What Story are you Building for the Client?

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, The Covenant Group

A com­mon dis­cus­sion in the world of cus­tomer ser­vice is how to build a nar­ra­tive for your clients. Some of the biggest brands have achieved life­long loy­alty from con­sumers and con­tinue to draw in more cus­tomers. This is because they have focused not only on the qual­ity of their prod­ucts, but also on the expe­ri­ence clients have when inter­act­ing with their brands.

When assess­ing your own company’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, con­sider sev­eral fac­tors; includ­ing how you want clients to feel after they have used your prod­uct or got­ten off the phone with one of your employ­ees, as well as how your ser­vice is going to improve their lives. Addi­tion­ally, think about what you want them to say to oth­ers when they talk about your brand. By defin­ing the over­all mes­sage of your prod­uct, you can start to work that into every facet of your busi­ness, from client ser­vice to prod­uct devel­op­ment to the sales and mar­ket­ing functions.

Con­struct­ing a nar­ra­tive arc

What do you do to make sure your clients’ expe­ri­ences have a begin­ning, a mid­dle and a happy end­ing? This is a clear exam­ple of how all the com­po­nents of a busi­ness are inter­wo­ven. Most likely, the first encounter a poten­tial client will have with your com­pany is through mar­ket­ing efforts.

Pay atten­tion to how you com­mu­ni­cate with prospects dur­ing this period and how you make them feel as you grad­u­ally move them through the sales process to even­tu­ally become clients. At that point, what do you do to make them feel val­ued and appre­ci­ated? How are you com­mu­ni­cat­ing — explic­itly and sub­lim­i­nally — that you and the client are part­ners on a jour­ney to solve the prob­lem or need that ini­tially led them to do busi­ness with you?

It may be when you are draft­ing your mar­ket­ing strat­egy that you pay the most atten­tion to cre­at­ing a nar­ra­tive for your clients, but it is in client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment that you tell the tale. In every inter­ac­tion, make sure that you are build­ing upon that ser­vice story, mov­ing toward clos­ing — a sat­is­fied client who is ready to start the next chap­ter of his or her rela­tion­ship with your busi­ness. To do so, iden­tify the con­flict (the ques­tion or prob­lem that your client is expe­ri­enc­ing) and main­tain intrigue by deliv­er­ing sur­prises (meet­ing and exceed­ing the client’s expectations).

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.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Anthony Lam, Client Relationship Management, Consumers, Covenant Group, Customer Experience, Experience Clients, Experiences, Facet, First Encounter, Interaction, Journey, Lifelong Loyalty, Marketing Efforts, Marketing Strategy, Narrative Arc, Product Marketing, Prospects, Sales And Marketing, Sales Marketing, Several Factors
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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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To Get Your Clients Referring, Teach Them the Trigger Phrases

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

The new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion is about inter­act­ing with our clients the way friends would inter­act with each other or enlist their help in problem-solving. What­ever approach we take, it should be a con­ver­sa­tion that deliv­ers ben­e­fits to the client.

One aspect of the new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion is that it can nat­u­rally grow out of edu­cat­ing the client. You have worked hard to deter­mine who your ideal client is, what prob­lems they have, and what kinds of solu­tions or expe­ri­ences they seek. Ide­ally, you would have reviewed your ser­vice mix and made some adjust­ments to more closely tai­lor it to that ideal client. So, the nat­ural place for the new refer­ral con­ver­sa­tion to begin is in describ­ing the prob­lem you have decided to focus on solv­ing or the need you have deter­mined to fill. By exten­sion, you will be draw­ing a pic­ture for your clients of your ideal prospect. Our objec­tive is to iden­tify and rein­force expres­sions the client may hear that we hope will prompt him to men­tion you. We want to be teach­ing the client how to know who a great refer­ral would be.

In The Refer­ral Engine, John Jantsch says “I believe any sales­per­son worth their salt has devel­oped a list of phrases, sit­u­a­tions, and ver­bal clues that, if heard dur­ing a sales pre­sen­ta­tion, sig­nal it’s time to take the order. The same idea is true of a qual­i­fied referral.”

What are your trig­ger phrases?

