When Clients Make You Livid …

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Recently I read an arti­cle by Don Con­nelly, a long-time con­sul­tant to advi­sors in the US.

An advi­sor got a call from a sig­nif­i­cant client who was really upset about an invest­ment that hadn’t worked out. This client had a long his­tory of being emo­tional … on this call he got so worked up that he accused the advi­sor of hav­ing rec­om­mended that invest­ment because he got paid bet­ter on it than other alternatives.

The advi­sor got livid. He told the client that he didn’t like to have his pro­fes­sion­al­ism ques­tioned and they began yelling at each other over the phone. And ulti­mately they more or less ended up fir­ing each other.

Set­ting boundaries

Let’s be clear, I don’t think any­one should allow them­selves or their staff to be abused by clients. Unfor­tu­nately, there are some peo­ple out there who are bul­lies — that’s their nature and they are unlikely to change. And, if you find your­self deal­ing with some­one like that, I rec­om­mend you fig­ure out how to part com­pany with that client.

I’ve talked to advi­sors with large clients so abu­sive that every time they had to call them or meet with them they got a sick feel­ing. When they finally parted com­pany with them it was a huge load off their shoul­ders — as a result they became more pro­duc­tive in other parts of their prac­tice and almost always ended up replac­ing that rev­enue more quickly than they’d expected.

Count­ing to three

So we’re not talk­ing about clients who are in that cat­e­gory. But let’s sup­pose you have a client that may be emo­tional and some­times dif­fi­cult but who you ulti­mately want to hang on to.

And let’s sup­pose they say some­thing on the phone that upsets you, per­haps some­thing like: “I don’t know why I’m pay­ing all these fees for atro­cious performance.”

When a client says some­thing that pushes your but­tons, con­sider doing two things.

First, before respond­ing count qui­etly to three, so that you don’t say some­thing that you’ll regret.

And those three sec­onds of silence some­times do one other thing — some­times it lets clients know that they have crossed the line and they’ll apol­o­gize right then and there.

Estab­lish­ing a per­sonal connection

Sec­ond, If a client says “I don’t know why I’m pay­ing fees for this crappy per­for­mance”, I sug­gest you respond with some­thing like:

“I can under­stand that you’re upset with your per­for­mance. This is some­thing we need to talk about fur­ther.  I won­der whether we could sched­ule a time to sit down in the next two or three weeks to dis­cuss this.”

That does a num­ber of things. First, it gives the client a chance to calm down.  Sec­ond, again in some cases it lets them know that they’ve crossed the line.

And finally, emo­tional con­ver­sa­tions are almost always bet­ter con­ducted face to face. So the chances are much bet­ter that by talk­ing about this in per­son you’ll have a bet­ter outcome.

Mak­ing meet­ings productive

Get­ting clients to open up about how they feel should be your top pri­or­ity… your main goal should be to ask ques­tions and get clients talk­ing, both so you can bet­ter under­stand where they’re com­ing from but also so they feel heard.

At the end of that con­ver­sa­tion, you might fin­ish with some­thing like:

“First of all, thanks for tak­ing the time to talk about the issues that are both­er­ing you. What else is on your mind that I should know about?”

After giv­ing clients a chance to respond, con­tinue on:

“For a part­ner­ship to work, it has to work for both of us.

So I guess I have two questions.

First of all, do we both want to con­tinue work­ing together?

And if we do, how do we ensure that we have a rela­tion­ship that is pro­duc­tive and that works for both of us?”

This con­ver­sa­tion won’t always be easy … but by being clear with clients that rela­tion­ships have to work for you as well as for them, you’ll sig­nif­i­cantly increase your chances of cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able, sat­is­fy­ing part­ner­ship with clients.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

Turning Market Woes into Prospecting Opportunities

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

The last few weeks have been the most volatile in mem­ory, bring­ing new mean­ing to the phrase “bungee markets”.

My recent posts have focused on the need for proac­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with clients.

In the per­fect world, you would have had con­ser­v­a­tive port­fo­lios with large cash bal­ances going into the last twelve months. Real­is­ti­cally, few advi­sors can hon­estly make that claim — but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the oppor­tu­nity to gain new clients in the cur­rent mar­ket conditions.

Ear­lier this week, I got a call from an advi­sor who had dili­gently con­tacted clients over the sum­mer — since last spring he’s made face to face and tele­phone meet­ings with all his key clients a pri­or­ity. He’s also sent out let­ters and emails, orga­nized two con­fer­ence calls and hosted lun­cheon and evening ses­sions for clients.

