A good Advisor should have Width & Depth. What do I mean by Width & Depth? By Width I mean that s/he should be 1) Well read and 2) Should have a little knowledge of every investment product possible, enough to carry on an intelligent conversation on that subject for 5 minutes at least.
Do you as an Advisor know a little about
- Bullion
- Real Estate
- Commodities
- The concept of an Index
- Various popular rating agencies
- Inflation etc.
I am not saying you need to have in-depth knowledge – but you must have some basic knowledge. That is when the customer will start respecting you. Imagine an Advisor talking of an insurance product or a Mutual Fund, and the customer asks him what he thinks about Bullion as an investment option. If at that time the Advisor hesitates, the investor/customer will say to himself “This Advsior does not know about other investment products – then on what basis is he saying that this Mutual Fund is ideal for me?”
On the other hand, an Advisor must have tremendous depth about
- His product
- His industry
- Competitor products
- Direct Competition (We will talk about Direct & Indirect Competition in a later post)
One often comes across Advisors who lack either width or depth or in some cases, both! There is a likelihood that many agents/advisors would be high on Depth but not necessarily high on Width. So start reading up – and of course, visit this site more often!
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