Hard Lessons from a Lost Account

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Every cou­ple of weeks for the past year and a half, I’ve taken an evening or a week­end morn­ing to talk to investors — dis­cussing their mood and  chat­ting about what they’re think­ing and doing.

A cou­ple of weeks ago I talked to an investor who had recently switched advi­sors — and who  pro­vided an exam­ple of  the stress that investors expe­ri­ence when they’re not sure whether their advi­sor is really on top of their finan­cial affairs.

“I’d been work­ing with this advi­sor for a few years” he said “and I liked him well enough. He’s actu­ally a really nice guy.

But late last year I real­ized that I was los­ing sleep because I wasn’t sure whether he was really on top of my sit­u­a­tion.“

I asked this investor what had led to the deci­sion to change advisors.

“Two things really” he answered.

“First, my advi­sor had put together a finan­cial plan about three years ago.

In light of every­thing that’s hap­pened, about a year ago I asked him whether the plan needed to be updated. His answer was that the plan had a long term focus and that what we’d been through was just a blip and that I didn’t need to worry.

Given that I kept read­ing about how the finan­cial sys­tem was melt­ing down, I didn’t entirely buy that — and got more and more con­cerned that my advi­sor wasn’t really tak­ing my account seriously.”

Then he went on.

“The other thing that con­cerned me was that aside from get­ting a call from his assis­tant to book a meet­ing once a year, I had to take all the ini­tia­tive to stay in touch.

When­ever I called him, he always got back to me right away — he was really good on that.

But I only heard from him when I called. I was just con­cerned that I wasn’t impor­tant enough for my advi­sor to really care about — and that my half a mil­lion dol­lars was sec­ondary to his other big­ger clients.”

Like many peo­ple who switch, this investor didn’t rel­ish the prospect of break­ing the news  — and the new advi­sor told him he’d get in touch with his pre­vi­ous advisor’s office and take care of all the paper­work entailed to switch his account over.

Inevitably, the investor got an imme­di­ate call from his old advisor.

“I was really sur­prised to get a request to trans­fer your account” was how the con­ver­sa­tion began.

“I know that the mar­kets have been tough but I thought that we had talked about how your account has really bounced back and in fact done well under the cir­cum­stances. Based on our last con­ver­sa­tion, I thought you were actu­ally rea­son­ably happy.  ”

This investor explained that it was noth­ing per­sonal and that his move was not pri­mar­ily because of the per­for­mance of his portfolio.

He went on to men­tion that one of the rea­sons for his move was the con­cern that his plan hadn’t been brought up to date.

“That was actu­ally on my list to talk to you about the next time we met” was the response from the old advisor.

“I didn’t real­ize that this was that big a  con­cern — if you’d told me I would have been happy to do this for you.”

There are a cou­ple of impor­tant lessons from this expe­ri­ence — costly for the advi­sor who lost the half a mil­lion dol­lar account, but avail­able free of charge to every­one else.

The first les­son is to lis­ten for hid­den mean­ing when talk­ing to clients and to never dis­miss any con­cern or appre­hen­sion, no mat­ter how small it might seem. Chances are that if the advi­sor had acted when his client first ques­tioned whether his plan con­tin­ued to reflect the mar­ket real­ity at the time, he would still have that account.

The sec­ond les­son relates to the stress that many clients expe­ri­ence when they feel they have to ini­ti­ate all the con­tact with their advisor.

I’ve writ­ten in the past about the dif­fer­ence between a con­ver­sa­tion that a client ini­ti­ates on a topic such as TFSAs or RESPs for grand­chil­dren and that same con­ver­sa­tion if the advi­sor picks up the phone to make the call first.

It can be exactly the same con­ver­sa­tion, but if it hap­pens at the client’s ini­tia­tive, the advi­sor gets dra­mat­i­cally less credit — peo­ple won­der whether that con­ver­sa­tion would have hap­pened if they hadn’t picked up the phone and called.

