The Final Step to Make Client Meetings Truly Successful

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Advi­sors invest a huge amount of energy on their client meet­ings, with a goal of hav­ing clients leave feel­ing pos­i­tive about their advi­sor and about their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. But many advi­sors miss on the final step to make meet­ings truly suc­cess­ful – a fol­low up let­ter or email that doc­u­ments what hap­pened and lays out next steps.

The arti­cle below first appeared in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US advi­sors. Writ­ten by a highly suc­cess­ful advi­sor, it sets out a six-step process for effec­tive follow-up com­mu­ni­ca­tion after meet­ings.  (Click here for a free 45-day trial to Horsesmouth

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 Ralph Adamo, MSFS, ChFC, CAP, CLU

Oct. 1, 2012

Send clients a writ­ten sum­mary after every meet­ing you have with them. Not only does it con­firm your con­ver­sa­tion, but it serves as a to-do list, his­tor­i­cal record, and a phys­i­cal reminder that you offer world-class ser­vice to those clients and prospects smart enough to hire you.

In our office, no client meet­ing passes with­out a follow-up sum­mary let­ter being drafted, edited, and sent to clients and prospects by either hard copy or email. This rou­tine is cru­cial to our efforts in a num­ber of ways:

• Many clients and prospects tell us they have gained con­fi­dence merely from know­ing that we cared enough to lis­ten, take notes, memo­ri­al­ize those notes, and play back the salient points in a sum­mary letter.
• As a group, the sum­mary let­ters build a chrono­log­i­cal pro­gres­sion of the dis­cus­sions and work achieved to date. I can­not tell you how many clients bring all the let­ters they’ve received over time to each suc­ces­sive meet­ing. They are using these let­ters as a his­tor­i­cal record as well as a to-do list of items still outstanding.
• We have the records of all client meetings—not just stored as notes to file, but notes that are in the client’s pos­ses­sion. Should there ever be an instance where we need to address a client com­plaint, we can quickly and eas­ily refer back to the sum­mary letters.

Let­ter format

So what exactly goes in the sum­mary let­ter? In our office, each let­ter includes:

1. An open­ing
2. High­lights of the meeting
3. Advi­sor action items
4. Client action items
5. Next meeting’s pro­posed agenda items
6. A clos­ing that con­firms the next meet­ing date

Let’s break it down here one com­po­nent at a time:

1. The opening

The first step is to clar­ify the rea­son why you are send­ing this cor­re­spon­dence. An exam­ple of this lan­guage is below:

I would like to express my sin­cere appre­ci­a­tion for the oppor­tu­nity to meet and visit with you on Tues­day morn­ing. I enjoyed our time spent and trust that what was shared did prove valu­able. Below are the sum­mary points from our last meeting:

~ or ~

I thor­oughly enjoyed our visit and con­ver­sa­tion the other after­noon. I felt that the objec­tives and con­cerns that you shared are con­sis­tent and highly com­pat­i­ble with our exist­ing approach to plan­ning in this area. In order to sum­ma­rize our meet­ing high­lights, I’m includ­ing the fol­low­ing bul­let points as a reflec­tion of our discussion:

Of course, it is per­fectly fine that you add open­ing pleas­antries or cor­dial salu­ta­tions in this stage. Per­son­al­iz­ing any of these sec­tions with your cus­tomized approach and lan­guage is always a good idea.

2. Dis­cus­sion highlights

I list the high­lights from the meeting’s dis­cus­sion in bullet-point fash­ion. I use bul­let points rather than para­graphs to bet­ter sep­a­rate ideas for reten­tion, reflec­tion, and ulti­mately action for both client and advi­sor alike. We always incor­po­rate the hard facts of the dis­cus­sion as well as the softer-issue top­ics that inevitably arise in client meetings.

For instance, we’ll include sum­mary feed­back on per­sonal items like the sta­tus of a cur­rent home remodel, a client’s per­sonal travel plans, fam­ily events, and recent indi­vid­ual mile­stones or accom­plish­ments, and so on.

Here’s an exam­ple of the items we would include from a meeting:

• We are happy to share in the cel­e­bra­tion of your upcom­ing 29th anniver­sary. Congratulations!
• You relayed to us that you have nego­ti­ated a con­trac­tor bud­get of $86,000 for the home improve­ment work. It’s your goal to have this work done in time to be mov­ing in by Labor Day, so as to alle­vi­ate any addi­tional house­hold expenses.
• We reviewed two alter­na­tive mod­els. The first: retir­ing with staged reduc­tions in expenses at 10-year inter­vals dur­ing retire­ment. And the sec­ond: retir­ing with level spend­ing assump­tions through­out retirement.
• You shared with us that you would like to meet and dis­cuss mov­ing your 403(b) and two IRA posi­tions to our invest­ment platform.
• We dis­cussed the chal­lenges you have been hav­ing with ABC Bank’s port­fo­lio accounts when try­ing to remove those funds and place them in your con­trol. We decided that prepar­ing ACAT trans­fer forms would be our next step. We will pre­pare those forms once we receive copies of the recent statements.
• We dis­cussed the port­fo­lio in light of the cash posi­tions within the defined-benefit and 401(k) retire­ment accounts. We are post­pon­ing any deci­sions sur­round­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of those funds until your company’s immi­nent launch.
• You shared with us that you pur­chased a house for your son while he’s com­plet­ing an intern­ship for his PhD at Notre Dame Uni­ver­sity. You paid $85,000 for the home, which you’ll be gift­ing to your son over the next three years.
• You con­firmed for us that you per­son­ally hold 100% of the note on Build­ing 1 in the LLC. You had shared with us that you and your wife con­tinue to dis­cuss fam­ily goals. Cur­rently you are in the process of sort­ing through your char­i­ta­ble con­cerns and the impor­tance of keep­ing the spirit of enter­prise and indus­try alive for your chil­dren as you embark on your life after the sale of your business.

Our goal is to show the client or prospect that we truly lis­tened. Our sum­mary let­ter illus­trates that we are com­mit­ted to the rela­tion­ship and deeply care about our clients and their future. You know the old say­ing “Clients don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.” The sum­mary let­ter helps us demon­strate our conviction.

3. Advi­sor action items

This sec­tion of the sum­mary let­ter serves two pur­poses. It com­mu­ni­cates to the client that we have listed the action items clearly, and it serves as a check­list for you and your staff to use to com­plete a course of action.

