Making 2013 Your Breakthrough Year for New Clients

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

With the first month of 2013 behind us, many of those res­o­lu­tions at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary relat­ing to diet, weight or exer­cise are dis­tant mem­o­ries. That’s why this might be an oppor­tune time to con­sider a new res­o­lu­tion for 2013 relat­ing to your busi­ness – and that’s to make this the year that you get really seri­ous about bring­ing new clients on board.

I was reminded of this by two dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tions last fall from two dif­fer­ent branch man­agers frus­trated by the lack of prospect­ing activ­ity among the advi­sors in their branches. There was a con­sis­tent theme to their com­ments: While the large major­ity of advi­sors do a rea­son­ably good job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing clients, other than hop­ing for refer­rals from their client base, most advi­sors in their branches dis­played lit­tle empha­sis on prospect­ing activ­ity and on attract­ing new clients.

In con­ver­sa­tions with advi­sors, there are four pri­mary rea­sons for the lack of prospect­ing focus: loss of con­fi­dence, lack of pri­or­ity, no clear prospect­ing plan and fail­ure to estab­lish a prospect­ing rou­tine. Let’s talk about what you can do in 2013 to address each of these.

Con­fi­dence

When talk­ing to poten­tial clients, you need to believe that prospects would be bet­ter off work­ing with you than where they are now or with other advi­sors. But for prospects to believe that, first you have feel that way.

I’ve talked to advi­sors who lack that fun­da­men­tal con­vic­tion and are ques­tion­ing the value they  pro­vide to their clients.  I recently spoke with an advi­sor who feels that over the past fif­teen years she’s let clients down, as tough mar­kets have meant that plans that clients had back then have had to be adjusted down­wards, with retire­ments post­poned, hol­i­days deferred and lifestyles scaled back.

The first nec­es­sary con­di­tion to be develop prospect­ing momen­tum is to have the gut feel­ing that prospects would be for­tu­nate to work with you. If you don’t have that con­fi­dence, then you’re unlikely to be suc­cess­ful in devel­op­ing prospect­ing momen­tum. Some­thing that helped one advi­sor was adding an agenda item to his Mon­day morn­ing team meet­ings, in which some­one shares an expe­ri­ence from the pre­vi­ous week where a client thanked them for the job they’d done or the dif­fer­ence they’d made. Alter­na­tively, they select a plan update they’ve reviewed the week before and talk about the how the client is bet­ter off as a result of the deci­sions that were made.

Pri­or­ity

When most advi­sors entered the busi­ness, prospect­ing was a sur­vival issue — if you weren’t suc­cess­ful in attract­ing new clients, your career in the indus­try would be a short one. This is a stark con­trast to today’s mind­set — while most advi­sors know they should prospect, many see this as a “nice to do” activ­ity rather than a crit­i­cal issue for the health of their businesses.

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Tags: Branch Managers, Breakthrough Year, Confidence, Consistent Theme, Conversations, Conviction, Distant Memories, Fifteen Years, Good Job, Gut Feeling, Lifestyles, Momentum, Necessary Condition, New Resolution, Opportune Time, Priority, Prospects, Referrals, Resolutions, Retirements
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Are You Using Periodic Reviews to Secure Client Capital?

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Some of the most valu­able busi­ness prospects are already your clients. Because you have already suc­ceeded in con­vert­ing exist­ing clients, a major por­tion of the mar­ket­ing process has been com­pleted. It allows you to build upon your past suc­cesses and the fact that the exist­ing clients are already famil­iar with your work.

Get infor­ma­tion on past actions for future suc­cess
To get insight into how you can do that, how­ever, you must undergo peri­odic reviews. As I explained in a recent pre­sen­ta­tion at the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Insur­ance and Finan­cial Advi­sors’ Annual Con­fer­ence (NAIFA), this is a six-step process and should be part of a reg­u­lar follow-up sched­ule that you main­tain for each of your clients.