I recently talked to an advi­sor who last spring began set­ting aside half an hour a day to pick up the phone and check in with clients who he hadn’t spo­ken to for a while. He told me he was aston­ished at the pos­i­tive response — and the relief many clients seemed to feel just know­ing that he was on top of their situation.

In fact, this advi­sor com­mented that the most pro­duc­tive 30 min­utes was when he didn’t actu­ally reach any clients and sim­ply left mes­sages, say­ing some­thing like: “It’s Joe Smith. I’m just call­ing to check to be sure everything’s okay and in case you have any ques­tions you’d like to talk about. If there’s any­thing you want to dis­cuss, give me a call at the office — oth­er­wise, I look for­ward to sit­ting down when we meet in a cou­ple of months for our reg­u­lar review.”

Along sim­i­lar lines, a cou­ple of years back, I inter­viewed an extremely suc­cess­ful busi­ness owner who talked about what he looked for from his pro­fes­sional advisors.

“I assume that most peo­ple are basi­cally com­pe­tent and know what they’re doing” he said.

“What I look for are peo­ple who are proac­tive and are always think­ing about my sit­u­a­tion so that I don’t have to” he said. “That’s what I look for in my accoun­tant, that’s what I look for in my lawyer — and that’s what I look for in my finan­cial advisor.”

Not every client artic­u­lates this as clearly as this busi­ness owner. But those words cap­ture the essence of what many clients look for — the con­fi­dence that their advi­sor is on top of their sit­u­a­tion so they don’t have to be.

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Tags: Advertisement, Blip, Compendium, Financial Affairs, Hard Lessons, Initiative, Investor, Investors, Losing Sleep, Lost, Nice Guy, Sleep, Stress, Target, Term Focus
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Getting a reading on how clients feel

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Recently I spoke to an advi­sor still agi­tated after a client had pulled his account.”What really annoyed me” the advi­sor said “is that just a cou­ple of months ago I asked this client how he felt about his account and he said he under­stood that every­body was down and he was okay with it.”

This advi­sor had made a com­mon mis­take. While he’d started off doing the the right thing by solic­it­ing  feed­back, he had fallen down in the way he had asked.

There are two keys to get­ting feed­back from clients. First, you need to ask for feed­back on the right dimen­sions. And sec­ond „ you have to ask in a way that really tells you how they feel.

What you ask about

There is cer­tainly some value in ask­ing clients how they feel about the recent per­for­mance of their port­fo­lios — this is obvi­ously an impor­tant issue. By ask­ing how they feel about the per­for­mance of their port­fo­lio, you’re able to bring issues to the sur­face you were unaware of and you might be able to pro­vide addi­tional con­text and perspective.

Ulti­mately, how­ever, recent per­for­mance is beyond your con­trol — far bet­ter to then move on and also ask about some­thing that you can actu­ally influ­ence, such as the advice you’re pro­vid­ing today or the com­mu­ni­ca­tion clients have received.

How you ask

The next step is ask­ing in a way that gives you an accu­rate reading.

The prob­lem is that most peo­ple are polite, don’t want to hurt your feel­ings and want to avoid con­flict. Ask­ing clients if you’ve done a good job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing over the past will often get you a “sure”, a response that’s not all that help­ful in get­ting a sense of where you really stand and may in fact mask real unhappiness.

Sim­i­larly, ask­ing clients after a meet­ing how they feel about port­fo­lios that have been repo­si­tioned will often get you a “fine”, again not ter­ri­bly edifying.

Con­sider instead ask­ing clients to give you a report card from 1 to 10. At the con­clu­sion of a meet­ing (or if that’s not pos­si­ble, a phone call), one way to do this is to say: “I won­der if I could take a minute to get some feed­back on the com­mu­ni­ca­tion you’ve received from me over the past while. How would you rate the con­tact you’ve got from me on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is low and 10 is high?”

Or after you’ve met to revise a client’s port­fo­lio, say “Now that we’ve made these changes, how com­fort­able do you feel with your port­fo­lio on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being low and 10 being high.”