Advi­sor Action Items

• Com­plete enter­ing the data pro­vided in prepa­ra­tion for our next meeting.
• Pro­vide to you the Excel spread­sheet for enter­ing your bud­get details (look for that in a sep­a­rate email).
• Request from insur­ance car­rier ABC addi­tional in-force ledgers to review and advise.
• Review pen­sion and per­sonal port­fo­lio account pro­vid­ing analysis.
• Develop an invest­ment rec­om­men­da­tion for $500,000 from the sale of bank stock and commodities.

4. Client action items

In the next sec­tion of the sum­mary, we out­line the action items the client should take in between meet­ings.  In my expe­ri­ence, this one step does more than any other to com­mu­ni­cate the seri­ous­ness of the client’s role in the plan­ning process. It is amaz­ing to see how quickly our clients sup­ply needed items or take action based on the rec­om­men­da­tions in this check­list. Here is a sam­ple from one of our recent communications:

Client Action Items

• Please pro­vide an updated copy of your home owner and auto­mo­bile cov­er­ages along with the earth­quake pol­icy at your next con­ve­nience. Fax copy is fine. Send it to 949–955-XXXX.
• Con­tact insur­ance car­rier XYZ to mod­ify long-term-care pre­mium from quar­terly to annual mode; sub­mit­ting bal­ance of annual pre­mium presently may be required.
• Com­plete the Cash Flow Bud­get spread­sheet and pro­vide in advance of our next meeting.
• Please pro­vide the following:
  • Need cost basis for var­i­ous invest­ments in the ABC Bro­ker­age account (recent state­ment would suffice).
  • Ben­e­fit book­let from XYZ Employer.
  • Copy of pay­check stubs.
  • Tax return for 2011.

5. Next meet­ing agenda items

This is the step where art meets sci­ence. Before explain­ing this sec­tion of the sum­mary let­ter, let’s review the example:

Next Meet­ing Agenda

• Con­tinue to ver­ify accu­racy of infor­ma­tion rep­re­sented on the model.
• Will and trust discussion
• Port­fo­lio man­age­ment conversation
• Asset posi­tion­ing
• Are we demon­strat­ing suf­fi­cient value? What should/can be improved/eliminated to ele­vate your expe­ri­ence and level of sat­is­fac­tion with our service?
• Review process and engage­ment out­line in greater detail. Are we at the point to con­sider for­mal engagement?

Notice that we have included not merely facts on the list, but we are also sub­tly groom­ing clients and prospects by ask­ing them for feed­back. This step allows us to sys­tem­at­i­cally elicit input on how we are doing as a firm and how the client is expe­ri­enc­ing the process.

Since we offer every prospec­tive client at least two—and in many instances as many as three—meetings at no charge and no oblig­a­tion prior to any engage­ment, we sub­tly remind the prospec­tive client that we’re mov­ing  out of the “decision-free zone” and into the “fish or cut bait” stage where pay­ing for the coun­sel­ing is now com­ing to the fore. (Note, we only hold the sec­ond or third meet­ing if we earnestly believe  there is a fit between us and the prospect.)

6. Clos­ing paragraph

Here is where we invite ques­tions or con­cerns that may not have been expressed or ade­quately addressed.  The client may sug­gest edits, addi­tions, or even repri­or­i­tize the pro­posed agenda items.

Most impor­tant, we never con­clude a meet­ing with­out sched­ul­ing the next meet­ing. Get­ting the appoint­ment on the cal­en­dar is crit­i­cal to keep­ing the momen­tum going. Plus, just know­ing that we have to end every sum­mary let­ter with the next meet­ing date qui­etly reminds us to pull out the cal­en­dar as we wind down the cur­rent meet­ing. Here are a cou­ple exam­ples of our closing:

Our next meet­ing is sched­uled for Fri­day, Aug. 31, at 9 a.m. in your office. In the mean­time, if there are any ques­tions or con­cerns, please don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact me directly.

~ or ~

We came out of our meet­ing with the objec­tive of get­ting back together in the not-too-distant future. We ten­ta­tively set Tues­day, Aug. 28 at 3 p.m. for our next plan­ning meet­ing. The meet­ing with the trust and estates attor­ney will occur sep­a­rately. Our staff will coor­di­nate that meet­ing date.

Final hints

Here are some tips based on our expe­ri­ence that will give you a head start on the process of using these sum­mary letters.

• Develop a notepad for client meet­ings. We devel­oped a form that can quickly cap­ture some or all infor­ma­tion listed above. It helps us trans­late our notes and makes the sum­mary let­ter a breeze to pro­duce. In fact, if you take well-organized notes, you can hand your sheet to your staff and they can eas­ily pro­duce the sum­mary let­ter on their own, sav­ing you the step of dic­tat­ing or tran­scrib­ing. All you need to do is review the final let­ter. A sam­ple of our notepad is below (the to-do list areas are a bit longer on our actual notepad):

• Pro­duce a sum­mary let­ter for phone and online ses­sions. Clients may not attach the same degree of seri­ous­ness to a meet­ing that is not face to face, so send­ing a sum­mary let­ter lends a greater degree of grav­ity to the issues dis­cussed. In fact, it’s a good idea to pro­vide a sum­mary let­ter for all appoint­ments with clients and prospects, whether they take place by phone, online, or in person.
• Send the let­ter a cou­ple of days after the meet­ing. The sooner the let­ter arrives in the client’s hands, the bet­ter. Don’t let too much time pass, or your let­ter will lose its desired impact—and both you and your client will lose momentum.
• Keep send­ing. Once you start down this path with clients, you’ll have to keep it up. As you will soon see, your clients come to rely on these sum­mary let­ters as rou­tine. Before you know it, they will become a manda­tory com­po­nent of your client ser­vice and prospect­ing efforts—but the results will be well worth the effort involved.

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Tags: Aspx, Chfc, Client Meetings, Clu, Communication, Confidence, Email, Financial Situation, Follow Up Letter, Management Resource, Msfs, Physical Reminder, Play Back, Possession, Practice Management, Prospects, Ralph Adamo, Salient Points, Smart, World Class Service
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Optimize Your Client Year-End Reviews

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Opti­mize Your Client Year-End Reviews

by Rose­mary Smyth and Sara Gilbert

Year-end port­fo­lio reviews are around the cor­ner; as you start sched­ul­ing your client meet­ings take this oppor­tu­nity to lever­age the organic poten­tial in your busi­ness. Research shows us that today’s investor is seek­ing a deeper level of port­fo­lio review. Beyond returns and data, clients want to build a deep rela­tion­ship with their advisor.