His ques­tion: In addi­tion to focus­ing on talk­ing to key clients through the mar­ket tur­moil, what can he do to attract new clients?

His­tory shows more clients move in bad mar­kets rather than good ones. If you’re in a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to this advi­sor, where you’ve done most of the right things over the past while, you have a unique oppor­tu­nity to cap­i­tal­ize on the time you’ve invested by lever­ag­ing your client com­mu­ni­ca­tion to talk to prospects.

Clearly, your pri­mary focus these days should be on exist­ing clients. That said, once you’ve done a solid job with the peo­ple you’re work­ing with right now, the best use of the last hour or two in a week won’t nec­es­sar­ily be more con­tact to exist­ing clients.

Instead, direct that time against prospects — we know that many clients aren’t sat­is­fied with the con­tact from their advi­sors through recent mar­ket events. In light of that, con­sider two strate­gies — one focused on exist­ing clients, the sec­ond on com­mu­ni­cat­ing directly with prospects.

Exist­ing clients

Refer­rals con­tinue to be key in attract­ing new clients. At the end of a con­ver­sa­tion with clients, you could say: “Given the chal­leng­ing mar­kets over the last while, talk­ing to clients like you has been my first pri­or­ity. How do you feel about the level of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you’ve received from me over the past while?”

Assum­ing you get a pos­i­tive response con­tinue: “I’m glad you feel good about the con­tact, even if mar­kets haven’t been coop­er­at­ing through this. Of late, there has been lots of media cov­er­age about investors who haven’t heard from their advi­sors and are think­ing about mak­ing a change as a result. Given the work I’ve done, I’m hop­ing to have the oppor­tu­nity to talk to some of those people.”

How you con­tinue at that point depends on what you’ve done to stay in front of clients — for example:

“Can you think of one or two friends or col­leagues at work who might be inter­ested in receiv­ing the last mar­ket com­men­tary I sent you?”

“Are there one or two peo­ple you work with who might be inter­ested in com­ing along to the lun­cheon ses­sion at my office you’re going to be attend­ing next week?”

“Can you think of one of your friends who might be inter­ested in lis­ten­ing to the con­fer­ence call we con­ducted last week”

“Do you know one per­son in par­tic­u­lar who might be inter­ested in talk­ing to me, per­haps some­one who has com­plained to you about lack of con­tact from their advisor?”

Or if you’re look­ing for a more low key approach, sim­ply say:

“Based on the team I have in place, over the next year I have capac­ity for ten to fif­teen addi­tional clients. Should you be talk­ing to a friend or col­league in the next while who is unhappy with their advi­sor and think­ing about mak­ing a change, I would be happy to sit down with them and dis­cuss their situation.”

While less likely to prompt an imme­di­ate response, at least this con­ver­sa­tion plants a seed in your client’s mind.

Note that hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions entails addi­tional min­utes at the end of a meet­ing — you can get a big return for a small invest­ment of time.

Prospects

While it’s cer­tainly pos­si­ble to ini­ti­ate a con­ver­sa­tion with a prospec­tive client from a stand­ing start, the odds of suc­cess are much bet­ter if you’ve built cred­i­bil­ity and famil­iar­ity with a prospect over the past months or years.

If you’re talked to some­one in the past, now is the time to cap­i­tal­ize on the things you’ve done to pro­vide direc­tion and guid­ance to clients over the recent while.

Call up prospects you’ve been cul­ti­vat­ing and say some­thing like:

“In light of recent mar­ket events, I’m call­ing to see if you’re inter­ested in sit­ting down for 20 to 30 min­utes to do two things.

First, I’d like to quickly take you through the advice I’ve given to clients over the past while through meet­ings, phone calls and my writ­ten mar­ket reviews (adding in any­thing else you’ve done).

And sec­ond, if you’re inter­ested, I’d be happy to talk about your own sit­u­a­tion and per­haps pro­vide you with a sec­ond opin­ion on how your port­fo­lio is posi­tioned given the cur­rent mar­ket cir­cum­stances and prospects for the period ahead.”

Even if the prospect doesn’t want to meet, you can still advance your cause by offer­ing access to the mate­r­ial you’ve pro­vided to your clients.

