3% of Issues and Clients Cause 90% of Grief

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consultants

This arti­cle is a fourth in a series about build­ing a great busi­ness.  The first three arti­cles dis­cussed set­ting goals and objec­tively ana­lyz­ing the cur­rent state of your business:

Build­ing a $100 Mil­lion Busi­ness – Set­ting Your Goals

Build­ing a $250 Mil­lion Busi­ness – Set­ting Goals

Build­ing a Great Busi­ness – Where are You Now?

These steps are designed to help you gain clar­ity about your busi­ness – where you are now and where you plan to be in the future.

Before you start tak­ing steps to put plans in place, you need to iden­tify issues that are hold­ing you back from focus­ing com­pletely on achiev­ing your goals and build­ing a sus­tain­able growth business.

We all have issues that drive us crazy:

• Bad habits
• Team mem­bers who are not productive
• Dif­fi­cult clients
• Bad invest­ments
• Tech­nol­ogy that is hard to use and frustrating
• Com­pli­ance issues

I have a rule of thumb – three to five per­cent of issues or clients cause you 90% of grief.  Just think about this for a minute.  How many of your clients are stress­ful to work with?  What tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions require con­stant atten­tion?   What per­sonal or busi­ness prob­lems occupy your thoughts when you are at work, at play or spend­ing time with your family?

We call these issues your Prin­ci­pal Frus­tra­tions.  Before you can move for­ward, you need to deal with these clients or issues.

The prob­lem with many Prin­ci­pal Frus­tra­tions is that they are often too com­plex to resolve.  In fact, when most advi­sors make a list of their Prin­ci­pal Frus­tra­tions, the list is com­prised of such things as:

• I need more clients
• I lose clients due to my inabil­ity to pro­vide the level of ser­vice they expect
• My client port­fo­lios are not gen­er­at­ing pos­i­tive results

Before you can iden­tify solu­tions to these frus­tra­tions, you need to break them down into less com­plex com­po­nents.  Let me give you an example:

Prob­lem:  I need more clients

Poten­tial com­po­nents of the problem:

• I do not have a good lead gen­er­a­tion system
• I do not allo­cate time and money to gen­er­ate leads
• I am not gen­er­at­ing enough referrals
  • I am not deliv­er­ing client expe­ri­ences that encour­age clients to refer friends and colleagues
  • My client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment processes are too intangible
  • My clients do not under­stand what I do so how can they talk to friends and col­leagues about me
  • I don’t con­duct edu­ca­tional work­shops or events that encour­age clients to invite friends and colleagues
  • I don’t have a good web­site or mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial to help con­vert leads into clients
• I don’t do a good enough job of fol­low­ing up on leads
• I don’t have per­sonal or team capac­ity to attract more clients

Now we have some­thing to work with.  Some of the items in the list above can be bro­ken down fur­ther.  The goal is to break items down until you have small prob­lems for which you can cre­ate solu­tions.  It is much eas­ier to fix a series of small prob­lems than to try to tackle a big one.

A great way to iden­tify these frus­tra­tions is through client com­plaints.  When a client com­plains about some­thing, he is doing you a favour.  He is giv­ing you the oppor­tu­nity to resolve a prob­lem that is caus­ing him frus­tra­tion.  Solve the prob­lem and you increase sat­is­fac­tion.  Fail to resolve it and you cre­ate a detrac­tor – some­body who sends out neg­a­tive mes­sages about you to friends and colleagues.

Here is our process for deal­ing with Prin­ci­pal Frustrations:

1. Quan­tify the poten­tial cost of Prin­ci­pal Frustrations
2. Pri­or­i­tize your Prin­ci­pal Frustrations
3. Choose a  single Principal Frustration
4. Iden­tify action steps to resolve the problem
5. Track progress of solu­tions for each frustration

1. Quan­tify the poten­tial cost of your Prin­ci­pal Frustrations

Before you start try­ing to solve your prob­lems, you should pri­or­i­tize your frus­tra­tions, based on a prob­lem value.  Prob­lem value is a cal­cu­la­tion of the total cost that you may incur as a result of the frus­tra­tion.  Let’s use the loss of a client due to a ser­vic­ing issue as an example.

