Be the doctor, not the pharmacist

In the medical industry, prescribing a treatment without first thoroughly diagnosing the illness with the patient opens up the risk of a malpractice suit. But in the advisory profession, it often feels easier to dispense the “medicine,” because you know instinctively how to solve the illness, given your years of experience and expertise.

A prospect has an initial conversation with you and begins explaining their situation, and you think to yourself: “Ah, I know that problem well. I’ve heard it a thousand times before. I know exactly the path to take toward the solution.”

Rather than doing a thorough deep dive into their issues in the first meeting, you ask some basic fact-finding questions, then head toward your onboarding process to move them forward.

It all seems fine in your mind, until at the end of the meeting, they become indecisive – unable to say “let’s do this,” and then they ghost you.

Here’s the sequence of assumptions that can occur in your mind, allowing opportunities like this to slip through your fingers:

1. You assume their problem was what they told you.
2. You assume it was unnecessary to diagnose deeply, on the spot.
3. You assume prescribing the “treatment” (and dispensing some of the medicine) would impress them with your knowledge and expertise, encouraging them to hire you.

Why isn’t your prospect buying your confidence that you can solve their problem?

Because they’re not judging you based on your confidence in your solution, they’re judging you based on how much they feel you understand them.

Read that line a couple of times to let it sink in.

Your job is to build deep trust with them, and that comes from their feeling you understand their issues at a deep level – you “get them.”

This mismatch plays out over and over again in the advisory profession, and it’s caused by the entrenched industry mindset I affectionately call “the expert syndrome.” Your prospect tells you about their problem and you attempt to prove you’re competent to solve it, therefore, it should be a no-brainer that you should work together.

That’s the complete opposite of the doctor mindset, which I describe as a “trusted authority-based mindset.” This mindset takes the view that until the patient is ready to own their problem, no prescription or proposal of a treatment is appropriate (or even ethical).

How do you get the “patient” to reach the point of owning the totality, gravity and urgency of their situation?

By focusing only on helping them see the depth of their situation, the underlying problems that have caused it, and the impact of not solving it.

In other words, by making the initial meeting a problem-centric diagnostic process, not a solution-centric process.

Think about it. A doctor primarily focuses on an extensive diagnosis. After diagnosis comes prescription and then treatment – and that’s their “success” sequence.

It’s a matter of routine that patients accept this process, never questioning it or needing to go away and “think about it.”

If the patient isn’t ready or open to that process, there are plenty of other patients in need. (The basic ingredient of being a trusted authority is never having to chase opportunities.)

The advisory profession needs to take a page out of the medical industry’s handbook, because in reality, advisors are more than financial experts – they’re financial doctors.

You don’t need to wait for industrywide reform before this shift happens, it will be too late by then.

Ari Galper is the world’s No. 1 authority on trust-based selling. Access a free copy of his newest book, “Trust In A Split Second,” here.