Not every prospec­tive client will have a pos­i­tive response to this over­ture and those who do respond pos­i­tively may take a while to become clients — but by hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions you will plant seeds that will pay div­i­dends in future.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Cash Balances, Client Communication, Current Conditions, Current Market, Evening Sessions, Face To Face, Job, Last Spring, Luncheon, Market Turmoil, Memory, Perfect World, Phrase, Portfolios, Priority, Prospects, Referrals, Twelve Months, Woes
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

The Benefits Of Being In The Learning Mode: Can You Hear Your Clients?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

The Ben­e­fits Of Being In The Learn­ing Mode: Can you hear your clients?

by Stephen Wershing

If you want greater share of wal­let and more refer­rals, peri­od­i­cally you need to be lis­ten­ing and act­ing on feed­back. When it is time to receive that feed­back, it is crit­i­cal that you be in the “learn­ing mode”. When I facil­i­tate client advi­sory boards, I coach advi­sors to have a Zen mind. I encour­age them to be in the state of open­ness. It is a lit­tle like prac­tic­ing a form of med­i­ta­tion called mind­ful­ness – accept ideas as they arrive, exam­ine them with­out judg­ment, per­haps set them aside for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, and move onto the next suggestion.

Get­ting into and stay­ing in the learn­ing mode is hard. As humans, we have a reflex­ive ten­dency to respond to ques­tions with answers. Com­pound­ing that, we are in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing answers. It is our job to share our exper­tise and tell peo­ple what to do. There are times, how­ever, when we need to switch roles and get feed­back on what we’re doing. If we want to improve our prac­tices, we need our clients’ guid­ance. And in that sit­u­a­tion, answer­ing does not help. What do you learn when you answer? Noth­ing. How do you get bet­ter when you answer? You don’t.

Always seek value in these inter­ac­tions. Ask what can I learn from this client? What can I learn from this sit­u­a­tion? Look for ques­tions to ask. If you are asked a ques­tion, try fol­low­ing the answer with another ques­tion. If pos­si­ble, ask a ques­tion instead of answer­ing. Here are some examples:

Before I answer that, what about this is impor­tant to you?

What would it mean to you if I could do that?

What would you say is the biggest con­cern you have that is prompt­ing that ques­tion? (Which is a less threat­en­ing way of ask­ing “why do you ask?”).

The need to dis­cuss this was high­lighted by a con­ver­sa­tion I had with an advi­sor yes­ter­day. We were dis­cussing the agenda for his first client advi­sory board meet­ing. He said “I’m not sure what to put on the agenda, I don’t know what they want to hear about.” My response was that a meet­ing like this was not about what they wanted to hear, it is about what they have to say.

There is a time to answer. When it is a time to lis­ten and the clients turn to speak, the longer you can stay in the learn­ing mode, the more your clients will tell you how to do more busi­ness with them and how you can attract more clients like them.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Advisory Board, Advisory Boards, Agenda, Board Meeting, Coach, Guidance, Job, Judgment, Meditation, Openness, Providing Answers, Questions With Answers, Referrals, Share Of Wallet, Suggestion, Tendency, Zen Mind
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

To Connect, Communicate Solutions, NOT Methods

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Peo­ple care less about what you do and more about what they get.

When I asked advi­sors what they do, or what value they rep­re­sent, too many describe the process they uti­lize and not enough describe solu­tion they deliver. Peo­ple won’t send you a refer­ral because you have a cus­tomized finan­cial plan­ning process and eval­u­ate indi­vid­ual goals and gen­er­ate rec­om­men­da­tions tai­lored to client spe­cific needs, and they won’t send you a refer­ral because you care­fully mon­i­tor rela­tion­ships between mar­kets and rebal­ance port­fo­lios based on pro­pri­etary pro­to­cols. They will pro­vide a refer­ral beause you pro­vide a solu­tion to a prob­lem their friend has. Peo­ple care less about what you do and more about what they get.

I believe the most pow­er­ful descrip­tions of the value advi­sors offer encap­su­late the ben­e­fit a tar­get prospect real­izes by work­ing with them. This requires, first, that you have a prac­ti­cal and well defined tar­get mar­ket, but that’s another post. Con­sider describ­ing what you do worded as a solu­tion from the client’s point of view. Com­plete this sen­tence “Peo­ple like [describe tar­get prospect] come to me for [solu­tion that tar­get mar­ket requires]. Con­sider these possibilities:

Cor­po­rate exec­u­tives fac­ing retire­ment in the next three years come to me because I show them the right choice on their retire­ment plan distributions.