In this exam­ple, you lost a client who has $500,000 in a 1% fee-based account.  At first glance, you may assume that this frus­tra­tion cost you $5,000 but your loss is much greater than that.  If you had bet­ter ser­viced this client, she may have worked with you for another seven years and she is grow­ing her account by 10% per year, includ­ing invest­ment return.  At that rate, her account will be just under $1 mil­lion and would have gen­er­ated over $57,000 in fees over the seven-year period.

This is only the start of your costs.  If you don’t fix this prob­lem, you may lose addi­tional clients.  If you lost five clients due to poor client ser­vic­ing, this prob­lem could cost you over a quar­ter of a mil­lion dollars.

2. Pri­or­i­tize Your Prin­ci­pal Frustrations

Based on the above analy­sis, develop a pri­or­i­tized list of your frus­tra­tions, based on prob­lem values.

3. Choose a Sin­gle Prin­ci­pal Frustration

Based on your analy­sis in step one, you should choose one of your high pri­or­ity frus­tra­tions.  Ide­ally, you will start at the top and work your way down the list.   As you iden­tify addi­tional frus­tra­tions, add them to your list, based on prob­lem values.

Note:  You will accom­plish more if work on a sin­gle frus­tra­tion rather than try­ing to resolve mul­ti­ple frustrations.

Let’s con­tinue with the exam­ple of los­ing a client due to client ser­vic­ing issues.  Try to drill down to find out what the root of the prob­lem is.  Is it that you are not con­tact­ing clients fre­quently enough?  Are you not return­ing calls promptly?  Do your meet­ings lack direc­tion?  Are your quar­terly reports too detailed or not detailed enough?    As high­lighted in the exam­ple above, by focus­ing on the smaller issues, you can solve the major prob­lem more quickly.

By doing so, you may expand your list of frus­tra­tions.  Pick the most impor­tant one and add the oth­ers to your list for future review.

4. Iden­tify action steps to resolve the problem

Some prob­lems may be sim­ple to resolve, whereas oth­ers are more com­plex.  The goal is to find a solu­tion that per­ma­nently elim­i­nates the prob­lem.   If it is a sim­ple prob­lem that can be resolved in one step, then go ahead and solve it.  If it is more com­plex, you may need to look at a vari­ety of options.  Cre­ate a plan to solve the prob­lem, includ­ing the nec­es­sary resources.  Then assign respon­si­bil­ity to an indi­vid­ual in your team and deter­mine a due date.

5. Track progress for each frustration

The steps above are log­i­cal steps in a typ­i­cal project man­age­ment approach.  Make sure to follow-up with the indi­vid­u­als in your team who have been assigned respon­si­bil­ity for res­o­lu­tion of frus­tra­tions.  As the owner of your busi­ness, you are ulti­mately respon­si­ble.  If you fail to keep your team mem­bers account­able for cre­at­ing solu­tions, you will find it increas­ing dif­fi­cult to get things done.

When we work with clients, we start by ana­lyz­ing Prin­ci­ple Frus­tra­tions.  We do this for two reasons:

• It helps us to get a bet­ter idea of key issues that need to be resolved and helps us struc­ture a program
• Until some Prin­ci­pal Frus­tra­tions have been dealt with, many advi­sors do not have the abil­ity to be present in meet­ings, work on assign­ments and be more proac­tive in deal­ing with issues to build a great business

As I stated ear­lier in this arti­cle, three to five per­cent of issues or clients cause you 90% of grief.  If you can clear up the­ses issues, you will feel free.  Only then can you be ready to take proac­tive steps to build­ing a great busi­ness and achieve sus­tain­able growth.

Spe­cial Offer

We are so con­vinced that our Prin­ci­pal Frus­tra­tions Process is so pow­er­ful in help­ing advi­sors to solve prob­lems and get back on track to build­ing a great busi­ness that we offer a series of free 15-minute ses­sions.  We con­duct these ses­sions on Thurs­days and Fri­days between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

To book a ses­sion, sim­ply choose a date and e-mail us three times that work for you and we will e-mail you back a con­fir­ma­tion.  Please include the tele­phone num­ber at which you can be con­tacted for your session.

