New Schwab Study Shows Why Clients Have Been Moving

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

Clients weren’t get­ting what they wanted, and they want to address more than the portfolio.

Charles Schwab recently released its 2012 sur­vey Inde­pen­dent Advi­sor Outlook/High Net Worth Investors Study. Among the data was an update on why peo­ple have been chang­ing advi­sors and how they found their new advisor.

Refer­rals con­tinue to be the sin­gle most impor­tant way clients con­nected with their new advi­sors, account­ing for over half of the clients who moved.

When it came to the rea­sons peo­ple moved, 66% said they didn’t get the kind of atten­tion or ser­vice they wanted from their prior advi­sor and 51% indi­cated that they wanted some­one to take a more holis­tic approach to their finances and invest­ments. This rein­forces other stud­ies that have shown that con­ver­sa­tions beyond the port­fo­lio drive client engage­ment. We would expect this to be espe­cially true in dif­fi­cult invest­ment mar­kets, but this study was com­pleted on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012 – a time when the mar­ket was par­tic­u­larly strong.

It also indi­cates the impor­tance of get­ting sys­tem­atic client feed­back. While two thirds of the clients who moved indi­cated they were not get­ting what they wanted from their prior advi­sor, I do not believe it can fully be explained sim­ply by poor ser­vice. Rather, I sus­pect the ser­vice they received was not what they had hoped for or expected as opposed to inad­e­quate for infre­quent. Given that this is by far the most com­mon rea­son for peo­ple to move, com­pounded by the fact that we are in a volatile or declin­ing mar­ket, it makes more sense than ever to make sure that part of your ser­vice model includes client sur­veys or an advi­sory board.

Copy­right © The Client Dri­ven Practice

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Accounting, Advisory Board, Charles Schwab, Client Engagement, Client Feedback, Client Surveys, Conversations, Declining Market, Driven Practice, High Net Worth Investors, Holistic Approach, Independent Advisor, Investment Markets, Investments, Moving, People, Portfolio, Referrals, Service Model, Two Thirds
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Your Clients Don’t Like “Fee-Based”

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

by Stephen Wershing

Advi­sors who don’t seek client feed­back don’t know what their clients want, they know what the advi­sor thinks they should want.

We all know that fidu­ciary is bet­ter than bro­ker, and so nat­u­rally our clients would give us refer­rals because we are fee-based and not commission-based, right? Of course. And that’s why it’s a great idea to attract clients by talk­ing about how we charge fees.

Well, that makes a lot of sense to most of us because we tend to talk about our mar­ket­ing with other peo­ple in the indus­try and not with our clients and prospec­tive clients. As it turns out, clients don’t like fees and they don’t like to be reminded of those fees. So, when Sul­li­van and North­star sur­veyed investors on their reac­tions to dif­fer­ent words we use in our mar­ket­ing, for the 2012 update in their “Rebuild­ing Investor Trust” series, they found that 64% of respon­dents had a neg­a­tive reac­tion to the phrase “fee-based.”

Since fidu­ciary is clearly bet­ter for clients, you might also be sur­prised to learn that in a sur­vey done last year by Cerulli Asso­ciates, about 47% of 7800 house­holds sur­veyed pre­ferred pay­ing com­mis­sions com­pared with 27% that would rather pay a fee based on assets.

Of course, if you had asked your client advi­sory board to eval­u­ate your mar­ket­ing you prob­a­bly would have heard about this already. Who bet­ter than your best clients to help you under­stand the most impor­tant mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate in your mar­ket­ing? This is the group with the clear­est idea of what is most valu­able about what you do, and their lan­guage for describ­ing it prob­a­bly dif­fers from yours. It is pos­si­ble that your clients con­sider the fact that you are “fee-based” to be one of the more impor­tant things that dis­tin­guish you from other advi­sors, but I sus­pect they will talk more about what you do for them rather than how they pay you.

