Here's something that some top advisors do (these guys are Chairman's Club Members):
- When clients sign on, he sends them a welcome letter along with a binder in which to keep statements, annual reviews, correspondence, etc.
- One week later, he calls to be sure that they have received the confirmation of their initial purchase or transfer in the mail and to ensure that there are no questions on these.
- A month out, he calls again to check in, just to be sure that everything is okay.
- Just before the first statement goes out, he calls clients to let them know they’ll be receiving the statement and sets up a time to discuss it with them on the phone. He does this even though earlier, at the initial meeting with new clients, he does something which few advisors do. At this meeting, he walks clients through a sample statement, using a yellow highlighter to draw attention to key points. Having done that, he still calls after the first statement arrives to make sure everything is clear and that there are no questions.
- He calls personally to invite new clients to the quarterly sandwich luncheon which he hosts in his boardroom — talking about what’s happening in the market.
- Ninety days out, he schedules a short, 20 to 30 minute check up meeting. That meeting can take place at either his or his client’s office or the client’s home - he starts the meeting by asking the clients to complete a short five question report card on how he’s doing, focusing on how he’s delivered on his commitments, quality and frequency of contact, how any questions or problems have been addressed and their overall satisfaction. Without exception, he gets very high ratings on all of these - in effect, he has dispelled any doubts that clients might have had about whether they’ve made the right decision.
- At the end of the check up meeting, the advisor does one final thing. When clients first signed on, he talked about what they could expect in terms of the frequency of contact - let’s suppose that the clients agreed that an annual meeting and quarterly phone calls in between made sense. The difficulty is that the early experience has raised client expectations - what the advisor now has to do is to reset expectations of contact to a sustainable level by reminding clients that the next meeting will be in nine months and that they will get a call from him in three months (although he is, of course, always available to take their calls).
I post this to point out that in order to be a successful advisor, you need to realize that you are running your own business. You may be employed by firm X, but your success is predicated on your actions and no one else's.
Being an advisor is not easy. (See above.) In addition to general client management, you need to understand markets and investing and be able to make recommendations that are suitable to the individual investor. You also need to be able to land new clients. Keep in mind that as people become wealthier their needs change and generally become more complicated. So you need to change along with their needs. Don't think you can take the basic courses and that's it; you will need to push yourself to learn on a more or less continuous basis.
Being an advisor can be lucrative. But it's not easy to be a good financial advisor. There are thousands of advisors out there; in order to stand out you need to differentiate yourself which means you need to be better than the next guy. It's not impossible, but it's not easy.
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