All dis­cus­sions are one-on-one and con­fi­den­tial.  There is absolutely no cost or obligation.

To book your ses­sion, e-mail us at info@synchronicity.ca or call us at 905−502−0100.

Bob Simp­son

Direct Line:  905−502−0100

Toll Free:      866−646−6002

E-mail:  bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca

Text Mes­sage:  905−502−0100

Web­site:  www​.syn​chronic​ity​.ca

Join our Dis­cus­sion Group on LinkedIn:  www​.linkedin​.com/​g​r​o​u​p​s​/​A​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​C​o​l​l​a​b​o​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​4​2​4​8​7​2​5​/​a​b​out

Bio:  www​.syn​chronic​ity​.ca/​a​b​out

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Tags: 100 Million, Achieving Your Goals, Bad Habits, Bob Simpson, Business Problems, Client Portfolios, Compliance Issues, Constant Attention, Current State, Frustrations, Grief, Growth Business, Performance Consultants, Rule Of Thumb, Setting Goals, Spending Time With Your Family, Sustainable Growth, Synchronicity, Taking Steps, Technological Solutions
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A wake up call for advisors — Turmoil at the top of the market

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

“Once an acci­dent, twice a coin­ci­dence, three times a trend” is a rule of thumb among observers of polit­i­cal campaigns.

That’s why I was struck by arti­cles last week in the Globe and Mail, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

These arti­cles describe tur­moil among high-net worth investors  …. and have pro­found impli­ca­tions for finan­cial advisors.

Busi­ness Week

First came Busi­ness Week. A story in late June out­lined how the num­ber of afflu­ent Amer­i­cans look­ing to switch advi­sors has tripled in one year, lead­ing to a spike in investors seek­ing out sec­ond opin­ions. (Links to all of these sto­ries can be found at the bot­tom of this article.)

Many find this process excru­ci­at­ingly dif­fi­cult. “My plan­ner was a friend, a good guy …. but I had to stop the bleed­ing” said one investor who had moved. “It was almost like a breakup …. you know, I’ll take the dog, you take the sil­ver­ware.” Among the advice in the Busi­ness Week arti­cle was for investors to take any sec­ond opin­ion with a grain of salt and to work hard on the rela­tion­ship before split­ting, just as they would a marriage.

Wall Street Journal

Last Wednes­day, the Wall Street Jour­nal weighed in on how afflu­ent investors are shift­ing from Wall Street bro­ker­age firms to inde­pen­dent advi­sors using firms such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity and TD Amer­i­trade to pro­vide a back-office plat­form. The key attrac­tion behind the move: The per­cep­tion that inde­pen­dent advi­sors will be more objec­tive and more likely to put their inter­ests first.

The arti­cle talked about the fact that inde­pen­dents oper­at­ing as Reg­is­tered Inde­pen­dent Advi­sors are held to a “fidu­ciary” stan­dard in the advice they pro­vide, in which they are oblig­ated to oper­ate in clients’ best inter­ests; this is a higher level than bro­kers at Wall Street firms, who are guided by “suit­abil­ity rules” in which they are merely pro­hib­ited from rec­om­mend­ing inap­pro­pri­ate prod­ucts.  (The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has made noises about extend­ing the fidu­ciary stan­dard to all finan­cial advisors.)

Just as in Canada, Amer­i­can investors strug­gle with the “Who Can I Trust?” ques­tion, plagued by the lack of con­sis­tent reg­u­la­tory over­sight and the same alpha­bet soup of cre­den­tials we have here. A sign of the times, the article’s clos­ing piece of advice urged investors look­ing to move to hone in on poten­tial con­flicts of interest.

Globe and Mail

On Thurs­day, the Globe and Mail gave this a Cana­dian spin. In a front-page story in the Report on Busi­ness, it detailed how wealthy Cana­di­ans are rethink­ing rela­tion­ships that have some­times been decades in the mak­ing. It talked about the scrutiny that once-passive investors are bring­ing to the invest­ment philoso­phies guid­ing their port­fo­lios, the fees they’re pay­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion from their advi­sor. And it also pin­pointed the dra­matic spike in aggres­sive mar­ket­ing to high net worth clients by other advi­sors seek­ing their business.