One of the biggest mis­takes we make in mar­ket­ing our prac­tices is to dream up what we will pro­mote and what we will empha­size with­out input of the peo­ple we are hop­ing to attract. Engage your clients in an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion about your value, and you will find you have a much clearer idea of what to say to attract more clients like them. And you can work together to develop what they can say to other peo­ple to get you refer­rals.

Copy­right © The Client Dri­ven Practice

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Board, Assets, Cerulli Associates, Client Feedback, Commissions, Households, Important Things, Investor, Investors, Marketing, Nbsp, Northstar, Phrase, Prospective Clients, Referrals, Respondents
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

How to Design a Referral Marketing Strategy – Results from Client Engagement Think Tank, Part Four

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

In my first three posts on our client engage­ment think tank, I set the stage for a dis­cus­sion of a refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan. What we found in our round­table dis­cus­sion with advi­sors is that many do not tar­get prospects par­tic­u­larly well, don’t use the tar­get mar­kets they have defined in their client onboard­ing process, and they don’t have a plan to attract refer­rals from that tar­get group. So now that these obser­va­tions are in the open, how do you write a plan to sys­tem­at­i­cally attract refer­rals? Here are a few basic principles:

1. Do an excep­tional job – this may seem obvi­ous, but many advi­sors I speak to want to know how to get refer­rals and do not ques­tion how the qual­ity of their work may be part of the cause for not receiv­ing more. Rather than ask “Why don’t my clients pre­fer?” Asked “What can I do better?”
2. Get client feed­back – In order to find out how good a job you’re doing, and what you could do bet­ter, have a sys­tem­atic way of obtain­ing feed­back from your clients. Whether through sur­veys or advi­sory boards, have a struc­tured way to ask ques­tions like How my doing? What am I really good at? What unique value do I bring to the relationship?
3. Define your tar­get mar­ket – Many advi­sors do not do enough work in defin­ing who exactly their best tar­get prospects are. Even many of the arti­cles I have read on tar­get mar­kets only offer the shal­low­est and most super­fi­cial advice. It is not enough to define the tar­get mar­ket by pro­fes­sion, a faith com­mu­nity, or an age range. And don’t even get me started on investable assets. You need to go beyond the obvi­ous and develop a more sub­tle and nuanced descrip­tion of the peo­ple you can ser­vice most effec­tively. One of the advi­sors I work with ini­tially told me his tar­get mar­ket was “women.” To be effec­tive, you need to have unique skills and ser­vices that con­nect with a group. There­fore, that group needs to be less than 52% of the pop­u­la­tion. Ulti­mately, we arrived at a descrip­tion that included “women who have just recently or are about to take con­trol of their fam­ily finances for the first time in their lives.” These are not the “sud­denly sin­gle” or the cases of “sud­den wealth.” Many of these women are still mar­ried, and the fam­ily net worth has not changed. One exam­ple is a woman whose hus­band was recently diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The fam­ily and assets have not changed, but she was fac­ing the fact that she was about to be in charge. It is a group of peo­ple with sim­i­lar needs, shared con­cerns, in need of sim­i­lar services.
4. Research the needs of your tar­get audi­ence – Now that you have deter­mined who your tar­get mar­ket is, con­sider what they might need from you do not cur­rently pro­vide. Per­form a “gap analy­sis” on your prac­tice ver­sus the ideal prac­tice for that tar­get audi­ence. Go back to your clients who are in that tar­get audi­ence and get their opin­ion on your research. Ask ques­tions like “if I wanted to work with other peo­ple just like you, what ser­vices would I add that would make me the ideal advi­sor?” Bring them the results of your gap analy­sis, and ask “do you think I should add ser­vices like these?”
5. Design your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy – Once you have tai­lored your prac­tice to your tar­get mar­ket, design a strat­egy for com­mu­ni­cat­ing your area of spe­cialty and your spe­cial­ized ser­vices. Let your clients know specif­i­cally what kind of new client you are focus­ing on, and what spe­cial skills you bring to the table to work with them. Learn how to describe what makes you unique for that tar­get audi­ence so that you can clearly artic­u­late it to the peo­ple you meet. Let peo­ple know that you worked with your best clients to tai­lor your prac­tice to that tar­get group.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Boards, Client Engagement, Client Feedback, Faith Community, Find Job, How To Get Referrals, Investable Assets, Marketing Plan, Marketing Strategy, Profession, Referral Marketing, Relationship, Strategy Results, Surveys, Systematic Way, Target Group, Target Market, Target Markets, Target Prospects, Think Tank
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Five Things You Can Do To Attract Referrals In 2012

