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Successful advisors focus on talking to their top clients.
But even when advisors talk to clients frequently, one important sentiment and seven critical words often get missed.
Those seven words, incredibly simple but often overlooked: “You rank among my very favorite clients.”
The impact of recognizing top clients
I was reminded of this in a recent article on the website for the Harvard Business Review, summarizing a research study on the impact of telling people they’re special.
Two groups of students received a flyer in the mail from a retailer opening a new clothing store nearby. None of the students had ever visited this store or knew anything about it.
In the first group, the flyer was a fairly straightforward description of the store’s offering, with a coupon offering a discount on their first purchase.
The second group received the same flyer and coupon. The only difference was the headline on the flyer, which said: “You are receiving this because you have been recognized for your good taste.”
Now the students in the second group knew this line was a generic sales pitch that was sent broadly – and that they hadn’t been recognized for their good taste at all. Despite this, when researchers looked at the attitudes toward the store and the subsequent likelihood to visit the store among these two groups of students, they saw a striking outcome: The students who had been told that they received the flyer because of their good taste had a significantly more positive attitude toward the store and were more likely to actually go and make a purchase.
Why advisors fail to do this
Now if we see this outcome when the sentiment is transparently false, imagine how much more dramatic the outcome would be if this was true.
So the conclusion is simple: Let clients know that they’re valued.
On the face of it, this is remarkably basic. You’re saying to yourself, ”That’s absolutely self-evident, of course I should let my clients know that they’re valued. “
But why then do most advisors fail to convey this effectively?
In many cases it’s lack of focus and priority on this. In others, it’s because advisors believe actions speak louder than words – by doing a great job, your clients should know that they are valued.
There is a difficulty, though. Just appreciating clients isn’t enough; for you to see a payoff in sentiment, you have to tell them. And for clients to feel valued, you have to make an explicit point of letting them know. The reason is simple: After 25 years of working with investors and advisors, here’s a key insight I’ve gleaned: Very few clients are mind readers.