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

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 1 Million, Brisk Walk, Challenges, Client Meetings, Dentist Office, Effective Meetings, Fatigue, Foreboding, Fresh Air, Investor, Lunch, Optimism, Possibilities, Priority, Scheduling, Short Breaks, Signs, Snacks, Three Steps, Warren Buffett
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Are Your Client Meetings Like Going to the Dentist?

Thursday, September 8th, 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, so that they’re not seen as akin to a visit to the dentist.

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, he never men­tions the share price — rather he focuses on its book value. In essence, he points to some­thing he can control.

Advi­sors should try to do the same. You obvi­ously have to talk about what’s hap­pened to client port­fo­lios, go beyond that to talk about things which are in your con­trol. 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.

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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Tags: 1 Million, Brisk Walk, Challenges, Client Meetings, Dentist Office, Exercise, Fatigue, Foreboding, Fresh Air, Going To The Dentist, Investor, Lunch, Optimism, Portfolio, Possibilities, Priority, Short Breaks, Snacks, Three Steps, Visit To The Dentist
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Ten Tips to be More Likeable

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

Ask advi­sors about what it takes to attract and retain clients and you’ll get answers like above aver­age returns, pre­serv­ing cap­i­tal in tough mar­kets and strong communication.

Those are all true — to these can be added deliv­er­ing strong value and hav­ing clients trust your com­pe­tence and integrity.

But there’s one other fac­tor that’s often under­es­ti­mated — and that’s likeability.

The impor­tance of being likeable

I’ve heard clients say they’re a bit dis­ap­pointed with recent returns or they haven’t heard from their advi­sor in the last while quite as much as they’d hoped — but they really like him or her and just don’t see them­selves leaving.

Other times, I have talked to investors who selected a new advi­sor. These investors spoke to sev­eral advi­sors, all of whom seemed com­pe­tent and inter­ested — and ended up select­ing the one they liked the most.

It’s really quite sim­ple — every­thing else being equal, we like to work with peo­ple we like.

Some advi­sors believe that like­abil­ity is innate — we either have it or we don’t.

That’s true to a point. But there are spe­cific things that advi­sors can do to be more likeable

Strat­egy one: Watch your attitude

The first thing that makes peo­ple like­able is being upbeat, pos­i­tive and optimistic.

No one likes to spend time with some­one who is con­stantly down in the dumps and sucks the energy out of every room.

In tough mar­kets, it can be hard to stay pos­i­tive. The best known researcher on strate­gies to improve opti­mism is psy­chol­o­gist Mar­tin Selig­man of the Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania.

Click here to read an arti­cle on his book Learned Opti­mism that appeared ear­lier this year.

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​178

Strat­egy Two: Boost your energy

One way to con­vey a more pos­i­tive atti­tude is to radi­ate pos­i­tive energy — it’s hard to look upbeat if you’re slumped in a chair at the end of the day.

Exer­cise can play a big role in boost­ing energy — start­ing the day with a work­out or a brisk walk can help.

And fresh air and sun­shine can help as well. Even tak­ing five or ten min­utes before an impor­tant meet­ing to get some fresh air will increase your energy level.

Or you can do what one advi­sor did to be more upbeat when talk­ing to clients on the phone. He put a sign on his wall with the two words “Be pos­i­tive” — and began to talk stand­ing up. Just by doing those two things, he raised his energy level on the phone.

Strat­egy Three: Smile

When going out to greet a client in the lobby, make a point of smil­ing. It may feel a bit funny ini­tially — but it’s amaz­ing the impact that doing this and this alone can have.

Not only will clients see you as more pos­i­tive — but you’ll feel bet­ter as well.

Ulti­mately, the goal is to make smil­ing a habit — so you don’t have to do it consciously.

Strat­egy Four: Demon­strate interest

The next strat­egy is a sim­ple one — and that’s to demon­strate real inter­est in the clients you’re talk­ing to.

The best way to do that is to ask ques­tions to get clients talk­ing. The more ques­tions you ask, the more clients will talk. Remem­ber, when meet­ing with an exist­ing or prospec­tive client, the num­ber one pri­or­ity is always to ask ques­tions to get clients engaged.

Peo­ple who drone on about their views are the oppo­site of like­able — we all know paragons of pom­pos­ity who dom­i­nate every con­ver­sa­tion, these are exactly the peo­ple every­one avoids at a party.

Strat­egy Five: Give your undi­vided attention

It’s not just good enough to get clients to talk — they have to feel lis­tened to. You need to focus all of your atten­tion on what they say. One way to do that is to make eye con­tact, look­ing away to make notes.

One of the things that’s been said about Bill Clin­ton is that when peo­ple talk to him, they feel that they have his undi­vided atten­tion — for that moment or two, as far as he’s con­cerned they are the only peo­ple in the room. You want your clients to feel the same way.

Strat­egy Six: Make gen­uine compliments

Strat­egy six is to seek out oppor­tu­ni­ties to make gen­uine compliments.

The key is to be sin­cere — being phony will work against you. But look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to say that I truly admire the job you’ve done with your kids, your house, your busi­ness, your com­mit­ment to char­ity — these will all make you more likeable.

One advi­sor I talked to said that in every meet­ing his goal is to make one gen­uine, sin­cere com­pli­ment — and has been struck by the pos­i­tive response from clients.

Strat­egy Seven: Seek to help

Some­thing else that makes advi­sors like­able is let­ting clients know you’re there to help — espe­cially when there’s no rev­enue attached to it for you.

Let’s say a client says that her son has lost his job.

You have three choices.

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Tags: Blog, Brisk Walk, Competence, Dumps, Exercise, Fresh Air, Integrity, Investors, Likeability, Likeable, Martin Seligman, Optimism, People, Positive Attitude, Positive Energy, Psychologist, Researcher, Sunshine, University Of Pennsylvania, Workout
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