Do You Offer Your Clients Exclusivity?
By Rob Knapp
How often have you run into a client procrastinating about setting up wills, updating their life insurance, reviewing mortgage rates or even meeting with you? Next to their family and their health, a client’s wealth is probably one of the most important thing in their lives. However they don't always treat it like that. Does this sound familiar to you?
We all want clients who respect what we do, follow up on details and come to meetings prepared to discuss their needs. How do you engage them to accomplish this goal? By giving them more service!
When you reduce your clientele to a manageable number, you not only give them more service, but also more value and most importantly, exclusivity. It is human nature to want to be a part of an exclusive club. And clients will respect you more if they know you are including them.
Here's an example from an FA we coach in Boston:
"We have this client in for a review that was pretty unreliable as far as making appointments. We sat him down and explained our decision to work with a limited number of clients so that we could give them a concierge style of service. We explained we want to meet monthly with every client and focus on a few rather than have hundreds we only meet with once or twice a year. In order to do this we told him we are going to reassign some of our clients to another advisor that can give them the same service. We are also going to accept only new clients that met our minimum amount of assets to be managed. The look on his face was sheer terror. He thought we were going to say we were no longer going to work with him. I assured him that wasn't the case, and was surprised by his reaction.
At the end of the appointment I asked him for an updated 401(K) and pension information. Usually we don’t get that follow-up information for months, but he got it to us within a week with a nice email. It was interesting to watch his reaction to what we were telling him. He was concerned he wasn't going to make the cut. That is our most tangible example of introducing the service model to a client."
Our advisors have found that even their highest net worth clients are worried that they are at risk of being let go and will do everything possible to stay with them. Do your clients feel that way about you?
Send us a quick note to: cindy.beuoy@supernovaconsulting.com with your story so we can share with the Supernova community.