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

As you put your 2012 busi­ness and mar­ket­ing plans into action, what are your plans for attract­ing refer­rals this year? One of the biggest rea­sons we do not attracts more refer­rals than we do is because we do not have a for­mal, writ­ten plan on how we will attract them. Just like busi­ness plans and finan­cial plans, achiev­ing your goals with refer­ral mar­ket­ing begins with a plan.

To help you get started, here are five things you can include in your plan that will help you attract referrals.

Ask your clients how they describe you – Refer­rals hap­pen when your clients men­tion you to their friends and busi­ness asso­ciates. (Not when you ask for them.) For that refer­ral to turn into a client, what your clients tell their friends needs to be accu­rate and com­pelling. Is it? This can also be a great way to find out what your clients believe is most valu­able about what you do for them.

Make sure your clients know your ideal prospect – When your clients send you refer­rals, are they the peo­ple you most want to attract as clients? If not, then your clients don’t know who you are look­ing for. Help­ing them under­stand your ideal prospect is a great way to let them know you are try­ing to make your prac­tice grow and to gen­tly remind them that you would appre­ci­ate refer­rals with­out putting them on the spot by ask­ing for names and num­bers. And, of course, it helps them be aware of who the best refer­rals would be.

Change one thing in your prac­tice based on client feed­back – Some­times it is what we do and some­times it is how we do it, but there is always a way we can improve what we do that will make clients more excited. And the more we tai­lor what we do to what our clients want most, the more loyal they will be and the more enthu­si­as­ti­cally they will refer us. Look through client sur­vey data or ask your advi­sory board for clues about how you can improve.

Stop doing one thing that doesn’t add value – We all do things that clients per­ceive makes us valu­able and things that clients don’t par­tic­u­larly care about. Drop­ping some­thing that does not add value frees up time to do more of what clients really value.

Ask cen­ters of influ­ence who they are ideal clients would be – Ask­ing COIs about their spe­cial­ties, unique skills, and ideal prospects opens the oppor­tu­nity to talk about your unique value and ideal clients. It also demon­strates that you can be an asset in help­ing them build their busi­ness. It will not guar­an­tee that you will get refer­rals, but it is the most pro­duc­tive approach.

If you want to be suc­cess­ful in attract­ing refer­rals, start with a well thought out refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan. These ideas can help you get started.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Achieving Your Goals, Advisory Board, Business And Marketing, Business Associates, Business Marketing, Business Plans, Client Feedback, Client Survey, Friends, Marketing Plans, People, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Survey Data, Year One
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

How Client Feedback Drove Dramatic Gains in One Advisor’s Business

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

How client feed­back drove dra­matic gains in one advisor’s business

Many advi­sors have heard about the ben­e­fits of a Client Advi­sory Board. Today, an advi­sor who leads a six per­son team dis­cusses how her very first meet­ing yielded star­tling insights on every­thing from the most effec­tive form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to port­fo­lio reviews to how to encour­age referrals.

Note that this advi­sor recruited the mem­bers of her board by post­ing a notice in her newslet­ter invit­ing clients inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing to let her know, and then sup­ple­mented this by approach­ing a few clients directly.