Few clients will give you a score that they see as a fail­ing grade, but some who feel a lit­tle uncer­tain might give you a 5, 6 or 7, think­ing that’s an accept­able score that won’t hurt your feel­ings. In real­ity, if the response is 7 or below, clients are telling you they’re not all that happy. You need to fol­low up with by learn­ing more.

So you could say “Tell me, what aspects of your port­fo­lio still leave you uncom­fort­able?” or ” What kind of changes would you like to see to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion you get from me over the next while?”

If, on the other hand, you get an 8, 9 or 10, then you can move on with the con­fi­dence that you are in fairly good shape with this client.

Even if you get a great score, con­sider one final ques­tion that can yield eye-opening results.

That ques­tion: “What one thing could I do in the period ahead to improve your expe­ri­ence work­ing with me and my team?” Hav­ing asked that ques­tion, sit back and allow the client to fill the silence that fol­lows — you might be sur­prised by what you hear.

One final note. Not every client is con­sis­tent and ratio­nal. Just because some­one has given you a grade of 8 or 9 doesn’t mean a friend won’t tell them about an advi­sor who moved them to cash early last year and they won’t switch accounts.

Those kinds of events are beyond our con­trol. What we need to focus on are the things we can influ­ence — such as ask­ing clients for feed­back on the right dimen­sions and in a way that gets them to tell us how they really feel.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: Advertisement, Communication, Conclusion, Conflict, Feedback, Feelings, Good Job, Mask, Mistake, Perspective, Phon, Portfolios, Report Card, Unhappiness
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Bringing discipline to client portfolios

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

In light of the events of the last nine months, investors and advi­sors alike are reex­am­in­ing the process used to build portfolios.

A May 25 in the Globe and Mail high­lighted two tools to over­come investors’ (and some advisors’) emotional reac­tions to mar­ket move­ments, cre­at­ing the impulse to buy and sell at exactly the wrong times. The arti­cle quoted  the words of Walt Kelly’s 1950’s car­toon char­ac­ter Pogo:  “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The solu­tion for advi­sors lies in bring­ing much more dis­ci­pline to how client port­fo­lios are man­aged, using two tools from insti­tu­tional investors. The goal is to bor­row War­ren Buffett’s dis­pas­sion­ate approach to invest­ing, which he sum­ma­rizes as: “Be fear­ful when oth­ers are greedy and be greedy when oth­ers are fearful.”

To read the arti­cle click on :

http://​the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​b​r​i​n​g​i​n​g​-​s​t​r​i​c​t​-​d​i​s​c​i​p​l​i​n​e​-​t​o​-​y​o​u​r​-​p​o​r​t​f​o​l​i​o​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​1​5​2​2​22/

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Building a Values-Based Practice

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

The most suc­cess­ful advi­sors whom we have worked with have taken the time to really think about what’s impor­tant to them in their work and their life. They have thought about their values.

A value is a thing or con­di­tion we con­sis­tently act upon to get and to keep. A value is a vec­tor – a direc­tion with a force. The clear­est indi­ca­tion of what we value is how we spend our time and our money. It is not what we say that tells peo­ple what we value, it is what we do.

When your val­ues are clear, deci­sion mak­ing is easy.

What are your Values?

Your val­ues are those things or con­di­tions that are impor­tant to you. They rep­re­sent the things you want to do in your life and work to make a dif­fer­ence. The clearer you are about your val­ues, the eas­ier it is to put them into prac­tice. Val­ues pro­vide the frame­work for decision-making. If you value hon­esty, you will demon­strate this in your inter­ac­tions with oth­ers. A num­ber of years ago, I was hav­ing lunch with the Pres­i­dent of an insur­ance com­pany. He very gra­ciously paid for lunch and, at the end of the meal, offered me the receipt. I declined, since I did not pay the bill. He was sur­prised and told me that when he took the finan­cial advi­sors who rep­re­sented his com­pany for lunch or din­ner, they rou­tinely took the receipt for tax pur­poses. He went on to say that he was unim­pressed with them for doing so, even though he was abet­ting their actions. Peo­ple judge us by our actions. They observe us in a myr­iad of sit­u­a­tions and make a deci­sion about our char­ac­ter. And our val­ues.
How many Val­ues should you have?

