This mini-series is centred on 5 key components to establishing, building and retaining client relationships. In part 1 we examine how you can make the process of establishing client relationships more consistent while also backtracking to the point of making sure a client’s first impression of you is likely to build good rapport.

(Click here to read the second instalment in this series and click here to read the third and final instalment.)

For decades now the financial services sector has been faced with constant change and advancement on several fronts. There has been a veritable barrage of change in areas like legislation, technology and service delivery.  Amid it all however, it would be very easy for advisers to lose sight of some of the fundamental aspects that create, build and retain professional relationships with clients.  To this end it’s instructive to recall an old French proverb: ‘The more things change – the more they stay the same’.

While technology to improve efficiency is now in abundance it is important to remember what clients are really looking for in a professional relationship with an adviser. They want to have strong rapport with you and they want to receive tailored, unbiased, advice from you. Clients also want to know that you have genuinely understood them and that you sincerely care about them. These are needs that can be aided by technology however it is the ‘human’ components, that are interwoven with technology use, which fortify client engagement with their adviser. Building stronger, longer and closer professional relationships with your clients will see both you and clients profit and we have identified five key strategies which can help you.

1. Process

The very best professional adviser-client relationships do not happen by accident – they are most often the result of implementing a process, no matter how sophisticated or otherwise, it might be. If you do not already run an effective, process-driven, client acquisition and retention process in your business then there is a process for you to follow to get there.  And if you do already have established client management processes in place then what follows might still assist you in, for example, cross-referencing what you are already doing.

Firstly, you need to decide on the client experience you want to give to clients.

Consider what you would like your clients to experience from their first interaction with you and your business and then write it down. What experience do you want them to have from when they first meet you (or have first contact with your business such as via your website), through to hearing and reading your strategy recommendations, to signing documentation; right through to their ongoing relationship with you and your firm. Now think about how will you maintain that experience and your important role in your clients’ lives?

Successful processes can only be so if other people can replicate the tasks and actions within them with relative ease. In this regard if you have staff members who are great at their job get them to document how they carry out all of their tasks in your business.  For example, what they do when they book a client meeting; how they administer investment/insurance lodgements and so on.

The point here is that while many businesses have outstanding support employees, the business owners can be blind to the over-dependence on such employees. It’s a risk that too often is overlooked by business owners in all types of business. This over-dependence and the embedded risk are sometimes only identified when someone, who has been with the firm for many years, leaves and the business subsequently struggles. Service delivery and quality fall away simply because there was no written record of what that key person actually did in the business.

Take note however that in making a request to your employees to document what they do in carrying out their roles, you need to explain the reasons behind making the request. It’s not uncommon for staff to feel threatened or worried that they may be out of a job if they remove the ‘mystique’ of what they do.

Align then automate the on-boarding

Subsequent to a detailed written account of each employee’s role is the need to align the current processes with the type of client experience you want to deliver. By doing this with your administration support team, you will better understand where you have inefficiencies in your workflows.  And when you identify weaknesses or inefficiencies ask the people involved for help in solving the problems. They will see things you cannot see – the good and the bad – and the final outcome will very often be better for their input to devising a solution.

Once you have documented your processes it is important to automate them as much as possible either using ‘threads’ in software such as XPlan and the like or ‘workflows’ if you are using a CRM program.  Essentially this means the process is input to a series of the tasks that can be automatically delegated, diarised and flagged for completion.

For example in the case of the written ‘new client on-boarding process’, the staff member who receives the first enquiry has responsibility for activating the process.  After the first step is carried out by a staff member (e.g. received initial enquiry by phone), that person initiates the thread and the subsequent tasks are allocated.  Your support person might receive a task to send out a ‘Welcome Pack’ to the potential client and then another task on the day before the client meeting to contact the client and confirm the appointment. This person, for example, also might receive an automated task to prepare a new client file in readiness for your meeting with the potential new client the following day.

At first glance it might seem counterintuitive that in order to deliver a customised, very personal, service you need to automate and document processes into a standardised format.  However, automation serves to ensure the key tasks actually get done and done efficiently.

2. First impressions and beyond

The second stage of a plan to increase client engagement centres on your on-boarding process for new clients; the process you deploy from the moment of first contact with a potential new client.

Your capacity to successfully engage with potential clients in a very personal way will be greatly influenced by their very first introduction to you; this influence could even be at play before they meet you in person.  Getting the first impressions right can lay the foundations for a long and fruitful professional relationship with clients.

Take a moment to list all the ways a potential new client might become aware of you and your business. Start with the obvious, your website but then think beyond that to advertising, your business card handed to someone by another client, your brochures and so on. Try to be objective – what sort of impression do these items give?

Back to on-boarding and, ideally, you should be aiming to ensure that your on-boarding process is designed to remove, or at least reduce, fears that potential new clients will have.  This step should begin to place your clients on a footing of trust, right from the outset, regardless of whether they have been personally referred to you or found you from their own enquiries.  Be careful though – in the twenty teens – consumers are more and more ‘hard-wired’ to be suspicious of claims made by financial services people. Many will treat with, great suspicion, written or spoken claims of an adviser being ‘trustworthy’. It is the old saying of ‘actions speak louder than words’ situation.

Now think again about how your new clients currently find their way to you?  Do the current pathways for new clients begin to engender an atmosphere of trust? Your website? Your referral sources? Your other marketing? Note – this is not about even mentioning the word trust or its derivatives.  Rather, it’s about the overall impression generated by the sum of all that is presented – written and spoken and physical (your reception area, for example) – in representing you and your business.

For a potential new client, at every contact with you and your business in the early weeks and months, she is running the ‘trust radar’ to confirm that you really are trustworthy. After committing to, for example, engaging you to prepare a Statement of Advice, she is looking for that document – and the way you present it – to confirm her initial trust in you. The same can be said at the plan implementation stage and so on.  Trust is not a set and forget aspect of a professional relationship – it must be ever present in your every action for and on behalf of clients.

Your internet presence

What will a prospective client see if they search for you on the Internet?  If they view your website, your LinkedIn profile, or your business Facebook page, what will they learn about you?  How do all these sites ‘position’ you in the eyes of someone who hasn’t met you?  When you read the information about you on your website or LinkedIn profile, for example, how does it ‘sound’?  Try to explore your online presence as a client – with fresh eyes – and consider if these give potential clients a genuine sense of who you are, why you do what you do and your areas of advice expertise. If you don’t think you can ‘trust’ yourself to be objective, ask a friend or another professional person to give you a full and frank critique of what they see.

All of these things can be very powerful tools in enabling your potential clients and clients to get to know you.  Conversely, the reality is that if they do not position you well in the eyes of a potential client, you might never get to meet them – they might not even contact you.

In addition, when used with your existing clients they can be a great way to communicate ideas, inform them about financial concepts and keep them in touch with you and your business.  You can also utilise them to keep clients in touch with key issues and the economy and markets – even if that’s only to get comfort that you are keeping an eye on investment markets.

Be careful though.  This doesn’t mean you should publish an academic style thesis to show people how clever you are.  Rather, by simply sharing client stories, publishing comments on issues of interest and allowing people to get a sense that you are someone who can really help them, you will enhance the propensity for people to gain and retain trust in you.

In Part 2 of this series we will examine how to manage the interaction at the point of ‘First Contact’ and explore ways of creating the right first impression using the world’s second largest search engine.

Note: The accreditation for this CPD article is no longer current. Please visit our CPD section for current CPD quizzes. 

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