There’s nothing like ending the year on a high note.
Advisors can raise a glass of cheer this year because clients are altogether happy with the service provided by their advisors.

Earlier this year, Toronto-based consulting firm Advisor Impact Inc. surveyed some 35,000 clients in its database. According to Julie Littlechild, president of Advisor Impact, those clients rated their satisfaction with their advisors as 4.7 out of five. That may be slightly skewed, as these aren’t random clients — they’re provided by advisors who were willing to have their clients surveyed — but it does reveal that advisors have something to crow about.

So, crack open the bubbly.

But that was 2006. The service bar is always being raised. How does an advisor make sure client service in 2007 is even better than in 2006?

Littlechild suggests advisors start by finding out what clients really value about their relationships with advisors. For instance, a common resolution advisors make at this time of year is that they are going to try to spend more face time with clients. Yet Advisor Impact data suggest that most advisors are actually outperforming expectations when it comes to frequency of contact.

“They may be spending time trying to figure out how to call clients more often when, if they just communicated differently about the process, that would be all that’s necessary,” says Littlechild. “What the data tell us is that advisors may be focusing their time and energy on the wrong thing.”

This brings us to the question that has puzzled advisors since the birth of the industry: what do clients want? According to Advisor Impact research, clients place the highest values on having a solid plan, the quality of the advice and their advisor being proactive.

“We need to do a much better job of communicating everything that we do for our clients over the course of a year — and why they’re paying for it,” says Littlechild.

Thus, the top New Year’s resolution for advisors for 2007 should be:



> I Will Let My Clients Know Everything I Do On Their Behalf.

While all advisors face different challenges, depending on the stage of development of their business, most advisors share one problem: their clients don’t recognize the behind-the-scenes machinations that make up the advisors’ practices.

“Clients don’t know what you’re doing,” Littlechild says, adding that it’s worthwhile to let them peek behind the scenes. “It probably makes sense to help clients understand that the process is not simply what occurs when they’re in the office.”

Mapping out what you do behind closed doors is important. This can be elaborate — one Toronto advisor provides each client with a binder that details all aspects of the relationship, along with the client’s investing profile and portfolio performance — or it can be rudimentary.

In fact, sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference, says Littlechild. Simple strategies, such as alerting clients as to how you’ll earn continuing education credits each year, can go a long way toward cementing your value in a client’s mind, she adds.

Another good example of this simple approach to helping clients realize that things are ticking along as they should is taking steps to prepare for the annual review. Sending out a form asking about any life or work changes, or any areas the client wishes to discuss, shows that you want to spend quality time when you’re with the client.

Sylvain Morin, a certified financial planner with Investors Group Inc. in Halifax, prefers using the phone to check in with clients before meeting with them because, he says, mailed forms are too often put aside by clients “for later” — and then forgotten. “I will make the phone call to probe them to see if anything has changed,” Morin says.

The little bit of extra effort translates into a much more efficient meeting, he adds.



> I Will Exercise The Same Discipline I Expect Of My Clients.

If you’re one of those advisors who shakes his or her head with frustration at clients who resist a regular commitment to investing, then you should take a good look in the mirror. Are you just as diligent, on a regular basis, at making sure that you’re on track in terms of how you expect your business to develop?

@page_break@Janet Freedman, a fee-only planner, CFP and registered financial planner for Finance Matters in Toronto, says that, each year, she sets aside a day in late December to map out her earning objectives for the following year, month by month. She says this is particularly crucial for fee-based planners, who can’t rely on commissions to get them through the slower months.

Then, each month throughout the year, she’s able to compare her actual figures with her goals and she can adjust her business accordingly.

Freedman also takes the time to plan out how she will earn her education credits for the coming year, and she blocks off time and money for those commitments.

“We all know what conferences are coming up and we usually know approximately where they are and when they are,” she says. By planning ahead, Freedman can be sure that she has the time and financial wherewithal — the cost can be quite high, particularly for out-of-province conferences — to attend.

