Todd Fithian on Game-Changing Conversations

Show Timeline:  

1:48 Overview of how Todd started in financial services and the work he is doing today  
5:41 Todd explains the Above the Line™ Conversations concept
10:21 The importance of digger deeper in conversations with clients, and the strategies you can use
15:05 The concept of the ‘bridge talk’ to communicate what you do in a way that creates interest
20:21 Using the bridge talk to help drive referrals
25:02 What makes your first meeting with a potential client ‘the best first meeting ever’
29:01 A step-by-step framework for the best first meeting to start engaging prospective clients
36:29 Todd’s book offer for our listeners

Links:

Download a free copy of Todd’s book, The Right Side of the Table
Website:             think-legacy.com
Facebook:          https://www.facebook.com/ThinkLegacy/
Twitter:              https://twitter.com/think_legacy
LinkedIn:           https://www.linkedin.com/in/tfithian/

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

Julie Littlechild:           
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild and on this week’s show Steve and I are joined by Todd Fithian.

Todd is the founder of the Legacy Companies, a firm that providers training, as well as consulting and coaching for advisors to help them improve and grow. This was a great conversation. Todd has over two decades of experience in this industry as an advisor, an author and a trainer. He is so passionate about the extraordinary work that advisors do and how to help them do even more for their clients. That passion comes through loud and clear. He is also the author of two books, including the best selling The Right Side of the Table and if you listen to the end, he has a special offer for you.

Todd talks to us about how we need to change the conversations we’re having with clients to engage more deeply and he goes very deep on two specific strategies. The first is the bridge talk, a creative take on how to share what you do, particularly when you are in a social situation, in a way that helps generate interest in learning more. He also talks about a structure for an initial prospect meeting, which he calls the best meeting ever, and I think it is.

With that, let’s get straight to our conversation with Todd.

Well, Todd, welcome to Becoming Referable. So happy to have you here.

Steve Wershing:    
Yeah, welcome Todd.

Todd Fithian:   
Yeah. Thanks for having me. Excited to be part of it.

Julie Littlechild:           
Hey, look I’ve known you for quite a while and seen some of the great work that you’ve done, but it probably makes sense to just start with a quick overview for the folks that are listening of the work that you are doing right now.

Todd Fithian:       
Yeah, absolutely. Love to do that Julie, thank you.

I entered into financial services a long time ago. Close to 30 years ago now and was growing up third generation in my family in the business. My grandfather, father, in the business and all very successfully using traditional approaches in the business. One of the things as I entered the business that I found flawed was really the training in the ways in which advisors were being brought in to connect with, engage, and ultimately sell clients products.

It was a very transactional approach. I never really connected with that in a meaningful way. In fact, I struggled in many ways in the business because I tend to be a much more relational oriented guy and it was nothing about that.

Fast forwarding trial and tribulation, trying a bunch of things in our own practice, we were really studying behavioral advice and behavioral decision making long before it was a buzzword like it is today in our industry. My brother and I were studying and researching and going to courses and learning enough to be really, really dangerous.

The reality is that we began to start to apply some of these approaches and theories with our own clients and really just connecting with them to try to uncover what mattered to them and what was important to them before we began to tell them how smart we were and all the things that we had to offer them.

The results were pretty staggering. To fast forward that we literally saw our business grow quite dramatically. The number of introductions that we were getting to other families that were looking for this type of relationship grew dramatically. We had a group of advisors around the country.

Julie, I think I shared this with you in our past, that literally said “Hey, will you come out and show us what you guys are doing because you are having fun. Your business is obviously very successful. We want to know what you are doing.” We literally had a group of about 80 some odd advisors flying to Chicago. We spent two days with them. We gave them everything it is that we were doing, every tool that we had developed. At the end of that they said, “When are we getting together again?”

Me and my brother scratching our heads said, “Guys, we just gave you everything we’ve got.” This is the foundation of Legacy. My brother and I went back to our office and we sat in the conference room and stared at each other and said “Are we going to do this? There is a need. We have a need.” That was really the birth of Legacy and today 22 years later we are one of the leading training, consulting, coaching organizations helping advisors build the most meaningful relationships with their clientele, yet with an eye on profitability and growth in the business’s model.

Showing people how to do it in a systematized way and being able to replicate that from client to client. That’s really a global perspective of Legacy. Our path, how we got to where we are today.

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