The more you know about your clients, the eas­ier it is to pro­vide the prod­ucts that best suit their needs. Be curi­ous about their opin­ions and view­points, and make a habit of ask­ing them what they think and what is impor­tant to them. “Imag­in­ing your­self in your clients’ shoes is one way to fig­ure out what they need”, says Rose­mary Smyth, inter­na­tional busi­ness coach for finan­cial advisors.

Five tips to improve client ser­vice are:

1. Be fully present.
2. Estab­lish trust. Give hon­est answers and be straight­for­ward about what you can do.
3. Empathize with your clients. Imag­ine what they are going through, espe­cially dur­ing tough times.
4. Be patient. Even when you have answered the same ques­tion many pre­vi­ous times, answer it patiently.
5. Be open to learn­ing. There are always new ways to deal with clients.

Focus on each client as an unique indi­vid­ual that just wants to be seen, heard and under­stood. Per­son­al­ize your client ser­vice so that you are treat­ing them how they would like to be treated. Pay atten­tion to their body lan­guage as it can tell you what is not being said.

“Here are some use­ful tools you can eas­ily imple­ment to deepen your rela­tion­ship with clients and uncover busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties”, says Sara Gilbert, founder of Strate­gist in Montreal.

1. Put more struc­ture into client meetings.

Start using a meet­ing flow chart to get the most out of every client meet­ing and con­stantly find new ways to be of greater ser­vice to your clients:

• Inquire about their family
• Ask what’s on their mind, and about any sig­nif­i­cant changes since last meeting
• Review the port­fo­lio and investments
• Check for out­side invest­ments (offer sec­ond opinion)
• Dis­cuss other top­ics or con­cerns they may have
• Sum­ma­rize and present an action plan, invite them to an upcom­ing event
• Walk the client to the ele­va­tor and thank them for the meeting.

2. Use goal-driven client reviews.

Behind the mar­ket and the returns, there’s a per­son, a fam­ily and a busi­ness. Show your client you care beyond their invest­ment and let them guide you towards their per­sonal ambi­tions. Ask open-ended ques­tions, such as:

• What is your vision of an ideal retirement?
• Have you dis­cussed with your sig­nif­i­cant other his/her vision of retirement?
• What val­ues would you like to pass on to your chil­dren regard­ing money?
• Do you have con­cerns regard­ing the wealth trans­fer to your children?

3. Ask about their expectations.

As you can’t assume or guess your client’s sat­is­fac­tion level, ask open-ended ques­tions to show your clients you value their opinions.

• We are review­ing the effec­tive­ness of our port­fo­lio review meet­ings with our clients. How valu­able you find the report­ing we pro­vide? Is there enough infor­ma­tion? Does it clearly explain how your port­fo­lio per­formed? Why or why not?
• Are there ways we could improve the time­li­ness and effec­tive­ness of our responses?
• Are there ways we could improve our com­mu­ni­ca­tions? (Cite a spe­cific com­mu­ni­ca­tion piece such as invest­ment com­men­tary, mar­ket out­look or newsletter.)
• What are two or three ways our firm could improve how we serve you?

4. Offer addi­tional services.

If you want to become your client’s trusted advi­sor, you must con­stantly ele­vate the client expe­ri­ence and earn their trust.

• Pro­pose a com­plete finan­cial plan to fur­ther pre­serve their lifestyle that they have taken years to attain; and
• Offer insur­ance analy­sis to pro­tect their loved ones and to ensure they do not become a “bur­den” on their families.

There are great oppor­tu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the port­fo­lio review meet­ing; oppor­tu­ni­ties to deepen the client rela­tion­ship, to deliver excep­tion­ally per­son­alised ser­vice that dis­tin­guish you and to ele­vate your ser­vice, offer­ing help­ing them safely achieve their goals and objectives.

What will you do to lever­age the organic poten­tial in your business?

****

Rose­mary Smyth, MBA, CIM, FCSI, ACC, is an author, colum­nist and an inter­na­tional busi­ness coach for finan­cial advi­sors. She spent her career work­ing at lead­ing invest­ment firms before pur­su­ing her pas­sion for coach­ing. She lives in Vic­to­ria, BC. Visit her web­site at www​.rose​marys​myth​.com. You can email Rose­mary at: rosemary@rosemarysmyth.com

Sara Gilbert, FMA, FCSI, CSWP, is Founder and Busi­ness Con­sul­tant of Strate­gist Busi­ness devel­op­ment. She brings over 15 years of wealth man­age­ment indus­try expe­ri­ence to help wealth advi­sor develop and imple­ment busi­ness build­ing strate­gies. Visit her web­site at: www​.Strate​gist​.cc, you can reach her via email at: Sara.Gilbert@Strategist.cc

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Tags: Best Suit, Body Language, Business Coach, Business Research, Client Meetings, Financial Advisors, Honest Answers, International Business, Meetin, New Ways, Portfolio Reviews, Relationship With Clients, Rosemary, Sara Gilbert, Smyth, Strategist, Tough Times, Useful Tools, Viewpoints, Year End
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Why Your Sales Process No Longer Works—And What to Do About It

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

by Katharine Vessenes, of Vest­ment Advi­sors, via Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Kather­ine Vessenes

As a stu­dent of great finan­cial advi­sors and their sales processes, I have been for­tu­nate to actu­ally sit in on client meet­ings with some of the top finan­cial advi­sors in the coun­try. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when an $8 mil­lion dol­lar advi­sor closes the sale? It has been my priv­i­lege, as a prac­tice man­age­ment coach, to not only watch the great finan­cial advi­sors in action, but to even offer a few sug­ges­tions on how they might close more business.

Here is what I have learned, just this last sum­mer, as we coached two of the top advi­sors in the coun­try on man­ag­ing their prac­tice and improv­ing their sales practice:

A short­ened, quick sales process that was very effec­tive 10 years ago, is much less effec­tive today.

In 2000, it was not unusual for our firm, Vest­ment Advi­sors, to con­sult with $3 mil­lion finan­cial advi­sors who worked with the mid­dle mar­ket. Our goal was to use our prac­tice man­age­ment process to increase these advi­sors’ sales and build the value of their busi­ness. Every one of them got their sales process down to two meet­ings of an hour and a half each; three meet­ings were needed only in the rare case for higher-end or more com­pli­cated clients.