At the same time, she reviews her insurance coverage for the year. “I’ve had clients ask me this and, yes, I do my own financial planning,” she says of the annual exercise that she has done for the 22 years she has been in the business.

Joanne Ferguson, partner and coach for Advisor Pathways Inc. in Stratford, Ont., agrees that mapping out the year ahead by the month is the best way to break resolutions down into manageable steps. By drawing up a month-by-month plan well ahead of time — with each member of your team given specific tasks to reach certain goals — nothing will be missed.

Too often, she says, the day-to-day grind can get in the way of real goals and, before long, important tasks such as planning for a client appreciation event are shrugged off.

“You don’t want your day-to-day reactive business to be an excuse for why a goal is not happening,” she says.

“I know I’m guilty,” admits Blaine Conrad, a CFP with Ramey Investments Inc. in Dartmouth, N.S. “I’ll shrug, throw my hands up and say, ‘Oh well, it’s not to be this month.’ But my resolution is to dig in more and make sure that I meet those goals. And not give up.”



> I Will Segment My Client Base.

It may be a case of inertia or out-and-out reluctance, but advisors tend to put off for years the task of segmenting clients, often waiting until they hire a coach to help them, Ferguson says. Yet segmenting your clients — even if it means dropping the unproductive or undesirable ones — is an action that should be done annually.

Each year, advisors need to know how many new clients they have, whether all clients have been through their annual reviews and whether all clients fit into the advisors’ evolving business models, she says.

For Mimi Tang, a CFP, chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant, launching her own business, Mimi Tang Wealth Management & Consulting Ltd. , two years ago in West Vancouver meant that she had to rethink just how many clients she wanted. “I scaled down my clients to be more focused,” she says.

In the past, she had relied on mutual funds for her clients, so she was able to manage a 350-client roster. But these days, she spends her days picking and choosing stocks and bonds, so she prefers to work with a smaller client base.

Tang admits that the work isn’t as profitable — although she’s hoping to get to the point at which she manages $1 million per client. But as a grandmother of three who has been in the business for 25 years, Tang is more interested in finding balance in her life. “I am trying to take it easy,” she says.

Making the decision whether or not to weed out some clients isn’t easy but it is necessary, says Conrad, who considers this resolution another high priority for the coming year: “I have to do that to go forward.”

While focusing on high net-worth clients is one way to improve your business, there is more to the business than assets under management, Conrad says. It’s the stagnant accounts — in which clients have stopped contributing — that frustrate Conrad because those clients cost him — in time and new business.

“The big key for me is that if clients are trying to be on plan and committing monthly, however much that might be — even if it’s not as much as I think they’ll need for retirement — I will keep them,” Conrad says. He is also willing to wait out patiently clients’ financial rough patches, but only if they get back on track as soon as they can.

As for clients who don’t seem to care one way or another? He treats them the same way some doctors are starting to treat lifetime smokers who refuse to give up the habit: by showing them the door.

“Obviously, they’re not interested in their future. So, why should I waste time on them?” Conrad says.



> I’ll Be A Team Player.

This is the year of the team, Littlechild says. And if you are still treating your team members as nothing more than support staff, you’re probably not only insulting those working closest to you, you’re also hurting your business.

“When we run the data, the issue of ‘team’ is quite important to clients,” Littlechild says, adding that this is even the case for those advisors who share an assistant with a colleague. Clients want to have faith in all members of the team, she says: “There is a strong correlation between confidence in the team and overall satisfaction.”

The key, Littlechild says, is that the team approach has to be presented as a benefit of working with a particular advisor. There’s no room for egos in this business model, she says: “You have to take a very proactive strategy to transfer credibility actively to your team and truly work as a team.”

To that end, advisors should go out of their way to involve their team in business planning and introduce team members to clients. By including a biography of each team member and their individual strengths in a formal communication to clients, advisors can ensure that they don’t have to do all of the tasks that are client-related. By handing off some of those tasks, advisors can prevent getting bogged down by details that other team members can handle.

“It not only doesn’t work when it’s a surprise to the client,” Littlechild says, “it doesn’t work when clients feel that they’re being passed off.” IE