New York Times

And on Fri­day of last week, the New York Times focused on a Price­wa­ter­house Coop­ers sur­vey of 238 pri­vate banks and wealth man­agers serv­ing clients with assets of $500,000 to $20 mil­lion.  The study high­lighted a huge gap in the train­ing, skills and tools that client rela­tion­ship man­agers are equipped with — dri­ven in large mea­sure by the pri­or­ity these firms give to attract­ing new clients as opposed to serv­ing exist­ing ones.

One con­sul­tant quoted in the story sum­ma­rized it this way: “In the past, peo­ple were incred­i­bly loyal to their advi­sors even through peri­ods of dis­sat­is­fac­tion. Today that’s changing.”

Given the level of para­noia that dom­i­nates the psy­che of many Amer­i­can investors in today’s post Mad­off world, more impor­tant than advi­sors’ brand, per­for­mance or pedi­gree is the level of trans­parency in how they do busi­ness and how they man­age clients’ money. “Even if you think you’ve found an advi­sor you can trust, check and check again” the arti­cle concludes.

A five point response

Among the fall­out from arti­cles such as those in Busi­ness Week, the Globe and Mail, New York Times and Wall Street Jour­nal will be an increase in the num­ber of clients explor­ing their options — some investors who have been on the fence will con­clude that if oth­ers are look­ing at mov­ing, per­haps they should as well.

In some cases, dis­il­lu­sioned investors are going the dis­count bro­ker route; over the past while the self-directed chan­nel has picked up sig­nif­i­cant share in both the U.S. and Canada.

More often, clients will be mov­ing to another advi­sor. Note that investors mak­ing a move will be ask­ing tougher ques­tions than in the past. A Globe and Mail col­umn in June set out a process that investors could use in select­ing an advi­sor, includ­ing ques­tions they might ask. One advi­sor used these ques­tions to his advan­tage. You can read more about this here:

Telling your story to prospects

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​190

In light of the increas­ing media cov­er­age on investor move­ment, you have two choices: You can fume about know-nothing jour­nal­ists, ungrate­ful clients and “media whore” advi­sors seek­ing out the lime­light. Or you can accept these arti­cles as real­ity and focus on the things under your control.

Since Jan­u­ary, I’ve been run­ning work­shops that have received the best response of any­thing I’ve done in twenty years work­ing with advi­sors. Here’s a five point strat­egy you might con­sider, draw­ing on ideas from those work­shops and bring­ing together some of the things I’ve been writ­ing about over the past year.

Step One: Revisit your value

In today’s value dri­ven world, Cana­di­ans are tak­ing a hard look at the value they get from every­one with whom they do business.

Like it or not, more and more investors will be push­ing hard to under­stand how much they’re pay­ing in fees and what they’re get­ting in return . This has already started at the top of mar­ket, as Invest­ment Coun­sel­lors charg­ing as lit­tle as half a per­cent annu­ally have forced some advi­sors to change the way they oper­ate in order to com­pete. Increas­ingly, the mar­ket is cap­ping fees for mil­lion dol­lar plus clients at one and a half per­cent or less.

His­tor­i­cally, some advi­sors have pro­moted their invest­ment and asset allo­ca­tion dis­ci­pline as their key point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion — although for many, the last year’s events have called into ques­tion the abil­ity to define value in this fashion.

Another approach to value lies in the total wealth approach that more and more high end advi­sors are tak­ing. This was a recur­ring theme by speak­ers at last spring’s Top Advi­sor Summit.

Five take­aways for advisors

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​170

Still another exam­ple is the peace of mind and sense of con­trol that can come from a plan­ning approach, sum­ma­rized in this post from last fall:

Trans­lat­ing cri­sis into opportunity

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​107

Or per­haps you have gone the route of spe­cial­iza­tion and built expert knowl­edge in a nar­row prod­uct area or bring deep under­stand­ing and strong cre­den­tials in the needs of a defined niche market.