I am often asked if there is a uni­ver­sally right num­ber of val­ues. In Defin­ing Your Busi­ness, the right num­ber of val­ues is prob­a­bly four to six. This is a num­ber that can be effec­tively expressed and is rel­a­tively easy to remem­ber. If you list too many val­ues in your busi­ness def­i­n­i­tion, they begin to lose some of their mean­ing for you and the other stake­hold­ers who have an inter­est in your business.

Val­ues and Oper­at­ing Principles

Express­ing your val­ues is facil­i­tated when you are able to describe in one or two sen­tences how each value will be imple­mented. We call these descrip­tions of val­ues in action, Oper­at­ing Prin­ci­ples. The pur­pose of an Oper­at­ing Prin­ci­ple is to pro­vide a nec­es­sary frame of ref­er­ence to help bal­ance con­flict­ing moti­va­tions and pri­or­i­ties when mak­ing deci­sions on what to do and how to act in dif­fer­ent situations.

If one of your val­ues is team­work, then an oper­at­ing prin­ci­ple could be:

“The team will meet on a weekly basis to ensure that every­one is informed of issues that affect our busi­ness. These meet­ings will give us an oppor­tu­nity to share infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge with each other, address any issues or con­cerns and make sure each mem­ber of the team is focused on doing all the right things to move the busi­ness forward.”

Oper­at­ing prin­ci­ples become guid­ing lights that help peo­ple decide how to act in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. To the extent that they are well thought out and rein­forced con­sis­tently, they ensure that deci­sions and actions are focused on doing all the right things, not sim­ply doing some things right.

In your Busi­ness Plan, you out­line the four to six Val­ues that describe what is impor­tant to you. Your Oper­at­ing Prin­ci­ples illus­trate how you are going to express your values.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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Tags: Advertisement, Business Definition, Business Values, Clearest Indication, Decision Making, Direction, Financial Advisors, Insurance, Insurance Company, Lunch, Money, Myriad, Norm Trainor, Practice Values, Receipt, Stakeholders, Tax Purposes, Value Honesty, Vector
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Free webinar — Using low-cost client lunches to build prospecting momentum

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Many advi­sors are strug­gling with a strat­egy to com­mu­ni­cate with prospec­tive clients.Last week, I con­ducted a webi­nar with U.S. advi­sor site Hors­es­mouth, out­lin­ing a sim­ple approach to prospect­ing using a series of low cost client lunches that advi­sors can host in their boardroom.

You can lis­ten to the webi­nar at the link below — there’s no cost, you sim­ply have to enter your email address.

http://​reg​is​ter​.web​cast​group​.com/​l​3​/​?​w​i​d​=​0​7​2​0​6​1​0​0​9​4​7​2​3​&​a​m​p​;​p​r​e=1

For much more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca.

Sorry, it turns out the webi­nar referred to above is no longer avail­able, how­ever, here is the tran­script of the pre­sen­ta­tion by Dan Richards:

Sur­pris­ing infor­mal sur­vey con­ducted by Dan Richards…says that the most com­mon answer is “None” when advi­sors are asked, “How much time did you spend in your office last week talk­ing with clients?”

Dan sug­gests advi­sors can host a reg­u­lar round­table lun­cheon series with their clients. It’s impor­tant that they do this regularly.

Only requires about three hours a week–two 90-minute time blocks. Book room for lunch, call peo­ple to invite.

Can hold them in your board­room, or a coun­try club or a pri­vate room at a restau­rant. No need to do it elaborately.

Dan rec­om­mends hold­ing it in your office and cater­ing with sandwiches.

Tim­ing: Do it from 12:30–1:30.

Says do two or three of these lun­cheons in your first campaign.

Goal for guests: eight or nine. Sug­gests that is opti­mum for dynam­ics. It’s a work­shop, not a pre­sen­ta­tion. Invite six or seven client and two or three prospects.

