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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The New Reality for Effective Client Communication

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

My col­umn this month in Invest­ment Exec­u­tive dealt with a major change in what it takes to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively with a grow­ing num­ber of exist­ing and prospec­tive clients – and in par­tic­u­lar focuses on the grow­ing impor­tance of video based communication.

In under­stand­ing the need to change our think­ing on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it’s impor­tant to look at the broader shift in mind­set among many clients.

Until recently, most investors would respond to a rec­om­men­da­tion with “If that’s what you think, fine.”

Today, even if the same deci­sion is ulti­mately reached, con­ver­sa­tions are tak­ing longer and investors are ask­ing tougher ques­tions – and often look­ing for back up via direct access to experts.

Indeed, many Cana­di­ans are look­ing to col­lab­o­rate on deci­sion mak­ing – that’s espe­cially true of younger clients in their for­ties and fifties, but in fact can cut across all ages.

This is reflected in a com­ment from Paul Allan, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent with Macken­zie Finan­cial regard­ing research with high net worth Cana­di­ans from Toronto con­sult­ing firm Investor Economics:

“High net worth investors are try­ing to get closer to their money and are lis­ten­ing to mul­ti­ple sources of infor­ma­tion beyond their finan­cial advisor.

As a result, advi­sors need to spend more time address­ing dif­fer­ent view­points. Three years ago, clients would typ­i­cally agree with finan­cial advi­sor rec­om­men­da­tions. Today, they want advi­sors to explain exactly why they are rec­om­mend­ing solu­tions and strate­gies – and to pro­vide evi­dence and support.”

A short atten­tion span world

It’s not just the amount of evi­dence needed to back up rec­om­men­da­tions that’s changed – it’s how Cana­di­ans want to receive that evidence.

His­tor­i­cally, finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion was paper based – arti­cles, newslet­ters and lengthy reports. Clients have long com­plained about the avalanche of paper they get – long on dis­clo­sure to sat­isfy legal require­ments, short on meaning.

In fact, many finan­cial advi­sors doubt whether most of what they send gets read.

“Our firm’s econ­o­mist pub­lishes a monthly report that we’re encour­aged to send clients” one advi­sor told me. “In my view, the chances of most clients look­ing at that report approach zero. They’d be far bet­ter off to send a short video of him being inter­viewed on BNN.”

The power of video

What makes video so pow­er­ful is not just the fact that clients are more likely to watch a video than read an arti­cle – it’s also the impact of the sight and sound that video bring.

In early 2009 I con­ducted a series of morn­ing work­shops, out­lin­ing strate­gies to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion with clients.

Among the ideas I cov­ered was sup­ple­ment­ing face to face and tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with reg­u­lar emails of arti­cles from cred­i­ble sources such as the Wall Street Jour­nal, the Econ­o­mist or Fortune.

A few weeks later, I got a call from an advi­sor who had attended the workshop.

He had started email­ing clients arti­cles and had received a gen­er­ally pos­i­tive response. Then one day he decided to try email­ing a video of a CNBC inter­view with War­ren Buf­fett instead – and was blown away by the feedback.

As he put it: “The response to the arti­cles was good but the feed­back to the video was great. Partly because it was War­ren Buf­fett, but a big com­po­nent was that clients could actu­ally see and lis­ten to him for the first time. Even if I’d sent an arti­cle by Buf­fett, it wouldn’t have had any­where near the same impact.”

David Foot in action

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I should men­tion that in the fall of 2009 my com­pany launched an ini­tia­tive to allow finan­cial advi­sors to send clients videos of inter­views with port­fo­lio man­ager and finan­cial experts.

Among these inter­views were sev­eral with David Foot of the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, con­sid­ered Canada’s lead­ing author­ity on demo­graph­ics and co author of the best seller “Boom, Bust and Echo.”

One inter­view related to the the­sis in Harry Dent’s book “The Great Crash Ahead” that demo­graph­ics will cause a mar­ket col­lapse, which Foot dismisses.

Last fall, an advi­sor called to tell me about an expe­ri­ence he’d just had.

A mil­lion dol­lar client had called him, said he’d just fin­ished Harry Dent’s book and had decided to go to cash as a result. Despite all the advisor’s best efforts, noth­ing could change this client’s mind.

At lunch, a col­league told him about the Foot video. The advi­sor arranged for a short meet­ing at the client’s office that after­noon — and played Foot’s inter­view on the client’s computer.

After­wards, the client first thanked him, then said that now he under­stood the advisor’s per­spec­tive apol­o­gized for wast­ing his time – and asked if they could just pre­tend that morning’s con­ver­sa­tion had never taken place.