Sin­gle pro­fes­sional moth­ers come to me to learn how to bal­ance the demands of rais­ing kids with the abil­ity to afford college.

Peo­ple who have saved enough to take care of them­selves and want to use their sav­ings to leave a mark on the world come to us to plan their legacy.

You can teach your clients state­ments of value like these, and they will repeat them to oth­ers when pro­vid­ing you a referral.

Don’t worry about answer­ing the ques­tion “What do you do” with a sen­tence that starts out by describ­ing your tar­get client. You may think the per­son who asked you the ques­tion wants you to be the sub­ject of the sen­tence, but you can much more effec­tively get their atten­tion by describ­ing the per­son you spe­cial­ize in – espe­cially if it is them.

When I ask advi­sors what they do, most often I hear ver­sions of “I help peo­ple reach their finan­cial goals” or “I man­age people’s port­fo­lios to help reduce risk.”  Or “I give peo­ple peace of mind”. These are usu­ally too gen­eral to be use­ful. And the big­ger prob­lem is that I don’t think of my prob­lems in those terms. I have just started a new busi­ness with one child in col­lege, and am newly mar­ried, work­ing on con­sol­i­dat­ing two house­holds and have a three-year-old in the house for the first time in 14 years. You are NOT going to give me peace of mind.

Peo­ple will come to get a solu­tion, not to get a process. And peo­ple will remem­ber to refer you because a friend men­tions a prob­lem that your client can plug your solu­tion into, not because they like your process or because you have pro­vided them returns to keep up with the mar­ket (even if it’s with lower volatility).

If you stand for process you are a tech­ni­cian. If you rep­re­sent a solu­tion, you will attract clients and refer­rals who need a prob­lem solved.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Answering The Question, Benefit, Corporate Executives, Financial Planning, Legacy, People, Point Of View, Portfolios, Possibilities, Proprietary Protocols, Raising Kids, Referral, Relationships, Retirement Plan Distributions, Right Choice, Target Client, Target Market, Worry
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Traps that Chew Up Your Day

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Time has always been the scarcest resource for suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sors. But given all the demands today, it’s essen­tial that advi­sors make max­i­mum use of their workday.

Three Com­mon traps

There are three com­mon traps for advi­sors when it comes to how they spend their day.

Trap one: Being reactive

The first big trap is not being proac­tive in man­ag­ing time. For many advi­sors, rather than man­ag­ing their day, their day man­ages them — as a result advi­sors are spend­ing most of their time react­ing to events.

Trap two: How you use your time

Sec­ond is fail­ing to focus on the high­est and best uses of time.

Quite sim­ply, too many advi­sors get bogged down in stuff that is low value and don’t spend enough time on their high­est value activities.

Those high value activ­i­ties will vary with the advisor.

Typ­i­cally, advi­sors need to spend some time on team man­age­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, on port­fo­lio research, on deal­ing with admin and client ser­vice issues and on con­tin­u­ing education.

But gen­er­ally, these aren’t the activ­i­ties dri­ving the suc­cess of a business.

Rather the things that make advi­sors excel typ­i­cally fall into two cat­e­gories — first, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing clients and sec­ond, either talk­ing to prospec­tive clients or doing things that will facil­i­tate talk­ing to prospec­tive clients.

Trap three: No con­sis­tent routine

The third trap is not hav­ing a con­sis­tent rou­tine for each day. With­out a con­sis­tent rou­tine, it’s all too easy to get side­tracked and to have your day get away from you.

How advi­sors are spend­ing their time now

Cerulli Asso­ciates is a lead­ing firm based in Boston spe­cial­iz­ing in research for the finan­cial indus­try.

Late last year, they pub­lished a sur­vey on how advi­sors spent their time in 2009.

What Cerulli found was that the aver­age advi­sor spent 27% of their day deal­ing with exist­ing clients and 16% with prospec­tive clients.

So that was just over 40% spent on these high­est value activ­i­ties, which of course left almost 60% spent on lower value activities.

These lower value activ­i­ties included 11% of advi­sors’ time on client ser­vice issues and then between 7 and 10% of their day in five other areas, includ­ing research and due dili­gence, trad­ing and asset man­age­ment, office admin­is­tra­tion, train­ing and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and compliance.