Looks and feels like a client event. That’s what you want. So you only want 33% prospects.

Rule of thumb for invites: Invite 10–15 prospects to get two or three.

Stay away from folks who are anx­ious or dom­i­nate dis­cus­sions. Avoid them for this approach.

What advi­sor should say on invites: “I’m host­ing a series lun­cheons this sum­mer. Hope you can come.” Say, “Next lunch is July 8. Does that work for you?” If no, go on to next two days.

Call them “infor­mal sand­wich lun­cheons to talk about the market.”

Says one advi­sor he knows does one lunch at his down­town office and then does other lun­cheons at firm’s branch offices in sub­urbs. Can also do other lunches at a hotel or restau­rant in sub­urbs.

Week One

Stress it’s very infor­mal, 10– to 15-minute talk in the begin­ning and then open­ing it up for ques­tions and conversations.

Prospects not typ­i­cally cold. You know them, but not that well. May play golf with them. Share mem­ber­ship in an orga­ni­za­tion. They’re not cold.

Break this car­di­nal rule of prospect­ing: Actu­ally leave mes­sage on voice mail if you’ve got a good rela­tion­ship with the per­son. They will call you back if it’s a good relationship.

Empha­size you’re lim­it­ing the lun­cheon to 10 peo­ple. Ask them on phone if they’re on some ques­tions or top­ics they’d like addressed. Ramps up com­mit­ment level. Also ask what type of sand­wich they want.

This is a low-stress invite. You give them three dates. If they say no to all three dates, then you can eval­u­ate whether they’re really inter­ested. Per­haps invite them by e-mail next time you do the campaign.

Write down now two to three names of peo­ple you can see poten­tially inviting.

Week Two

Con­nect with clients by phone who’ve agreed to come. Call to ask them about ques­tions they may have and get sand­wich order. If you have an open­ing, go ahead and ask them if they know any­one who might want to attend…

Struc­ture talk around ques­tions asked by attendees…Makes it per­sonal. Makes it more participatory.

If new to busi­ness, you can ask branch man­ager or whole­saler to be present to help with ques­tions. You deliver the talk.

Week Three

Final­ize open remarks. Prac­tice your remarks; you want to sound con­fi­dent. Send con­fir­ma­tion e-mails. Con­sider send­ing an arti­cle along or link to some­thing you’ve read that per­tains to talk.

Final details: It’s crit­i­cal to fol­low up with peo­ple who attend.

Tips: Think about seat­ing. Have pen and pad, and copy of slides if you use slides. Might ask some­one to ask first ques­tion. Be sure to have folks com­plete eval­u­a­tion. Keep it short and sweet. Use scale 1–4 on lun­cheon, talk, com­ments and a line for their name. Short and sweet.

Follow-up call with clients. Review eval­u­a­tion form. Any spe­cific ques­tions. Ask how they might sug­gest you change or improve the lunches. Respond to any ques­tions they have. Ask them if they want to attend one later in the future.

Follow-up call with prospects. Sim­i­lar as above but…

Over­all: Make prospect­ing a pri­or­ity. Be sure to time block…Integrate prospect­ing into ongo­ing client com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Pick one strat­egy as a focal point. Refine and repeat and get really good at it. Don’t be scattershot.

Dan says some clients like to come to such events a cou­ple of times a year. So it’s OK to invite clients to come again later in the year.

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The Power of Just “One Thing”

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Since Jan­u­ary, I’ve been con­duct­ing full day work­shops to help advi­sors adjust their busi­nesses to today’s new real­ity. I’ve had a ter­rific response to these — typ­i­cally, advi­sors emerge excited with a long list of pos­si­ble ini­tia­tives and new ideas. That’s good news at one level — but also risks hav­ing advi­sors feel over­whelmed and fail to act as a result. The dif­fi­culty after a work­shop is almost never not enough new ideas — it’s almost always too many.

