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On a recent flight to Chicago, I sat beside an advisor. We chatted about industry developments and the prospecting initiatives that advisors have been trying. Then he shared a story of a remarkable return from 30 minutes of his time.
Over the course of last year, he spent an extra half hour with each of his top 50 clients – so 25 hours in all. As a result:
- He deepened relationships with his top clients.
- He received 10 referrals, which led to three new clients.
- His clients volunteered to bring over $3 million that they held elsewhere.
Here’s how he did it.
Taking a load off clients’ minds
This initiative began when a significant client passed away, leaving his records in a shambles. Working with his former client’s daughters and other professional advisors, it took many hours for this advisor to create order out of the mess that had been left behind.
This advisor resolved to preempt a replay of this scenario with his other large clients. He began calling those clients, offering to sit down and prepare a spreadsheet with all of their financial information in one place – the institutions where they held money, the account numbers, account balances and contact information.
All that clients had to do was come into his office with their statements; in 30 minutes, he was able to summarize all the information on an Excel spreadsheet which he emailed to clients. Once they had this, he encouraged them to add passwords in a separate column and to file this summary with their lawyer.
Clients were universally appreciative – most knew that they should have a summary of this kind, but didn’t know where to begin. It took a mild nudge from their advisor to gather all their statements together so that he could consolidate this information for them.
