Optimize Your Client Year-End Reviews

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Opti­mize Your Client Year-End Reviews

by Rose­mary Smyth and Sara Gilbert

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

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

Five tips to improve client ser­vice are:

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

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

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

1. Put more struc­ture into client meetings.

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

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

2. Use goal-driven client reviews.

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

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

3. Ask about their expectations.

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

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

4. Offer addi­tional services.

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

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

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

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

****

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

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

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Tags: Best Suit, Body Language, Business Coach, Business Research, Client Meetings, Financial Advisors, Honest Answers, International Business, Meetin, New Ways, Portfolio Reviews, Relationship With Clients, Rosemary, Sara Gilbert, Smyth, Strategist, Tough Times, Useful Tools, Viewpoints, Year End
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How Client Feedback Drove Dramatic Gains in One Advisor’s Business

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

How client feed­back drove dra­matic gains in one advisor’s business

Many advi­sors have heard about the ben­e­fits of a Client Advi­sory Board. Today, an advi­sor who leads a six per­son team dis­cusses how her very first meet­ing yielded star­tling insights on every­thing from the most effec­tive form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to port­fo­lio reviews to how to encour­age referrals.

Note that this advi­sor recruited the mem­bers of her board by post­ing a notice in her newslet­ter invit­ing clients inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing to let her know, and then sup­ple­mented this by approach­ing a few clients directly.

This arti­cle orig­i­nally appeared in Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing advi­sor prac­tice man­age­ment site. Any­one inter­ested can get a 45 day free trial to Hors­es­mouth here:

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: Debra Tay­lor, CPA/PFS

I am con­stantly striv­ing to fol­low best prac­tices and become more effi­cient as my firm and I grow. Fol­low­ing best prac­tices, we recently held our first Client Advi­sory Board (CAB) meet­ing. Although it is too soon to say for cer­tain, I think it may be the best $500 I have ever spent on my clients. (In fact, I didn’t even spend it, as one of my local ven­dors was more than happy to foot the bill.)

I expected the CAB to serve as a way for me to be more in tune with my clients’ wants and needs so that I could bet­ter serve them, but it is turn­ing out to be much more than that. I now have eight action items on my plate, plus the knowl­edge that my clients have a vested inter­est mak­ing our firm stronger.

The mechan­ics

We held the CAB meet­ing in a pri­vate room at our local coun­try club and had eight clients in atten­dance. We met for about two hours and fol­lowed the agenda below, which was pre­sented to each client.

I was wor­ried that my clients would be reluc­tant to share with me, espe­cially those things that my staff and I could be doing bet­ter. To address this con­cern, I invited my most out­spo­ken client, a for­mer col­lege pro­fes­sor, to act as the cat­a­lyst for open communication.

Dur­ing the early part of the meet­ing, we talked about the acces­si­bil­ity of my staff and the open­ness and trans­parency of our processes and fees. I received 10 min­utes of pos­i­tive responses, which made me a lit­tle ner­vous; wor­ried that my CAB meet­ing was turn­ing into a love fest and no action­able items would come out of it. So I baited my out­spo­ken client, men­tion­ing a trans­fer that was not prop­erly processed in his account; then the con­dor started to surface.

Broker-dealer

We started to talk about the rela­tion­ship with my broker-dealer. Many of our clients were actu­ally unaware of the rela­tion­ship, and we ded­i­cated a con­sid­er­able amount of time dis­cussing my broker-dealer’s cus­to­dial and com­pli­ance roles.

I believe my clients found the expla­na­tions to be reas­sur­ing. It also puts me at ease to know that should I take the next step in going RIA, I would have a loyal fol­low­ing among my clients and not lose a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of them. If noth­ing else comes from a CAB, the renewed faith and boosts in con­fi­dence you get from hear­ing your clients praise and appre­ci­ate your work is def­i­nitely valuable!

Action item

1. Explain our rela­tion­ship with our broker-dealer to our clients so they gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the benefits.

Our newslet­ter

Our firm sends out a newslet­ter called The Week­ender every Fri­day. It is our main dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel for dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion to clients and prospects on a mass scale.

We have used The Week­ender to dis­trib­ute our weekly mar­ket com­men­tary and to stay top-of-mind on a reg­u­lar basis. As it turns out, our clients were eager to learn more about their invest­ments, learn more about the mar­kets, and have a more per­sonal rela­tion­ship with the firm.

