Mindful Listening: A Crucial Element of Your Successful Communication Strategy

by Claudio O. Pannunzio

An old Zen proverb goes, "When walking, walk. When eating, eat." In other words, be mindful and give your whole attention to the task you’re carrying out.

A client meeting or call is the perfect opportunity for us to test our mindfulness and capacity to actively listen. This is particularly true in situations of distress or uncertainty in the financial markets, when clients depend on your ability to communicate to reassure them and help them cope with their pain. In such situations, your role becomes as crucial as that of a doctor who can relieve their pain. Indeed, this is the time when mindful listening brings about healing. 

Think about a therapist: in order to cure her patients she must practice deep, compassionate listening. This puts her patients at ease enabling them to drop their defenses, clearly articulate their problems, and describe what frightens them—the key reasons why they are seeking her professional help. It is only this kind of listening that allows the therapist to attain an intimate understanding of her patients’ problems and identify the best therapy for them.

There are two main reasons, among many others, why you have chosen to be a financial advisor:

• You like to establish and maintain relationships with clients and become a recognized expert by building credibility and trust.
• You want to achieve the higher purpose of helping people attain their financial goals, which can have a profound impact on the quality of their lives and those of their family members.

Because of the meaningful impact that your decisions exert on the lives of your clients, the same type of listening employed by a therapist must be applied to your client interaction. Mindful listening is the foundation of good communication, as it nourishes both the speaker and the listener.

A MAGNETIC AND CREATIVE FORCE

Listening is one of the hardest things for a human being to master. Many of us experience unconscious barriers to good listening that prevent us from clearly recognizing when we are not listening. Listening is a magnetic and creative force. When people listen to what we say, we experience a satisfying expansion and become highly creative. It is this creative force that actually enables ideas to spring within us and come to life. We experience it countless times but, regrettably, we easily forget. Think for a moment about what happens when a person laughs at our jokes. We instinctively become funnier and funnier, and if that person does not laugh, every little funny spark in us swiftly dries up and dies.

One of the most valuable rewards of listening is the ability to learn something we might not know. Conscientiously listening to your clients enables you to gather good intelligence about what they worry and care about, what motivates them and, ultimately, what they really want. Mindful listening will empower you to facilitate their pursuit for financial freedom, better address their demands and elevate your role from financial advisor to that of personal confidant. For example, during a client meeting you might ask a question like, “What are the most important challenges our firm has helped you successfully address?” The answer may yield valuable information that may make it possible for you to get more business or assets from the client.

Henry David Thoreau stated, "The greatest compliment that was ever paid to me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer." Mindful listening empowers us to change the direction of our lives and those we come in contact with every day. As an empathetic listener you will provide valuable feedback that makes your clients feel appreciated. Mindful listening refers to making a conscious effort to listen with an open mind, void of any preconceived notions and ideas. It involves not just listening with your ears but also with your eyes to monitor your client’s body language as you look for congruency among words, posture, gestures, and tone of voice.

It is worth underscoring that the ultimate goal of mindful listening is simply to listen—nothing more and nothing less. It emphasizes focusing attention and activity on what we are doing in the immediate moment, wholeheartedly without getting sidetracked by premature ideas and projections of personal gain, which incidentally are not pertinent to the present moment and will or will not happen in the future. When you are completely “present” in that way, each activity becomes the most important activity you can perform for the highest and greatest good of both your clients and yourself.

FOUR GOLDEN RULES

On one hand, developing mindful listening skills and habits requires hard work and conscious attention. On the other, once mastered it can become a powerful, easy-to-use tool that will help you attract new clients, raise your credibility, achieve brand recognition, and eventually grow your business. There are Four Basic Rules of Communication that I would like to share with you. These have helped and continue to help my advisor clients excel in their client communication efforts:

1. Bridge the Intentions-Behavior Gap
Traditionally, as human beings we have a propensity to evaluate ourselves by our intentions, while the rest of the world rates us by our behavior. An effective strategy to fill the intentions-behavior gap is to truthfully and unequivocally state our true intentions with our key audiences—“Our firm does not use structured products or other illiquid securities to protect our clients’ capital, but rather implements the tactical use of cash.”  Such a straightforward statement removes the need for your clients (and would-be clients) to attempt to infer what your intentions are––often inferring the worst.

2. Seek feedback

Asking your clients a few well-conceived questions about your firm and its services can help you gauge if you are fulfilling your original mission and achieving your desired goals. In addition, your clients often perceive your query as a courtesy; a caring gesture. Ergo, the honest feedback you receive in return provides you with invaluable information and data that you can strategically use to defuse potential conflicts and resistance that may arise down the road. The more your communication is genuinely focused on bridging the overall intentions-behavior gap, the more it will be possible for you to accomplish the higher purpose of helping your clients––making a consequential, positive impact on their lives.