Explain to your clients that you like to con­duct peri­odic reviews, and send an invi­ta­tion between two and four weeks ahead of when you would like to meet. Call them to estab­lish a con­crete date and time, and then send a meet­ing agenda a week before this date. Shar­ing an out­line for the meet­ing will make it a more con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion for you and the client and will allow both of you to orga­nize your thoughts ahead of time. Tele­phone once again to con­firm that your client received the agenda and ask if there are any ques­tions he or she would like to ask ahead of time or that should be cov­ered in more detail dur­ing the meet­ing. Anthony Lam delves deeper into the sim­ple steps you can take before a meet­ing here.

When you meet with the client, you can ask for feed­back on your per­for­mance and for sug­ges­tions of how you can pro­vide added value. This is a great oppor­tu­nity to have your clients reaf­firm their sat­is­fac­tion with your ser­vice and con­fi­dence in your abil­i­ties. The meet­ing will be a primer not only for secur­ing future sales — it can also be a great tran­si­tion as you ask for refer­rals and intro­duc­tions. At that point, describe who your ideal prospect is, and guide the client through a few ques­tions to help him or her iden­tify poten­tial leads. Now the client will be primed for you to ask for a per­sonal intro­duc­tion (a much more effec­tive tac­tic than cold-calling referrals).

In both the introduction-request and review processes, fol­low­ing up with your client is essen­tial. Let him or her know how it goes with the prospects they iden­ti­fied. Sim­i­larly, con­tact clients with whom you con­duct reviews to A) thank them for their time and feed­back, and B) let them know what course of action you plan to take as a result of their cri­tiques and/or suggestions.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Business Prospects, Confidence, Covenant Group, Future Sales, Insight, Insurance, Introductions, Invitation, Marketing Process, Meeting Agenda, National Association Of Insurance And Financial Advisors, Norm Trainor, Referrals, Satisfaction, Simple Steps, Six Step, Successes, Time Telephone, Transition
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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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Securing Valuable Introductions

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

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Tags: Asser, Client Description, Client Relationship, Colleagues, Confidence, Covenant Group, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Services Industry, Five Steps, Groundwork, Introductions, Latter Situation, Momentum, Norm Trainor, Prospects, Quality Customer Service, Referral, Referrals, Salesperson, Sectors
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Lessons From the Dow Jones Man-on-the-Street Referral Survey

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

A recent video blog post demon­strates why tar­get mar­ket­ing is so important.

Veron­ica Dagher of Dow Jones recently posted a video in which she asks passersby on a Man­hat­tan street what would cause them to make a refer­ral to their finan­cial advi­sor.  Some sam­ple ques­tions and answers include “What do you like best about your advi­sor?” “He gives me thought­ful ideas.”

“What could your advi­sor do to improve his ser­vice?” “Focus on what I need and my objectives.”

“What does it take to get a refer­ral?” “The con­fi­dence that they will con­tinue to do a good job for who­ever I referred over.” “They would have to do a good job through­out the mar­ket cycle.”

Does it strike you that any of these peo­ple come off as par­tic­u­larly enthu­si­as­tic about mak­ing refer­rals to their finan­cial advi­sor? It doesn’t come across to me like that. Notice, for exam­ple, they answer the hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion “What would it take for your advi­sor to get a refer­ral” rather than respond­ing “I give my advi­sor refer­rals, and this is why.”

My con­vic­tion is that the key to being refer­able is to pro­vide a spe­cific set of ser­vices tai­lored to the needs of a well defined tar­get mar­ket. What is the trig­ger phrase that would get any of the sub­jects of this sur­vey to tell some­one about their advi­sor? Would one of their friends have to say “I wish I could find a finan­cial advi­sor who will do a good job for me through the mar­ket cycle?” Peo­ple don’t talk like that!

If you have care­fully and specif­i­cally defined your ideal client and tai­lored your ser­vices to the needs of that group, and that client was inter­viewed by Veron­ica, I can envi­sion their response to the refer­ral ques­tion to be some­thing like “oh I do pro­vide refer­rals to my advi­sor. He works with peo­ple exactly like me, and under­stands the par­tic­u­lar things I need. So, when I hear a friend like me talk about their chal­lenges with money, I always pass his name along.”

