Financial advisors don’t struggle with closing ratios because they lack intelligence or credentials. They often struggle because they underestimate the importance of people skills, proper discovery, and persuasion. Selling is not separate from advising; it’s what allows advising to happen. Selling skills are still the foundation of advice.

When many advisors hear the words “sales” or closing ratios, they often feel it is the opposite of advising. They don’t want to appear as a salesperson. Financial advisors tend to see themselves as above sales professionals, and this resistance can impact their closing ratios. Financial advice is as much about a client’s emotions as it is about planning, investment management, or wealth protection.

Working on your sales skills and closing ratios means setting aside the impulse to describe your firm or your advisory processes and focusing on getting prospects to talk more about themselves and their desired outcomes.

People act on what they want. The most brilliant financial plan in the world means nothing if you can’t persuade a prospect to act on it.

Improving Your Closing Ratios: The Common Missteps

There is a common set of missteps many advisors make when engaging prospects. These missteps can directly impact their closing ratios. For example:

• Focusing on fee-driven marketing messages. When you focus on how you are paid, the client ends up focusing on the “fee.”
• Relying on purchased leads vs. niche marketing. Purchased leads are a passive approach that is based on volume. This can cause advisors to spin their wheels trying to convince leads to meet with them, not to mention whether they are even qualified leads.
• Spending the first meeting talking about themselves or their firm, and little time asking the right questions to uncover the prospect’s true motivations.
• Talking at clients, down to clients, or talking over their heads.
• Assuming your credentials, experience, planning model, and brand automatically establishes buy-in and trust. Trust must be demonstrated, not declared.
• Focusing on technical jargon and how much you know vs. listening and probing.

It’s about a client’s desired lifestyle and legacy goals, not just their balance sheet or assets.

When advisors resist working on their selling skills, what they’re really doing is avoiding the truth – that an advice-based model does not automatically compel prospects to commit. Poor closing ratios are typically indicative of mistakes that occur throughout the entire client engagement process.

It’s Not Manipulation, It’s Relational.

At its core, financial advising is not just a technical process; it’s about relationships and care. Clients rarely leave an advisor because of poor investment performance alone. They leave because they don’t feel heard, understood, or important. That’s where a sales mindset becomes essential. Sales is about connecting, listening, cultivating, and helping clients make decisions that serve their best interests. It’s not tactics.

Advisors who master selling skills understand that every conversation with a prospect is a mix of logic and emotion. A prospect may understand the numbers or your process, but emotions drive their decisions.

You’re not just recommending a financial plan. You’re helping prospects address their fears and financial anxieties. You give them hope that they can achieve their desired goals. It comes from persuasion, empathy, and conviction. It’s sales skills, by any other name.

It’s Not About Performance Charts.

Effective storytelling is one of the most powerful sales tools in financial advising. A simple, authentic story about how you helped a client retire early or helped them build wealth through multiple generations builds more confidence than any performance chart.

Without selling skills, nothing else in your business works. You can’t demonstrate your value, implement financial plans, or motivate clients. Sales isn’t just the first step; it drives the entire client engagement process and ongoing relationship.

It’s About Consistency

Sales is about consistency – following up, delivering on promises, and communicating proactively. Sales isn’t a single pitch; it’s an ongoing pattern of consistency and reliability.

You can be the most skilled planner in your firm, but if you can’t attract and retain clients, your expertise is unused. Conversely, advisors who embrace selling skills as a professional discipline, not a necessary evil, tend to have higher closing ratios and retain business longer.

True sales mastery doesn’t mean being slick or aggressive. It’s about being intentional: asking better questions, listening more deeply, and helping people see the cost of inaction. When done ethically and empathetically, sales is a form of leadership.

In the end, the best financial advice in the world can only change lives if a prospect first says “yes.”