• I was just awarded another allo­ca­tion of stock options, and I’m not sure exactly what they can do for me.
• Our com­pany just moved to a cash bal­ance retire­ment plan.
• My best friends hus­band was just diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s.
• We went to my son’s high school last night to you the guid­ance coun­selor talk about finan­cial aid.
• My sis­ter just had her first child.

Take some time and talk with your clients about who you have real­ized your ideal client is. And dis­cuss those ideal clients in terms of needs they might express that you are par­tic­u­larly good at ful­fill­ing. Teach your clients those trig­ger phrases so that when they hear them again you will pop back into their mind.

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Tags: Alzheimer, Best Friends, Cash Balance, Experiences, Expressions, Financial Aid, Focus, Guidance Counselor, Ideal, Objective, Phrases, Referral, Retirement Plan, S High School, Sales Presentation, Salesperson, Stock Options, Verbal Clues
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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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To Get Referrals, Your Clients Must Understand Your Target Market

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, Advi​sor​Check​list​.com

When Andrew Sul­li­van, of Sul­li­van and Schlie­man in Atlanta, formed his client advi­sory board, one of their top rec­om­men­da­tions was to give each of them a card list­ing his ser­vices and accom­plish­ments. Their request was “tell us how to sell you.”

In a recent client advi­sory board I facil­i­tated, the par­tic­i­pants told the advi­sor “tell us who your ideal client is, so we know who to refer.” It is not the first time I have heard that kind of feed­back from clients.

Expe­ri­ences like this raise two crit­i­cally impor­tant points. First, there is clearly a strong will­ing­ness, even an enthu­si­asm, on the part of clients to make refer­rals. This is not really sur­pris­ing – Julie Littlechild’s research has shown that as much as 91% of our clients are will­ing to refer. (It also demon­strates why par­tic­i­pants on an advi­sory board tend to be a firm’s best refer­ral sources!)

Sec­ond, it is the strongest proof I can imag­ine that advi­sors must clearly define what they do and for whom. They must be able to describe their niche, their tar­get mar­ket. Remem­ber, these advi­sory boards are com­posed of the advi­sors’ best clients – the ones who should know best what they have to offer.  And yet, they asked for guid­ance on what kind of clients the advi­sor hoped to attract.

If you believe you have defined your tar­get client, here is how you can test how well you have done. Try this exper­i­ment – next time you talk to a cou­ple clients you are on par­tic­u­larly good terms with, and who would be will­ing to take a minute for a lit­tle thought exper­i­ment, ask them this ques­tion: If I sent you into a cock­tail party in the next room full of all kinds of peo­ple, and I asked you to refer a cou­ple of them to me as prospec­tive clients, how would you fig­ure out who would be the best ones to send to me?

I sus­pect that most clients would answer “I don’t know.” And if that’s the response, you will know why you aren’t get­ting more refer­rals. Your clients are not sure who you’re look­ing for. And what­ever you have done so far to define and com­mu­ni­cate your tar­get mar­ket, your value propo­si­tion, and your ideal client, you still have work to do.

Defin­ing who you want as clients and what unique solu­tions and expe­ri­ences you pro­vide to peo­ple like them are the foun­da­tion of refer­ral mar­ket­ing. Get those two things right, and attract­ing new clients becomes much easier.

Copy­right © Advi​sor​Check​list​.com

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Tags: Advisory Board, Advisory Boards, Andrew Sullivan, Cocktail Party, Experiences, Feedback, Guidance, Ideal, Imagine, Julie Littlechild, Niche Market, Participants, Proof, Prospective Clients, Referral Sources, Referrals, Target Client, Target Market, Thought Experiment, Willingness
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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.

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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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Ten minutes to MUCH more effective client meetings

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Ten min­utes to MUCH more effec­tive client meetings

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

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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One Advisor’s Perfect Calendar

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

The fol­low­ing is based on one of Norm Trainor’s clients, Wes Barrett.

Top advi­sors have one sim­ple mes­sage that describes what makes them unique. When some­one asks Wes Bar­rett the ques­tion, “What do you do?” he responds by say­ing, “We help our clients live their per­fect cal­en­dar.” Typ­i­cally, the response Wes gets to this state­ment is, “Wow, what do you mean?” This gives Wes an oppor­tu­nity to describe his services.