What­ever approach to value you offer, being able to clearly artic­u­late your value propo­si­tion and what clients get from work­ing with you will become the nec­es­sary cost of doing busi­ness going for­ward. Now’s the time to take a hard look at how you describe the value you bring.

Step Two: Start with defence.

Iden­tify your top clients, the ones most likely to be approached by com­peti­tors.   Think about when you last met and con­sider whether a meet­ing is overdue.

What hap­pens when you meet is key. In that meet­ing, you need to pro­vide per­spec­tive on what you’ve learned from the events of the past year, a point of view on where we are today and clear guid­ance on what clients should be doing going forward.

Many clients are look­ing for a depar­ture from the invest­ment approaches that failed them in the past year and have fre­quently led to dis­ap­point­ing returns over the past decade. Given that many investors are look­ing for changes from the sta­tus quo, focus on mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the strat­egy you’re rec­om­mend­ing.  Even say­ing some­thing like: “The core strat­egy we had a year ago still makes sense, but I’d like to talk about a few changes respond­ing to today’s mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties in invest­ment grade cor­po­rate bonds” will be well received by many clients.

If you’re advis­ing a stay the course approach, empha­size why it still makes sense and ensure clients under­stand the alter­na­tives you’ve con­sid­ered before arriv­ing at a do-nothing recommendation.

When you meet, make it a pri­or­ity to dig deep for how clients really feel and focus on hear­ing them out. A recent arti­cle out­lined five steps to an effec­tive meet­ing, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on get­ting clients engaged in meetings.

Five steps to high-impact meetings

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​148

Even if you haven’t con­ducted a for­mal client sur­vey, con­sider ask­ing key clients to com­plete a short report card  before the meet­ing and use that as a jump­ing off point for your conversation.

And here’s a com­fort­able way for clients to tell you how they really feel:                                                                             

Get­ting a read­ing on where you stand

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​167

Step Three: Make trust your top priority

At one time, trust was given by clients — increas­ingly today it’s earned.

Rec­og­nize that rebuild­ing client trust is your num­ber one pri­or­ity — ero­sion of trust is a can­cer that inevitably under­mines your relationship.

Research by con­sul­tant Charles Green has iden­ti­fied four dri­vers of trust  — cred­i­bil­ity, reli­a­bil­ity, inti­macy and client  focus. For strate­gies on build­ing trust, take a look at his http://​www​.trustedad​vi​sor​.com/ web­site — you can also read more about rebuild­ing trust below.

Rebuild­ing trust — today’s #1 client challenge

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​172

Step Four: Tackle per­ceived con­flicts head-on

Investors today are para­noid about con­flicts of inter­est — in many cases the pen­du­lum has swung from indif­fer­ence about con­flicts to fix­a­tion on them.

Con­sider pub­lish­ing a code of con­duct and shar­ing that with clients; this was an idea pro­filed in this post by a U.S. indus­try insider pub­lished ear­lier this year.

The case for an advi­sor code of conduct

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​153

And think about being proac­tive in embrac­ing a “fidu­ciary approach”, in which you com­mit to tak­ing the ini­tia­tive in dis­clos­ing poten­tial con­flicts and putting client inter­ests first in every­thing you do. At one time, advi­sors would have been con­cerned that talk­ing about a fidu­ciary approach would cre­ate sus­pi­cion among clients and raise con­cerns where none existed; in today’s hyper-vigilant world, we need to pre-empt the con­cerns that may be weigh­ing on clients but that they aren’t com­fort­able raising.

Step Five: Shift to offence

No mat­ter how good a job you do, today’s real­ity is that you will inevitably lose some clients.

You need to put steps in place to replace them. Start by carv­ing out a reg­u­lar time block in your sched­ule — say two ninety minute peri­ods each week, dur­ing which you focus on one prospect­ing strategy.

You could use that time to meet with pro­fes­sional advi­sors of exist­ing clients. Or sys­tem­at­i­cally reach out to peo­ple you know, offer­ing to send them the arti­cles you email clients, with the goal of increas­ing the num­ber of prospec­tive clients in your pipeline.

