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Innovation | Strategy | Leadership

trusted advisor

Why Should Your Clients Trust You?

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In my March 24 post (Want Client Loyalty? Do Something You Don’t Have To Do) I wrote about trust being the number one driver of client loyalty, and how important it is to put your clients’ needs before your needs and your firm’s needs.

But what is trust and how can you increase it?

My favorite definition of trust is the formula given in the book The Trusted Advisor (David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford):

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(Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy)

__________________________

Self Interest

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Let’s break that down from the client’s point of view:

Credibility = You know what you’re taking about

Reliability = You do what you said you were going to do

Intimacy = You have taken the time to really understand me

(All divided by)

Self Interest = You give the appearance that you are more interested in what’s in it for you that what’s in it for me

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Notice how the the elements in the numerator are additive, but even their combined effect are quickly diminished by the single element in the denominator.

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Think of the stereotypical sleazy used car salesman in the loud plaid sport coat:

Even if he knows every feature and benefit of every model on the lot and is a 10 out of 10 on credibility…

Even if he followed up on every question and returned all of your calls promptly and is a 10 out of 10 on reliability…

Even if he asked great questions about what you were looking for, who would be the primary drivers and how much you wanted to spend, so you’d have to give him a 10 out of 10 on intimacy…

…You just couldn’t shake the feeling that he had x-ray vision that saw through you directly to your wallet. Unfortunately, he’s also 10 out of 10 on self interest.

Let’s do the math:

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(10 + 10 + 10)

             __________    =  3

10

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A final trust score of 3 out 10 is a far cry from being a trusted advisor. Even though our salesman was best in class in three out of four factors, it hardly matters if his customers feel like they can’t trust him.

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So…

Even if you know everything there is to know about the economy, the investment markets and every nuance of financial and estate planning…

Even if you have flawless execution in transactions, reporting and follow-up…

Even if you have assiduously documented every personal and financial fact and nuance about your clients in your comprehensive CRM system…

…you will not have long-term success if your clients don’t feel like they can trust you.

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Why should your clients trust you?

How Sticky Are Your Relationships?

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It’s Valentine’s Day– have you told your clients lately how much you love them?

Yes, it’s already February the 14th, and you know what that means. Gentlemen, it’s the day to leave the office early to pick up some cellophane-wrapped flowers from the grocery store and grumble about the picked-over selection of torn cards and mismatched envelopes. Ladies, it’s the day to bask in the warm glow of your superior planning and thoughtfulness. I can neither confirm nor deny that these lighthearted stereotypes may possibly emanate from my own personal experiences…

It is also a great day to reach out to your clients.

By the way, so was January 13th. And January 26th. Or January 25th. Or last November 3rd.

Any day is a great day to reach out to your clients.

Whether you are self-employed or work for a large firm, whether you receive a direct commission or a flat salary, your book of clients is your practice. Your practice is only as valuable as the recurring revenue stream from your clients, and if you aren’t retaining your clients and adding new ones, you aren’t adding value.

Contact Increases Stickiness

I have seen scores of client research reports and I cannot recall one that didn’t show a positive correlation between advisor contact and client satisfaction and retention. To cite just a few recent examples:

  • The J.D. Power and Associates 2011 U.S. Full Service Investor Satisfaction StudySM found that one of the key best practices of client service was “Proactive advisor contact regarding new products and services or accounts four times in the past 12 months”.
  • The AdvisorImpact 2009 Client Index revealed that only 63% of clients strongly agreed with the statement “My advisor is proactive in managing our relationship.”, despite 80% of them describing that attribute as ‘critical’.
  • The VIP Forum‘s 2008 study Boosting Advisor Productivity reported that 80% of new business for advisors came by referral.
  • I recall a proprietary client satisfaction survey for a large U.S. financial institution that showed even clients who were contacted more often than they preferred were statistically more loyal than those who were not contacted.

What do I say?

Worried that you don’t have a concrete reason to call your clients? Many advisors are quite proficient at coming up with great excuses to avoid making proactive contact:

“I don’t have any news”

“The market has been too volatile/flat/unpredictable”

“I don’t want to upset the apple cart. If I call, it will just give them a chance to complain”

To some degree, it doesn’t much matter. In 2010 The Oechsli Institute discovered that less than half of financial advisors performed well at what they called Engagement Competencies, with only 46% scoring well with clients at “Caring more about me than just my investments”.

I once inherited a client that I could not seem to interest in meeting so I could get to know her and see if I could add any value. I made it a personal challenge to call her quarterly. I could never reach her, so I left her brief  voicemail messages saying that I was just checking in to see if everything was going OK and to call me if I could help in any way. Within a year I got a call from her saying she needed my help. She and her husband were selling their business and they really weren’t sure what to do with the $3 million they were getting in cash.

The surveys are right. I was very satisfied to get that call.

Even Better? Ask Questions.

