Nine Ways to Make Your Clients Love You

Take the time to build a meaningful relationship, and soon your customers will become your advocates.

By D. Douglas Graham

Great business relationships begin with a single sale, then slowly evolve into partnerships, and ultimately end up as alliances. This is the journey an advisor hopes for when he begins to develop a business relationship with a new customer. But the road leading from here to there is often long, winding and not so easily traveled. How do you arrive at the desired destination at the end of that road? With time and patience, experts say, and by shifting your focus from your own interests to those of your customers.

1. Exceed their expectations.
Such a journey cannot begin without the proper philosophical orientation, says William DiCristofaro, CFP, an advisor with New England Financial in West Hartford, Conn., and a member of Hartford AIFA. An advisor who wishes to make allies of his customers must be willing to perform beyond their expectations, he explains, and demonstrate through action that his main concern is to make them, not himself, better off.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS • Do more than what is expected. • Remember that it pays to be courteous. • Give your clients all the time they need. • Take the time to learn what really excites them. • Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it. • Help them obtain information that is not readily accessible. • Help your small clients grow into big clients. • Limit your clients to people with whom you enjoy a clear fit.

“It’s vitally important that you win the confidence of your clients,” DiCristofaro adds. “You do that by keeping your commitments to them, and standing by the principles by which you ply your trade. It may sound corny, but the relationships you build in this business will bloom or wither to the extent that they are defined by mutual trust and high-mindedness. Those commercials you see on television about super-caring personal financial consultants have a basis in reality. Some practitioners really do go on vacation with their clients, and a few may even cheer for their kids at little league games and give their daughters away on their wedding day. You can’t cultivate that level of trust in people by just selling them financial products. You have to win it by performing at a level above and beyond the call of duty.”

2. Demonstrate uncommon courtesy.
Remember when people answered their phones and welcomed visitors when they knocked or rang the doorbell? Many of your customers do, as they were raised in a time when good manners were a bottom-line requirement of human interaction. Though common courtesy is becoming more uncommon all the time, it is the point at which relationship building begins, says Bob Stanworth, president of Robert G. Stanworth Associates in Salt Lake City, and a member of NAIFA-Salt Lake.

“When I meet with my customers in person, I put my blinders on,” Stanworth says. “What I mean by that is that I give them my full and absolute attention by blinding myself to all potential distractions. When dealing with clients, it’s all-important that you remain fully focused on whatever subject is under discussion at the time. That can’t happen if the window’s open and traffic noise is pouring in, your phone’s ringing and people are storming in and out of your office. The same rule applies to in-home visits. I turn my cell phone off and go to work. You have to make certain that your clients understand that the time you spend with them is their time, not yours. Client time should be quality time.”

3. Give them all the time they need.
Carefully listening to, and speaking with clients is at least as important as giving them your undivided attention, Stanworth continues. As this principle applies to the advisor-client relationship, it’s the client who should do most of the talking and the advisor most of the listening. When Stanworth queries his clients about their financial concerns, he gives them all the time they need to reply, and then some. By doing so, he makes very clear his intention is to make their needs his own and to craft a solution that meets their requirements.

4. Read between the lines.
“People don’t always say what they mean, but by developing skills in the listening area, you can glean their meaning by reading between the lines,” says Elaine Fremling, CLU, an advisor with Northwestern Mutual in Fargo, N.D., a member of NAIFA-Fargo Moorhead and a former NAIFA trustee. “Over the years, I’ve worked hard to develop a good listening-questioning technique designed to draw out what people really are saying as opposed to what they seem to be saying. People tend to express the really important stuff between the lines. That’s where you uncover a person’s deepest feelings and learn about the things that truly excite him.”

Like any good psychologist, Fremling provides her clients with a quiet, caring place for them to unload and express whatever may be on their minds. The subject need not touch on financial matters. In fact, it may address just about anything—from salmon fishing to rock collecting. The point, Fremling says, is that you learn a great deal about a person by listening to him closely and carefully. Information uncovered through simply listening will spur deeper questioning through which an advisor can build a stronger relationship with his client and better serve his needs.

5. Stay connected.
“Communication is everything in our business,” adds Bruce Knopp, CLU, ChFC, CSA, LUTCF, an independent financial services broker in Naperville, Ill. “Your clients must provide you with detailed information if you’re going to build them a plan they can be comfortable with and one that will also accurately address their needs. You won’t win their trust overnight, however, nor are you likely to quickly convince them that you have genuine empathy for their concerns.”

NEVER FAIL TO KEEP IN TOUCH AND NEVER, EVER, REMAIN OUT OF TOUCH.

6. Always follow up.
Follow-up is an equally vital but much too often neglected function of the relationship, Stanworth says. Like common courtesy, follow-up has fallen out of favor, even among car salespeople. Rather than go through the effort involved in coaxing a deal to closure, many sales professionals push for commitment right now. An advisor who uses this tactic will crash and burn, Stanworth says. Clients will have many questions, some of them relevant, others relevant only to them. No matter. All must be addressed in as timely a manner as possible.