I was struck by two things in particular.

First, the time spent on research and due dili­gence and trad­ing and asset man­age­ment aver­aged about 17% — for some advi­sors it was much more, for oth­ers much less.

Advi­sors have to take a very hard look at their value propo­si­tion and where they bring unique value to clients — and if it’s not related to the invest­ment selec­tion process, then take a very hard look at how much time they’re spend­ing in this area.

Sec­ond, I was also sur­prised by the 11% of the aver­age advisor’s week spent on client ser­vice related issue — that’s four hours a week, almost 200 a year.

In some cases, advi­sors have no choice but to get involved but as much as pos­si­ble you need to del­e­gate lower value activ­i­ties, even if it ini­tially takes a bit of extra time to explain something.

Putting a value on your time

Let’s sup­pose you buy into the notion that you need to del­e­gate every­thing you can out­side of high value activities.

As part of that, you should put a value on your time, say $40 or $50 an hour or per­haps more — and using that as a guide­line for decid­ing whether to do some­thing your­self or to hire some­one to do it.

If I can hire some­one for $12 or $15 an hour to do fil­ing, even it takes them twice as long as it does me, if my hourly rate is $40 or $50, it still makes sense to do this.

Improv­ing the return on your day

A good place to start is by get­ting a han­dle on where you spend your time currently.

For one week, track how you’re spend­ing your time in 15 or 30 minute incre­ments, putting that time block into com­mon categories.

Here’s one pos­si­ble list of com­mon activ­i­ties to assign each time block to:

Clients

• Prepa­ra­tion for meet­ings or calls
• Meet­ings (includ­ing travel)
• Phone calls
• Client ser­vice issues
• Prepar­ing for and con­duct­ing client sem­i­nars and workshops
• Other client activity

Prospects

• Prepa­ra­tion for meet­ings or calls
• Meet­ings with prospects
• Phone calls with prospects
• Prepar­ing and con­duct­ing prospect sem­i­nars and workshops
• Pro­file build­ing activity
• Vol­un­teer activity
• Other prospect activity

Office and admin

• Plan­ning weekly and daily schedule
• For­mal team meetings
• Infor­mal team communication
• Office admin
• Head office calls and meetings
• Other office activity

Com­pli­ance

• Research and pro­fes­sional development
• Daily read­ing
• Attend­ing man­ager pre­sen­ta­tions / roadshows
• Edu­ca­tion sessions
• Other read­ing and prof development

Other

Once you’ve done that, you need to sum­ma­rize the results and ask if this is con­sis­tent with focus­ing on the high­est and best uses of your time.

If not, con­sider block­ing out time in your cal­en­dar for high pri­or­ity activ­i­ties, whether it be call­ing clients you haven’t spo­ken with for awhile or con­tact­ing a prospect that you’re over­due to talk with.

Quite sim­ply, if you block out time for them in your cal­en­dar, these activ­i­ties are much more likely to happen.

In the process, you’ll see a dra­matic increase in the return from the time you spend on your business.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Boston, Consistent Routine, Continuing Education, Day Time, Day Trap, Excel, Financial Advisors, Maximum, Portfolio Research, Proactive, Prospective Clients, Stuff, Team Management, Traps, Workday
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

The Single Best Way to Start a Client Meeting

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

What does it take for a meet­ing with a key client to be successful?

Answer­ing that ques­tion requires you to first quan­tify how you mea­sure success.

Here are three alter­na­tive definitions:

• 1. First and fore­most, did the clients agree to move for­ward on at least one thing that will advance their agenda , mov­ing them towards their goals and leav­ing them bet­ter positioned?

• 2. Did the clients agree to move for­ward on at least one item that that will advance your agenda and leave you bet­ter off?

