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Hey Mister Professional, you’re too good at your job – if you could just tone it down a little, that’d be great.
– Said no one ever
No one calls their bank manager insisting on earning less interest on a savings account. And who in their right mind would be upset after the lawn care guy did an immaculate job?
Just as you wouldn’t be upset that you had too much fun, no client has called me to complain that I’m too good at what I do.
When it comes to value, you can’t deliver too much. Here are five ways to deliver even more value to your clients this week – without beating them over the head.
What is value?
In my practice, we’ve defined value to be anything that provides personalized, actionable advice.
I don’t want my clients to filter their mail wondering whether an envelope from Shilanski and Associates will apply to them. Nor do I want them to leave a meeting unsure of what to do next. We never interact with clients just to check the “I did something” box.
If a client can’t act on it, and it's not specific to them, that advice isn’t valuable – it's just noise.
1. Deliver as much value as you possibly can
When I started in the profession, I was too focused on what the client could do for me rather than what I could do for the client. It wasn’t hard to see why I wasn’t closing on prospects when I spent the entire meeting talking about myself.
It wasn’t until my attitude shifted from being self-serving to client-serving that I saw a significant change in my client retention.
Now during those initial meetings (and every other meeting), I’m hyper-focused on delivering as much value as possible.
By the end of our appointment, I don’t care whether they decide to hire me. I care that the client leaves the meeting glad they met Micah Shilanski.
2. Follow the dishwasher rule
What is the dishwasher rule? Well, the concept is this:
If I did all the work to do the dishes but didn’t tell my wife, did the dishes get done? And do I get the bonus points from my wife for helping?
No, my work doesn’t count if she can’t see it.
The same idea applies to our clients. My bills are explicitly clear: My clients see exactly how much it costs them to work with me each quarter. I want to be equally clear about what they are getting for that cost, so I tell them exactly what I’ve done that quarter to earn my fee.
3. Never be dismissive of a client’s harebrained ideas
At some point in your career, a client will approach you with a fantastic idea to sell their equities and buy crypto or blow their entire nest egg on NFTs. No matter how outlandish their ideas are, dismissing a client is a surefire way to destroy a relationship.
There’s no coming back from laughing out loud and telling them, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Your client came to you as a trusted advisor – don’t jump into your adversarial role and downplay their ideas. Instead, acknowledge that they have an interesting plan, then authentically ask them for more details. But don’t be pandering and taint the relationship.
Hopefully, through your discussion, you can guide them to see the problems with their scheme. What matters most is the value you deliver to your client by maintaining a stellar relationship.
4. Call with a specific intent – or don’t call
It's vital to respect our communication boundaries with our clients. You don’t want them to start filtering your outreach because not everything you send is valuable.
I want my clients to be excited to see that we’re calling because they know that no matter what it is or who’s calling from the office, we will deliver value and help them.
There are calls from some professionals I’ve made a habit of ignoring because I don’t want another update on how they haven’t taken of things. I don’t want my clients ever to feel this way about calls from my office. In client communications, we are very clear that we’ll only call for essential issues that need to be discussed today.
5. You add value by being profitable
Let’s take this to the hyperbolas extreme: If I were to go out of business, that’s not helping my clients.
If I went into the office next week more concerned about how I would make payroll than the work on my desk, that doesn’t put me in a good position to be a financial advisor.
This isn’t to say that you won’t have grind times in your early years when you need to take out another credit card to stay afloat – which happened to me.
But if you’re barely treading above the red because you’re not charging appropriate fees, you have an enormous problem. You’re running an unprofitable model, which will only snowball until you make profound changes.
You’re bringing on the wrong clients if you’re undercharging because your clients can’t pay you what your services are worth.
You need to make better business decisions. That doesn’t mean these decisions aren’t personal, as a business is highly personal. After all, we are dealing with individuals with heartbeats and real-life consequences.
But you’d never advise your clients to work for someone and not make money, so why are you?
Action Items
Nothing will improve your ability to deliver massive value like investing in personal development. My partner, Matthew Jarvis and I didn’t wake up one morning knowing these things. We learned from other advisors who had practices we wanted to emulate.
If you haven’t already, set up a professional development budget based on a percentage of your gross income and start investing in yourself.
Micah Shilanski, CFP®, is a financial planner who achieves the impossible. Micah is recognized as a leader in the concept of lifestyle design for financial planners and has spoken at conferences across the country. Micah is an advisor with Shilanski and Associates, a founder of Plan Your Federal Retirement, and a co-founder of The Perfect RIA.
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