“Clients need to know that you’re on the case,” he continues. “They expect you to do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. When you don’t follow up with a client, even about a little thing requiring only a two-minute phone call, you’re breaking a promise. Your client will remember that and won’t think kindly of you for it. I myself have a tough time doing business with someone who doesn’t return my calls. To me it seems that person has no interest in my needs, and total interest in his own. Of course, it’s not easy to keep track of everything so I have my secretary fax me a schedule every day. That way, no commitment I’ve made to a client, however small, is allowed to slip between the cracks and disappear.”

It’s the little things that make a difference in a professional relationship and move it more rapidly to higher levels, Stanworth adds. When an advisor routinely follows up with his clients’ queries, they soon come to realize that he values them as people. They, in turn, will come to view him as a valuable asset and eventually an ally and advocate.

There is a fine line however, between acting as your clients’ advocate and leading them down the primrose path. Some advisors lose face when they are confronted with questions they can’t answer. Rather than admit they don’t know, they promise to follow up and never get around to doing it.

“I never fail to follow up with any client query, nor do I make it difficult for clients to contact me, even after hours,” comments Tom Palmeri, LUTCF, an advisor with MetLife Financial in Melville, N.Y., and a member of Suffolk AIFA. “I have the same phone number I had years ago and have given all my clients standing instructions to call me any day they like, including holidays, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Many act on those instructions and come to me with questions completely unrelated to the financial services I provide. I get questions about the mortgage, insurance, even about personal problems involving their kids. I answer the ones I can and pass the ones I can’t to people I know who can help. I see this as part of my job, which extends well beyond selling financial products to my customers. As far as I’m concerned, I’m their friend and ally as well.”

7. Go the extra mile.
Don’t be afraid to enlist the aid of friends and associates in other professional areas. If a client asks about a legal matter, refer him to a good lawyer. If he has an accounting problem, recommend a good CPA. No one can be all things to all people. No one’s smart enough to fill that role. One can, however, help his clients obtain information that is not instantly accessible but accessible through a network of professional contacts.

The dividend paid by this practice will be very great indeed—the recognition on the part of your clients that you really are ready and willing to serve them to the limit of your knowledge and abilities, and sometimes beyond that.

8. Nurture the relationship.
“It’s not just important that you maintain regular contact with your clients, it’s vital,” says NAIFA-Southern Alaska member Steven R. Foster, LUTCF, with Raymond James Financial Services in Anchorage. “One way to do this is to limit the number of clients you take on. If you have too many you won’t be able to do justice to them all. Someone’s going to get hurt, and it won’t just be your neglected clients. You will ultimately lose some business. ”

 

COMMON COURTESY IS THE POINT AT WHICH RELATIONSHIP BUILDING BEGINS

According to Foster, a nutshell primer on client nurturing reads as follows: Limit your clients to people with whom you enjoy a clear fit. Then hold a full disclosure meeting to make sure that each party in the relationship fully understands the other’s goals and expectations. You’ll also want to schedule regular maintenance during the course of the relationship. Meet with your clients on a quarterly basis if they’re comfortable with that, and use the time to review their financial and personal goals. Never fail to keep in touch and never, ever remain out of touch.

9. Help them succeed.
Nurturing and growing clients are related skills, but they are not exactly the same. According to Palmeri, it’s fairly common practice in the business to cast for big fish and toss out the smaller ones that get caught in the net. Bad strategy, Palmeri says. Some guppies stay guppies. Others grow into whale sharks via successful internet ventures, inheritances and other windfalls unanticipated by advisors with their eyes and hopes on customers the caliber of Bill Gates.

“Do I have some top clients?” Palmeri asks. “Absolutely! Do I want to deal with Bill Gates? Again, absolutely. But as a realist and a veteran in this business, I also understand that top clients are captured, but they are also made. Big clients are often grown from small seeds, and when you help a client evolve from nearly nothing to far more than nothing, there’s more than a good chance that you’ve won his trust and loyalty along the way. A small client you’ve helped grow into a big one may very well turn out to be your strongest ally and best customer.” Think of such customers as ground floor opportunities, Palmeri says, because that’s exactly what they are.

But even clients grown from scratch can sometimes stray and very often through no fault of the advisor. Sometimes practitioners simply fall out of favor for reasons mostly unknown,” Palmeri says. “Should that happen to you, don’t fuss and don’t take it personally. Just bow out gently. Never burn your bridges. You never know when you’ll need them. Remember, the time and effort you invested in a lost relationship may eventually return to you in the form of a good referral or a prodigal customer coming home.”

D. Douglas Graham is a contributor to Advisor Today.