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Matt Oechsli
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Chicago: "It seems as though clients are getting
more and more unreasonable," said Bob following a speech I'd delivered.
"I know the drill, all I need to do is start making them money again,"
he continued.
Well, yes, and no. Bob was losing clients and struggling to
acquire new ones. After linking up with one of our team coaches, they
were taken through a process that every advisor or team of advisors
should work through.
Our extensive research on the affluent points to eight
statistically significant criteria that the affluent use when selecting
a financial advisor. To begin with, the partners were asked to apply one
of the following categories to each of these eight criteria:
(a) Services our team performs very well to exceptionally well
(b) Services our team performs moderately well
(c) Services our team does not perform very well
(d) Services our team does not offer.
Feel free to answer the questions yourself, but be brutally
honest. (The team's answers are in parentheses.)
1. Helping clients create a comprehensive, formal financial plan. (not
very well)
2. Coordinating investment decisions for clients. (not very
well)
3. Taking steps to understand the client's goals and family situation
when giving investment advice. (not offered)
4. Helping clients select the asset mix for their investment portfolio.
(moderately well)
5. Bring in experts to help with financial areas where team members lack
expertise. (not offered)
6. Clearly revealing and justifying your fee structure. (not very
well)
7. Helping clients coordinate and organize all their financial
documents. (not offered)
8. Proactively contacting clients when upcoming tax and other changes
will impact their investment portfolio. (moderately well)
I hope you fared better than Bob and his partners. They knew
their services weren't aligned with the eight criteria, but had no idea
they were so disconnected from the needs of their affluent clients.
Their focus was only on making money. While this is important, it's not
everything. Unfortunately, too many teams are in the same boat.
The challenge is to make certain that you always deliver what
the affluent want, and then a little bit more. This requires that you
constantly improve the delivery of these services.
The best way to approach this is to implement the following
action steps for any area that needs improvement. I recommend you begin
with the areas that need the most improvement.
Affluent Client Expectations Action Plan
- Do whatever is necessary to add and deliver any service you don't
offer. It's important that you attend to all of your affluent clients'
financial needs (six or seven out of eight won't cut it). Example:
Identifying that you need to better leverage estate planning attorneys
for your clients.
- For services that you currently provide but that need improvement,
be clear on what you offer and exactly what you are doing to deliver
that service.
- Establish a timeline for improvement - 30 days, 60 days or 90 days.
The timeline should be based on a realistic assessment of the effort
needed to improve delivery of that service. Example: Within 30 days,
you should have arranged meetings between our top five clients and a
reputable estate planning attorney in the area.
- Project to the end of your timeline and ask: "What will we need to
continually refine? What tasks, if any, should be eliminated? What else
should we be doing?" Example: At the end of this 30 day period, we
should assess who else needs estate planning, then look to other experts
we could leverage (CPAs, mortgage experts, etc.)
- Determine how to implement each improvement. Assign responsibility
for each element to one individual, and set a deadline. Example: Sue
(the senior advisor) will call a couple of attorneys she knows. Jim (the
practice manager) will call the clients to explain the meeting and to
coordinate everyone's schedule. Sue will then conduct the
meetings.
- Establish how the Team Leader or Practice Manager will monitor
improvement efforts. You may want to meet weekly for an update,
especially for services that need immediate attention. Example: This
initiative will be discussed at each team meeting for the next 30 days
and will then be re-evaluated.
Now that we've framed these eight criteria, it's easy to see how every
member of an elite team, within her specified role, communicates,
demonstrates, and quantifies the value delivered by the team - whether
that value concerns asset allocation, financial planning, the review
process, etc. It's a new world and the advisor / affluent client
relationship has forever changed. Affluent investors expect more than
ever before, especially in regards to the criterion we just examined.
Even as I'm writing this we are crunching our most recent data on
affluent expectations. Stay tuned. I'll keep you posted.
If you would like to get a glimpse into some of our latest findings,
download our FREE teleconference The Art
of Selling to the Affluent in the New World. There is more
opportunity now than ever before. Make sure you are taking full
advantage of it.
Once again, we want to thank all of you who have emailed comments and
questions to us. We will continue to do our best to answer each one.
If you have any topic suggestions or special requests, please contact
Rich Santos, publisher of Registered Rep. and Trust &
Estates magazines, at rich.santos@penton.com.
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