As a result of CAB input, we have made rad­i­cal changes to The Week­ender. We now include a “Did You Know?” col­umn that high­lights a dif­fer­ent invest­ment topic every week, a “Per­sonal Finance Cor­ner” that high­lights a dif­fer­ent per­sonal finance piece every week (whether it be accel­er­at­ing your mort­gage pay­ments or high­light­ing credit card rewards pro­grams), and a “From Where I Sit,” col­umn, which is writ­ten with a more inti­mate tone and allows me to con­nect with my clients on a per­sonal level.

Action items (cont’d)

2. Con­tinue to build on the suc­cess of The Week­ender

3. Cre­ate other mean­ing­ful ways to con­nect with clients on a more per­sonal level

Port­fo­lio reviews

We have a very thor­ough process for port­fo­lio review meet­ing with our clients, whether they are quar­terly, semi-annually, or annu­ally. We start with a mem­ber of our team review­ing the accounts and their per­for­mance with the client. I then dis­cuss any changes that we are rec­om­mend­ing and any new strate­gies or man­agers we should be con­sid­er­ing. We then dis­cuss any changes in the client’s needs and fol­low up by answer­ing any ques­tions they may raise.

Fol­low­ing best prac­tices, we sched­ule our next appoint­ment before the client leaves, and within 48 hours, a mem­ber of our team sends notes that sum­ma­rize the meet­ing and out­line any action items to be done by our­selves or our clients.

As it turns out, the CAB reported that meet­ing notes are quite valu­able to the clients, and they appre­ci­ate that we put our promises for action items in writ­ing; thus hold­ing our­selves account­able. Although the clients asked that we be less thor­ough and spe­cific about the invest­ments in their port­fo­lios and focus more on the over­all per­for­mance, this is one time I think I will err on the side of com­pli­ance and caution.

Action items (cont’d)

4. Be more to the point in port­fo­lio reviews

5. Put more empha­sis on the deliv­ery of meet­ing notes

Client events

We closed by dis­cussing client events and sem­i­nars. We learned that our clients wanted more “lunch and learn sem­i­nars” and more client appre­ci­a­tion events. We will still hold our fun events, although we have now sched­uled a “lunch and learn” every six weeks for the rest of the year.

Our clients expressed inter­est in learn­ing more about their options when it comes to Social Secu­rity, tran­si­tion­ing to retire­ment, estate plan­ning, tax plan­ning, and mar­ket con­di­tions. Not only will these lunch and learns help strengthen my rela­tion­ships with my clients, but they will help me strengthen my rela­tion­ships with indus­try pro­fes­sion­als and cen­ters of influ­ence. I will invite an estate plan­ning accoun­tant and attor­ney to con­duct these sem­i­nars and hope­fully strengthen them as refer­ral sources.

Action items

6. Pro­vide more edu­ca­tional events, such as monthly sem­i­nar top­ics and speakers

7. Offer more oppor­tu­ni­ties to spend social time with my clients

Refer­rals

Although many advi­sors hold Client Advi­sory Board meet­ings as part of their refer­ral mar­ket­ing, I have always strug­gled with ask­ing my clients for refer­rals; although I do. How­ever, I was very sur­prised and found it most inter­est­ing that my clients did not wait for me to dis­cuss this topic; they raised it on their own!

One of my clients said they have been so impressed with our firm and the way that we man­age their invest­ments that they have been mean­ing to refer their friends and fam­ily to us, but haven’t had the oppor­tu­nity or venue to do so. They wanted to bring their friends and fam­ily mem­bers to a lunch or some other client events in order to make an intro­duc­tion and actu­ally show them first­hand what our firm is all about, rather than just rec­om­mend­ing our services.

Wow! That was an amaz­ing insight. With the help of these clients, I will be able to grow my prac­tice even faster than I could have ever imagined.

Action items (cont’d)

8. Hold “bring a friend” events specif­i­cally designed and mar­keted for clients to intro­duce oth­ers to the firm.

Your clients are your life­line, and you should be should lis­ten­ing to them. I have always believed that if you do right by your clients, lis­ten to their needs and desires, and do every­thing in your power to pro­vide them a supe­rior client expe­ri­ence, it will pay div­i­dends. Our Client Advi­sory Board expe­ri­ence has just rein­forced this belief for our firm.