The list of pos­si­ble items here is lengthy, for example:

• A shift in your com­pen­sa­tion model
• Con­sol­i­dat­ing accounts they have elsewhere
• Agree­ing to deal with one of your team mem­bers on day to day issues instead of call­ing you
• Open­ing the door to talk­ing about needs that you’re not deal­ing with cur­rently (so insur­ance if you only have their invest­ments, invest­ments if you only have their insurance)
• Find­ing a way to get to know their kids bet­ter and poten­tially to begin work­ing with their children
• Intro­duc­tions to fam­ily mem­bers or their accountant
• Refer­rals to col­leagues at work

• 3. In the process, was your bond with these clients strength­ened? Did they walk away feel­ing bet­ter about your depth of knowl­edge and pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the extent to which you truly care about their long term suc­cess, beyond the rev­enue you gen­er­ate from their account? Did they leave say­ing to them­selves: “Am I ever glad that Dan’s my finan­cial advisor”

Shap­ing your conversation

I’m going to sug­gest that depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, a meet­ing can be suc­cess­ful with­out spe­cific actions taken to advance your clients’ agenda or your agenda, but it’s impos­si­ble to have a truly suc­cess­ful meet­ing unless clients walk away feel­ing bet­ter about your rela­tion­ship. Even in tough mar­kets like we saw dur­ing the global finan­cial cri­sis, if clients don’t walk out of a meet­ing more con­fi­dent than they felt when they walked in, the meet­ing wasn’t a success.

I recently got a call from an advi­sor who’d attended one of my work­shops about a year ago and who’s a reg­u­lar reader of these articles.

Over the past year, she’s imple­mented a num­ber of ideas and feels that her meet­ings are much more pro­duc­tive as a result:

• 1. Before call­ing a client to sched­ule a meet­ing, she reviews her files and writes down her goals for the meet­ing, one or two things she hopes to achieve that will leave the clients bet­ter off and advance their agenda and also one thing that will leave her bet­ter off, advanc­ing her agenda.

• 2. When set­ting up the meet­ing, she starts by ask­ing clients what ques­tions they’d like to cover, then adds her own items to deal with (often emerg­ing from those goals she’s writ­ten down) and from that cre­ates an agenda, which she emails to clients before­hand and which is tabled at the start of the meeting.

I encour­age advi­sors to leave the line beside the first item blank and to say “You’ll note that he first item on the agenda is blank. That’s for any ques­tions that have come up since we set the meet­ing up or any­thing else that you’d like to talk about that’s not on the agenda.”

• 3. In devel­op­ing the meet­ing agenda, she fac­tors in some of the research I’ve writ­ten about on the “peak-end effect”. This research sug­gests that what shapes client rec­ol­lec­tions of any expe­ri­ence the most are the “peaks” — the highs and the lows — and what hap­pens at the very end. As a result, she struc­tures the agenda to be sure to end on a high note.

“What should I know about?”

This advi­sor has also incor­po­rated the idea of leav­ing the first agenda item blank, but after ask­ing clients about what else they’d like to dis­cuss that’s not on the agenda, she’s added another ques­tion of her own.

“At that point, I ask clients what’s hap­pened in their lives since we last met that I should know about, whether good or bad.

I have about 150 client meet­ings a year. About 95% of the time I don’t hear any­thing new or I hear great news about pro­mo­tions or buy­ing a vaca­tion home or their kids get­ting uni­ver­sity schol­ar­ships or per­haps expect­ing chil­dren them­selves. In those cases, we con­tinue on with the meet­ing, unless of course their good news has finan­cial impli­ca­tions we need to discuss.

Every cou­ple of months, though, the answer causes our meet­ing to move in an entirely dif­fer­ent direc­tion … I hear about health or work issues with them or fam­ily mem­bers or kids strug­gling with school or careers. Some­times their issues have spe­cific finan­cial con­se­quences that we talk about. Often though, I’m just there to lis­ten and to empathize … it’s amaz­ing how often clients tell me they have no one to talk to about these issues.

At times, that con­ver­sa­tion ends up con­sum­ing our whole meet­ing and we resched­ule. Occa­sion­ally I’m able to point to clients or peo­ple I know who’ve run into an issue sim­i­lar to theirs and ask if they’d like me to find out whether that other per­son would be will­ing to talk about their expe­ri­ence. And where clients are really strug­gling and need more help, I have a cou­ple of psy­chol­o­gists who I refer peo­ple to.

I know this won’t be every advisor’s cup of tea … most of the guys in my branch really don’t want to get into the soft stuff with clients.

But for me, there are four ben­e­fits to start­ing off meet­ings with that ques­tion — ‘What’s hap­pened in your lives since we last met that I should know about, whether good or bad?’

First, I think it sends a pos­i­tive sig­nal about my con­cern for every­thing going on in my clients’ lives.

Sec­ond, it helps me do my job bet­ter, by ensur­ing that plans reflect clients’ cur­rent circumstances.

