Given last year’s markets, today’s No. 1 priority for most advisors is to have as many face-to-face and telephone meetings with clients as possible.

Just talking to clients isn’t good enough, however. To get maximum return on your time, every conversation with clients has to achieve two goals.

First, conversations have to be seen by clients as advancing their needs and being a good use of their time. In my research with investors, one reason that top clients are sometimes reluctant to meet is that meetings are the “same old, same old” discussions, with little or no new information. Add in the hassle factor in many cities of fighting traffic and finding parking, and it should be no surprise that clients aren’t anxious to meet if they don’t find meetings valuable.

Second, conversations have to advance the advisor’s agenda with clients, taking advantage of the best business opportunities with each client.

So, how do you achieve this dual objective of ensuring that meetings are a good use of time for both client and advisor?

In conversations with investors and advisors, I have found one activity that has a high correlation with achieving both of these goals: the use of a written agenda. Advisors who consistently use written agendas report that they make meetings more productive and keep meetings on track.

Just slapping an agenda down at the beginning of the meeting isn’t enough, however. To get full value, you need to put a few key steps in place around that agenda:



> Start With The End In Mind.

In Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the author talks about “starting with the end in mind” — looking at every activity in the context of the desired outcome. When it comes to crafting agendas, advisors need to start with the end in mind as well. Before calling a key client to set up a meeting, identify the one or two most significant business opportunities that are available to you with that client, and then identify a primary and secondary goal for that meeting to capitalize on the opportunities.

There are lots of possible objectives. They typically include consolidating assets that the client holds with another advisor, getting cash off the sidelines, meeting a broader range of the client’s needs and building better relationships with your client’s spouse, kids or professional advisors. Or your goal could simply be to deepen your relationship with a key client in a difficult period.

Once you’ve identified your primary and secondary business goals, and still in advance of picking up the phone to talk to the client about the meeting you’re proposing, write down the specific issues you’re going to suggest covering in the meeting. That will help you achieve your goals.



> Get The Client To Buy Into The Agenda.

The next step is to discuss the agenda with the client in a way that he or she will see it as his or her agenda — rather than yours.

When the client has agreed to meet, you can say something like: “There are a number of issues I’d like to cover in our meeting. Before I talk about those, what are the questions and issues you’d like to talk about when we meet?”

After your client answers that question, but before introducing your items, pause and then ask, “What else would you like to discuss when we meet?” That way, you really are giving clients the opportunity to put all of their questions and issues on the table.

At the end of the conversation, you will have an agenda that reflects the issues that both you and your client want to cover. Email that agenda to your client as a followup to your conversation, and consider emailing it again as a reminder in the days immediately before you meet.



> Deal With The “Soft” Issues First.

As a general rule, your agenda will focus on “hard” issues related to the client’s investment, tax or insurance situation, or his or her financial plan. It’s obviously important to deal with these.

Very often, however, in order to get the client to focus on the hard issues on the agenda, you have to deal with the “soft” issues first. These days, those issues often focus around the client’s fears, anxieties and apprehensions.

@page_break@One way to start the meeting so that you get at the client’s soft issues is to say: “Here’s the agenda that we’re going to be covering today. Before we get into this, however, some people report that last year’s markets caused them to lose sleep. Tell me, did you find yourself affected by this past year’s markets?”

If the client responds that he or she lost sleep and experienced anxiety, resist the temptation to leap in with an immediate response. Instead, sit back and say the five words that, more than any others, will encourage the client to talk further: “Tell me more about that.”

Asking this question in this fashion gives your clients permission to talk about their own anxieties and opens the door to a discussion about how they really feel.

Some advisors use another tack to ensure they are dealing with all of the important issues about which clients are concerned. They’ll put the agenda on the table at the beginning of a meeting, containing all of the items to which the client agreed. The only difference is that all of the items have been pushed down by one line, and the line beside the first item on the agenda is blank.

Having given the agenda to the client, those advisors go on to say: “This is the agenda that we discussed on the phone — with one change. You’ll notice that the first item is blank. That’s just in case there’s something that’s come up since we spoke on the phone that you’d like to talk about today. Tell me, what else would you like to discuss that’s not on the agenda now?”

Advisors who take this approach report that quite often clients respond that, in fact, all of their issues are on the agenda, in which case, they move on to Item 2.

With surprising frequency, however, advisors say that, when given the opportunity, clients raise issues that they didn’t talk about on the phone. Often it’s these issues that are the most important matters that get talked about during the meeting.



> Practise The 50/50 Rule.

One of the most important steps in productive client meetings is consistent use of the 50/50 rule: for every 50 words you say in a client meeting, your client should say 50. Research on this subject is absolutely definitive. The one factor, more than any other, that gets clients saying that a meeting was a good use of time was the amount of time the clients spent talking.

My experience concurs. Over the years, I’ve talked to many clients who say that one thing they like best about their advisor is that he or she is a “great listener.” I have yet to run into a client who says that the reason he or she likes his or her advisor is because the advisor is a “great talker.”

The best way to get clients engaged and participating in a meeting is to ask lots of good questions. And the best way to ensure you ask good questions? Quite simply, take five minutes before a meeting to go through the agenda and beside each point write down questions you are going to ask.

Do that, and your chances of having the 50/50 rule work for you goes up dramatically.



> Translate The Agenda Into Client Outcomes.

When you and your client reach the end of your conversation, the agenda will have guided you through the meeting. At this point, take the time to summarize what you’ve talked about and talk about the steps to be taken after the meeting.

For larger clients with whom you’re meeting two or three times a year, you can say something along the these lines: “I found today’s meeting very productive and hope you did, too. I’d like to suggest that we plan to meet again in about six months. Tell me, to what specific issues would you like to devote more time at that meeting?”

In cases in which an advisor has multiple meetings scheduled with an important client over the course of a 12-month period, the agenda will lay out a road map of the issues that will be covered at each of those meetings. This road map should be part of the agenda for the first meeting of the year.

You have one final opportunity to remind your client that your meeting was a good use of time. Most advisors systematically create meeting notes, summarizing what was talked about and outlining the next steps arising from each meeting. Consider creating a client-friendly version of this summary and sending it along to the client as a reminder of the issues about which you talked, thus reinforcing the value the client obtained from taking the time to meet.

So, consider building a systematic process around written agendas into your meeting-planning routine. If you’re like most advi-sors, once you’ve tried this for a while, chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised about the positive impact this effort has on the value and productivity of client meetings. IE