Here’s the one strat­egy that I’ve seen work best to help advi­sors trans­late the ideas they take from any work­shop into action. This strat­egy comes down to four sim­ple words: One idea per quar­ter. I encour­age advi­sors to iden­tify the one idea that will have the most impact on your busi­ness — and resolve to focus on that and only that for the next 90 days. Make a sign up and put it above your phone. Put this idea as the num­ber one item for your weekly team meet­ings. Start your plan­ning for every week by iden­ti­fy­ing what you’ve going to do in the next seven days to make that idea hap­pen. Do this for 90 days and chances are that at the end of that, you’ve got momen­tum behind it and this idea is locked into your rou­tine. At which point you go to the next high impact idea on your list and repeat the process.

With this sim­ple strat­egy, you can act on four high impact ideas a year — and have a high like­li­hood of see­ing a lift in your busi­ness as a result. Remem­ber, we change the way we learned to walk — one step at a time. By focus­ing on one high impact idea a quar­ter, you increase the odds greatly of mak­ing that idea happen.

If you agree with this, two final questions:

First, what’s your high impact ini­tia­tive, the one thing that if you did that and that alone would have the biggest impact on your busi­ness? And sec­ond, what are you going to do between now and the end of the year to make that happen?

Answer those two ques­tions and chances are that you too will see your busi­ness move for­ward, one idea at a time.

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How to Consolidate Client Assets

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

In recent work­shops, I’ve talked about the need to focus on one pri­mary busi­ness goal for each key client you work with.When I ask advi­sors for exam­ples of pos­si­ble objec­tives, the one that comes up first most often is “con­sol­i­dat­ing accounts held elsewhere.”

Want­ing to do this is a good start …. The key ques­tion is how best to go about this.

Becom­ing the exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor for key clients has always been a pri­or­ity for advi­sors … but these days, this is even more impor­tant. Partly that because advi­sors are look­ing to regain some of the assets lost in last year’s mar­ket decline — and in part it’s because of the recog­ni­tion of the risk that if you don’t act, another advi­sor you share a client with might.

Here’s what I’ve learned from talk­ing to clients who have more than one advisor.

Investors who have accounts with mul­ti­ple finan­cial advi­sors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions fall into two cat­e­gories — the first group is those who have made a con­scious deci­sion to spread their rela­tion­ships around, the sec­ond cat­e­gory is those for whom this is more of a his­tor­i­cal accident.

The first group will be a tougher sell when it comes to cen­tral­iz­ing their finan­cial affairs. In some cases, they have long stand­ing rela­tion­ships with other advi­sors that they don’t want to aban­don. Other times, they have sought out dif­fer­ent advi­sors for spe­cific exper­tise (work­ing with one advi­sor for invest­ments and another for insur­ance is a com­mon example.)

And in other instances, investors are con­cerned about con­trol or con­fi­den­tial­ity if one advi­sor has all their money — con­fi­den­tial­ity is a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in smaller communities.

Then there’s the sec­ond group — who work with more than one advi­sor either because no one has ever sug­gested bring­ing all their finances under one umbrella or if one of their advi­sors did bring this up failed to give them a good rea­son to do so.

Regard­less of which cat­e­gory your client falls into, con­sider a three pronged approach to a con­ver­sa­tion about con­sol­i­dat­ing a client’s finan­cial affairs.

Start by point­ing out the advan­tages. Depend­ing on the client, these might include bet­ter con­structed port­fo­lios by elim­i­nat­ing dupli­cated posi­tions, more effi­cient tax man­age­ment and lower bills for tax prepa­ra­tion, less paper­work to keep track of and gen­er­ally sim­pli­fy­ing their lives.

The sec­ond prong is to make mov­ing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, by tak­ing on as much of the paper­work and fol­low up as you can. When­ever you ask a client to do some­thing, they mea­sure the gain ver­sus the pain. It’s not enough to talk about increas­ing gain — you also have to focus on reduc­ing pain.

The third prong is your fall­back strategy.

