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“It takes humility to seek feedback. it takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it, and appropriately act on it.” Stephen Covey  Include a structured, in-person meeting plan for each client as part of your wealth management deliverables and your client loyalty and retention efforts. It is one of the limited opportunities you have to meet face-to-face with your best clients—the 20 to 30 percent of those who provide you with 70 to 80 percent or more of your revenues, your most important feedback, and perhaps your best introductions.
Relationships have been best built by in-person meetings. In fact, a Forbes article made these points about business executives:
Bridging The Perception Gap Between Affluent Client and Financial Advisor 28% of affluent clients perceive to have a personal relationship beyond the professional level, compared to 68% of advisors reporting a personal relationship with their affluent clients. The perception of the relationship remains a challenge. The data also suggested the affluent want to know their advisor on a personal level as a fundamental concern of trust. When clients have a personal relationship with their advisor, they are more likely to follow their advisor’s advice, appreciate the services provided, stimulate positive word-of-mouth-influence, are loyal, and introduce the advisor to business opportunities (prospects). In-person meetings matter in building relationships and reducing perception gaps. Each client meeting must have a structured, written agenda. Objectives for all meetings must be established, whether the meeting is simply a check-in call, a telephone-based portfolio review, or a face-to-face meeting. What actions do you want the clients to take as a result of the meeting? The most important elements of each agenda are to:
In your annual and semi-annual Strategic Planning and Review meetings also:
Your client contacts and especially review meetings are some of your best opportunities to gauge the sentiment of your clients. How do they feel and think about you? How important are you to their lives, including their families? Do you have a meaningful relationship with the spouse, children, parents, and others in the client’s family? Are you seen as a resource for decision making when the client wants to make any significant purchase? Do you know about the health and welfare of their children and their parents? Have you had a family financial planning meeting? Would they trust you for that? David I. Leo, Your Client Planning and Review Process Snippet 11 David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients. If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/081443913 “Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.” ― Ken Blanchard  Your client service promise must provide an end-to-end client experience that ensures nothing falls through the cracks so that your client has an overriding sense of financial well-being. The first steps are to define and implement your six-core client-facing processes:
Every client you are willing to accept to your practice needs to receive an appropriate version of these processes based on their needs, the deliverables they deserve, their value to the business, and the fees you charge in compensation for the value you deliver. Client loyalty and retention based on “delighting” clients has significant value. The Kano Model points out that which pleased and even delighted the client yesterday becomes a basic expectation today. Delighting clients and solidifying their loyalty takes more and more effort and cost over time. Opportunities to delight the client come from at least three sources:
Generate Client Loyalty and Advocacy The Client Service process represents a summary of many of the deliverables which are intended to be presented formally to your clients as your “promise” to them of your services—hence, your “Client Service Promise.” This promise is a key part of generating loyalty and advocacy from your client, as well as differentiating you as a financial advisor. The set of deliverables is rarely put together in a formal, written manner and your written promise is also rarely presented formally to the client by FAs. There are five functions in your Client Service Promise that address client deliverables:
The primary pushback has been a concern about putting the promise in writing. We agree that if the advisor does not intend to deliver some component of the promise it should not be included. However, if it is included, it needs to be delivered. Clients would have some expectations for the fees they pay, some or all of what you promise may have been discussed in your sales process. David I. Leo, Your Client Loyalty or Client Service Process Snippet 10 David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients. If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136 “whatever you have to do to gain self-knowledge, do it. Find out who you are and what you want. Then you can stop wasting your life energy and your money on stuff that doesn’t matter to you—and start making financial decisions that will get you to your true goals.” ― Carl Richards  The investment planning process, a subset of the broader subject of wealth management, is a core capability of advisors who have gone through much training and experience. Our goal in this section is to show the value you add over and above portfolio construction, which is essentially a commodity and can be accomplished by technology.
Today’s competitive investment management/wealth management marketplace requires a consultative selling approach and has for almost 50 years. Before “consultative selling,” selling investments tended to be about products. Advisors may have called clients or prospects to buy a “hot stock,” offer a bond with a good interest rate and rating, or offer “penny stocks” or some high-performing fund, among other offerings. The term “consultative selling” first appeared in the 1970s book Consultative Selling by Mack Hanan. It describes a selling technique in which the salesperson acts as an expert consultant for the prospect, asking questions to determine the prospect’s needs and wants, then using that information to select the best product or service to match those needs. Consultative selling also works with value-added selling. Properly done, the consultative process digs deeply into the prospect’s wants and needs starting with the “intake process” and continuing through all six of your core client-facing processes. The intent is for you to be able to incorporate the prospect’s wants and needs and match them with the wealth management solutions you offer. The consultative approach is also intended to discover your prospect’s emotional as well as financial wants and needs, and, critically, to develop rapport as an expert who truly understands and will be an outstanding resource for your prospect. Building rapport will result from sharing information that is both helpful and valuable while not pressing too soon for a commitment. By demonstrating your understanding, even compassion when appropriate, your expertise, and how you can meet your prospect’s wants and needs, you will earn the right to establish a mutually beneficial relationship. Consultative professionals do not rush the process. Consultative selling has advanced over the years and needs to be customized to the industry in which it is used. However, the tenets are the same:
The steps in a wealth management consultative process include working with the investor interactively to:
David I. Leo, Your Investment Planning Process Snippet 9 David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients. If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136 “Risk is what’s left when you think you’ve thought of everything. Our assumptions about the future are almost always wrong. We can never think of everything—but we can take sensible steps to protect ourselves from life’s inevitable surprises.” – Carl Richards  Risk management is about accounting for life’s risk - above and beyond investment risks. It’s a critical part of planning a family’s financial life and requires a separate section from financial planning so appropriate attention can be paid to these risks.
