Seven Critical Words to Share with Top Clients

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Suc­cess­ful advi­sors focus as much time as pos­si­ble on talk­ing to their top clients. Even in cases where advi­sors talk to clients fre­quently, there is one impor­tant sen­ti­ment and seven crit­i­cal words that often get missed.

Those seven words, incred­i­bly sim­ple to say but that often get over­looked: “You rank among my very favourite clients.”

The impact of rec­og­niz­ing top clients

I was reminded of this in a recent arti­cle on the web­site for the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, sum­ma­riz­ing a research study on the impact of telling peo­ple they’re spe­cial. Two groups of stu­dents received a flyer in the mail from a retailer open­ing a new cloth­ing store nearby. None of the stu­dents had ever vis­ited this store or knew any­thing about it. In the first group, the flyer was a fairly straight­for­ward descrip­tion of the store’s offer­ing, with a coupon offer­ing a dis­count on their first purchase.

The sec­ond group received the same flyer and coupon. The only dif­fer­ence was the head­line on the flyer, which said: “You are receiv­ing this because you have been rec­og­nized for your good taste.”

Now the stu­dents in the sec­ond group knew this line was a generic sales pitch that was sent broadly – and that they hadn’t been rec­og­nized for their good taste at all. Despite this, when researchers looked at the atti­tudes toward the store and the sub­se­quent like­li­hood to visit the store among these two groups of stu­dents, they saw a strik­ing out­come. That result: The stu­dents who had been told that they received the flyer because of their good taste had a sig­nif­i­cantly more pos­i­tive atti­tude to the store and were more likely to actu­ally go and make a purchase.

Why advi­sors fail to do this

Now if we see this out­come where the sen­ti­ment is trans­par­ently false, imag­ine how much more dra­matic the out­come would be if this was actu­ally true. So the con­clu­sion is sim­ple. We should let clients know that they’re valued.

On the face of it, this sounds remark­ably basic. You’re say­ing to your­self, that’s absolutely self-evident, of course I should let my clients know that they’re val­ued. So why then do most advi­sors fail to con­vey this effec­tively? In many cases it’s lack of focus and pri­or­ity, and in oth­ers, it’s because advi­sors believe actions speak louder than words – by doing a great job, your clients should know that they are valued.

Just appre­ci­at­ing clients isn’t enough; for you to see a pay­off in sen­ti­ment, you have to tell them. And for clients to feel val­ued, you have to make an explicit point of let­ting them know. The rea­son is sim­ple: After 25 years of work­ing with investors and advi­sors, here’s a key insight I’ve walked away with: Very few clients are mind readers.

Let­ting clients know they’re valued

Sup­pose you buy into let­ting clients know they’re val­ued, the next ques­tion is how best to achieve this. I’ve had advi­sors tell me they do this by sign­ing every let­ter “Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity to work together” or “Your busi­ness is greatly appre­ci­ated.” And while there’s noth­ing wrong with includ­ing that sen­ti­ment in let­ters, the vast major­ity of clients will gloss over that line. For it to make an impact, the mes­sage has to really stand out.

What that means is that when you rec­og­nize top clients with an invi­ta­tion to a din­ner or spe­cial event, you need to be explicit about the rea­son they’ve received the invite: “As one of my most val­ued clients, I am delighted to invite you to join me for a spe­cial …. Break­fast, lunch, din­ner, evening with …” And then at the event, repeat the mes­sage: “I’m pleased to have the oppor­tu­nity to wel­come every­one here tonight and to thank you all for being among my most val­ued clients.”

This recog­ni­tion doesn’t have to be tied to a spe­cial event, in fact it can be con­veyed effec­tively in nor­mal con­ver­sa­tions, pro­vided that three things are in place. First, the sen­ti­ment has to be gen­uine – you can’t tell some­one that they’re one of your most val­ued clients if that’s not the case with­out the risk of it ring­ing false and under­min­ing your cred­i­bil­ity. Sec­ond, you need to phrase this in your own words … most val­ued clients, top clients, favourite clients, most impor­tant clients, one of the clients I enjoy deal­ing with the most all. Just pick the one that you’re com­fort­able with.