Alter­na­tively, you could focus on client devel­op­ment via the client sand­wich lunch ini­tia­tive out­lined in this arti­cle and free one hour webinar:

Get­ting client devel­op­ment into first gear

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​164

Free webi­nar: Build­ing a client lunch prospect­ing program

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​180

Or you could seize on oppor­tu­ni­ties to posi­tion your­self as to the go-to resource for peo­ple who face cor­po­rate down­siz­ing; this was the topic of my August col­umn in Invest­ment Executive:

Turn­ing down­siz­ing into prospect­ing success

http://​invest​mentex​ec​u​tive​.news​pa​perdi​rect​.com/​e​p​a​p​e​r​/​v​i​e​w​e​r​.​a​spx

And don’t ignore plant­ing refer­ral seeds when meet­ing with clients. If you’re unsure about how to raise the topic of refer­rals, try this at the end of a meet­ing: “In the next twelve months, I have the capac­ity to take on 10 new clients. I have recently iden­ti­fied the pro­file of the clients I find I can help the most and work with the best — a pro­file that you fit almost exactly, by the way. I won­der if I could take two min­utes to walk you through the qual­i­ties of the clients I work with best, in case you’re talk­ing to a friend who is con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a change.”

In Sum­mary

The four arti­cles that appeared recently and oth­ers like them are a wakeup call for advi­sors. The only ques­tion is whether you answer that call or press the snooze button.

If you decide to respond, sched­ule some time in your cal­en­dar right now, per­haps along with your team or col­leagues. In that time slot, you might go through this arti­cle in detail and pick one or two areas to focus on in the period ahead, clearly defin­ing the steps you need to take in the next 30 days.

Just remem­ber:  Advi­sors are no dif­fer­ent than automak­ers or retail­ers. Those who embrace fun­da­men­tal change in response to an altered com­pet­i­tive land­scape and shift­ing cus­tomer real­ity can posi­tion them­selves for future suc­cess. Those who fail to do so risk being left in the dust.

P.S. For those who want to send this arti­cle to a team mem­ber or col­league, note that the email for­ward­ing sys­tem on the plat­form for this blog has devel­oped a glitch.

Copy and send this link instead:                                                                                                                                                           

To for­ward this arti­cle: http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​198

Links to articles:

Busi­ness Week — June 25 Think­ing of Switch­ing Finan­cial Planners?

Wall Street Jour­nal — July 29 WSJ​.com — Wary Investors Are Seek­ing Out Objec­tive Voices

Globe and Mail Report on Busi­ness — July 30  “Woo­ing the Wealthy” <http://​www​.globein​vestor​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​7​3​0​.​R​H​I​G​H​N​E​T​W​O​R​T​H​3​0​A​R​T​1​9​4​4​/​G​I​S​t​o​r​y​/​E​m​ail>

New York Times — Aug 1 Wealth Mat­ters:  In Search of Com­pe­tent (and Hon­est) Finan­cial Advisers

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Free webinar — Using low-cost client lunches to build prospecting momentum

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Many advi­sors are strug­gling with a strat­egy to com­mu­ni­cate with prospec­tive clients.Last week, I con­ducted a webi­nar with U.S. advi­sor site Hors­es­mouth, out­lin­ing a sim­ple approach to prospect­ing using a series of low cost client lunches that advi­sors can host in their boardroom.

You can lis­ten to the webi­nar at the link below — there’s no cost, you sim­ply have to enter your email address.

http://​reg​is​ter​.web​cast​group​.com/​l​3​/​?​w​i​d​=​0​7​2​0​6​1​0​0​9​4​7​2​3​&​a​m​p​;​p​r​e=1

For much more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca.

Sorry, it turns out the webi­nar referred to above is no longer avail­able, how­ever, here is the tran­script of the pre­sen­ta­tion by Dan Richards:

Sur­pris­ing infor­mal sur­vey con­ducted by Dan Richards…says that the most com­mon answer is “None” when advi­sors are asked, “How much time did you spend in your office last week talk­ing with clients?”