That kind of com­pressed, quick sales process was very effec­tive 10 years ago, but it is much less effec­tive in today’s wary eco­nomic cli­mate. Ten years ago, it was com­mon prac­tice. Not so today.

Today, many clients are not pre­pared to make a deci­sion at the sec­ond meeting.

Most clients haven’t yet built up a trust fac­tor with their finan­cial advi­sor by the sec­ond meet­ing. They are still skep­ti­cal. The rea­son: clients are fear­ful about chang­ing money man­agers, invest­ment styles, and advi­sors, even though they are in a lot of emo­tional pain.

Fur­ther­more, clients don’t like sit­ting for long meet­ings. They are busy, much busier than 10 years ago. They don’t have the time, energy, or atten­tion span to meet for two hours. Today, the shorter the meet­ings, the bet­ter for most clients.

Two of the advi­sors we coached this sum­mer had both length­ened their sales process to four shorter meet­ings. It was work­ing so well for them that their clos­ing ratios were far higher than we cur­rently are see­ing with other firms. In fact, they were prob­a­bly clos­ing 80% to 95%. These ratios are quite high, given the cur­rent market.

Here’s what’s cov­ered in each of the four meetings:

First meet­ing: Ori­en­ta­tion or “getting-to-know-you”

Time: 45 min­utes to an hour

The whole pur­pose in this meet­ing is to get a bet­ter feel for prospects, how they tick, and what they are look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship. As New Jer­sey advi­sor Paul Hart­line (not his real name) said to me, “When you have been in the busi­ness for 30 years, you can tell in that ini­tial meet­ing if you want them for a client or not.”

Most advi­sors who use a “get-to-know-you” meet­ing ask the client not to bring in any per­sonal finan­cial data. They feel it helps build trust and makes the client feel more comfortable.

Hart­line does this meet­ing in his office because he also wants new clients to get a feel for him. Hart­line is in a class-A space, and his office and staff show very well. The whole setup makes a great first impres­sion on prospects.

On the other hand, George Jack­son (also not his real name), from Seat­tle, does a first meet­ing that is all about the new client. Jack­son usu­ally con­ducts this meet­ing at a prospect’s office or even at his or her home. This lets them feel com­fort­able, lets him get to know them bet­ter, and he says the client then feels oblig­ated to come to George’s office for the next meet­ing as a social courtesy.

Sec­ond meet­ing: Data gathering

Time: 1 to 1½ hours

Dur­ing this meet­ing, the advi­sor gath­ers the data nec­es­sary to com­plete a finan­cial plan. Advi­sors are review­ing all the invest­ments, insur­ance, and other data that will be needed to make recommendations.

Paul does this meet­ing in the client’s home. He says he likes to see how the clients live. It lets him know if they are big spenders or savers, and he gets a bet­ter feel for them as peo­ple. It also makes it eas­ier to gather the infor­ma­tion Paul needs for the planning.

George does just the oppo­site. Since he has already met with the prospects in their home or office, they come to George’s office for the data gathering.

Third meet­ing: Plan pre­sen­ta­tion and gap analysis

Time: Up to 2 hours

We have seen advi­sors call this meet­ing many things. Most of them are pre­sent­ing what we call the “plan,” but it’s really a sit­u­a­tional analy­sis of the new client’s num­bers, where that per­son stands, and the like­li­hood he or she will run out of money in retirement.

Advi­sors also look at the gaps between the clients’ goals and where they are likely to end up.

Uni­ver­sally, these meet­ings are held in the advisor’s office.

Typ­i­cally, the client leaves the third meet­ing with answers to these questions:

• Will I run out of money in retirement?
• How much do I need to save to reach my goals?
• What can I do to save taxes now and in the future?

Some advi­sors may present a few prod­ucts here. Many will talk about the prod­ucts only gener­i­cally. They might dis­cuss REITs in gen­eral, and why it would be a good choice, but stop short of nam­ing a spe­cific one.

Fourth meet­ing: Implementation

Time: 1½ to 2 hours.

At this meet­ing, the advi­sor is talk­ing about spe­cific prod­ucts, money man­agers, sign­ing paper­work, and mov­ing the invest­ments over to the new firm.

For par­tic­u­larly fear­ful clients, or for those with com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tions, this meet­ing could stretch into two meetings.

Key take­aways

Prac­tice man­age­ment lessons and adap­tive strate­gies learned from flexible—and there­fore successful—advisors and planners:

• What worked really well 10 years ago may not work so well now. We all have to change with the times and be sen­si­tive to where clients are emo­tion­ally these days.
• The over­all amount of time you spend with clients is likely to be more than it was 10 years ago. Even though each meet­ing is shorter, chances are you will be hold­ing more meet­ings, and there­fore spend­ing more time, with poten­tial clients before they are ready to commit.
• Just as I like to remind advi­sors that all mar­ket­ing is trial and error, the same is true with your sales process. Test out dif­fer­ent strate­gies and orders to see what works for you and what doesn’t.
• Noth­ing, no mat­ter how great the sys­tem, works 100% of the time.
• Prospects and clients sim­ply are more fear­ful now, so it will take longer to build up sub­stan­tial trust with new people.

Kather­ine Vessenes, JD, CFP, a nation­ally known author and speaker, has the best job in the world.

She turns aver­age pro­duc­ers into stars by focus­ing on sales, mar­ket­ing, com­pli­ance, and prac­tice man­age­ment issues for broker-dealers and advi­sors. You can con­tact Kather­ine at (952) 401‑1045 or at katherine@vestmentadvisors.com. Or visit her web­site: www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 10 Years, Client Meetings, Coach Watch, Economic Climate, Few Suggestions, Financial Advisors, Fly, Fly On The Wall, Hour And A Half, Katherine Vessenes, Lawyer, Management Coach, Management Resource, Newsletter, Practice Management, Privilege, Rare Case, Sales Processes, Sit, Vestment
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The Misconception of Asking Dumb Questions

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the say­ing that there’s no such thing as a dumb question—only the ones you don’t ask. Depend­ing on that, you might assume that poten­tial clients com­pre­hend your require­ment to dis­cover insight about their issues and so pro­vide you with license to pose dumb questions.

You are able to get away with that to some extent in client meet­ings. But clients expect you to learn quick, and will eval­u­ate your capa­bil­i­ties accord­ingly. When the depth of your ques­tions does not enhance the client’s impres­sion of you with every one you ask, watch out.

