice, and the words they use. In this way they can ‘enter’ their client’s world and see the situation and themselves through their client’s eyes.  As Henry Ford said, “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

Why is this so important? Because being able to see through your client’s eyes opens the window to what she truly wants. And as we all know, the secret to winning other people’s trust and loyalty is to give them what they want. And at the end of the day, in addition to products and solutions, your client wants to be heard and understood. Then you can start writing your own cheque.

So take a minute to think about the way you behave in front of your clients. Eliminate everything from your mind, including your well-prepared script and your client strategy. Just go in there and open your mind to the world offered to you by your client. Treat your client like a great teacher, there to help you go places you have never gone before.

Bank clients today are like swinging voters. They are neither Republican nor Democrat, but are lost as to which way to turn and ready to turn towards a bank which can win their trust. What an opportunity! Go and get it!

James Irvine, Team Egyii Singapore