Advisors’ Limiting Beliefs Sabotage a Firm’s Bottom Line

By Michelle R. Donovan

As a referral/business coach for financial advisors, I hear a lot of truths that advisors hate to admit to anyone else. My vault is full of honest admissions of fears and weaknesses that often cause them to underperform at business development. Much of what I hear falls into a category that, if left unaddressed, will sabotage a firm’s bottom line.

Limiting Beliefs

We all struggle with occasional negative thoughts that ink themselves into our brain like a tattoo. These thoughts affect our state of mind and alter our actions, mostly without our full awareness. We call these negative thoughts “limiting beliefs.” Since your brain is wired to protect you, when you think these thoughts, your brain will send out warning signals that you should stop and not proceed with your actions.

Let’s look at limiting beliefs that are attached to referral activities. If you repeat these limiting beliefs often enough, they eventually become your truth and exert a strong hold over your behavior. You and the others in your firm need to get past those limiting beliefs in order to develop relationships, generate referrals, and ultimately close new business.

4 Common Limiting Beliefs

Let’s look at four of the most common limiting beliefs advisors have admitted to me, their impact on the bottom line, and how to overcome them.

1. “People are too busy to help me.”

On the surface, this sounds like an excuse. The reality is that everyone is busy. If an advisor has come to believe this, they must have low self-esteem and lack trust in their relationships. It’s likely that deep down they don’t feel worthy of other people’s time and attention. They severely underestimate the value that they bring to people in their lives and don’t trust that others will respond positively.

Consequently, these people never ask for help. They not only avoid asking for referrals, but they also take on more tasks than they should because they never feel comfortable delegating to others. In their mind, other people are too busy, so they continue to do it all themselves. This will eventually lead to an advisor who is frustrated, exhausted, and unproductive. On top of that, they leave a lot of money on the table and miss opportunities to help their team members gain more experience and grow.

2. “If I ask for referrals, I’ll sound salesy and desperate.”

All of us have experienced a desperate, salesy person in a business or other environment. The visceral reaction you felt was similar to the first time you tasted something that you just wanted to spit out of your mouth. You’ve never forgotten it.

Some young advisors observe their senior partners badgering a client for referrals at the end of a review meeting, only to witness the client squirming in their chair. I’ve known advisors who, as a result, have made the association that if they ask clients for referrals, they will appear desperate and make their clients feel horrible.

This limiting belief often eliminates any possibility that the advisor will speak to clients about referrals. It will be seen as taboo. Because they have not been taught any other way to engage clients for referrals, this avoidance will continue indefinitely.

3. “I shouldn’t have to ask for referrals if I give great service.”

The first question I usually ask a person who makes this statement to me is, “How’s that working for you?” Nine out of 10 times, the advisor admits that it’s not working at all. Great service is the expectation, and without it you likely would not have a practice at all. Great service helps you to retain clients and will certainly lead to some referrals. However, great service alone will not create a stream of referrals. Instead, great service is one part of a sustainable referral system.

If you have come to believe this statement, I can almost guarantee that you’ll become complacent and will not be proactive in generating new business. Instead, you’ll focus entirely on great service while waiting for the phone to ring with a new prospect. But the cycle of waiting for things to happen rarely turns out as you hope.

4. “No one likes to talk about money.”

When I ask advisors why they think their clients aren’t referring them, many respond with this statement: “No one likes to talk about money.” Research from Absolute Engagement has shown that when satisfied clients are asked why they haven’t referred their advisor, only 19% say that they don’t like talking about money. That leaves 81% of satisfied clients who have no problem talking about money but don’t refer for other reasons, two of which are their advisors don’t ask and they don’t think they know anyone who needs the advisor.

Advisors with this limiting belief are leaving a lot of money on the table by not teaching the 81% of satisfied clients how to recognize when someone needs their help. People are talking about money issues all the time, and your clients are not informed on what to listen for or taught how to bring you up in the conversation. This limiting belief, combined with a lack of knowledge on how to engage their clients for referrals, leads to low client referrals and advisors who remain frustrated, wondering why their best clients won’t refer them.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

As you can see, limiting beliefs can wreak havoc on referrals, an advisor’s productivity, and a firm’s bottom line. If nothing is done to reverse these limiting beliefs, the self-sabotaging behaviors and poor results will continue to worsen. What can eliminate these limiting beliefs?

Mindset matters. As emphasized in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, what you think about, you bring about. Each limiting belief needs to be replaced with an empowering belief. Empowering beliefs are positive statements that can help overcome self-sabotaging and negative thoughts. This is exactly where you begin to eliminate limiting beliefs. Below are examples of limiting beliefs, followed by empowering beliefs that can encourage reluctant advisors to ask for referrals.

1. People are too busy to help me.

• My clients love me and would be happy to help me.
• People love to help others, including me.

2. If I ask for referrals, I’ll sound salesy and desperate.

• Asking for referrals allows someone to help the people they love.
• I can ask for referrals and still make everyone feel comfortable.

3. I shouldn’t have to ask for referrals if I give great service.

• Great service gives me permission to ask for referrals.
• My great service will make it easy for me to ask for referrals.

4. No one likes to talk about money.

• I can teach my clients to recognize when someone needs my help.
• My clients know people who need my help.

Remember, your limiting beliefs did not take hold overnight. Time and repetition caused them to ingrain themselves into your belief system until they eventually became truths. It will take the same recipe of time and repetition to replace them with empowering beliefs that allow you to move forward. It may even take the help of a coach to support your change in mindset and actions.

Empowering beliefs need to be repeated multiple times throughout the day and placed where they will be seen frequently. Many of our advisor clients post their empowering beliefs on their computer monitor or put them on the fridge. Some write them on mirrors or create screen savers to display them. They repeat them out loud just before they go to sleep, allowing their subconscious brain to take in the new message while they sleep.

It’s only when you repeat these new positive empowering beliefs often enough and believe in them that you can start to make positive changes in your mindset and directly influence your activity. Eventually, your brain will no longer interpret asking for referrals, talking about money, or getting people to help you as bad things to do. Instead, you will move forward without fear or hesitation.

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Michelle R. Donovan is a referral/business development coach for financial advisors at Productivity Uncorked LLC and the best-selling author of A Woman’s Way: Empowering Female Financial Advisors to Authentically Lead and Flourish in a Man’s World. To see if she can help you, email her at michelle@productivityuncorked.com.

image credit: istock.com/marrio31