This arti­cle orig­i­nally appeared in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing advi­sor prac­tice man­age­ment site. Any­one inter­ested can get a 45 day free trial to Hors­es­mouth here:

http://​www​.hors​es​mouth​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​f​r​e​e​t​r​i​a​l​/​f​t​j​o​i​n​.​a​spx

By: Debra Tay­lor, CPA/PFS

I am con­stantly striv­ing to fol­low best prac­tices and become more effi­cient as my firm and I grow. Fol­low­ing best prac­tices, we recently held our first Client Advi­sory Board (CAB) meet­ing. Although it is too soon to say for cer­tain, I think it may be the best $500 I have ever spent on my clients. (In fact, I didn’t even spend it, as one of my local ven­dors was more than happy to foot the bill.)

I expected the CAB to serve as a way for me to be more in tune with my clients’ wants and needs so that I could bet­ter serve them, but it is turn­ing out to be much more than that. I now have eight action items on my plate, plus the knowl­edge that my clients have a vested inter­est mak­ing our firm stronger.

The mechan­ics

We held the CAB meet­ing in a pri­vate room at our local coun­try club and had eight clients in atten­dance. We met for about two hours and fol­lowed the agenda below, which was pre­sented to each client.

I was wor­ried that my clients would be reluc­tant to share with me, espe­cially those things that my staff and I could be doing bet­ter. To address this con­cern, I invited my most out­spo­ken client, a for­mer col­lege pro­fes­sor, to act as the cat­a­lyst for open communication.

Dur­ing the early part of the meet­ing, we talked about the acces­si­bil­ity of my staff and the open­ness and trans­parency of our processes and fees. I received 10 min­utes of pos­i­tive responses, which made me a lit­tle ner­vous; wor­ried that my CAB meet­ing was turn­ing into a love fest and no action­able items would come out of it. So I baited my out­spo­ken client, men­tion­ing a trans­fer that was not prop­erly processed in his account; then the con­dor started to surface.

Broker-dealer

We started to talk about the rela­tion­ship with my broker-dealer. Many of our clients were actu­ally unaware of the rela­tion­ship, and we ded­i­cated a con­sid­er­able amount of time dis­cussing my broker-dealer’s cus­to­dial and com­pli­ance roles.

I believe my clients found the expla­na­tions to be reas­sur­ing. It also puts me at ease to know that should I take the next step in going RIA, I would have a loyal fol­low­ing among my clients and not lose a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of them. If noth­ing else comes from a CAB, the renewed faith and boosts in con­fi­dence you get from hear­ing your clients praise and appre­ci­ate your work is def­i­nitely valuable!

Action item

1. Explain our rela­tion­ship with our broker-dealer to our clients so they gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the benefits.

Our newslet­ter

Our firm sends out a newslet­ter called The Week­ender every Fri­day. It is our main dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel for dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion to clients and prospects on a mass scale.

We have used The Week­ender to dis­trib­ute our weekly mar­ket com­men­tary and to stay top-of-mind on a reg­u­lar basis. As it turns out, our clients were eager to learn more about their invest­ments, learn more about the mar­kets, and have a more per­sonal rela­tion­ship with the firm.

As a result of CAB input, we have made rad­i­cal changes to The Week­ender. We now include a “Did You Know?” col­umn that high­lights a dif­fer­ent invest­ment topic every week, a “Per­sonal Finance Cor­ner” that high­lights a dif­fer­ent per­sonal finance piece every week (whether it be accel­er­at­ing your mort­gage pay­ments or high­light­ing credit card rewards pro­grams), and a “From Where I Sit,” col­umn, which is writ­ten with a more inti­mate tone and allows me to con­nect with my clients on a per­sonal level.