Prior to you ask­ing your client a ques­tion, con­sider these three points:

1. Will your ques­tion really enhance your knowl­edge of the client’s issue?

2. Will it encour­age the client to think much more deeply about the matter?

3. Will your ques­tion lead the client to ask you ques­tions about your plan?

A per­fect client ques­tion fur­thers your under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, adds some value for that client, and shows that you really know your stuff. Obvi­ously, not every thing you ask about needs to trig­ger your clients to stroke their chins and rumi­nate on a response; you style some ques­tions solely to col­lect fun­da­men­tal info.

There are dumb ques­tions, and you get to ask a small num­ber of them in any client meet­ing. Make sure to try to ask them early on if you want to remain around to win the sale.

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Tags: Capabilities, Chins, Client Meetings, Customer Meetings, Dumb Question, Dumb Questions, Extent, Insight, Knowledge, Lead, Misconception, Ruminate
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Ten minutes to MUCH more Effective Client Meetings

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Ten min­utes to MUCH more effec­tive client meetings

Given the impor­tance of client reviews, advi­sors should always be alert for ways to make them more effective.

Some ideas to make meet­ings more pro­duc­tive high­lighted in past articles:

Writ­ing down key objec­tives in advance of meet­ings
Using agen­das to keep meet­ings on track and improve the sense among clients that they’re get­ting value from the time invested
Struc­tur­ing the items you cover in meet­ings based on research on what leads to pos­i­tive rec­ol­lec­tions of expe­ri­ences
Employ­ing tech­nol­ogy to make tele­phone meet­ings look and feel more like face to face meet­ings
Kick­ing off your meet­ings with a strong ques­tion to engage clients

Recently I spoke to an advi­sor who made a sim­ple change to meet­ing agen­das and saw a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment as a result.

Start­ing meet­ings by engag­ing clients

Last year, this advi­sor started using meet­ing agen­das, using the three step process that was laid out in one of my articles:

1. When set­ting up the meet­ing, start by ask­ing clients about any ques­tions they’d like to cover, then men­tioned the items he wanted to cover.

2. He fol­lowed up with an email to clients with the agenda that arose from this conversation.

3. When he sat down with clients, the agenda would have all the items they’d dis­cussed moved down one spot, with the first item blank.

He’d start meet­ings by saying:

“Here’s the agenda we agreed to, but you’ll notice the first item is blank. That’s in case anything’s come up since we spoke that you’d like to talk about or in case we’ve missed anything.”

Then he’d go on to say:

“What is there that we should talk about today that’s not on this agenda.”

Most of the time clients answered that there was noth­ing else, that every­thing was on the agenda. Even so, there was ben­e­fit in engag­ing clients right off the top and let­ting them know that this was their meet­ing, not his. But occa­sion­ally, clients would raise impor­tant issues that would not have come up otherwise.

Help­ing clients stay focused

Even with this strong start, this advi­sor found that clients would some­times lose focus dur­ing meet­ings. Fur­ther, often clients would walk away from meet­ing and then seem to for­get what they cov­ered shortly afterwards.

As a result, he made a sim­ple change that has helped address these problems.

He still pre­pares an agenda in advance of meet­ings, but now he takes 10 min­utes before­hand to add two or three bul­let points under each agenda item, sum­ma­riz­ing the key points he’s mak­ing. Now when clients sit down, they not only have a list of items that will be cov­er­ing in the meet­ing but a cheat sheet of the key points under each item.

Two pos­i­tive things have hap­pened as a result of this.

First, this has helped keep clients on track and to main­tain their atten­tion. It’s like the dif­fer­ence between being at a talk in which the speaker is deliv­er­ing her mes­sage ver­bally as opposed to hav­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion to rein­force key points and a hand­out with which to fol­low along.

Sec­ond, he’s found that client reten­tion of key points cov­ered in the meet­ing has become much bet­ter. In essence, he’s sup­plied clients with meet­ing notes that they can use to fol­low on dur­ing the meet­ing and to take away afterwards.

While fill­ing in key points on the agenda for client meet­ings worked for this advi­sor, of course it may not work for you. But con­sider giv­ing this a try in an upcom­ing meet­ing and see­ing if it adds value — the only way to improve is by being open to new ideas and approaches, inte­grat­ing the ones that work into your process, dis­card­ing the ones that don’t.

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Tags: Agenda, Benefit, Client Meetings, Effective Meetings, Email Clients, Employing Technology, Experiences, Face To Face, Items Wanted, Key Objectives, Leads, Meeting Agendas, Recollections, Significant Improvement, Time Clients
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Why Your Sales Process No Longer Works—And What to Do About It

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

I have a reg­u­lar col­umn in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advisors.

Recently, I read an arti­cle that impressed me. Writ­ten by Kather­ine Vessenes, a lawyer and well known con­sul­tant to suc­cess­ful advi­sors, she has given per­mis­sion to repro­duce her arti­cle. To see more about her work or to sign up for her newslet­ter, go to www​.vest​men​tad​vi​sors​.com.

By Kather­ine Vessenes:

As a stu­dent of great finan­cial advi­sors and their sales processes, I have been for­tu­nate to actu­ally sit in on client meet­ings with some of the top finan­cial advi­sors in the coun­try. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall when an $8 mil­lion dol­lar advi­sor closes the sale? It has been my priv­i­lege, as a prac­tice man­age­ment coach, to not only watch the great finan­cial advi­sors in action, but to even offer a few sug­ges­tions on how they might close more business.

Here is what I have learned, just this last sum­mer, as we coached two of the top advi­sors in the coun­try on man­ag­ing their prac­tice and improv­ing their sales practice:

A short­ened, quick sales process that was very effec­tive 10 years ago, is much less effec­tive today.

In 2000, it was not unusual for our firm, Vest­ment Advi­sors, to con­sult with $3 mil­lion finan­cial advi­sors who worked with the mid­dle mar­ket. Our goal was to use our prac­tice man­age­ment process to increase these advi­sors’ sales and build the value of their busi­ness. Every one of them got their sales process down to two meet­ings of an hour and a half each; three meet­ings were needed only in the rare case for higher-end or more com­pli­cated clients.