Even if a client declines your offer to bring all of their finan­cial affairs under one roof, keep the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open. One way to do this is by offer­ing to help them sum­ma­rize their invest­ment reports — sim­ply by hav­ing your assis­tant call them once a quar­ter to arrange to get all of their state­ments and prepar­ing a con­sol­i­dated ver­sion. Not only will you be doing your client a ser­vice, but you’ll elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity that another advi­sor your client is work­ing with will beat you to the punch.

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Tags: Advertisement, Business Goal, Client Assets, Confidentiality, Conscious Decision, Financial Advisors, Financial Affairs, Financial Institutions, Focus, Good Reason, Instances, Insurance, Investments, Investors, Market Decline, Money, Priority, Relationships, Risk, S Market, Second Group, Umbrella
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Getting buy in to your recommendations

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

I recently chat­ted with an advi­sor who com­plained of dif­fi­culty get­ting clients to buy into his recommendations.

We all know the expres­sion “A pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words.”

This speaks to the fact that we can talk to exist­ing and prospec­tive clients all we want about our rec­om­men­da­tions, but a cou­ple of well cho­sen graphs and charts can dwarf the impact of any num­ber of words.

That’s why when­ever pos­si­ble, rec­om­men­da­tions should be sup­ported by a cou­ple of well cho­sen charts and graphs.

This is espe­cially true when using struc­tured tele­phone reviews to sup­ple­ment face to face meet­ings. Struc­tured phone meet­ings may lack some of the per­sonal con­nec­tion of a face to face meet­ing so don’t replace meet­ings entirely, but they tend to be more focused and also avoid hav­ing to ask clients to fight traf­fic and part to come to your office.

To be effec­tive though, you have to estab­lish a visual con­nec­tion when dis­cussing state­ments, review­ing port­fo­lios or mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions. You can email this before­hand for clients to refer to.

As a bet­ter alter­na­tive, more and more advi­sors are payng $15 monthly to sub­scribe to web meet­ing sites like gotomeet​ing​.com, Microsoft line or Webex — these allow you to email clients a link, when clients click on it, you con­trol their com­puter and you can walk them through a pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion or other visuals.

As another exam­ple of the power of graph­ics to present date in a com­pelling fash­ion, a site called www​.gap​min​der​.org does a remark­able job of depict­ing eco­nomic progress going back to 1800 – this may be worth shar­ing with clients.

It shows how life expectancy and income per per­son have evolved each year from 1800 to the present and makes for com­pelling view­ing – espe­cially when you see how China and India stag­nated ini­tially but have been play­ing catch up of late.

Click below to see that chart:

Gap­min­der Chart

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Tags: Advertisement, Charts And Graphs, Charts Graphs, Economic Progress, Email Clients, Expression, Face To Face, Fashion, Gotomeeting Com, Graphs And Charts, Graphs Charts, Income Per Person, India, Life Expectancy, Meeting Sites, Personal Connection, Phone Meetings, Portfolios, Powerpoint Presentation, Prospective Clients, Remarkable Job, Visuals, Web Meeting
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Turning service problems into opportunities

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

No mat­ter how hard we try to avoid them, it’s inevitable that on occa­sion clients will expe­ri­ence a ser­vice prob­lem — a change of address doesn’t go through, some­thing that was sup­posed to be sent slips through the cracks or a request wasn’t fol­lowed up on.

Even small mis­takes can be costly — they can cor­rode client con­fi­dence, under­mine good­will and some­times even cost you a client. A while back, I spoke to an investor who pulled his account because of a suc­ces­sion of irri­tat­ing mis­takes over an eigh­teen month period.

As a result, every advi­sor needs a two part strat­egy when it comes to ser­vice problems,

First, you need to put sys­tems in place to keep mis­takes to a minimum.

And sec­ond, you need a proac­tive process to recover from any prob­lems that do take place. In fact, research shows that as long as mis­takes are the excep­tion, speedy and effec­tive recov­ery from a prob­lem can actu­ally leave rela­tion­ships stronger than if the prob­lem hadn’t hap­pened at all.