Action items (cont’d)

2. Con­tinue to build on the suc­cess of The Week­ender

3. Cre­ate other mean­ing­ful ways to con­nect with clients on a more per­sonal level

Port­fo­lio reviews

We have a very thor­ough process for port­fo­lio review meet­ing with our clients, whether they are quar­terly, semi-annually, or annu­ally. We start with a mem­ber of our team review­ing the accounts and their per­for­mance with the client. I then dis­cuss any changes that we are rec­om­mend­ing and any new strate­gies or man­agers we should be con­sid­er­ing. We then dis­cuss any changes in the client’s needs and fol­low up by answer­ing any ques­tions they may raise.

Fol­low­ing best prac­tices, we sched­ule our next appoint­ment before the client leaves, and within 48 hours, a mem­ber of our team sends notes that sum­ma­rize the meet­ing and out­line any action items to be done by our­selves or our clients.

As it turns out, the CAB reported that meet­ing notes are quite valu­able to the clients, and they appre­ci­ate that we put our promises for action items in writ­ing; thus hold­ing our­selves account­able. Although the clients asked that we be less thor­ough and spe­cific about the invest­ments in their port­fo­lios and focus more on the over­all per­for­mance, this is one time I think I will err on the side of com­pli­ance and caution.

Action items (cont’d)

4. Be more to the point in port­fo­lio reviews

5. Put more empha­sis on the deliv­ery of meet­ing notes

Client events

We closed by dis­cussing client events and sem­i­nars. We learned that our clients wanted more “lunch and learn sem­i­nars” and more client appre­ci­a­tion events. We will still hold our fun events, although we have now sched­uled a “lunch and learn” every six weeks for the rest of the year.

Our clients expressed inter­est in learn­ing more about their options when it comes to Social Secu­rity, tran­si­tion­ing to retire­ment, estate plan­ning, tax plan­ning, and mar­ket con­di­tions. Not only will these lunch and learns help strengthen my rela­tion­ships with my clients, but they will help me strengthen my rela­tion­ships with indus­try pro­fes­sion­als and cen­ters of influ­ence. I will invite an estate plan­ning accoun­tant and attor­ney to con­duct these sem­i­nars and hope­fully strengthen them as refer­ral sources.

Action items

6. Pro­vide more edu­ca­tional events, such as monthly sem­i­nar top­ics and speakers

7. Offer more oppor­tu­ni­ties to spend social time with my clients

Refer­rals

Although many advi­sors hold Client Advi­sory Board meet­ings as part of their refer­ral mar­ket­ing, I have always strug­gled with ask­ing my clients for refer­rals; although I do. How­ever, I was very sur­prised and found it most inter­est­ing that my clients did not wait for me to dis­cuss this topic; they raised it on their own!

One of my clients said they have been so impressed with our firm and the way that we man­age their invest­ments that they have been mean­ing to refer their friends and fam­ily to us, but haven’t had the oppor­tu­nity or venue to do so. They wanted to bring their friends and fam­ily mem­bers to a lunch or some other client events in order to make an intro­duc­tion and actu­ally show them first­hand what our firm is all about, rather than just rec­om­mend­ing our services.

Wow! That was an amaz­ing insight. With the help of these clients, I will be able to grow my prac­tice even faster than I could have ever imagined.

Action items (cont’d)

8. Hold “bring a friend” events specif­i­cally designed and mar­keted for clients to intro­duce oth­ers to the firm.

Your clients are your life­line, and you should be should lis­ten­ing to them. I have always believed that if you do right by your clients, lis­ten to their needs and desires, and do every­thing in your power to pro­vide them a supe­rior client expe­ri­ence, it will pay div­i­dends. Our Client Advi­sory Board expe­ri­ence has just rein­forced this belief for our firm.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Board, Aspx, Attendance, Best Practices, Board Meeting Agenda, Client Feedback, Cpa, Debra Taylor, Dramatic Gains, First Meeting, Free Trial, Local Country, Mechanics, Person Team, Portfolio Reviews, Practice Management, Private Room, Referrals, Startling Insights, Vested Interest
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