My col­league and asso­ciate, Bill Whit­ley, calls this the ‘Wow’ state­ment. The next step is to illus­trate the ‘How’. The two most impor­tant indi­ca­tors of what peo­ple value are how they spend their time and their money. Finan­cial inde­pen­dence gives us the free­dom to spend our time doing what is mean­ing­ful to us. Wes Barrett’s mis­sion is to enable his clients to live their lives doing what they value. In that way, they cre­ate their own per­fect calendar.

Wes uses sto­ries to illus­trate how his finan­cial advi­sory firm helps clients live their dreams. One of the rea­sons his mes­sage is so pow­er­ful, is that Wes is liv­ing his per­fect cal­en­dar. He and his wife, Hy, take a min­i­mum of 150 days a year to pur­sue their dreams. They have trav­elled all over the world. Hy and Wes are fully engaged in liv­ing their lives. When they go away and enjoy their expe­ri­ences, they come back to the busi­ness renewed. Wes truly believes that peo­ple are either grow­ing or dying. There is no sta­tus quo. Horowitz, the great pianist, prac­ticed con­tin­u­ously because he believed that you can always improve.

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Tags: Asia, Barrett, Bill Whitley, Calendar Free, Colleague, Create Calendar, Dreams, Experiences, Financial Advisory Firm, Financial Independence, Free Time, Freedom, Holidays, Horowitz, Norm Trainor, Pianist, Simple Message, Time Conferences, Wes, Work Calendar, Working With Clients
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A Unique Way to Engage Key Clients

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Many advi­sors strug­gle with ways to deepen rela­tion­ships with  top clients .

Nat­u­rally, you pro­vide a more in depth plan and meet with them more fre­quently. And of course their calls are returned promptly and their issues attended to first.

The chal­lenge is that many top clients see this treat­ment  as their due – and you’re not going to impress some­one by merely deliv­er­ing what they expect.

That’s why many advi­sors try to build per­sonal rela­tion­ships with their most impor­tant clients by con­nect­ing at a social level – per­haps by invit­ing them to din­ner, to attend a play or a hockey game  or by host­ing them to a round of golf.

Despite the best inten­tions on the part of advi­sors, often these attempts to deepen rela­tion­ships fall short — despite the expen­di­ture of sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time and money.

First, your top clients are very often pressed for time – and another social invi­ta­tion may be as much of an impo­si­tion as a rela­tion­ship builder.

Beyond this, chances are that mil­lion dol­lar clients enjoy high end din­ners and rounds of golf on their own. As a result, it’s pos­si­ble to spend a sub­stan­tial amount of money with­out mak­ing a mean­ing­ful impact or get­ting an appre­cia­ble return.

Remem­ber, there are two costs to host­ing top clients to an event that’s ho hum. First of course are the dol­lars you spend.  But per­haps the big­ger cost is the lost oppor­tu­nity build deeper rela­tion­ships with your most impor­tant clients – you only have so much face time with key clients, and you can’t afford to squan­der that time on a rou­tine experience.

Focus­ing on unique experiences

There’s a sim­ple test of whether a client activ­ity is a good use of time and money – will your clients vividly remem­ber this three and six months from now?

If the answer is no or if you’re not sure, chances are that the time and money you spent won’t give you the rela­tion­ship build­ing pay­off you’re look­ing for. To make an impact, you need to cre­ate unique expe­ri­ences that strike a chord with clients and that they’ll recall many months from now.

Here’s a sim­ple four step process to doing things that make an impact with your top clients.

First, make a list of your top ten clients.

Sec­ond, beside each one iden­tify their pas­sions. Are they food­ies or wine lovers? Do they love opera, bal­let or clas­si­cal music?  Are their favourite char­i­ties related to third world coun­tries or to help­ing trou­bled youth in the city you live in?

Next, try to put clients into com­mon groups – find two or three client cou­ples that share a com­mon passion.