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Tags: Advisory Board, Aspx, Attendance, Best Practices, Board Meeting Agenda, Client Feedback, Cpa, Debra Taylor, Dramatic Gains, First Meeting, Free Trial, Local Country, Mechanics, Person Team, Portfolio Reviews, Practice Management, Private Room, Referrals, Startling Insights, Vested Interest
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Why a Simple Email is Today’s Best Prospecting Strategy

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

In the Q & A after my talk on refer­rals at a recent con­fer­ence, an advi­sor asked about the best way to inter­act with clients today — and also how to get in front of prospects in the cur­rent environment.

Per­son­al­ized port­fo­lio reviews and one on one con­tact are essen­tial to let clients know how they’re doing and to assure them that their port­fo­lios are hold­ing up — that’s espe­cially true in tur­bu­lent mar­kets like we’ve seen of late.

The chal­lenge in times of stress is that given how many clients want to hear from you, try­ing to reach every­one in per­son can be imprac­ti­cal. And if we’re not care­ful, the focus on exist­ing clients means we miss the oppor­tu­nity to reach out to prospects.

It’s here where vehi­cles that allow you to effi­ciently reach mul­ti­ple clients at the same time can be effec­tive. Some advi­sors invite clients to evening town hall meet­ings, at which they dis­cuss mar­ket devel­op­ments. Oth­ers host con­fer­ence calls for clients, dur­ing which the advi­sor and an out­side money man­ager review where the mar­ket standas .

Town halls and con­fer­ence calls can be effec­tive sup­ple­ments to reg­u­lar con­tact, but dur­ing mar­ket tur­moil even these can fall short of the fre­quency of updates that some clients are seek­ing — and they also have lim­ited impact when it comes to prospects.

That’s the appeal of a strat­egy that one advi­sor employed in the 2008 to reach both exist­ing and prospec­tive clients — an approach he began using again in the past month.

Offer­ing to send arti­cles and videos

Last month, I wrote about some guide­lines for effec­tive client com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing tur­bu­lent peri­ods. As part of that, I men­tioned an advi­sor named Robert who I sat down with in Sep­tem­ber of 2008. A 20-year vet­eran and a multi-million dol­lar pro­ducer, he wanted to talk about ramp­ing up his client contact.

As a result of our con­ver­sa­tion, Robert and two asso­ciates on his team began call­ing clients with this offer: “Given what’s hap­pened to mar­kets, we have ramped up the time we spend each week review­ing a vari­ety of the very best sources for new insights. In light of the cur­rent uncer­tainty, I’d be happy to send you arti­cles or video inter­views I find espe­cially rel­e­vant. Is this some­thing that would be of interest?”

Almost with­out excep­tion, clients expressed strong inter­est in get­ting this infor­ma­tion. Then they asked a fol­low up question:

“And how fre­quently would you like to get an arti­cle or video? I could send these to you once a week, once every two weeks or once a month.”

Most clients responded that they’d like to get these weekly — although some did choose every two weeks or every month. In each case, Robert promised to start send­ing these emails — and asked clients to call or send an email if they had any ques­tions about the infor­ma­tion they received.

Mak­ing weekly emails happen

When I met with Robert, I sug­gested he send out emails on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. There were two rea­sons for send­ing these on Sat­ur­day — first because clients are more likely to be able to focus on the arti­cles on Sat­ur­day, sec­ond because of the mes­sage this sent that Robert and his team were going the extra mile and not treat­ing the cri­sis as busi­ness as usual.

Robert and his team set out a sched­ule to make these emails hap­pen. First, they had to select the weekly item to go to clients by end of the day Wednes­day; Robert’s branch man­ager agreed that if he received the arti­cle or video on Wednes­day, approval would fol­low no later than noon on Friday.

Each week­end, Robert and his team divided up respon­si­bil­ity for review­ing pub­li­ca­tions like Forbes, For­tune, Bloomberg Busi­ness Week, New York Times, the Econ­o­mist and Finan­cial Times. They also looked at Bar­rons and Wall Street Jour­nal, although these were less likely can­di­dates for arti­cles to send clients, since they limit access unless you’re an online subscriber.