How to Attract Referrals Systematically

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

In my first three posts on our client engage­ment think tank, I set the stage for a dis­cus­sion of a refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan. What we found in our round­table dis­cus­sion with advi­sors is that many do not tar­get prospects par­tic­u­larly well, don’t use the tar­get mar­kets they have defined in their client onboard­ing process, and they don’t have a plan to attract refer­rals from that tar­get group. So now that these obser­va­tions are in the open, how do you write a plan to sys­tem­at­i­cally attract refer­rals? Here are a few basic principles:

1. Do an excep­tional job – this may seem obvi­ous, but many advi­sors I speak to want to know how to get refer­rals and do not ques­tion how the qual­ity of their work may be part of the cause for not receiv­ing more. Rather than ask “Why don’t my clients pre­fer?” Asked “What can I do better?”
2. Get client feed­back – In order to find out how good a job you’re doing, and what you could do bet­ter, have a sys­tem­atic way of obtain­ing feed­back from your clients. Whether through sur­veys or advi­sory boards, have a struc­tured way to ask ques­tions like How my doing? What am I really good at? What unique value do I bring to the relationship?
3. Define your tar­get mar­ket – Many advi­sors do not do enough work in defin­ing who exactly their best tar­get prospects are. Even many of the arti­cles I have read on tar­get mar­kets only offer the shal­low­est and most super­fi­cial advice. It is not enough to define the tar­get mar­ket by pro­fes­sion, a faith com­mu­nity, or an age range. And don’t even get me started on investable assets. You need to go beyond the obvi­ous and develop a more sub­tle and nuanced descrip­tion of the peo­ple you can ser­vice most effec­tively. One of the advi­sors I work with ini­tially told me his tar­get mar­ket was “women.” To be effec­tive, you need to have unique skills and ser­vices that con­nect with a group. There­fore, that group needs to be less than 52% of the pop­u­la­tion. Ulti­mately, we arrived at a descrip­tion that included “women who have just recently or are about to take con­trol of their fam­ily finances for the first time in their lives.” These are not the “sud­denly sin­gle” or the cases of “sud­den wealth.” Many of these women are still mar­ried, and the fam­ily net worth has not changed. One exam­ple is a woman whose hus­band was recently diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The fam­ily and assets have not changed, but she was fac­ing the fact that she was about to be in charge. It is a group of peo­ple with sim­i­lar needs, shared con­cerns, in need of sim­i­lar services.
4. Research the needs of your tar­get audi­ence – Now that you have deter­mined who your tar­get mar­ket is, con­sider what they might need from you do not cur­rently pro­vide. Per­form a “gap analy­sis” on your prac­tice ver­sus the ideal prac­tice for that tar­get audi­ence. Go back to your clients who are in that tar­get audi­ence and get their opin­ion on your research. Ask ques­tions like “if I wanted to work with other peo­ple just like you, what ser­vices would I add that would make me the ideal advi­sor?” Bring them the results of your gap analy­sis, and ask “do you think I should add ser­vices like these?”
5. Design your com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy – Once you have tai­lored your prac­tice to your tar­get mar­ket, design a strat­egy for com­mu­ni­cat­ing your area of spe­cialty and your spe­cial­ized ser­vices. Let your clients know specif­i­cally what kind of new client you are focus­ing on, and what spe­cial skills you bring to the table to work with them. Learn how to describe what makes you unique for that tar­get audi­ence so that you can clearly artic­u­late it to the peo­ple you meet. Let peo­ple know that you worked with your best clients to tai­lor your prac­tice to that tar­get group.

Clearly posi­tion your­self with your clients, your prospects, and the pub­lic. Come to own that par­tic­u­lar spot on people’s brains, and when some­one expresses a need for that kind of advi­sor they will nat­u­rally think of you

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Boards, Client Engagement, Client Feedback, Faith Community, Find Job, How To Get Referrals, Investable Assets, Marketing Plan, Population, Profession, Referral Marketing, Relationship, Surveys, Systematic Way, Tank, Target Group, Target Market, Target Markets, Target Prospects
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

The Immense Value of Client Feedback in Getting Referrals

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Last Fri­day, advi­sor coach Stephen Wer­sh­ing was inter­viewed by exec­u­tive coach Bruce Peters.