If Veron­ica but­ton­holed your clients and asked about you, what would they say? Would it be “he lis­tens to me and does a good job.” Or, would it be “he knows me. He spe­cial­izes in peo­ple like me.” And which do you think would get you more referrals?

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Tags: Challenges, Confidence, Conviction, Dagher, Dow Jones, Good Job, Hypothetical Question, Job Market, Man On The Street, Manhattan Street, Phrase, Questions And Answers, Referral Question, Referrals, Sample Questions, Service Focus, Target Market, Target Marketing, Thoughtful Ideas, Veronica
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The Art of the Client Apology

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, Covenant Group

Some­times, you or your employ­ees will make mis­takes. When a client feels his or her needs have not been met or have been ignored, it’s impor­tant to make an effort to restore their con­fi­dence in your ser­vices and reset the tone of the relationship.

Tak­ing the time to con­tact an unhappy client and say “I’m sorry” can go a long way in doing that.

Writ­ing for Inc. mag­a­zine, Glen Blick­en­staff says har­bor­ing the con­cern that apol­o­giz­ing would open up a busi­ness to lia­bil­ity will not do much to repair hurt or angry feel­ings. In fact, that worry may be destruc­tive, dri­ving away clients who could be won back. Blick­en­staff explains that cus­tomers may be happy or unsat­is­fied, but there’s an oppor­tu­nity to con­vert the lat­ter group by recov­er­ing from a sit­u­a­tion where the com­pany didn’t “get it right the first time and meet expectation.”

He warns that unhappy cus­tomers are much more likely to share their bad expe­ri­ences pub­licly, but when the recov­ery is “done the right way, the cus­tomer who has the expe­ri­ence will tell a story. Not how bad their ini­tial expe­ri­ence was but the story of how well they were treated, respected and cared for in the recovery.”

Blick­en­staff offers some advice on how to mend a dam­aged cus­tomer rela­tion­ship. First, try to talk (and more impor­tantly, lis­ten!) to the client and get their side of the story. Give your apol­ogy. As he says he does when talk­ing to a cus­tomer, “I actu­ally and sin­cerely con­vey my regret that we failed them and accept respon­si­bil­ity.” From there, give them a few options that could solve the prob­lem, which makes them feel that they are in con­trol of where the dis­cus­sion goes next. Finally, fol­low up. Stay in touch with the client and make sure you “met the recov­ery expec­ta­tion,” he adds.

Have you ever had to do dam­age con­trol after a client expressed his or her dis­plea­sure with the qual­ity of cus­tomer ser­vice? Does your prac­tice have a stan­dard pol­icy for how it responds to and mit­i­gates the fall­out from an unhappy client?

As Norm Trainor wrote in The 8 Best Prac­tices of High-Performing Sales­peo­ple, “the key to devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships with your clients is your com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing first-class ongo­ing service.”

A key in finan­cial advi­sor train­ing is under­stand­ing that when the deliv­ery of ser­vice falls short of first class, a heart­felt apol­ogy can serve as a recom­mit­ment. It can offer the client proof of another sales best prac­tice: that you will “do what you say you will do.”

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices train­ing.

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Tags: Angry Feelings, Anthony Lam, Apology, Blickenstaff, Confidence, Contact, Covenant Group, Customer Relationship, Customer Service, Damage Control, Displeasure, Expectation, Experiences, Initial Experience, Nbsp, Opportunity, Taking The Time, Unhappy Client, Unhappy Customers, Worry
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Re-Igniting Your Passion for the Business

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

“By mak­ing one small change to my weekly rou­tine, I’ve been able to recap­ture some of my excite­ment for the busi­ness.” – Vet­eran Chairman’s Club advisor

Suc­cess­ful advi­sors con­sis­tently tell me they’ve lost enthu­si­asm and pas­sion for their work com­pared to 10 or 15 years ago. Advi­sors have two choices when this hap­pens; either accept it as a sad real­ity or, put in place strate­gies to rekin­dle the fire that burned ear­lier in their career.

