Five essential lessons from top advisors

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

This month, my col­umn in Invest­ment Exec­u­tive high­lights impor­tant take­aways  from ten suc­cess­ful advi­sor who spoke at the recent Top Advi­sor Summit.What was espe­cially strik­ing was how con­sis­tently these themes were repeated by advi­sors with dis­parate back­grounds and a broad range of firms.

Advi­sors look­ing to move through the cur­rent tough times could do far worse than focus on the five com­mon mes­sages that came out of the Summit

Les­son One: Deal with all of your clients’ finan­cial issues

Many clients want and need more than invest­ment advice alone and ben­e­fit from advi­sors who take a whole wealth approach.

By tak­ing a whole wealth approach, advi­sors can add sub­stan­tial value to the rela­tion­ship. You’ll build deeper rela­tion­ships and increase the chances you are the pri­mary advi­sor, so insu­late your­self from com­pe­ti­tion and pos­si­ble pric­ing pres­sure. And since clients are hap­pier, you’ll feel bet­ter about the work you do and increase the chances of referrals.

Les­son Two: Make a finan­cial plan the cor­ner­stone of your client relationships

A num­ber of the speak­ers talked about the pos­i­tive impact of hav­ing a writ­ten plan in place in main­tain­ing peace of mind for clients dur­ing peri­ods of mar­ket tur­moil such as we’ve seen of late — being able to show them that things are not as dire as they fear and that they’re still okay can be a huge relief.

In the words of one speaker,” never for­get that he who owns the plan owns the relationship.”

Les­son Three: Put strate­gies in place to ensure clients feel listened

Another recur­rent theme was how impor­tant it is to get anx­ious clients to open up about their mood and to ensure that they feel lis­tened to.

One speaker talked about a con­ver­sa­tion with his brother, a psy­chi­a­trist, who coun­seled him not to reas­sure clients that they shouldn’t be wor­ry­ing. When clients are bom­barded by neg­a­tive head­lines, it’s nat­ural that they be con­cerned. To build a bond of trust, advi­sors need to hear those con­cerns out, to tell clients that they’re not alone and that their con­cerns are under­stand­able …. and then to go on to bring con­text and per­spec­tive to the situation.

A num­ber of advi­sors also talked about using client advi­sory boards to obtain struc­tured  feed­back on an ongo­ing basis.

Les­son 4: Bring focus to your business

All the speak­ers had achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess — and lis­ten­ing to them rein­forced the impor­tance of bring­ing focus to your busi­ness. One talked about the impact of bring­ing a full-time Vice Pres­i­dent Oper­a­tions on board so that he and his part­ner could con­cen­trate on build­ing out their retire­ment plan­ning prac­tice. Another team described the many hours invested in cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive “owner’s man­ual” that every client receives — and that is also a pow­er­ful tool in talk­ing to prospec­tive clients.

And  two oth­ers described their exclu­sive focus on busi­ness own­ers and some of the pos­i­tive impli­ca­tions of this deci­sion on their abil­ity to serve those clients extra­or­di­nar­ily well.

Les­son 5. Remem­ber that lit­tle things truly matter

In mar­kets like these, it’s easy to over­look some of the small touches when deal­ing with clients — these can range from remem­ber­ing birth­days to inquir­ing about a client’s grand­chil­dren. And yet, remark­ably often, it’s not the big things that clients notice and remem­ber, it’s the lit­tle things.

One speaker talked about buy­ing $5 Star­bucks cards with her name on them — and look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to send these out to clients with a thank you note. Whether it’s thank­ing them for send­ing in an RESP con­tri­bu­tion for their chil­dren or for tak­ing the time to come into her office for a meet­ing, she has the goal of send­ing these out when­ever she can. In her talk she dis­cussed the very pos­i­tive response she’s received to these cards, well beyond what would seem mer­ited by a $5 investment.

To read the entire col­umn and see detailed cov­er­age of all of the pre­sen­ta­tions, click: Top advi­sors share com­mon themes from Invest​mentEx​ec​u​tive​.com

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Tags: Brother, Client Relationships, Concer, Cornerstone, Disparate Backgrounds, Investment Advice, Investment Executive, Market Turmoil, Negative Headlines, Peace Of Mind, Periods, Psychiatrist, Recurrent Theme, Referrals, Relationship, Speakers, Substantial Value, Summit, Takeaways, Tough Times
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