That kind of com­pressed, quick sales process was very effec­tive 10 years ago, but it is much less effec­tive in today’s wary eco­nomic cli­mate. Ten years ago, it was com­mon prac­tice. Not so today. Today, many clients are not pre­pared to make a deci­sion at the sec­ond meet­ing. Most clients haven’t yet built up a trust fac­tor with their finan­cial advi­sor by the sec­ond meet­ing. They are still skep­ti­cal. The rea­son: clients are fear­ful about chang­ing money man­agers, invest­ment styles, and advi­sors, even though they are in a lot of emo­tional pain.

Fur­ther­more, clients don’t like sit­ting for long meet­ings. They are busy, much busier than 10 years ago. They don’t have the time, energy, or atten­tion span to meet for two hours. Today, the shorter the meet­ings, the bet­ter for most clients. Two of the advi­sors we coached this sum­mer had both length­ened their sales process to four shorter meet­ings. It was work­ing so well for them that their clos­ing ratios were far higher than we cur­rently are see­ing with other firms. In fact, they were prob­a­bly clos­ing 80% to 95%. These ratios are quite high, given the cur­rent market.

Here’s what’s cov­ered in each of the four meetings:

First meet­ing: Ori­en­ta­tion or “getting-to-know-you”

Time: 45 min­utes to an hour

The whole pur­pose in this meet­ing is to get a bet­ter feel for prospects, how they tick, and what they are look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship. As New Jer­sey advi­sor Paul Hart­line (not his real name) said to me, “When you have been in the busi­ness for 30 years, you can tell in that ini­tial meet­ing if you want them for a client or not.”

Most advi­sors who use a “get-to-know-you” meet­ing ask the client not to bring in any per­sonal finan­cial data. They feel it helps build trust and makes the client feel more comfortable.

Hart­line does this meet­ing in his office because he also wants new clients to get a feel for him. Hart­line is in a class-A space, and his office and staff show very well. The whole setup makes a great first impres­sion on prospects.

On the other hand, George Jack­son (also not his real name), from Seat­tle, does a first meet­ing that is all about the new client. Jack­son usu­ally con­ducts this meet­ing at a prospect’s office or even at his or her home. This lets them feel com­fort­able, lets him get to know them bet­ter, and he says the client then feels oblig­ated to come to George’s office for the next meet­ing as a social courtesy.

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Tags: 10 Years, Advi, Client Meetings, Coach Watch, Economic Climate, Few Suggestions, Financial Advisors, Fly, Fly On The Wall, Hour And A Half, Katherine Vessenes, Lawyer, Management Coach, Management Resource, Newsletter, Practice Management, Privilege, Rare Case, Sales Processes, Sit
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A simple strategy for more effective meetings

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Advi­sors have two com­pet­ing and con­tra­dic­tory imper­a­tives when meet­ing with clients.On the one hand, it’s essen­tial to estab­lish an emo­tional con­nec­tion and have clients feel truly lis­tened to. You do this by engag­ing clients with good ques­tions and by being alert for nuances in how they answer, main­tain­ing eye con­tact and read­ing their body language.

On the other hand, we need to make notes to ensure that we cap­ture new infor­ma­tion and key points in our conversation.

The dif­fi­culty for some advi­sors is the focus on tak­ing notes under­mines your abil­ity to fully con­cen­trate on the sub­tle things that can be impor­tant tip offs in a con­ver­sa­tion and pre­vents clients from feel­ing that they have your com­plete, undi­vided attention.

Recently, I spoke to an advi­sor who has elim­i­nated a key bar­rier to mak­ing that con­nec­tion — and has seen much bet­ter out­comes from meet­ings as a result.

Some years ago, she began hav­ing her assis­tant sit in on client meet­ings with the express pur­pose of tak­ing notes of what was said and then typ­ing the notes up for the client file after­wards. By doing this and this alone, this advi­sor was able to put her entire focus on the client inter­ac­tion — and found her abil­ity to lis­ten to clients and estab­lish a con­nec­tion much improved as a result.

Another advi­sor achieves the same goal by ask­ing some clients for per­mis­sion to record meet­ings — and then has his assis­tant sum­ma­rize those record­ings after­wards.  To min­i­mize the admin­is­tra­tive bur­den, he only does this for meet­ings with key clients — but finds that this makes meet­ings much more pro­duc­tive and effective.

Given the sen­si­tiv­ity of many meet­ings today, it’s never been more impor­tant to estab­lish an emo­tional con­nec­tion and have clients feel they have your full atten­tion.  If this is some­thing you’re strug­gling with, con­sider try­ing this in a few upcom­ing meet­ings — like the advi­sors I’ve described, you too may be sur­prised by the dif­fer­ence this makes.

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Tags: Administrative Burden, Body Language, Client Interaction, Client Meetings, Effective Meetings, Emotional Connection, Express, Eye Contact, Full Attention, Imperatives, Many Meetings, Nuances, Tip Offs, Undivided Attention, Upcoming Meetings
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Ten minutes to MUCH more effective client meetings

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Ten min­utes to MUCH more effec­tive client meetings

Given the impor­tance of client reviews, advi­sors should always be alert for ways to make them more effective.

Some ideas to make meet­ings more pro­duc­tive high­lighted in past articles:

• Writ­ing down key objec­tives in advance of meetings
• Using agen­das to keep meet­ings on track and improve the sense among clients that they’re get­ting value from the time invested
• Struc­tur­ing the items you cover in meet­ings based on research on what leads to pos­i­tive rec­ol­lec­tions of experiences
• Employ­ing tech­nol­ogy to make tele­phone meet­ings look and feel more like face to face meetings
• Kick­ing off your meet­ings with a strong ques­tion to engage clients

Recently I spoke to an advi­sor who made a sim­ple change to meet­ing agen­das and saw a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment as a result.

Start­ing meet­ings by engag­ing clients

Last year, this advi­sor started using meet­ing agen­das, using the three step process that was laid out in one of my articles:

1. When set­ting up the meet­ing, start by ask­ing clients about any ques­tions they’d like to cover, then men­tioned the items he wanted to cover.

2. He fol­lowed up with an email to clients with the agenda that arose from this conversation.

3. When he sat down with clients, the agenda would have all the items they’d dis­cussed moved down one spot, with the first item blank.

He’d start meet­ings by saying:

“Here’s the agenda we agreed to, but you’ll notice the first item is blank. That’s in case anything’s come up since we spoke that you’d like to talk about or in case we’ve missed anything.”

Then he’d go on to say:

“What is there that we should talk about today that’s not on this agenda.”