In many regards, loss of enthu­si­asm is understandable:

· If you’ve been at this for a while, you often don’t have the same sense of excite­ment about win­ning new clients that you did in your early years the industry

· Clients are much more demand­ing and the media dra­mat­i­cally more critical

· Your focus has shifted from build­ing a busi­ness to man­ag­ing it; often with added com­plex­ity and the has­sles of man­ag­ing peo­ple along the way

· The global finan­cial cri­sis has added huge stress and put pres­sure on revenues

· Age is a fac­tor: few of us have the same energy at 60 that we did at 45, or at 45 that we did at 30

And then of course there’s mar­ket per­for­mance over the past ten plus years. One vet­eran advi­sor described it this way:

“I’ve been in this busi­ness for over 30 years. For most of the first 20 years I looked for­ward to meet­ings with clients; they were mak­ing money and I felt I was adding value. By con­trast, most of the past ten years have been bru­tal; in meet­ing after meet­ing I’ve found myself apol­o­giz­ing for performance.”

In the cir­cum­stances it’s absolutely under­stand­able that our excite­ment is down com­pared to the past. That said energy and pas­sion is essen­tial to imple­ment new ini­tia­tives and inspire con­fi­dence with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients.

Here are three dif­fer­ent approaches that can help you restore your energy and excite­ment level, includ­ing one that helped a vet­eran advi­sor sig­nif­i­cantly increase his enthusiasm.

Strat­egy One: Boost your energy level

While energy alone won’t rekin­dle your pas­sion, feel­ing alert and ener­gized is a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent to bring excite­ment to your work.

Some advi­sors tell me they feel exhausted at the end of the day. I’ve writ­ten in the past about four proven strate­gies to boost your energy level:

· Reg­u­lar exer­cise to start your day:

Even a brisk 30 minute walk makes a difference.

· Fresh air and sunshine:

Espe­cially as the weather is get­ting bet­ter, build in 5 minute fresh air breaks in the morn­ing and after­noon and before key meet­ings (and much bet­ter at boost­ing energy than a trip to Starbucks)

· Diet:

Aston­ish­ing as it may appear a recent New York Times arti­cle reported that parole board ver­dicts grew dra­mat­i­cally more severe as the day pro­gressed and fatigue set in, but were more lenient after board mem­bers restored energy with some fruit.

If your energy level dips later in the day, con­sider light­en­ing up on lunch and adding serv­ings of fruit to your daily routine.

· Fre­quent vacations:

Most of us need annual breaks of two weeks or longer to recharge. Beyond this, fre­quent short breaks can help main­tain moti­va­tion; even a three or four day long week­end can have a pos­i­tive impact.

That’s because research shows that the biggest boost on moti­va­tion from vaca­tions isn’t actu­ally the vaca­tions them­selves, but rather the antic­i­pa­tion before­hand. Sched­ul­ing quar­terly or bi-monthly short breaks means we always have a mini-vacation to look for­ward to.

Strat­egy Two: Get energy out­side your business

Many advi­sors get rein­vig­o­rated through activ­i­ties that have lit­tle to do with our busi­ness. That energy will have a pos­i­tive impact when it comes to the excite­ment you bring to bear on client interactions.

Some exam­ples of doing things out­side the norm:

· Phys­i­cal chal­lenges: Train­ing for marathons or for hikes up Machu Pic­chu or Mount Kilimanjaro

· Dream vaca­tions: Going on two to four week trips to des­ti­na­tions that you’ve always dreamed of; whether it be Hawaii, Aus­tralia or an African safari

· Intel­lec­tual chal­lenges: I talked to one advi­sor who began attend­ing the lead­ing edge TED con­fer­ence (TED stands for Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment and Design) in Cal­i­for­nia; another advi­sor attends sum­mer courses at Oxford. In both cases they return excited and inspired.

