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In our clients’ eyes, the driver of value for advisors has three legs: trust, personal connection and proactive outreach.
A recent white paper by Vanguard, The Value of Advice: Assessing the Role of Emotion, illustrated that the top four aspects of the relationship in the eyes of a client are: plan monitoring, trust, connected-ness and investment expertise … The bottom four: performance, mediation, online access and budgeting.
According to Vanguard, 72% of clients said the value of an advisor lies within the relationship itself: trust, personal connection and proactive outreach
The past 12 months allowed us an opportunity to innovate our ability to establish, cement and build trust with our clients.
The ability to find new ways to build trust by providing proactive value has never been easier.
We are in a world that is more accepting of digital technology. It is a world that is thirsty for more digital interaction.
But this is still a service-based business that hinges on the relationship. How do we balance this?
For me, it was scaling communication and making it more frequent. The other day I held my fourth quarterly Zoom call with clients. The theme was: “The markets, the economy and the light at the end of the tunnel.” More than 30% of our clients joined the call and I forwarded the recording to the rest of my client book.
Along with this, I sent a survey to get their thoughts on the environment, their worries, their desire for in-person or video meetings, etc.
The feedback continues to be the same… “Thank you.”
My content is personalized to my clients and what they want to talk about. It is tailored around the philosophy that I preach. It is recorded so they can review it at their leisure. I share the slide deck so they can put down notes. It is timely.
But, more importantly, they are able to see me, their team at our firm and they are able to connect with me. I share updates on my family and thank them for continuing to be with us. And I level set to help with expectations between now and our next call.
And I open it up to live questions.
This is personal at scale. It does not fully replace the one-on-one meetings that I do with my clients. But it does make our time together in those one-on-one meetings more relevant to their situation because everyone knows where we stand on the markets, economy, etc.
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