Making Clients Matter: How Mercurio’s Principles Can Help Your Advisory Practice

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This article is inspired by Zach Mercurio’s 2025 book, “The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance.” The book explains how leaders can foster a more effective team by making sure the members feel valuable.

Here, I focus primarily on applying my synthesis of the principles of Mercurio’s book not to one’s employees and coworkers, but to client relationships, where the business impact is most direct. The same behaviors that can strengthen your relationships with the people who work alongside you can also deepen client engagement in your practice.

The Core Translation

The book’s key premise is that when people feel they matter, they thrive. They show greater engagement, follow-through, and loyalty. This applies to your employees, as Mercurio explains — and to your clients.

When clients, specifically, feel they matter to their advisor, they engage more deeply in the planning process, follow through on recommendations, refer more frequently, and build lasting relationships that transcend market volatility.

The Fundamental Insight

Mercurio defines mattering as two components:

Feeling valued by those around us
Adding value to those around us

For financial advisors, this means:

Clients must feel valued by you. This means they must feel seen, heard, and understood as individuals.
Clients must understand how they add value to the relationship. Their participation matters; their input shapes outcomes; and their story informs the plan you develop collaboratively.

Clients won’t fully engage in financial planning if they don’t think they matter to you. As Mercurio writes: “If we want people to contribute, they must first believe they’re worthy of contributing.”

The Three Behaviors That Create Mattering

Mercurio identifies three core behaviors — noticing, affirming, and needing — that create the experience of mattering. Each translates directly into your client relationships.

1. NOTICING: Truly Seeing and Hearing Clients

Pay genuine attention to the ebbs and flows of your clients’ lives, not just their portfolios. Create psychological safety so they’ll tell you what’s really going on.

Before the meeting (2 minutes):

Review your client notes and ask: “What do I know about this person’s life beyond their portfolio?”
Prepare one personal question to ask about their family, health, a trip they mentioned, or a milestone coming up.
Set your intention: “In this meeting, I will make them feel seen and heard.”

During the meeting, opening moves:

Start by asking: “Before we jump into numbers, how are you really doing?”, then wait for the real answer, not just “fine.”
Refer to what they’ve shared before: “I remember the last time we spoke you mentioned [personal detail]. How did that go?”
Ask about their feelings, not just facts: “How do you feel about retirement?” rather than just “When do you want to retire?”
Create psychological safety by reassuring them: “There are no dumb questions here,” and “I want to understand your concerns.”

After the meeting:

Update your CRM with personal details immediately, not just financial data. Note family updates, concerns expressed, milestones mentioned, and patterns you’re tracking.

Key phrases:

“What’s been on your mind lately?”
“Tell me more about that.”
“I noticed you seemed concerned when. . .”
“What I’m hearing is. . .”

2. AFFIRMING: Showing Clients Their Unique Significance

Recognize clients’ unique strengths, validate their concerns without dismissal, and show explicitly how their input shaped your recommendations. Make them feel irreplaceable, not interchangeable.

When discussing recommendations:

“Given what you’ve shared about your values regarding [X], here’s what I’m thinking. . .” shows their input shaped your thinking.
“Because you mentioned your concern about taxes, we adjusted. . .” makes the personalization explicit.
“I really appreciate how thoughtful you are about decisions like this.” affirms their approach.

When they express concerns:

Never say, “Don’t worry about that.” Instead say, “That’s a completely legitimate concern.”
“It makes total sense you’d feel that way, given your experience with. . .”
“I’m glad you brought that up; it tells me I need to explain this better.”

When they provide information or documents:

“This level of detail is really helpful; it helps me design something that truly fits you.”
“Thank you for being so thorough with these documents.”

Key phrases:

“That’s a really insightful observation.”
“You made a smart choice when you. . .”
“What you shared about your values really matters here.”
“This strategy is designed specifically for someone in your situation.”

3. NEEDING: Showing Clients They Add Value and Make an Impact

Express genuine reliance on clients’ input and show how their participation directly improves outcomes. When clients believe their engagement makes a real difference, they engage more fully — and they stay.