Third, where clients have pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing in their lives, which is most of the time, I’m able to con­grat­u­late them and talk about their good news a bit, I find that estab­lishes a pos­i­tive tone.

And finally, where clients are deal­ing with tough issues, I think it’s part of my role as their finan­cial advi­sor to make sure I know about that and to sup­port them as much as I can.

This advi­sor is right when she says that this approach won’t be a fit for every advi­sor. But it’s still worth think­ing about how you’re going to begin client meet­ings to max­i­mize the chances of a suc­cess­ful out­come, how­ever it is that you define suc­cess. And per­haps this advi­sor will inspire you to apply your own cre­ativ­ity on the ques­tion of the best way to start client meetings.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Accountant, Circumstances, Colleagues, Compensation Model, Definitions, Extent, Family Members, Finding A Way, Global Financial Crisis, Insurance, Introductions, Investments, Measure Success, Professionalism, Referrals, Relationship, Team Members, Term Success
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off

Working Smart vs Working Hard: Your Most Important Resolution for 2012

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

There are lots of res­o­lu­tions advi­sors could make in 2012. But here’s the one that for many advi­sors could have the high­est pay­off – and that’s to work smarter this year, by build­ing reg­u­lar think­ing time into your business.<br>

We’ve all become incred­i­bly busy with more demand­ing clients and an always-on world of email and black­berry. As a result, most advi­sors are work­ing hard but they aren’t nec­es­sar­ily work­ing smart. And the only way to ensure you’re work­ing smart is to con­sis­tently step back and take a bit of time to think hard about your business.

Quar­terly think­ing time

This process starts by hav­ing writ­ten goals in place for the next three to five years and a writ­ten plan of action for the year ahead on how you’re going to achieve those goals. That writ­ten 12 month plan is a good start­ing point but that’s all it is unless you sched­ule reg­u­lar time into your rou­tine to review, update and mod­ify that plan.

This should hap­pen at four lev­els – quar­terly, monthly, weekly and daily.

For your quar­terly think­ing time, you should sit down for half a day with your team or two or three other advi­sors that you respect and trust.

And in that half a day, you ask your­self a num­ber of key ques­tions:

What were my goals for the last quar­ter and how did I do against those goals?

What worked in the last quar­ter, what didn’t and what can I learn from the last quar­ter? In other words what I am I going to do dif­fer­ently in the next three months based on what hap­pened in the last three months?

And finally, what are my goals for the next quarter?

Monthly, weekly … and daily

For your monthly think­ing time, you go through exactly the same review process … except you do it more briefly, tak­ing an hour or so rather than half a day. But you ask your­self the same fun­da­men­tal ques­tions, how am I doing against my goals, what’s worked and what hasn’t , what am I going to do dif­fer­ently next month as a result.

For your weekly think­ing time, you’re look­ing at ten min­utes to review with your team what hap­pened last week, again what worked, what didn’t , what can we learn from this.

A few years back I talked to a very suc­cess­ful advi­sor who for thirty years had taken ten min­utes every Sun­day night at 9 o’clock to review all his meet­ings in the week that had just passed and asked him­self what he needed to do dif­fer­ently based on that – and attrib­uted much of his suc­cess to that process.

Finally, for your daily think­ing time I sug­gest advi­sors either end each day or start each day by tak­ing two or three min­utes and ask­ing one key ques­tion – what can I learn from the day that just passed.

And then write down the answer.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Blackberry, Br, Email, Fundamental Questions, Goals, Good Starting Point, Half A Day, Last Quarter, Lt, Plan Ahead, Resolutions, Sit, Smart, Thinking Time, Three Months
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Communicate with Confidence

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

1. Open effec­tively. The vast major­ity of sales pro­pos­als start with infor­ma­tion about the seller’s com­pany. I have never fig­ured out the ratio­nale of this approach. Your prospect doesn’t care about you or your com­pany. They don’t want to know how long you have been in busi­ness, what awards you have won, or what other com­pa­nies you have worked with. Effec­tive pro­pos­als always high­light the prob­lem that the prospect is fac­ing and the impact that prob­lem has on their busi­ness. And they do this early. Not on page two, three or nine. On the first page. If you feel oblig­ated to include this type of infor­ma­tion place it near the end of the proposal.

