What would you say if you were asked to speak to top-performing financial advisors who help multiple generations of families, entrepreneurs, and leaders?
This was the question on CGK President Jason Dorsey’s mind as he prepared to keynote Advisors Excel’s national meeting—and in-person! These top-performing financial advisors are committed to constantly learning, innovating, and adapting. Jason was on a mission to help them help every generation of clients. He was also fired up because there were multiple generations of advisors in the audience!
As many of you know, Jason is passionate about the intersection of financial services, fintech, banking, and generational trends. This is the industry he speaks in the most and includes all types of insurance, investments, retail and online brokers, wholesale, venture capital, private equity, wealth management, institutional investors, banking, and much more.
But what you may not know is that my first “office job” was at a financial services firm! The internship I had at age 18—which I got by cold calling the firm—had a significant impact on my life, including showing me the immense impact a great financial advisor can have on an individual, their family, and generations to come.
Here are a few of the areas where Jason focused his keynote program to these top-performing advisors from across the US:
- There is a popular belief in financial services that you have to be a Millennial advisor to attract Millennials as clients. This is false. Our work shows that there is zero generational advantage to attracting and keeping Millennials (and Gen Z) as clients simply because an advisor is in their generation. Whichever advisor best adapts to connect with these generations will earn their trust, business, and loyalty. In fact, being in a different generation than your Millennial clients can be a strength when you apply the approach I teach.
- Great advisors don’t take a family’s or company’s business for granted. So often, the “next generation” will leave their family’s or parents’ financial advisor if they haven’t effectively engaged them as individuals. Building connection, trust, and value with younger generations must start early. Very early.
- Understanding every generation helps us better connect with, empathize and serve clients because we can better understand their points of view, preferences, life stages, and priorities. Separating myth from truth about generations also helps advisors by providing a research-based lens that not only helps to serve clients, but also to understand the generational trends affecting markets and economies.
- Clients today expect (some might say demand) advisors to adapt to them rather than expecting that they should adapt to their advisors’ preferences. This means everything from communication and performance reporting to scheduling meetings should meet their preferences. This is particularly true when working across multiple generations in the same family who may each have a different preference for communication style and frequency of information.
- Contrary to popular opinion, Millennials are often the #1 group to refer new clients to financial advisors! That’s right. Millennials. And for several reasons. But our research reveals you have to ask them for referrals in a specific way that I shared with the participants (which, by the way, includes not using the word “referral”).
I love speaking to financial services leaders, and I want to give a big thanks to Advisors Excel for hosting a fantastic in-person event and fun book signing for Zconomy. I was excited to share that what we are uncovering works best now to connect with each generation of clients and unlock the tremendous potential of each one.
For more information about emerging trends that will affect financial services, check out our latest State of Gen Z® study, available for download at no cost here.