· Expand­ing your think­ing: You don’t have to travel long dis­tances to get fresh ideas. The Rot­man MBA pro­gram at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, where I teach, offers 5pm speak­ers series with some of today’s top busi­ness thinkers. Last fall, I spoke to an indus­try par­tic­i­pant who began attend­ing these ses­sions to get fresh ideas and con­sis­tently walked away ener­gized as a result

· Giv­ing of our­selves: I’ve recently talked to four dif­fer­ent advi­sors who orga­nize ambi­tious fundrais­ing events in their com­mu­nity. In every instance they say the sense of accom­plish­ment from the suc­cess of these events has made this among the most reward­ing things in their lives

In the per­fect world, we’d get all the sat­is­fac­tion and ful­fill­ment we need from within our busi­ness. In the real world, we some­times have to look beyond our busi­ness for the moti­va­tion to oper­ate at a peak level.

Strat­egy Three: Get energy inside your business

Rec­og­niz­ing that many advi­sors have to look exter­nally to cre­ate moti­va­tion, the most sus­tain­able way to rebuild pas­sion is by doing so from within your business.

In late Feb­ru­ary, I wrote an arti­cle about three ways advi­sors can moti­vate their team. One of those was to help the peo­ple you work with feel they’re mak­ing a real dif­fer­ence and get a sense of mis­sion from their work. To help instill that feel­ing of pur­pose, I sug­gested that advi­sors set aside five min­utes in their weekly staff meet­ing to focus to talk about one client they met with in the past week who they had really helped.

I got a call from a suc­cess­ful vet­eran advi­sor who had fol­lowed this advice and was aston­ished by the result:

“This was on the agenda for five min­utes but we ended up going well past that. It was the most engaged I can recall see­ing the mem­bers of my team. But the biggest sur­prise was how I felt after­wards. By mak­ing one small change to my weekly meet­ing to focus on a client where we’d made a real dif­fer­ence in their lives, my enthu­si­asm increased. As a result, I’ve been able to recap­ture some of my excite­ment for the busi­ness; and we’re mak­ing this a per­ma­nent addi­tion to our weekly plan­ning meetings.”

I heard from another advi­sor who had been using a vari­a­tion of this idea. When­ever clients express appre­ci­a­tion for the good work that she’s done, she thanks them and then goes on to say:

“I’m delighted you’re pleased; that’s ulti­mately the biggest reward I get from the work I do. If pos­si­ble, I’d like a favour: I want to share your com­ments with the mem­bers of my team. I won­der if I could ask you to send me a short email, sum­ma­riz­ing what you’ve just told me. A few lines are all I’m look­ing for. I could tell them about this of course, but it would have much more impact com­ing from you directly.”

Clients almost always agree. The advi­sor sends an email thank­ing them in advance for tak­ing the time to do this, and tells them it would be greatly appre­ci­ated if they would reply with a few lines. There have been three ben­e­fits to this: The advi­sor feels more pos­i­tive; her team is more ener­gized and finally, they got per­mis­sion from some clients to put their com­ments on the advisor’s website.

Every advi­sor has to find their own approach to main­tain­ing moti­va­tion. What­ever strat­egy works for you, if you have ambi­tious goals to move your busi­ness for­ward, bring­ing gen­uine pas­sion and enthu­si­asm to your busi­ness is Job One. After all, if you’re not excited about the work you do, you can’t expect your team and your clients to be.

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Tags: Business Veteran, Circumstances, Complexity, Confidence, Energy Level, Excitement Level, Global Financial Crisis, Hassles, Industry Clients, Initiatives, Managing People, Market Performance, Passion, Place Strategies, Prospective Clients, S Market, Sad Reality, Stress, Three Different Approaches, Two Choices
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Warning: How Financial Planning Can Cost You Clients

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

The last twenty years have seen many changes in the invest­ment indus­try. Among the most impor­tant being the adop­tion of finan­cial plans by many advi­sors as a cor­ner­stone of their client offering.

As a whole, this has been a huge pos­i­tive for both advi­sors and clients. But a plan is only as good as how it is imple­mented and my recent con­ver­sa­tions with some investors illus­trate the impor­tant steps advi­sors must take to fol­low through on their plan­ning efforts.