Protect your goals, dreams, treasure, and personal well-being from those “what ifs” before they become “what nows.” Address each of these four broad categories of risk with your client: 1. Income risks. Invest in securities portfolios to fulfill the client’s goals and dreams after their current income stream ceases. Clients are counting on you to minimize the risk of not being able to afford their dreams. Goals and dreams often include: a comfortable retirement, college for children, caring for a spouse and others as needed, vacation homes, travel, and “toys”, and legacy desires. If income stops prematurely due to death, disability, long-term illness, or loss of job, the individual and family may be left to cope without enough income to pay debts and living expenses, no less dreams. Plans should be made to handle such potential calamities. These situations can be addressed through insurance of many kinds. Discuss these risks with your clients, and document how the situation was addressed. 2. Expense risks. Spending via budget management, as well as income and emergency spending, should all be tracked and kept in line with the financial plan. The latter needs to be part of the plan as well and can be monitored by the client and/or the advisory team. In many cases, offering budget planning and management tools can be both a family educational offering as well as an added value service for those who need it and are interested. 3. Assets and investment risks. Portfolio risks are discussed as part of your investment planning process. Savings, investments, and other assets also need to be tracked to plans. As Carl Richards says, “While making wise decisions about how you invest your money is important, it doesn’t have nearly the impact of working hard and saving more—let alone starting a business, going back to school, or reinventing yourself in any number of ways.” Of course, you are tracking investments and return on investments as well as inflation and changes to real and personal property values if they are part of the plan. 4. Credit and debt risks. Debt and any other items that are part of the plan also need to have attention focused on them. Annual to biannual plan reviews are likely necessary and are part of managing the plan that you developed with the client. Obviously, the more effort, the more time and cost - and that is part of the value of your services (whether charged separately or as part of your asset fees). We are not suggesting the details of tracking and monitoring are done by the advisor, but rather by part of your team, real or virtual. These services can be separately billed if required and appropriate. David I. Leo, Your Risk Management Process Snippet 8 David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients. If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136 “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching to mend the part that is within our reach” -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes  Providing comprehensive financial planning services is mandatory for today’s Wealth Management practice.
Financial planning goes beyond software and tools; it’s about making financial decisions that support client’s life goals. Life decisions must be made before financial decisions can be made. You as the financial advisor can make a significant impact on your client’s lives by helping them through the decisions that will help put a level of order into their lives. As Carl Richards says, Many Americans do not have their financial lives in order because they don’t have their life plans in order. If we don’t know what will make us “happy,” then it’s difficult to make financial decisions that support those goals. Financial planning is about knowing where you are today, where you want to be at some later point in time, and how you will (or have to) behave to get there... ...but financial plans themselves are worthless unless goals are established first. Your value as a FA is ongoing and continuous. If goals and situations change, plans must change, so the process of financial planning is vital. Essentially, if you put together a plan and it becomes “shelfware” while your life and goals move on, it’s of little value. However, if the plan is re-evaluated on a regular basis—annually or as needed, based on changes—that plan can keep current with the client. You bring great value to the process by helping your clients establish their life goals as well as their financial goals and by delivering your process on a continuing basis. Help clients understand the realities of finances in context of their lives and the financial markets as time goes on. Richards says, “No plan will cover every situation—and that’s okay. You don’t have to choose the perfect investment or save exactly the right amount or predict your rate of return or spend hours watching television shows about the stock market or surfing the Internet or stock picks. You don’t need a plan for every contingency.” He asks, “If planning isn’t the solution to our money problems, what is? More simply, what can we do to get what we really want?” He gives us his answers, which are the points advisors need to get across to their clients:
As Mitch Anthony says, “If you want to survive and thrive, your value proposition must move from ROI to ROL (Return on Life)—which means helping your client get the best life they can from the money they have.” Put money in context of your client’s life. Only humans can satisfy deep interpersonal needs. That’s how close the best advisors get to their best clients. Financial planning is an on-going process that outlines the direction we hope to go. A plan assumes that you know what’s going to happen—even though you don’t. Surprises are the rule. Bad things happen, but remember, good things also happen. Your value is continually reevaluating your assumptions based on longer term perspectives and your client’s current reality. Start with a “get organized” meeting with your client because many people are just not organized enough to provide all the information needed to develop a financial plan (Michael Kitces). David I. Leo, Your Financial Planning Process Snippet 7 David Leo is Founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC. He is an author, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer to financial professionals. David is an experienced business manager who works solely with Financial Advisors, Planners and firms who want to organize, structure & grow their businesses by attracting, servicing, and retaining affluent clients. If you have questions or would like assistance in personalizing and implementing approaches from The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual, schedule a free 45 Minute Strategy Session at https://calendly.com/davidileo or contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.CoachDavidLeo.com My book is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Advisors-Success-Manual-Structure/dp/0814439136 |
