Second example, the Analytical is the adversary of the Amiable. A person who is both Analytical and Amiable has lived a life of sincerely attracting people into relationships and then unconsciously pushing them away. Again, moving in opposite directions at the same time!

How does this type of people-reading play out in real life? Imagine, you're delivering an institutional presentation. As you look at the board of directors, can you read each person's values and personality type? That's exactly what my clients want to learn from me. Now, imagine you're called in to help with the owner of a huge regional business. She has a brooding look on her face and everyone thinks she is irritated or annoyed. If you have learned how to read faces, you'll know that she's simply processing information, and she's not irritated or annoyed. As important as those things are, there are other vital skills you need to learn if you want to learn about investor psychology.

In this article, I'm going to share with you some of the steps I teach my coaching clients to take in their client situations. In fact, these skills apply in just about all business situations. Follow these steps and you will see a dramatic increase in your income.

Step One – Damage control. Make sure you don't do anything to destroy your possible rapport. What's the worst thing you could do? Here's a strange example.

I have this old friend (let's call him KB) who is a genius working with digital graphics. He's lovable, but, he's also one of the weirdest humans on the planet. He actually scanned Playboy centerfolds and modified the photos into extremely bizarre and psychedelic digital images. That's what he would show potential clients to illustrate his skills. Guess what the reaction was. "Security!" KB was quickly ushered out of every office. He knew nothing about damage control.

The point of that story is safety. The first thing you always need to take care of in any business meeting is make sure the other person feels safe with you and in the given environment. Something you would not say is, "Here, let me give you a commemorative Ku Klux Klan Tee shirt."

Another example. Many advisors are conservative republicans. They assume everyone else in our business is also a conservative republican. And, they make comments in that vein. That's not good. It alienates a lot of people, a causes lot of potential clients to do an about face.

Those are silly extremes, but they are relevant in this way. If you make the safety blunder, the other person will show you a different facial expression and you'll misread him or her. Even if you're allowed to continue, you'll be working with inaccurate data. Your "read" of the other person will be way off.

Step Two – Rapport, get inside those heads! I've read many articles on building rapport written by people who don't understand it. The main advice given is to mirror the other person. When the prospect scratches his head, you do the same thing. That's such crap.

We who operate inside the world of psychology always get a big laugh at that. The process of building rapport is so much more than just "monkey see/monkey do" antics. In fact, if you come to one of my Magnetic Connections seminars, you might get the opportunity to watch people breathe. No kidding. Breathing tells you a tremendous amount about what the other person is doing internally.

Actual rapport is your ability to get inside the other person's experience and understand what her existence is like, at least for the time being. If all you do is mirror her body movements, you're setting yourself up for a fall.

Let's follow the application of rapport-building skills back to its roots. In the 1970s two guys in California studied the world's greatest, most effective psychotherapists. Unbeknownst to any of the therapists, each was doing many of the same things. What the two researchers discovered was they had cataloged the best practices – the HOW – of the most effective self-development and therapeutic improvement. That changed the world of psychology. No longer were therapists consumed with figuring out why someone had a problem. Unlike Dr. Freud, they no longer, muttered, "Hmmmm. And, how did that make you feel about your mother?" They began actually doing something about it.

That new methodology is known today as Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). Very few financial professionals know much about NLP. I've been fascinated by it for years and have become a Master Practitioner of it as well as a Licensed Trainer of NLP.

In addition, as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and coach, I use those exact same techniques in my work to gain the confidence of a new hypnotherapy client. Only after the client begins to trust me can we start to work together. I have to match her energy level, breathing rate, speed of speech, tone of voice. That's just the start.

My point is, if you're wanting to work with a high-net-worth person, you don't go into high-net-worth rapport. A rich person is just a person. And, before you can get to the money issues, you have to make the person feel safe and skillfully build rapport.

Several years ago, I wrote a workbook titled The 5 Levels of Rapport. It's not a sexy title, but the information in the book gives you the levels to achieve. Pay attention to them one at a time, and you'll probably gain wonderful rapport with just about anyone in a very short period of time.

Step Three – Notice the language. In our industry, every producer is trained to deliver facts, figures, processes and data. Guess what – those are absolutely the wrong things to focus on. Unbeknownst to you, you're taught to listen for the same things. Again – wrong. Very few people think in terms of facts and data – about 7%. Very few people relate to or follow your conversation about facts and data. The best you can do when you focus on facts and data is connect with 7% of the other person's mind. Is that good enough for you?