The pos­i­tives of finan­cial planning

Con­ver­sa­tions with investors quickly drive home the ben­e­fits of finan­cial planning.

Espe­cially in rocky mar­kets, finan­cial plans give clients con­fi­dence that they have a roadmap to their long term objec­tives. They answer the “how much do I need “ques­tion that is a top con­cern for investors; and iden­tify how much clients need to save to hit their goals. Finan­cial plans can also drive home the rea­son that investors need port­fo­lios that offer returns above the risk free rate; even if clients don’t like the volatil­ity that comes with those portfolios.

Price Pow­ell of research firm, Cor­po­rate Insights has worked with many lead­ing invest­ment firms mea­sur­ing client sat­is­fac­tion and share a wal­let among over 50,000 investors.

He’s iden­ti­fied eight attrib­utes that cor­re­late with higher lev­els of client assets. First among those is hav­ing a finan­cial plan in place. In Powell’s words, “He (or she) who owns the plan owns the client.”

Note that you don’t need a 30 page plan for clients to feel they have a path to suc­cess. Espe­cially for less com­plex sit­u­a­tions you can often do every­thing you need to in six or eight pages (and many clients pre­fer a more suc­cinct doc­u­ment in any event.)

The pit­falls of finan­cial plans

Last fall I spent some time talk­ing to investors and was struck by con­cerns about their finan­cial plans among some of the clients I spoke to. These con­cerns didn’t relate to the plans them­selves, but rather to what hap­pened after the ini­tial plans were developed.

Investor com­plaints (which, just to be clear, come from a small minor­ity of clients) fall into the three categories.

The first can be sum­ma­rized as “What­ever hap­pened to my plan?”

These are clients who worked with their advi­sor to pre­pare a plan but haven’t heard any men­tion of it since. Clients expect that their plan will serve as a roadmap against which their progress will be mea­sured. Even if the news is not good, advi­sors need to incor­po­rate a con­ver­sa­tion about how clients are doing again their plan into every client review.

The sec­ond set of com­plaints relates to plans that are out of date.

“My plan was pre­pared eight years ago and hasn’t been updated since” one investor told me. “My wife and I have both switched jobs and our cir­cum­stances have changed dra­mat­i­cally. I just don’t think that a plan based on where we were almost ten years ago is rel­e­vant today. We men­tioned this a year ago but nothing’s hap­pened. We’ve been talk­ing about whether we need to change advi­sors to ensure our plan is up to date.”

The final cat­e­gory of com­plaints is directed at advi­sors who are seen as being overly passive.

“Given what’s hap­pened to mar­kets, it was no sur­prise that we’re behind on our plan” was what still another investor told me. “When we met with our advi­sor, we expected that we’d have a con­ver­sa­tion about either mov­ing some of our goals back or mak­ing some changes to get back on track.

Nei­ther of those things hap­pened; instead she said that we should expect to fall behind at cer­tain points and that we shouldn’t be con­cerned. We walked away won­der­ing if we’re work­ing with the right advisor.”

Incor­po­rat­ing finan­cial plans into client conversations

Every expe­ri­enced advi­sor knows that the plan itself isn’t what dri­ves value to clients; it’s what hap­pens as a result of the plan.

Clients who go through the plan­ning process typ­i­cally expect that their finan­cial plan will be an ongo­ing topic of con­ver­sa­tion with their advi­sors. It may be that you haven’t fallen vic­tim to any of the traps investors com­plained about when it comes to finan­cial plans. Just in case, con­sider these questions:

1. Are dis­cus­sions of progress against their finan­cial plans incor­po­rated into every client review?

2. Have all of the finan­cial plans for your clients been updated to reflect their cur­rent situation?

3. Are you being proac­tive in sug­gest­ing amend­ments to client goals or strate­gies in light of what’s hap­pened to markets?