During the meeting, closing moves (last 5 minutes):

Show impact: “Based on what you shared today about [X], I’m going to adjust [Y]. Your input directly improved this plan.”
Express reliance: “I need your honest feedback, how did this meeting feel? What would make our next one even better?”
Affirm contribution: “I learned something from our conversation today about. . .”
Create continuity: “Between now and our next meeting, if anything comes up — concerns, questions, changes in your life — please reach out. I’m here.”

After the meeting, personal follow-up (within 24 hours):

Send a personal note, not a template. Reference a specific point from the conversation, affirm their contribution, and show you heard them. For example:

Thank you for taking the time to meet yesterday. I’ve been thinking about what you said regarding your mother’s health situation. I’ve adjusted our plan to account for potential caregiving needs as we discussed. I appreciate your openness; it helps me serve you better. Looking forward to our next conversation.

Key phrases:

“I need your input on this decision.”
“I rely on you to tell me when something doesn’t feel right.”
“Your openness about [concern] helps me serve you better.”
“Working with you has made me a better advisor because. . .”

The Mattering Deficit in Financial Advisory

Mercurio’s research indicates that 30% of employees feel invisible, 65% feel underappreciated, and 82% feel lonely at work.

The parallel: Similar to employees, many clients may feel:

Like account numbers, not individuals
Unheard when they express concerns
Uncertain whether their advisor truly understands their unique situation
Disconnected between meetings, wondering if they matter outside of AUM

The consequence:

Clients don’t follow through on recommendations
They don’t refer because the relationship feels transactional
They’re easily poached by competitors who “listen better”
They disengage during market volatility, exactly when you need them to be most engaged

Creating “Exceptional Experiences” Through Mattering

What clients call “exceptional experiences” are often simply feeling that they matter as individuals, not as revenue sources.

The shift that makes this happen requires you to move from “How can I deliver value to this client?” to “How can I show this client they matter to me AND help them see the value they add to this partnership?”

The Warning: Don’t Make It Transactional

Mercurio is explicit: “You should not implement mattering as a tactic to achieve [transactional] ends.”

Do not:

Use these techniques to manipulate clients into larger accounts
Fake interest in their lives to generate referrals
Make clients feel they matter only to extract more revenue

Do:

Genuinely see clients as humans with vivid, complex, important lives
Show you care because people deserve dignity and significance
Trust that better relationships naturally lead to better outcomes

Five Implementation Questions for Advisors

Use the below questions to move from concept to practice in your next meeting, this week, and across your team.

For your most engaged clients: What are you already doing that makes them feel they matter? How can you do it systematically for all clients?
For clients who seem disengaged: Could they be experiencing a “mattering deficit”? What would change if you assume they feel unseen or undervalued?
For your team: Do your people feel they matter to you? You cannot create mattering for clients if your team experiences a mattering deficit.
For your practice culture: What would a “How Clients Matter Here” blueprint look like for your firm?
For yourself: Who in your life helps you feel that you matter? You cannot give what you don’t experience. Advisors need mattering, too.

The Bottom Line

The driving principle of Mercurio’s work is simple: People thrive when they know they matter.

The exceptional experiences clients seek aren’t built through better technology or fancier presentations. They’re built through the fundamental human skills of noticing, affirming, and needing, executed consistently before, during, and after every interaction.

As Mercurio advises leaders regarding their clients: “Always assume the people around you feel unseen, undervalued, and lonely, and act accordingly.”

Similarly, financial advisors should always assume their clients feel like account numbers, not individuals, and they should act accordingly to ensure that assumption does not harden into truth.

The question to carry into your next meeting: What would change if you truly believed your client needed to feel that they matter to you?

See more by David Leo:

Can You Prove You're Better? Understanding ‘The 80/20 Manifesto’

David I. Leo is founder of Street Smart Research Group LLC and senior coach and co-director of content development at AlphaScale, LLC. With over 40 years of experience in financial services, including 30 years at IBM and seven years at UBS/PaineWebber, and a quarter century coaching financial advisors, David works exclusively with advisors seeking to build sustainable, client-centered practices. Contact him at [email protected] or visit www.CoachDavidLeo.com.

His new book is “The 80/20 Manifesto” at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GWSQY572. It is available at Amazon.com, Apple Books, and BookBaby.

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