Ask questions to understand your clients’ pain points, their unmet needs, their unrealized goals. Find out what’s keeping them awake at night and offer a solution. The current economic and market landscape offers endless possibilities. Questions can lead to actually giving advice, where the real stickiness begins.

In 2011, another VIP Forum study, Building Business Owner Loyalty showed a lift in client loyalty anywhere from 8% to 19% by providing advice around key personal financial issues. (Number one? Personal retirement planning.)

Regardless of how it goes with your significant other today, make this a day to improve your client relationships and improve the value of your practice. Just skip the torn card and grocery store flowers wrapped in cellophane. Not that I have any direct experience in that area…

The Intersection

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The Intersection

Welcome to my blog!

I’m here to explore the intersection of innovation, strategy and leadership to improve financial services.

 

Innovation

I’ve been a fan and early adopter of technology for as long as I can remember, but technology is just a tool. I can barely a wire light switch and I have never written a line of code in my life. When I was in high school, my “Computer Math” class consisted of entering strings of arithmetic into what was essentially a programmable calculator with a paper tape. The only thing I remember from that class was that every string was supposed to start with “To (0): Load”, whatever that meant. That, and the time my friend Jim and I conspired to slow down the smartest guy in the class. We each occupied one of the two available “computers” while I switched the + and x keys and then volunteered my keyboard to our unwitting victim. It took him two days to debug his formula.

Computer classes in college consisted primarily of carefully rubber banding slippery stacks of IBM punch cards lest they get out of order and cause you to spend the night in the computer lab. At least, that’s how it appeared to me. I avoided computer classes like I avoided brussel sprouts. Even though my engineering major roommate was easily able to infect me with lustful desire for an Apple IIe (with pen plotter) or even a Tandy TRS-80, my main technology fix at that time came from synthesizers and audio and lighting equipment.

After college I discovered the IBM PCjr, with MS-DOS 2.0 and SuperCalc on 5 1/4″ floppies. My job at the time required me to do simple but repetitive arithmetic with pen and paper to calculate a payroll budget. The mere fact that my results were being printed in stunning dot matrix grey on green and white tractor-fed 14 7/8″ paper seemed to quadruple my credibility compared to the same numbers on the old handwritten sheets. I was forever hooked on the possibilities of technology to improve jobs and lives, and a lifetime of exploration lay ahead.

Strategy

Most of my professional life has been in the financial services industry, I have seen a lot of fads and trends pursued in the quest for growth and profit. Acquisition binges justified by “the need to diversify” followed by divestitures justified by “the need to focus on our core business”. An increased emphasis on variable advisor pay and commissions to “pay for performance” followed by flatter fee and pay structures to “better align interests” (or sometimes simply to “cut costs”). The optimistic splurges on technology to “revolutionize the client experience” (and/or “increase advisor productivity”) followed by the inevitable crash to the reality of disappointing ROIs. None of these strategies are necessarily misguided, but the key driver has to be advice.

Whether you are a bank teller suggesting that a customer might want to open a savings account to hold some of that excess cash in their checking account, or a superstar CFA portfolio manager recommending the latest structured hedged debt solution to improve alpha and reduce volatility, if the person on the other side of the desk from you doesn’t perceive you to be a trusted source of true advice that will solve their problem or achieve their goal, your personal success will be limited.

In my opinion, one of the leading authorities on the art and science of being a Trusted Advisor is one of the co-authors of the book by that very name, David H. Maister, and it seems like every financial firm I’m familiar with has had their advisors read the book. Not that it’s typically very apparent to their clients.  True Trusted Advisors remain as elusive as four leaf clovers in the vast meadows of financial services. Many advisors remain either salespeople or reactive servicers.

Leadership

Innovation and strategy don’t just happen on their own, they take a leader to make them happen. I am particularly fascinated with the research and writings of Marcus Buckingham who describes himself as dedicated to “…understanding what makes world-class managers tick, bottling it, and sharing it with the world.”  As the co-author of Now, Discover Your Strengths, he helped create StrengthsFinder to help people look deep within to find their unique combination of inherent talents.

(My Top Five:  Strategic | Achiever | Futuristic | Learner | Communication)

I have been lucky to work for, with and around some outstanding leaders (plus a few clunkers), and I’ve learned a lot from each of them. The best leaders know their strengths and leverage them to get outstanding results from themselves and from others, yet they know how to access different styles within themselves to provide the right leadership in the right situations. They harness the power of Strengths-Based Leadership and Situational Leadership. Regardless the industry, regardless the challenge, the need for effective leadership is always a critical ingredient for success.

 

About Me

I consider myself an “embedded entrepreneur” with a day job with a Fortune 150 financial services firm, but everything here is my own work and my own opinion. I have been an individual contributor, a manager and a senior leader, and I have always thought of myself as a serial intrapreneur. I love to build high performance teams to create and execute winning business plans. I’ll do my best to share the best thinking of those whom I feel are making important contributions to the intersection of innovation, strategy and leadership. I invite you to join the conversation.