The answer to all three ques­tions may be yes; but if you fall short with any of these with even a few clients now’s the time to rem­edy this. That way, clients will feel they’re get­ting the full ben­e­fit of the time they’ve invested to develop their finan­cial plan, and won’t be vul­ner­a­ble if approached by another advi­sor promis­ing that work­ing with him or her. Your clients will always have up to date plans in place.

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Tags: Adoption, Attributes, Benefits Of Financial Planning, Client Assets, Client Satisfaction, Confidence, Conversations, Cornerstone, Corporate Insights, Investment Firms, Investment Industry, Investors, Pitfalls, Portfolios, Roadmap, Rocky, Term Objectives, Twenty Years, Volatility, Wallet
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Three tips on successful prospecting

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Recently, I talked to three advi­sors who have had sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess bring­ing in new clients this year.

They have dif­fer­ent approaches, book sizes, length of time in the busi­ness — and are located in three dif­fer­ent cities.

Despite this, some con­sis­tent themes emerged. Here are three things that came out of our conversations.

You don’t win clients — other advi­sors lose them

The first advi­sor talked about an old adage in pol­i­tics — Gov­ern­ing par­ties don’t get defeated, they beat themselves.

In essence, given the choice most peo­ple would rather stay with an incum­bent government.

They only change when  they lose con­fi­dence in the party in power — it’s at that point that they look seri­ously at oppo­si­tion alternatives.

In this advisor’s view, the same applies to win­ning new clients. They’ll move on their sched­ule, not yours — gen­er­ally when they’ve become dis­il­lu­sioned with their exist­ing advisor.

This advi­sor believes two things have led to his suc­cess in attract­ing new clients:

1. He works to posi­tion him­self with as many prospects as pos­si­ble as the log­i­cal suc­ces­sor should they become dis­af­fected with their exist­ing advisor.

2. He tries to accel­er­ate this process of dis­af­fec­tion by shar­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion going to his exist­ing clients.

The harder you try, the less suc­cess­ful you’ll be

The sec­ond advi­sor believes a key to his suc­cess is his low key approach — he tells prospects that he’d be happy to sit down with them any time that they feel com­fort­able doing so.

In this advisor’s view, the least amount of pres­sure gets clients guards up. And the harder you try, the more your approach smacks of des­per­a­tion and scares prospects off.

Like the first advi­sor, he has focused on build­ing his pipeline of prospects to whom he sends infor­ma­tion going to his clients. He also touches base with every prospect once a year (more often if the prospect seems close to mak­ing a change) with a view to see­ing if they’d like to sit down to talk about their situation.

Reduce the risk of meeting

The third advi­sor has found that once he gets in front of prospec­tive clients for the first time, their com­fort level in sit­ting down fur­ther goes up dramatically.

His branch runs quar­terly lunches with out­side speak­ers — typ­i­cally one of their econ­o­mists or research ana­lysts or a port­fo­lio man­ager on the firm’s man­aged money program.

He always buys a table to these lunches — while the bulk of the peo­ple he invites are clients, he also aims to get one or two prospects out. He’s found that prospects are more com­fort­able being one of six or seven at a table than meet­ing with him one on one — and once some­one has come out to that lunch, his suc­cess rate at book­ing a fol­low up meet­ing goes up dramatically.

If you’re in the Toronto area and like this idea, below is a link to infor­ma­tion on a lun­cheon pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark Car­ney on Decem­ber 16.

Tables of 10 are $700 — con­sider split­ting a table with a col­league and invit­ing three key clients and one prospec­tive client you’ve been talk­ing to.

http://​www​.cana​di​an​club​.org/​d​o​/​e​v​e​n​t​?​e​v​e​n​t​_​i​d​=​3​102

If you’d like more ideas on what’s work­ing today to attract clients, here’s a link to a recent con­fer­ence call:

Con­fer­ence call:  Mak­ing 2010 your best prospect­ing year ever — with Dun­can Macpherson:

Dan and Duncan’s call

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Tags: Confidence, Conversations, Desperation, Disaffection, Incumbent Government, Length Of Time, Logical Successor, Old Adage, Opposition, Pipeline, Prospects, Some Consistent Themes
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