Robert and his team also looked for videos they could email clients. They began view­ing the PBS inter­view shows Char­lie Rose and Con­suelo Mack and also divided up respon­si­bil­ity for check­ing the sched­ules on Bloomberg and CNBC for pos­si­ble videos. Finally, Robert asked con­tacts at his head office and whole­salers he dealt with to for­ward arti­cles that could be can­di­dates to send clients.

On Wednes­day morn­ing, Robert and his team sat down to review can­di­dates for the Sat­ur­day email. Their prob­lem was never find­ing some­thing to send; it was choos­ing just one item from among the avail­able options. Once they made their selec­tion, Robert wrote a short note to go along with the arti­cle or video, that he sub­mit­ted for approval at the same time as the item itself.

Finally, all clients were divided into three cat­e­gories for the Sat­ur­day morn­ing emails.

For those who chose the weekly option, the email began: “When we spoke, you indi­cated you’d like to receive an arti­cle or video once a week. If you’d like to get this less often, please let me know.”

For clients who opted for biweekly emails, their email was headed: “When we spoke, you said you’d like to receive an arti­cle or video every two weeks. Please let me know if you’d like to receive this either more often or less often.”

And for clients who picked the monthly alter­na­tive, the email said: “When we spoke, you said you’d like to receive an arti­cle or video every month. Please let me know if you’d like to receive this more frequently.”

Lever­ag­ing client com­mu­ni­ca­tion with prospects

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Tags: Amp, Client Communication, Dollar Producer, Email, Host Conference, Market Developments, Market Turmoil, Money Manager, Portfolio Reviews, Portfolios, Prospective Clients, Prospects, Ra, Referrals, Stress, Town Hall Meetings, Town Halls, Turbulent Markets, Turbulent Periods, Veteran
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An alternative way to conduct client reviews

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Expe­ri­enced advi­sors know there’s no sub­sti­tute for face to face meet­ings to review port­fo­lios, espe­cially in times such as these.

In some instances, how­ever, a client’s loca­tion or sched­ule make it impos­si­ble to meet face to face — in those cases, you need to look at an alter­na­tive method to con­duct that review.Recently, I’ve talked to a num­ber of advi­sors who are hav­ing good suc­cess with struc­tured tele­phone meet­ings to con­duct port­fo­lio reviews.

To be suc­cess­ful, tele­phone reviews have to look and feel like a face to face review.

An appoint­ment is set for the call, just as would be the case for a meeting.

An agenda for the phone meet­ing is agreed to and sent to the client in advance of the meeting.

Clients are given the oppor­tu­nity to raise ques­tions and have con­cerns addressed.

And after the call, clients receive a sum­mary of what was dis­cussed and next steps.

For max­i­mum effec­tive­ness, you need to be able to point to a client’s state­ment dur­ing the call and clients should have visual sup­port for any rec­om­men­da­tions you’re making.

To do this, advi­sors can either email mate­r­ial to clients before­hand or uti­lize web con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware such as gotomeet​ing​.com or webex that allows advi­sors to email clients a link. When clients click on that link, the advi­sor con­trols their screen and can take clients through their state­ment online or through a Pow­er­Point presentation.

In talk­ing to clients who are using tele­phone meet­ings, another advan­tage of phone meet­ings is that they tend to be more focused — clients are less likely to drift off topic, since the visual on the screen keeps them on track

Just  remem­ber, tele­phone meet­ings lack the inti­macy and per­sonal dimen­sion of a face to face meet­ing — while they can be a good sup­ple­ment to face to face reviews, they are not a sub­sti­tute, for key clients it’s still impor­tant to meet once a year.

To see a short video inter­view with one advi­sor who has focused on tele­phone reviews, click below:

http://​tv​.invest​mentex​ec​u​tive​.com/​v​i​d​e​o​-​7​0​3​6​-​P​a​r​t​-​A​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​t​o​u​t​s​-​t​h​e​-​b​e​s​t​-​e​l​e​m​e​n​t​s​-​o​f​-​p​h​o​n​e​-​r​e​v​i​ews

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Tags: Appointment, Email Clients, Face To Face, Good Success, Instances, Intimacy, Maximum Effectiveness, Meeting Agenda, Opportunity, Personal Dimension, Phone Meetings, Portfolio Reviews, Portfolios, Powerpoint Presentation, Supplement Reviews, Telephone Reviews, Video Interview, Web Conferencing Software, Webex
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