Finally, seek out a unique  char­i­ta­ble or fundrais­ing event in your com­mu­nity that caters to that pas­sion, to which you can invite these clients as your guests.

This doesn’t have to be a high priced din­ner – in fact often the big ticket events tend to be too large and imper­sonal to have an impact. Instead seek out smaller, com­mu­nity based events where your dol­lar will go fur­ther and where the expe­ri­ence will be more per­sonal.  What you’re look­ing for are events that are high impact, not nec­es­sar­ily high cost.

Three exam­ples of events that res­onate with clients

As exam­ples to get you think­ing, here are three locally based expe­ri­ences that will strike a chord with the right clients – two in Toronto, one in Van­cou­ver.  The cost of host­ing four client cou­ples to these events varies from $750 to $2500 but for the right clients that invest­ment can deepen rela­tion­ships in a way that con­ven­tional enter­tain­ment just can’t.

If these ideas inspire you , con­sider seek­ing out sim­i­lar events in your own community.

Hands across the nation – for clients who want to sup­port under­de­vel­oped countries

A year ago, Cathy and Chris Fuchs of White Wil­low Ben­e­fits Con­sul­tants intro­duced me to a down­town Toronto fundrais­ing event in aid of Hands Across the Nation, a grass roots char­ity that sup­ports local projects in Mali and Bolivia.

Their annual fundraiser is among the best fundrais­ing val­ues I know of;  at a cost of $85 and includ­ing enter­tain­ment and great  food pro­vided by the Escoffier Soci­ety,  it’s guar­an­teed to res­onate with clients with an affin­ity for projects in under­de­vel­oped coun­tries. As it hap­pens,  tick­ets are still avail­able for this event , which takes place this com­ing Wednes­day March 23 – a link with infor­ma­tion is below.

http://​hatn​.org/​w​i​n​e​_​g​o​u​r​m​e​t​.​htm

The Stop – for seri­ous foodies

The Stop Com­mu­nity Food Cen­ter is a down­town Toronto facil­ity with the man­date to pro­vide the local com­mu­nity with access to healthy food. One Thurs­day each month, their award win­ning chef hosts a din­ner to sup­port their pro­grams. The cost is $75 for food alone or $120 with wine pair­ings – no more than you’d pay for a con­ven­tional din­ner, but with much more impact. And for a really unique expe­ri­ence, for $100 peo­ple get to help pre­pare the meal and expe­ri­ence life in a pro­fes­sional kitchen.

http://​thestop​.org/​e​v​e​n​t​/​1​4​-​a​p​r​-​2​011

UBC Opera Ball – for opera lovers

Last Thurs­day, I attended the annual fundraiser for the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia Opera Pro­gram. Over din­ner, I sat at one of fif­teen tables on the stage of the spec­tac­u­lour Chan Cen­ter, while stu­dents from the pro­gram performed.

No one at my table had attended this pre­vi­ously, so we were all unsure what to expect – but were uni­ver­sally  blown away by the remark­able tal­ent and energy of stu­dents in this pro­gram. Each table of ten costs $1500.  For $750, next year two Van­cou­ver advi­sors can split a table of ten and each invite two client cou­ples. For the right clients, that $375 could be an out­stand­ing invest­ment in rela­tion­ship building.

Chances are that you aren’t located in Toronto or Van­cou­ver – and even if you are, these events might not be a fit for your or your clients.  What’s impor­tant here are not the spe­cific exam­ples, but the prin­ci­ple of deep­en­ing client rela­tion­ships by doing things which break through the clut­ter and stand out.

And note that almost every major uni­ver­sity has a music pro­gram, which often host remark­ably pro­fes­sional  per­for­mances and rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive fundrais­ers – and invit­ing the right clients to these is not just much lower cost than con­ven­tional pro­fes­sional  per­for­mance, but also typ­i­cally more fun and higher impact.

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Tags: Amount Of Money, Attempts, Best Intentions, Dollar, Experiences, Face Time, Hockey Game, Hosting, Imposition, Invitation, Meaningful Impact, Personal Relationships, Play Game, Relationship Builder, Routine Experience, Simple Test, Six Months, Struggle, Time And Money, Use Of Time
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