What would it mean to you and your practice if your clients were giving you a larger portion of their assets and making more introductions to you?

According to a study commissioned by Van Kampen Funds, your ability to connect with your prospect’s core values is crucial to maximizing your relationship with them, and to getting them to provide you with more and better introductions. They identified 8 "core categories" of biographical knowledge of the client that would not typically be found in the client intake sheet or fact finder questionnaire, but would have a definite influence on whether or not the client felt 'understood' by the advisor.

• Specifically, if the prospect perceives you know all 8 of their major core values, you end up with 100% of their assets and 4.1 introductions.

• If they perceive you know 5 of their core values, you end up with 72% of their assets and 1.7 introductions.

• If they perceive that you know 2 or fewer of their core values, you end up with 50% (or less) of their assets and no introductions.

The problem, of course, is that you are not going to ‘get’ those 8 core values from typical intake forms or fact-finding interviews. To do that, you must build better relationships.