And finally, you should add a “so what” that pays off that sen­ti­ment. That pay­off can be as sim­ple as: “You rank among my most val­ued clients. I just wanted to take the oppor­tu­nity to thank you for the chance to work together over the past year.” Or you can go on to say “If you ever run into a prob­lem on your account or a ques­tion, no mat­ter how minor, please don’t hes­i­tate to let me know.” Or alter­na­tively “If at any time there’s any­thing I can do to improve your expe­ri­ence work­ing with me, please let me know.”

For advi­sors who aren’t in the habit of let­ting your most val­ued clients know that they’re your top clients, this may seem a bit awk­ward at first. Once you’ve done this a cou­ple of times, it will become more com­fort­able – and chances are you’ll be pleas­antly sur­prised by the pos­i­tive response you get. After all, none of us like to feel taken for granted and we all like to feel acknowl­edged. As a result, the 30 sec­onds it takes to have this con­ver­sa­tion with your very best clients could well be the high­est return 30 sec­onds you’ll spend with them.

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How to Consolidate Client Assets

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

In recent work­shops, I’ve talked about the need to focus on one pri­mary busi­ness goal for each key client you work with.When I ask advi­sors for exam­ples of pos­si­ble objec­tives, the one that comes up first most often is “con­sol­i­dat­ing accounts held elsewhere.”

Want­ing to do this is a good start …. The key ques­tion is how best to go about this.

Becom­ing the exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor for key clients has always been a pri­or­ity for advi­sors … but these days, this is even more impor­tant. Partly that because advi­sors are look­ing to regain some of the assets lost in last year’s mar­ket decline — and in part it’s because of the recog­ni­tion of the risk that if you don’t act, another advi­sor you share a client with might.

Here’s what I’ve learned from talk­ing to clients who have more than one advisor.

Investors who have accounts with mul­ti­ple finan­cial advi­sors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions fall into two cat­e­gories — the first group is those who have made a con­scious deci­sion to spread their rela­tion­ships around, the sec­ond cat­e­gory is those for whom this is more of a his­tor­i­cal accident.

The first group will be a tougher sell when it comes to cen­tral­iz­ing their finan­cial affairs. In some cases, they have long stand­ing rela­tion­ships with other advi­sors that they don’t want to aban­don. Other times, they have sought out dif­fer­ent advi­sors for spe­cific exper­tise (work­ing with one advi­sor for invest­ments and another for insur­ance is a com­mon example.)

And in other instances, investors are con­cerned about con­trol or con­fi­den­tial­ity if one advi­sor has all their money — con­fi­den­tial­ity is a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in smaller communities.

Then there’s the sec­ond group — who work with more than one advi­sor either because no one has ever sug­gested bring­ing all their finances under one umbrella or if one of their advi­sors did bring this up failed to give them a good rea­son to do so.

Regard­less of which cat­e­gory your client falls into, con­sider a three pronged approach to a con­ver­sa­tion about con­sol­i­dat­ing a client’s finan­cial affairs.

Start by point­ing out the advan­tages. Depend­ing on the client, these might include bet­ter con­structed port­fo­lios by elim­i­nat­ing dupli­cated posi­tions, more effi­cient tax man­age­ment and lower bills for tax prepa­ra­tion, less paper­work to keep track of and gen­er­ally sim­pli­fy­ing their lives.

The sec­ond prong is to make mov­ing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, by tak­ing on as much of the paper­work and fol­low up as you can. When­ever you ask a client to do some­thing, they mea­sure the gain ver­sus the pain. It’s not enough to talk about increas­ing gain — you also have to focus on reduc­ing pain.

The third prong is your fall­back strategy.

Even if a client declines your offer to bring all of their finan­cial affairs under one roof, keep the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open. One way to do this is by offer­ing to help them sum­ma­rize their invest­ment reports — sim­ply by hav­ing your assis­tant call them once a quar­ter to arrange to get all of their state­ments and prepar­ing a con­sol­i­dated ver­sion. Not only will you be doing your client a ser­vice, but you’ll elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity that another advi­sor your client is work­ing with will beat you to the punch.

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