Most of the time clients answered that there was noth­ing else, that every­thing was on the agenda. Even so, there was ben­e­fit in engag­ing clients right off the top and let­ting them know that this was their meet­ing, not his. But occa­sion­ally, clients would raise impor­tant issues that would not have come up otherwise.

Help­ing clients stay focused

Even with this strong start, this advi­sor found that clients would some­times lose focus dur­ing meet­ings. Fur­ther, often clients would walk away from meet­ing and then seem to for­get what they cov­ered shortly afterwards.

As a result, he made a sim­ple change that has helped address these problems.

He still pre­pares an agenda in advance of meet­ings, but now he takes 10 min­utes before­hand to add two or three bul­let points under each agenda item, sum­ma­riz­ing the key points he’s mak­ing. Now when clients sit down, they not only have a list of items that will be cov­er­ing in the meet­ing but a cheat sheet of the key points under each item.

Two pos­i­tive things have hap­pened as a result of this.

First, this has helped keep clients on track and to main­tain their atten­tion. It’s like the dif­fer­ence between being at a talk in which the speaker is deliv­er­ing her mes­sage ver­bally as opposed to hav­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion to rein­force key points and a hand­out with which to fol­low along.

Sec­ond, he’s found that client reten­tion of key points cov­ered in the meet­ing has become much bet­ter. In essence, he’s sup­plied clients with meet­ing notes that they can use to fol­low on dur­ing the meet­ing and to take away afterwards.

While fill­ing in key points on the agenda for client meet­ings worked for this advi­sor, of course it may not work for you. But con­sider giv­ing this a try in an upcom­ing meet­ing and see­ing if it adds value — the only way to improve is by being open to new ideas and approaches, inte­grat­ing the ones that work into your process, dis­card­ing the ones that don’t.

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Agenda, Benefit, Client Meetings, Effective Meetings, Email Clients, Employing Technology, Experiences, Face To Face, Items Wanted, Key Objectives, Leads, Meeting Agendas, Recollections, Significant Improvement, Time Clients
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Warren Buffett’s Strategy for Effective Client Meetings

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Last week I spoke to an investor who got a call from his advisor’s assis­tant about sched­ul­ing a time to review his portfolio.

“I had the same reac­tion as when I get a call from my dentist’s office” said this investor, whose account was worth over $1 mil­lion at the end of 2010. “I rec­og­nize it’s impor­tant and some­thing that I have to do, but also know it’s not likely to be pleas­ant, so put it off as long as I can.”

For many clients, the regret­table real­ity is that meet­ing with their advi­sor is no longer an uplift­ing expe­ri­ence. Instead of antic­i­pat­ing meet­ings with enthu­si­asm, they look to meet­ings with fore­bod­ing. Instead of walk­ing away opti­mistic about pos­si­bil­i­ties, they leave bur­dened down by limitations

This sit­u­a­tion is unhealthy and unsus­tain­able for both clients and for advi­sors. Here are three steps to make client meet­ings a more pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, includ­ing an idea bor­rowed from War­ren Buffett.

Step one: Be upbeat

For many advi­sors, the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing pos­i­tive client meet­ings starts with being pos­i­tive your­self. Unless you’re upbeat, there’s no chance that your clients will be.

Mar­kets like we’ve seen of late can obvi­ously make this a chal­lenge, but that doesn’t make this less of a pri­or­ity. Being pos­i­tive doesn’t mean that you’re obliv­i­ous to the chal­lenges we’re fac­ing — clients are look­ing for real­is­tic opti­mism, not some­one with a “don’t worry be happy” view of the world.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, I wrote about 12 ways to stay pos­i­tive. Some sam­ple strategies:

- Start by rec­og­niz­ing how impor­tant this is; being pos­i­tive is the nec­es­sary first step to effec­tive inter­ac­tions with clients

- Exer­cise at the start of the day to give you a boost; even a short brisk walk can help

- Find ways to fight fatigue and renew energy dur­ing the day; get some fresh air at lunch, and through­out the day take energy boost­ing snacks like fruit

- Take short breaks; sched­ule a short walk out­side between client meetings

- Be alert to signs that your energy level is drop­ping; before mak­ing a call or going into a meet­ing, take 30 sec­onds to focus on lift­ing your mood

- Seek out pos­i­tive col­leagues who give you energy, avoid neg­a­tive ones who suck it away

Step two: Look past the bad news

It’s hard to main­tain a pos­i­tive out­look when you’re drown­ing in a sea of neg­a­tive headlines.

When meet­ing with clients, start by acknowl­edg­ing the real chal­lenges faced by global economies.

Don’t let the gloom wear you and your client down. Intro­duce some off­set­ting good news. For exam­ple, point to three or four qual­ity com­pa­nies whose prices have been beaten down and shift the focus of the con­ver­sa­tion to the value in rec­og­nized mar­ket lead­ers like Shop­pers Drug Mart, TD Bank or Telus in Canada and McDon­alds, Nes­tle or Wal-Mart out­side Canada.

Step three: Focus on what you can control

War­ren Buf­fett is a name who inspires con­fi­dence among aver­age investors; look at what hap­pened to Bank of America’s share price after his invest­ment was announced. When he dis­cusses the per­for­mance of Berk­shire Hath­away in his annual report and his investor meet­ing each spring, he never men­tions the share price, focus­ing instead on its book value. In essence, he changes the score­card by which his per­for­mance is mea­sured, shift­ing from share price to some­thing he has more con­trol over.

Advi­sors should try to do the same. You obvi­ously have to talk about what’s hap­pened to client port­fo­lios, but need to go beyond that to talk about things which you can influ­ence. For exam­ple, you can set a goal of a 3% annual cash return from your client’s port­fo­lio, bet­ter than what they’ll get on GICs, and as part of your con­ver­sa­tion, talk about their cash flow in the recent period ver­sus that goal.

Or you can talk about the monthly income that clients will receive in retire­ment from all sources of income, based on today’s port­fo­lio and some con­ser­v­a­tive assump­tions on future per­for­mance and com­pare it to the base case needs in their finan­cial plan. Of course, the mar­ket decline means that their pro­jected monthly income will be down com­pared to what it would have been at the start of the year, but depend­ing on how much of a buffer they had in Jan­u­ary, their pro­jected income may still be above their base needs.

If there is a short­fall, chances are that it will be less than clients fear. At least you can have an open con­ver­sa­tion about the options to close the gap, remind­ing clients that if future per­for­mance is bet­ter than the assump­tions, these may not be needed. Again, your goal is to focus on things you can control.