“What made this work” the advi­sor said “was that my client could see and hear David Foot in real time. Even if I’d sent an arti­cle by David Foot mak­ing the iden­ti­cal points, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.”

Let’s be clear, the writ­ten word will always be with us. In a time pressed world, read­ing is still the most effi­cient way to assim­i­late infor­ma­tion. And with the launch of dig­i­tal devices such as Amazon’s Kin­dle, Sony’s E-Reader and Apple’s rumoured new com­peti­tor, read­ing in real time will become easier.

Fur­ther, there are some com­plex top­ics that just don’t lend them­selves to video. And of course there are some clients who will always pre­fer to receive infor­ma­tion in writing.

For good or for ill, how­ever, those clients are shrink­ing in num­ber. We live in a world that’s mov­ing to shorter and shorter atten­tion spans, with greater empha­sis on imme­di­acy and on the visual medium.

Today, advi­sors need to take a hard look at every aspect of their business.

As part of that, it’s essen­tial that advi­sors closely exam­ine not just WHAT infor­ma­tion they send to clients – and also HOW they com­mu­ni­cate that information.

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Tags: Advisor Recommendations, Avalanche, Canadians, Client Communication, Consulting Firm, Direct Access, Fifties, Financial Communication, Forties, High Net Worth Investors, Investment Executive, Lengthy Reports, Mackenzie Financial, Mindset, New Reality, Prospective Clients, Senior Vice President, Short Attention Span, Sources Of Information, Viewpoints
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The new reality for effective client communication

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

My col­umn this month in Invest­ment Exec­u­tive dealt with a major change in what it takes to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively with a grow­ing num­ber of exist­ing and prospec­tive clients – and in par­tic­u­lar focuses on the grow­ing impor­tance of video based communication.

In under­stand­ing the need to change our think­ing on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it’s impor­tant to look at the broader shift in mind­set among many clients.

Until recently, most investors would respond to a rec­om­men­da­tion with “If that’s what you think, fine.”

Today, even if the same deci­sion is ulti­mately reached, con­ver­sa­tions are tak­ing longer and investors are ask­ing tougher ques­tions – and often look­ing for back up via direct access to experts.

Indeed, many Cana­di­ans are look­ing to col­lab­o­rate on deci­sion mak­ing – that’s espe­cially true of younger clients in their for­ties and fifties, but in fact can cut across all ages.

This is reflected in a com­ment from Paul Allan, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent with Macken­zie Finan­cial regard­ing research with high net worth Cana­di­ans from Toronto con­sult­ing firm Investor Economics:

“High net worth investors are try­ing to get closer to their money and are lis­ten­ing to mul­ti­ple sources of infor­ma­tion beyond their finan­cial advisor.

As a result, advi­sors need to spend more time address­ing dif­fer­ent view­points. Three years ago, clients would typ­i­cally agree with finan­cial advi­sor rec­om­men­da­tions. Today, they want advi­sors to explain exactly why they are rec­om­mend­ing solu­tions and strate­gies – and to pro­vide evi­dence and support.”

A short atten­tion span world

It’s not just the amount of evi­dence needed to back up rec­om­men­da­tions that’s changed – it’s how Cana­di­ans want to receive that evidence.

His­tor­i­cally, finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion was paper based – arti­cles, newslet­ters and lengthy reports. Clients have long com­plained about the avalanche of paper they get – long on dis­clo­sure to sat­isfy legal require­ments, short on meaning.

In fact, many finan­cial advi­sors doubt whether most of what they send gets read.

“Our firm’s econ­o­mist pub­lishes a monthly report that we’re encour­aged to send clients” one advi­sor told me. “In my view, the chances of most clients look­ing at that report approach zero. They’d be far bet­ter off to send a short video of him being inter­viewed on BNN.”

The power of video

What makes video so pow­er­ful is not just the fact that clients are more likely to watch a video than read an arti­cle – it’s also the impact of the sight and sound that video bring.

In early 2009 I con­ducted a series of morn­ing work­shops, out­lin­ing strate­gies to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion with clients.

Read the whole arti­cle here.

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Tags: Advisor Recommendations, Avalanche, Canadians, Client Communication, Consulting Firm, Direct Access, Fifties, Financial Communication, Forties, High Net Worth Investors, Investment Executive, Lengthy Reports, Mackenzie Financial, Mindset, New Reality, Prospective Clients, Senior Vice President, Short Attention Span, Sources Of Information, Viewpoints
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