3. Know Thy Audience
Because advisors often have more than a single audience, it is imperative to fully grasp that communication generates different outcomes on different constituencies. Crafting customized, crisp, clear, and concise messages will ensure clarity and encourage your audiences to act upon them. When you seek to convey a highly technical message, break it down in easy-to-understand short sentences void of industry jargon and, when possible, use metaphors and/or anecdotes to facilitate understanding and concept retention. Before engaging in any communication effort, attain an in-depth grasp of your audience(s), recognize its level of knowledge and experience with the topic you intend to convey. This may involve an investment of time; however, the benefits you will derive will by far outweigh the effort.

4. Keep Yourself Accountable to the Outcome
Improving your communication skills requires your commitment to measure the efficacy of your efforts. Holding ourselves accountable to the results we generate ensures that our efforts are successful. Results come in different forms and shapes. At times, it is a simple confirmation that your messages resonate well with your audiences. Sometimes, the proof comes in the form of increased trust or an improved relationship, i.e., a client voluntarily bringing more personal assets to your firm, or suddenly introducing you to his/her affluent friend who is in search of a trusted advisor. And sometimes, it is simply witnessing your success manifest before you—a client seminar where an engaged and excited audience of prospects asks for a next day appointment at your office.

Often our client advisors share with us their concern that they might sound too much like a therapist when implementing mindful listening. They feel that they may be perceived as an interloper intruding on their clients’ emotions. Like many of our clients, you might share this notion, feel initially uncomfortable and worry that you appear to be repeating back your clients’ words. I encourage you to give mindful listening a try and you’ll be surprised by your clients’ positive responses––and, most importantly, how quickly all your anxieties about it dissipate.

THE E.R.A. FACTOR
The benefits of engaging in mindful and compassionate listening and establishing honest, proactive and ongoing communication are not limited to instant gratification but are far more outreaching, as they help you build enduring and successful relationships that often become multigenerational. As we always explain to our advisor and wealth manager clients, the establishment of enduring relationships hinges on what we call the E.R.A. Factor — your Elasticity, Responsiveness and Availability. Let me explain.

Elasticity—In the highly competitive environment in which advisors operate, flexibility is the quality that gives you an edge over your direct competitors. Not mindfully listening to your clients prevents you from truly understanding and being able to anticipate their needs. This naturally empowers your competitors to reach out to your clients and win them over by merely satisfying those needs. Elasticity is a concept that should guide any aspect of your practice management process and your life. Attaining a thorough understanding of your clients’ preferences and acting upon them helps develop elasticity. For instance, in-person meetings appear to be affluent investors’ preferred communication medium. Yet many of these investors complain that advisors have not spent enough face-to-face time with them during challenging times.

Responsiveness—I always underscore with my clients that the best way to damage a relationship with a reporter is by not promptly responding to his/her call or email. This rule squarely applies to your clients. During the recent crisis, you received desperate calls in which panicked clients where posing questions for which you honestly did not have an answer. As a PR counsel I can earnestly say that in those instances a humble “I don’t know, but I’ll try to find an answer for you” would have been much better than silence. Responsiveness is the quality that brings you closer to your clients, as it conveys the simple yet meaningful notion that in a situation of distress they can count on you.

Availability—Availability (which incidentally goes hand-in-hand with responsiveness) should be one of the main pillars on which your relationship building process rests. Leverage the power of Social Media to use videos to communicate and be in front of your clients as often as you can instead of making countless phone calls. Also, let technology make it as easy as possible for your clients to reach and communicate with you. When a client calls, emails or reaches out to you through Social Media, make sure that his/her request is addressed as promptly, politely and professionally as possible. Train your staff to handle a client’s demand as if that client were the only client you have and ensure that a response or solution is provided within a very short time frame.

Almost half a century ago, James Nathan Miller made an interesting observation, “Conversation in the U.S. is a competitive exercise in which the first person to draw a breath is declared the listener.” Don’t let this quote be the accurate description of how you communicate. Seek to implement the suggestions in this article to improve your prospecting and selling success. But, most importantly, master the art of mindful listening to enhance your professional image, build enduring client relationships, grow your business and, especially, make a difference in your life and those of your clients.

Claudio Pannunzio is the President & Founder of I-Impact Group, Inc.(www.i-impactgroup.com) an investment and financial services PR consultancy that focuses exclusively on the public relations and strategic communications needs of investment and wealth managers, broker/dealers, financial advisors and planners and other financial services companies. Claudio can be reached at Claudio@i-impactgroup.com or at (203) 532-5881.