One final note; I’ve writ­ten in the past about the research show­ing that the most pos­i­tive impact from vaca­tions doesn’t come from the expe­ri­ence itself or the pos­i­tive mem­o­ries after­wards, but rather the process of look­ing for­ward to them. The impli­ca­tion is clear; in addi­tion to peri­odic longer vaca­tions to recharge our bat­ter­ies, we should have lots of shorter, more fre­quent hol­i­days, say a four-day week­end away once a quarter.

As part of your strat­egy to stay pos­i­tive, sched­ule these short hol­i­days — and encour­age your clients to do the same. That way, at the end of your meet­ing, you’ll be able to briefly com­pare notes with your client not only on recent trips, but also those that are com­ing up.

And for any­one inter­ested, here’s a link to that 2009 arti­cle on ten tips to stay pos­i­tive http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​t​e​n​-​t​i​p​s​-​f​o​r​-​m​o​t​i​v​a​t​i​o​n​-​i​n​-​2​009

Last week I spoke to an investor who got a call from his advisor’s assis­tant about sched­ul­ing a time to review his portfolio.

“I had the same reac­tion as when I get a call from my dentist’s office” said this investor, whose account was worth over $1 mil­lion at the end of 2010. “I rec­og­nize it’s impor­tant and some­thing that I have to do, but also know it’s not likely to be pleas­ant — so put it off as long as I can.”

For many clients, the regret­table real­ity is that meet­ing with their advi­sor is no longer an uplift­ing expe­ri­ence. Instead of antic­i­pat­ing meet­ings with enthu­si­asm, they look to meet­ings with fore­bod­ing. Instead of walk­ing away opti­mistic about pos­si­bil­i­ties, they leave bur­dened down by limitations

This sit­u­a­tion is unhealthy and unsus­tain­able for both clients and for advi­sors. Here are three steps to make client meet­ings a more pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, includ­ing an idea bor­rowed from War­ren Buffett.

Step one: Be upbeat

For many advi­sors, the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing pos­i­tive client meet­ings starts with being pos­i­tive your­self. Unless you’re upbeat, there’s no chance that your clients will be.

Mar­kets like we’ve seen of late can obvi­ously make this a chal­lenge — but that doesn’t make this less of a pri­or­ity. Being pos­i­tive doesn’t mean that you’re obliv­i­ous to the chal­lenges we’re fac­ing — clients are look­ing for real­is­tic opti­mism, not some­one with a “don’t worry be happy” view of the world.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, I wrote about 12 ways to stay pos­i­tive. Some sam­ple strategies:

- Start by rec­og­niz­ing how impor­tant this is — being pos­i­tive is the nec­es­sary first step to effec­tive inter­ac­tions with clients

- Exer­cise at the start of the day to give you a boost — even a short brisk walk can help

- Find ways to fight fatigue and renew energy dur­ing the day — get some fresh air at lunch, and through­out the day take energy boost­ing snacks like fruit

- Take short breaks — sched­ule a short walk out­side between client meetings

- Be alert to signs that your energy level is drop­ping — before mak­ing a call or going into a meet­ing, take 30 sec­onds to focus on lift­ing your mood.

- Seek out pos­i­tive col­leagues who give you energy, avoid neg­a­tive ones who suck it away

Step two: Look past the bad news

It’s hard to main­tain a pos­i­tive out­look when you’re drown­ing in a sea of neg­a­tive headlines.

When meet­ing with clients, start by acknowl­edg­ing the real chal­lenges faced by global economies.

But don’t let the gloom wear you and your client down — intro­duce some off­set­ting good news. For exam­ple, point to three or four qual­ity com­pa­nies whose prices have been beaten down — and shift the focus of the con­ver­sa­tion to the value in rec­og­nized mar­ket lead­ers like Shop­pers Drug Mart, TD Bank or Telus in Canada and McDon­alds, Nes­tle or Wal­Mart out­side Canada.

Step three: Focus on what you can control

War­ren Buf­fett is a name who inspires con­fi­dence among aver­age investors — look at what hap­pened to Bank of America’s share price after his invest­ment was announced. When he dis­cusses the per­for­mance of Berk­shire Hath­away in his annual report and his investor meet­ing each spring, he never men­tions the share price, focus­ing instead on its book value. In essence, he changes the score­card by which his per­for­mance is mea­sured, shift­ing from share price to some­thing he has more con­trol over.

Advi­sors should try to do the same. You obvi­ously have to talk about what’s hap­pened to client port­fo­lios, but need to go beyond that to talk about things which you can influ­ence. For exam­ple, you can set a goal of a 3% annual cash return from your client’s port­fo­lio, bet­ter than what they’ll get on GICs — and as part of your con­ver­sa­tion, talk about their cash flow in the recent period ver­sus that goal.

Or you can talk about the monthly income that clients will receive in retire­ment from all sources of income, based on today’s port­fo­lio and some con­ser­v­a­tive assump­tions on future per­for­mance — and com­pare it to the base case needs in their finan­cial plan. Of course, the mar­ket decline means that their pro­jected monthly income will be down com­pared to what it would have been at the start of the year, but depend­ing on how much of a buffer they had in Jan­u­ary, their pro­jected income may still be above their base needs.

And if there is a short­fall, chances are that it will be less than clients fear — and at least you can have an open con­ver­sa­tion about the options to close the gap, remind­ing clients that if future per­for­mance is bet­ter than the assump­tions, these may not be needed. Again, your goal is to focus on things you can control.

One final note. I’ve writ­ten in the past about the research show­ing that the most pos­i­tive impact from vaca­tions doesn’t come from the expe­ri­ence itself or the pos­i­tive mem­o­ries after­wards, but rather the process of look­ing for­ward to them. The impli­ca­tion is clear — in addi­tion to peri­odic longer vaca­tions to recharge our bat­ter­ies, we should have lots of shorter, more fre­quent hol­i­days, say a four-day week­end away once a quarter.

As part of your strat­egy to stay pos­i­tive, sched­ule these short hol­i­days — and encour­age your clients to do the same. That way, at the end of your meet­ing, you’ll be able to briefly com­pare notes with your client not only on recent trips, but also those that are com­ing up.

And for any­one inter­ested, here’s a link to that 2009 arti­cle on ten tips to stay pos­i­tive http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​t​e​n​-​t​i​p​s​-​f​o​r​-​m​o​t​i​v​a​t​i​o​n​-​i​n​-​2​009

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