2. Address their sit­u­a­tion early. An approach that I have found very effec­tive is to begin with a one para­graph sum­mary of my prospect’s sit­u­a­tion fol­lowed by the key objec­tives they want to achieve. This demon­strates that you have a good under­stand­ing of your prospect’s prob­lems and con­cerns. I like to state the objec­tives in bullet-point form because it is eas­ier to read and absorb.

3. Show the value. This does not mean expand­ing at great length about your solu­tion. Instead, it requires that you iden­tify exactly how your prospect will ben­e­fit by imple­ment­ing your solu­tion. A tech­nique I learned many years ago is to include sev­eral bul­let points with each point stat­ing a sep­a­rate value proposition.

4. Avoid corporate-speak or mar­ket­ing mumbo-jumbo. The best pro­pos­als are writ­ten in plain, easy-to-understand lan­guage. Many sales peo­ple (and mar­ket­ing depart­ments) think that it is impor­tant to use ten dol­lar words when a sim­ple word would suf­fice. Never, ever use ter­mi­nol­ogy that might be dif­fi­cult to under­stand. Although this is a sim­ple con­cept, too many sales peo­ple include word­ing or tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion that just isn’t nec­es­sary. I learned this les­son when I sub­mit­ted my first pro­posal many years ago. After earn­ing the busi­ness I asked my client why they chose me and she said, “Your pro­posal was easy to understand.”

5. Keep it brief. I once read a pro­posal for a sales train­ing pro­gram that spanned 24 pages. Deci­sion mak­ers are far too busy to read a long pro­posal. I under­stand that some pro­pos­als require a lot of infor­ma­tion and detail, espe­cially if you are rec­om­mend­ing a com­plex solu­tion. How­ever, the longer your pro­posal the more likely it is that your prospect will skim through it and flip ahead to the invest­ment. It is much more effec­tive to write a short, con­cise pro­posal and pro­vide back-up infor­ma­tion if needed.

6. Avoid the word “I” or “we”. The more times these two words show up in your pro­posal the more evi­dent it appears that the pro­posal is about you, not about your prospect or their busi­ness or com­pany. This also includes men­tion­ing your com­pany name. Keep your pro­posal focused on your prospect and use the word “you”.

7. Use titles or head­ings. This is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant if your pro­posal is rel­a­tively long although it is an effec­tive approach with short pro­pos­als too. Head­ings make it easy for your prospect to find key infor­ma­tion. Head­ing also break up the page and make your pro­posal eas­ier to read.

8. Include at least one tes­ti­mo­nial. Tes­ti­mo­ni­als remain one of the most effec­tive sales weapons and you need to incor­po­rate them into your pro­pos­als. I like to add these in my P.S. after my sig­na­ture although I know peo­ple who include sev­eral tes­ti­mo­ni­als through­out their proposals.

9. Include a sum­mary. Many peo­ple will skip the details of your pro­posal and flip to the last page. Effec­tive pro­pos­als include a bullet-point sum­mary of the ser­vices you will pro­vide to your prospect.

10. End with a call to action. I used to close my pro­pos­als with, “If you require any addi­tional infor­ma­tion please feel free to con­tact me.” Bor­ing! Tell the prospect what you want them to do next. By the way, the next steps should ALWAYS be dis­cussed BEFORE you write your proposal.

The pur­pose of a pro­posal is to demon­strate that you and your com­pany have the best solu­tion for the prospect’s prob­lem. Apply the con­cepts that were men­tioned in this arti­cle and stand out from your competition.

Kel­ley Robert­son helps sales pro­fes­sion­als and busi­nesses dis­cover new tech­niques to improve their sales and prof­its. Learn more at www​.Kel​ley​Robert​son​.com.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Bullet Point, Bullet Points, Confidence, Corporate Speak, Dollar Words, Good Understanding, Key Objectives, Marketing Departments, Mumbo Jumbo, Paragraph Summary, Proposal, Rationale, Sales Proposals, Technical Information, Value Proposition
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Dan Ariely — The Upside Of Irrationality

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Make sure you watch this. Dan Ariely dis­cusses the virtue of irra­tional­ity, par­tic­u­larly the man­ner in which our irra­tional­ity serves us when it comes to the trust gap.

Dan Ariely and Dan Richards carry on a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion about human nature that is mate­r­ial to under­stand­ing the com­plex­ity of all deci­sion making.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Compendium, Complexity, Gap, Human Nature, Irrationality, Target, Trust Gap, Virtue
Posted in Dan Richards | Comments Off