Wholesalers, want to know how you can improve your relationship with your advisor-clients? Eric Lauzon, vice president of Environics Research Group Ltd. of Toronto, which conducts an annual survey on the wholesale industry, and marketing expert Dan Richards of Toronto-based Richards, Buitenhuis Associates, offer these tips:

• Make sure you have a reason to talk to the advisor.

• Take time to review progress in your territory — monthly, quarterly and annually. Make two lists — things that you are working, on which you can build, and problems that need to be fixed.

• Don’t wing it — prepare, prepare, prepare.

• For each advisor you target, ask yourself two key questions: how is this advisor different from all other advisors I deal with; and what will I do differently as a result?

• Know what the advisor’s concerns are about your company.

• Talk to advisors about the information they would like to receive from you and how frequently. Determine how they would like to hear from you (in person, telephone, e-mail) and at what time during the day they would like you to contact them.

• Know what the advisor’s concerns are about his/her practice.

• Before you set an appointment, write down the top three things you want to accomplish, taking into account both your objectives and those of the advisor. Use these to develop an informal agenda for the meeting.

• Reply to voice- and e-mail in the same day.

• At the end of a meeting, ask the advisor how effective it was and how it could have been made more effective.

• Help the advisor conquer new clients.

• Read more than your advisors.

• Have a solid team to service advisors; don’t try to do it all yourself.

• At the end of every conversation (in person or on the phone), summarize what you will do next and in what time frame. Make sure you follow through. IE