Blog

Here’s how to make a strong first impression for the new year, communicate to clients how you’re caring for them, and ask for referrals—all in that first conversation.
…
So, can you do all three of these? I was on a group call yesterday with a number of advisors, and most of them thought you could do two, at best. Some even thought you could really only do one. But here is how to do all three of them, and you need to respond sooner than later because we’ve just started a new year.

This is the ideal opportunity for you to connect with clients and let them know a couple of things. Let them know that you have reviewed 2021 with your team. It’s been a phenomenal year for you, and you are in the enviable position of not needing to bring on any new clients. Now you’d love to have five or six new families that you start working with, but you’re really only promoting that to existing clients because you’d ideally love to just work with friends and family of existing clients. But it’s been a fantastic year, and you’re looking forward to just a limited number of new families to begin working with.

You’re also focusing on your clients’ mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being more so than you have done before. The reason for this? You’ve already spoken with a number of people who thought between December 31, 2021, and January 1, 2022, with the simple turning of a diary page, everything was going to change. And that’s not the case. People are still fatigued. We still have political issues going on. We’re about to enter into another political news cycle with the midterm elections coming up. We have geopolitical stuff happening. We have COVID issues to deal with, and we have clients who have daughters and sons involved in the medical field. We have clients who have family members who are first responders. The fact that the S&P rose over 26% last year is irrelevant to them; they’re dealing with life issues that can change in a heartbeat. And so, just like we look after their financial well-being, we also want to be a resource to bring helpful advice and ideas regarding spiritual, mental, emotional well-being. And so that’s also an area that we are going to focus on throughout this year. We’re not going to bombard you with news. We’re not gonna bombard you with unhelpful pieces of information, but we do appreciate the fact that we take care of your financial well-being. We also want to let you know that we are aware of the other facets of your life—that you can use some uplifting information from, that you can use some encouragement with.

Now for you, the advisor, over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be bringing you some ideas and some very simple suggestions for you to enact this within your business and reach out and connect effectively with your clients.

So, to do this most effectively,

1. Realize you have one chance to make a first impression. It’s the new year. You want to connect with as many clients as you can, using this kind of language.


2. Manage expectations. Let them know that you’re not going to be bombarding them with irrelevant information every other week. But let them know, on the other hand, that what you provide will be super helpful.


3. Get your resources together. Be on the lookout for helpful pieces of information. And, as I mentioned, I’m going to bring you an idea next week and the week after about how to do this most effectively.

Start building out your schedule now so that you can drip on your clients with helpful information that keeps you top of mind in their lives and they see you as far more than just their “financial person”.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.