He dis­cussed the how to build a refer­ral mar­ket­ing pro­gram, and the impor­tance and immense value of client feed­back.

Lis­ten to the pod­casts (click the red play buttons):

Part 1

seg­ment 1

Part 2

seg­ment 2

In the first seg­ment Stephen Wer­sh­ing dis­cusses his work with AdvisorImpact’s Julie Lit­tlechild, who con­ducted a sur­vey of thou­sands of clients of advi­sors about their feel­ings con­cern­ing work­ing with a finan­cial advi­sor. Here are a few of the find­ings of that research:

1. Its impor­tant to have con­ver­sa­tions with clients that go beyond the scope of their portfolio
   • Those who had con­ver­sa­tions about finan­cial plan­ning, as opposed to just invest­ment plan­ning were much more satisfied.
   • Clients who were asked for feed­back gen­er­ally felt more impor­tant and felt more sat­is­fac­tion because they played a role in the advi­sor mak­ing changes to the prac­tice, and they felt more engaged, a sig­nif­i­cantly more dra­matic dri­ver of satisfaction.
   • Those were the peo­ple far more likely to refer new clients.
   • Just ask­ing for feed­back, and then doing some­thing about it, it makes them more com­mit­ted to you, and then imple­ment­ing it, that was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in how engaged they felt. It enhances the client’s per­spec­tive on the value they received from your pro­fes­sional service.
   • increases refer­ral traf­fic dra­mat­i­cally — mak­ing a client a part of your ‘advi­sory team’ cre­ates an excit­ing pre­text for con­ver­sa­tion with their asso­ciates and friends about how they were engaged
   • Stephen pro­vides more detail about this in the interview.
2. In the sec­ond seg­ment, Stephen dis­cusses the anatomy of the refer­ral, and the idea that there are many ways to attract refer­rals, and that ask­ing for them is the least effec­tive way.
   • When we refer, its a way for us to net­work, we do it for social cur­rency, its a way for us to expand our influ­ence, but the bot­tom line is that  we do it for OUR rea­sons, we don’t do it for their (the advisor’s reason).
   • When we are con­fronted by a friend’s chal­lenge, our instinct is to help them by refer­ring, or if we are asked “Who do you use?” we want to be in a posi­tion to use that to ben­e­fit our­selves by shar­ing our ben­e­fits with our friend.
   • When we are asked by some­one to sell the risk, as opposed to offer­ing the ben­e­fit, we become less will­ing, because the risk is ours - for exam­ple, if you send a friend to your mechanic, and the mechanic screws up, you risk being screwed up by that too.
   • If as an advi­sor, all you do is ask for refer­rals, what you are doing is forc­ing the client to ‘sell’ all the risk by putting the onus on them to per­form a task which risks dimin­ish­ing their per­cep­tion of you, and it puts a focus for them on the risk of send­ing their asso­ciates to you.
   • On the other hand, if you give the client the ben­e­fit of the expe­ri­ence of being engaged in the process, by ask­ing them for their advice, and then work­ing to vis­i­bly or ver­i­fi­ably imple­ment their sug­ges­tions for improve­ments to the way you do things, and you thank them and credit them for it, both pri­vately and in the pres­ence of your client advi­sory board, its their own sense of engage­ment that com­pels them to want to speak freely about their suc­cess with you as their advi­sor. Their enthu­si­asm about their expe­ri­ence with you fuels the drive to expand their influ­ence by refer­ring you.
   • The dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues in more detail dur­ing the interview.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 1 Segment, 2 Segment, Advisory Team, Anatomy, Bottom Line, Client Feedback, Conversations With Clients, Executive Coach, Financial Planning, Immense Value, Investment Planning, Julie Littlechild, Last Friday, Marketing Program, Pretext, Professional Service, Referral Marketing, Referral Program, Referral Traffic, Referrals, Service Increases
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