Here’s a six step plan for effec­tive prob­lem recov­ery that can help main­tain strong rela­tion­ships even in the face of ser­vice problems.

Step One: Let clients know you want to hear about problems

Many clients are incred­i­bly frus­trated by the dif­fi­culty of get­ting small prob­lems resolved with com­panes they deal with. As a result, many have given up com­plain­ing, men­tally shrug­ging their shoul­ders and mov­ing on.

You don’t want your clients deal­ing with you through grit­ted teeth. The first thing you need to do is to clearly com­mu­ni­cate that you truly want to hear if clients ever run into a prob­lem, no mat­ter how triv­ial.

You can’t be sub­tle on this — you need to let clients know that if they ever encounter an issue, you want to know. And make it easy for clients to let you know when they run into a prob­lem, by ask­ing them to drop you or your assis­tant an email or to give you a call.

Step Two: Under­stand the issue

Clients call­ing with an issue can some­times be worked up and overly emo­tional. As a result, your first pri­or­ity is to thank them for bring­ing this to your atten­tion — and then to clearly under­stand the exact nature of the prob­lem. Ask clients call­ing in to walk you through exactly what tran­spired, tak­ing detailed notes.

Then ask if you can play back what you heard just to be sure you got it right.

Step Three: Apologize

Once you’ve heard clients out, the next step is to apol­o­gize in a way that clients under­stand you truly are sorry.

These days, you see a lot of “going through the motions” apolo­gies, apolo­gies that don’t seem heart felt or sin­cere. After a long wait at a TD bank counter one recent morn­ing while the woman I was deal­ing with went to check some­thing, she came back and turned to her screen, mum­bling “Sorry to keep you wait­ing” with­out ever look­ing at me.

Not only did I not feel apol­o­gized to, I felt dis­missed. If this woman had looked at me when she got back, engaged me for a sec­ond and a half and said “I’m ter­ri­bly sorry to keep you wait­ing, we ran into a bit of a delay,” my reac­tion would have been entirely different.

After hear­ing clients out, be sure to take a few sec­onds to ensure they under­stand you sin­cerely regret hav­ing incon­ve­nienced them.

Step Four: Lay out next steps

Next you need to spell out exactly what you’re going to do to fix the prob­lem. Once you’ve done that, ask ”

Even if you need to do some research or to get more infor­ma­tion before iden­ti­fy­ing what will hap­pen, you need to be clear on when you’ll be respond­ing with more specifics.

Step Five: Make sure the prob­lem is fixed

Whether deal­ing with tele­coms, cable com­pa­nies or air­lines, many of us have had the expe­ri­ence as cus­tomers where small mis­take fol­lows small mis­take — it’s incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing when we go through one glitch after another.

When a client encoun­ters a prob­lem, you need ensure that it’s cor­rected quickly and accu­rately — the last thing you want to do is to com­pound a mis­take by fail­ing to deliver the solu­tion you promised.  One advi­sor starts his morn­ing team meet­ing by review­ing a list of out­stand­ing ques­tions and prob­lems, to be sure that noth­ing slips through the cracks.

Step Six: Check back with the client

The final step is to cir­cle back with the client to be sure that you’ve deliv­ered the res­o­lu­tion you promised.

The best way to do this is to pick up the phone after­wards and to say “I’m just call­ing to fol­low up on the prob­lem you expe­ri­enced. I wanted to say again how sorry I am that you ran into this and also to ensure that we’re resolved this issue.”

In the per­fect world, mis­takes would never hap­pen and we wouldn’t need a prob­lem res­o­lu­tion strat­egy. In the real world, occa­sion­ally things break down and clients inevitably expe­ri­ence small glitches from time to time — when that hap­pens, you need to be proac­tive to ensure that you turn prob­lems into an oppor­tu­nity to strengthen relationships.

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Tags: Advertisement, Change Of Address, Client Confidence, Cracks, Email, Face, Goodwill, Gritted Teeth, Investor, Relationships, Shoulders, Six Step, Slips, Succession
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