Dan sug­gests advi­sors can host a reg­u­lar round­table lun­cheon series with their clients. It’s impor­tant that they do this regularly.

Only requires about three hours a week–two 90-minute time blocks. Book room for lunch, call peo­ple to invite.

Can hold them in your board­room, or a coun­try club or a pri­vate room at a restau­rant. No need to do it elaborately.

Dan rec­om­mends hold­ing it in your office and cater­ing with sandwiches.

Tim­ing: Do it from 12:30–1:30.

Says do two or three of these lun­cheons in your first campaign.

Goal for guests: eight or nine. Sug­gests that is opti­mum for dynam­ics. It’s a work­shop, not a pre­sen­ta­tion. Invite six or seven client and two or three prospects.

Looks and feels like a client event. That’s what you want. So you only want 33% prospects.

Rule of thumb for invites: Invite 10–15 prospects to get two or three.

Stay away from folks who are anx­ious or dom­i­nate dis­cus­sions. Avoid them for this approach.

What advi­sor should say on invites: “I’m host­ing a series lun­cheons this sum­mer. Hope you can come.” Say, “Next lunch is July 8. Does that work for you?” If no, go on to next two days.

Call them “infor­mal sand­wich lun­cheons to talk about the market.”

Says one advi­sor he knows does one lunch at his down­town office and then does other lun­cheons at firm’s branch offices in sub­urbs. Can also do other lunches at a hotel or restau­rant in sub­urbs.

Week One

Stress it’s very infor­mal, 10– to 15-minute talk in the begin­ning and then open­ing it up for ques­tions and conversations.

Prospects not typ­i­cally cold. You know them, but not that well. May play golf with them. Share mem­ber­ship in an orga­ni­za­tion. They’re not cold.

Break this car­di­nal rule of prospect­ing: Actu­ally leave mes­sage on voice mail if you’ve got a good rela­tion­ship with the per­son. They will call you back if it’s a good relationship.

Empha­size you’re lim­it­ing the lun­cheon to 10 peo­ple. Ask them on phone if they’re on some ques­tions or top­ics they’d like addressed. Ramps up com­mit­ment level. Also ask what type of sand­wich they want.

This is a low-stress invite. You give them three dates. If they say no to all three dates, then you can eval­u­ate whether they’re really inter­ested. Per­haps invite them by e-mail next time you do the campaign.

Write down now two to three names of peo­ple you can see poten­tially inviting.

Week Two

Con­nect with clients by phone who’ve agreed to come. Call to ask them about ques­tions they may have and get sand­wich order. If you have an open­ing, go ahead and ask them if they know any­one who might want to attend…

Struc­ture talk around ques­tions asked by attendees…Makes it per­sonal. Makes it more participatory.

If new to busi­ness, you can ask branch man­ager or whole­saler to be present to help with ques­tions. You deliver the talk.

Week Three

Final­ize open remarks. Prac­tice your remarks; you want to sound con­fi­dent. Send con­fir­ma­tion e-mails. Con­sider send­ing an arti­cle along or link to some­thing you’ve read that per­tains to talk.

Final details: It’s crit­i­cal to fol­low up with peo­ple who attend.

Tips: Think about seat­ing. Have pen and pad, and copy of slides if you use slides. Might ask some­one to ask first ques­tion. Be sure to have folks com­plete eval­u­a­tion. Keep it short and sweet. Use scale 1–4 on lun­cheon, talk, com­ments and a line for their name. Short and sweet.

Follow-up call with clients. Review eval­u­a­tion form. Any spe­cific ques­tions. Ask how they might sug­gest you change or improve the lunches. Respond to any ques­tions they have. Ask them if they want to attend one later in the future.

Follow-up call with prospects. Sim­i­lar as above but…

Over­all: Make prospect­ing a pri­or­ity. Be sure to time block…Integrate prospect­ing into ongo­ing client com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Pick one strat­egy as a focal point. Refine and repeat and get really good at it. Don’t be scattershot.

Dan says some clients like to come to such events a cou­ple of times a year. So it’s OK to invite clients to come again later in the year.

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