And, it gets worse Even if the person is wealthy beyond measure, if she wants facts and data, she will judge you by your performance. For most advisors, no matter what size the account, that's the worst kind of client to have. In other words, when you talk about facts and data, you attract people who value facts and data. Those people don't value you, your professionalism or your relationship. Again, they're the worst clients to have – if you want client relationships that won't drive you nuts.

That person sitting in front of you is an electronic filtering system. You might visualize her as a human body with a huge graphic equalizer for a head. Each knob is a way of filtering incoming information. Each knob represents a different way people structure their communication. All you have to do is recognize the person's important filters and appeal to them. Notice the type of language she uses. Is it facts and data? Or is it people and relationships. Notice it and remember it.

How does this affect your career?

Nearly every day, in some article or seminar we see reference to "the mind of the high-net-worth investor." The assumption is that high-net-worth people think alike and have the same wants and needs. See the flaw in their logic? Those people have taken "investor needs" and called it "investor psychology." It is a misnomer.

Wealthy people may have similar or predictable financial needs. But, I guarantee you, they are not the same people. They are not even the same types of people. What does Richard Branson have in common with Donald Trump? Other than money, just about zero.

Russ Alan Prince identified a gaggle of HNW investors in terms of what they want. But, he didn't tell you how to find those people. To his defense, that wasn't his purpose. But, it still puts you in the awkward position of knowing something about what Family Stewards want, but not knowing how to find them or identify them.

If you have not read my book Face Values, it's a simple methodology for identifying the people you meet. It works like this. You walk into someone's office and shake hands. By the time you sit down, you should already know his or her personality type, values and communication style. If you don't know how to learn those things right now, you're sabotaging your own career.

Face Values is a unique body of work, because it gives you an easy-to-use skill set to "read" the people in your life. That's true investor psychology in action. Every other psychometric program we've seen (and we've been researching this field for many years) forces you to administer a written test to a person before you can determine they type and behavior. Can you see yourself asking Branson or Trump to take that stupid little test before you can do business? When you add Face Values at the front of your work, you learn those things in seconds. That's probably the biggest value in Face Values.

What next?

Engage the Skeptic in You! Look around the consulting landscape within the financial industry and you'll see a hoard of consultants, coaches and speakers who list very little credibility in their biographies. Pay attention to their messages and you'll recognize other people's messages. One reason for that is the practice some people have of "borrowing" good articles, editing them – then changing the by-line! It's thinly veiled theft of intellectual property. Of course, there are some truly excellent people out there, and if you want to know who some of them are, just ask me. I love turning good people onto other good people.

Here's an example. An article on investor psychology by someone whose training is in financial planning is suspect. That's someone who lacks the depth of psychological knowledge to understand investor psychology. A book on client relationships by someone whose background is with the National Speakers Association exposes what is more than likely just a big voice with a "borrowed" message.

The reason I bring that up is to plead with you to become more discerning as to what coaches and trainers to use. If you want to develop your professional life, hire someone who is a real professional with credentials to prove it. If you read my articles, you will probably notice that you never read fluff in my work. Instead, you get usable, practical instruction on how to do something important to your success. That's my standard for personal excellence and professionalism. Don't you deserve it?

Practical Application. All the information I've given you in this article leads to a relationship-building strategy. It works for high-net-worth investors and those not-so-high too. Over the past fifteen years, I've identified a simple four-step process that is hands-down the best. Mind you, I didn't invent it any more than Ben Franklin invented electricity. I just observed it in the financial industry by coaching highly successful advisors and learning what they did to build successful relationships.

Judge for yourself. It's a natural 4-step process that builds quality business relationship – if that's what you want. Eliminating any of the steps would be to sabotage the process. We use the acronym ARCH to describe this process. The steps are:

1. Attract. Attract the exact kind of person/client you want to work with. Do you have a psychological profile of that person? Can you say something that will excite him?
2. Read. Before you start talking, you need to "read" them and learn what makes them tick. Can you "read" people easily and accurately? Can you determine her values just by looking?
3. Connect. Use simple, effective psychology to make a relevant connection with that individual in front of you. Can you connect with the other person's emotions?
4. Help. Provide ever-increasing levels of relevant/meaningful service over many years and subsequent generations. Can you lay out a game plan for three years of client meetings that she will want to attend?

If you answer NO to any of those questions, you need to get some help fast.