The Advisor Your Clients Crave

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Stephen Wershing’s pre­sen­ta­tion asks some very impor­tant ques­tions for advi­sors to con­tem­plate. Great ques­tions lead to great answers, and the last posi­tion you want to find your­self in, is with a prospec­tive client sit­ting in front of you, think­ing to them­selves, “So what?” or worse say­ing it out loud. The objec­tive of your client com­mu­ni­ca­tions should be to rein­force to your clients the “Why did I become your client?”, and to keep the “What have you done for me lately?” answers fresh.

Make a point of scan­ning through the pre­sen­ta­tion for the ques­tions. If you hover your pointer over “more,” you can full-screen the viewer.

The Advi­sor Your Clients Crave on Prezi

Stephen Wer­sh­ing, CFP® coaches finan­cial advi­sors to be more effec­tive and suc­cess­ful, and attract more clients and refer­rals, by devel­op­ing more client-connected and client-driven prac­tices. His process of col­lect­ing sys­tem­atic and objec­tive client feed­back and using it to reori­ent an advisor’s prac­tice effec­tively engages an advisor’s best clients to drive the strate­gic plan of the busi­ness. He con­sults finan­cial prac­ti­tion­ers on many prac­tice man­age­ment issues, includ­ing strate­gic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, client advi­sory boards, and imple­ment­ing tech­nol­ogy. Read more from the author/contributor here.

Source: Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Boards, Cfp, Client Communications, Client Feedback, Contributor, Differentiation, Driven Practice, Financial Advisors, Financial Practitioners, Implementing Technology, Nbsp, Objective, Pointer, Practice Management Issues, Presentation, Prospective Client, Referrals, Relationship, Scanning, Strategic Plan
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

The Conversation is the Relationship

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

The num­ber of refer­rals finan­cial advi­sors receive from clients is directly related to how often they meet with clients and what they dis­cuss besides their port­fo­lio when they do.

David Whyte, in works like his book The Three Mar­riages, makes a point about suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships. Two peo­ple talk­ing about what they hope for, expect, and accom­plish together are not hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about their rela­tion­ship, the con­ver­sa­tion is the rela­tion­ship.

So it is with finan­cial advi­sors, accord­ing to the arti­cle “Secrets of Refer­rals” in Finan­cial Plan­ning mag­a­zine this month by Julie Lit­tlechild. The arti­cle describes the con­clu­sions of her soon to be released study Anatomy of a Referral.

Her research shows that the kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion an advi­sor has with clients has a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on whether those clients become “engaged.” In her prior research, she estab­lished that engaged clients pro­vide prac­ti­cally all an advisor’s referrals.

“Engaged clients have a deep rela­tion­ship with their advi­sor” she writes. That rela­tion­ship grows out of keep­ing clients focused and on track toward their goals, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship, and solic­it­ing client feed­back on the kind of expe­ri­ence they want.  So, it is enor­mously impor­tant to dis­cuss a broad range of clients con­cerns dur­ing meet­ings tak­ing a long view.  And an objec­tive process of obtain­ing sys­tem­atic feed­back, includ­ing sur­veys and client advi­sory boards, is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of your client ser­vice plan.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the right type and fre­quency is, in large part, the rela­tion­ship. And main­tain­ing that rela­tion­ship is the most direct path to engaged clients and more referrals.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Boards, Client Feedback, Communication, Conclusions, Critical Component, David Whyte, Financial Advisors, Financial Planning Magazine, Julie Littlechild, Leadership, Prior Research, Referral, Referrals, Relationship, Significant Influence, Study Anatomy, Successful Relationships, Surveys, Systematic Feedback
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off