Touch Your Clients 24 Times per Year without Breaking a Sweat

Do you know which of your clients refer their friends and family to you? Are they your satisfied clients? You’d like to think that all of your clients are satisfied, which is why they continue to do business with you. But you are not receiving referrals from every one of your clients, so satisfaction is clearly not the basis for referrals. A study conducted by Advisor Impact, called the Economics of Loyalty, indicates that while satisfied clients may be loyal, they won’t necessarily refer. The clients who refer their colleagues and loved ones are the clients who are engaged. According to the study, these engaged clients are not only more likely to refer friends and family members, but they are more open to cross selling opportunities and will invest a larger share of their wallet with their advisor.

Now that you know the secret to referrals, how do you go about engaging clients? While service offerings and customer service are important aspects to engaging clients, creating deeper client-advisor relationships has a more significant impact. The most systematic way to deepen relationships is to create a goal of touching your clients X amount of times per year. The magic number of annual contacts seems debatable, but I’ve read in several publications that high-net-worth clients expect to have 12 to 24 contacts per year with their advisor. This can be overwhelming if you multiply the number clients you have by 12, 18 or even 24 annual contacts. You are easily looking at thousands of touches annually. With the right plan and technology in place, touching your clients 24 times per year can be a cinch.

The first thing you need to do in order to start engaging your clients is to create a client communication plan. For purposes of this article, let’s assume you have 200 clients and 20%, or 40, of these clients are A clients. You want to touch your 40 A clients 24 times per year and the remaining 160 clients 12 times per year. The most logical place to start your client communication plan is to set a goal for the frequency of client reviews. The Economics of Loyalty study found that 84% of clients with more than $500,000 in investable assets expect two or more reviews per year and 43% expect four or more reviews annually. Using this information, start you communication calendar by planning for quarterly reviews for your A clients and semi-annual reviews for all of your other clients. That equates to four touches for A clients and two touches for the remaining clients. Now the question is, “How will you contact your clients the rest of the year to reach your goal?” There are dozens of ideas you can consider. I recommend a mix between educational and appreciation events. The Advisor Impact study indicates that financial reviews are the highest rated form of client contact, followed by educational communication and finally appreciation events. Keeping this in mind, I’ve included a sample client communication calendar to get you started. The activities in red are specific to your A clients.

2009
January	February	March
Quarterly Newsletter	In-Office Client Seminar – How the New Presidential Administration Affects You	Quarterly Review Webcast – 2nd Quarter Economic Forecast
April	May	June
Quarterly Newsletter Semi-Annual Client Appreciation Event	In-Office Client Seminar – Planning for your Parent’s & Children’s Future  Client Appreciation Event Thank You Cards	Mid-Year Review Webcast – 3rd Quarter Economic Forecast
July	August	September
Quarterly Newsletter	In-Office Client Seminar – Small Business Succession Planning Strategies	Quarterly Review Webcast – 4th Quarter Economic Forecast
October	November	December
Quarterly Newsletter Semi-Annual Client Appreciation Event	In-Office Client Seminar – End of Year Tax Planning Strategies Client Appreciation Event Thank You Cards	Year End Review Holiday Cards Webcast – 1st Quarter Economic Forecast

If you follow this sample calendar, you will touch all of your clients 15 times in a one year period and your A clients an additional six times for a total of 21 contacts. If you include birthday cards, anniversary cards, and special event cards for you A clients, you easily reach your goal of 24 touches per year. That equates to 3,360 client contacts per year. Who knew it could be that easy? 

The key to implementing such a plan is to have effective systems in place. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a must to track each touch and to alert you of birthdays, anniversaries, special events and financial reviews as they approach. It’s also imperative that you standardize your client events and communication. There will be some up front work to streamline your newsletter, webcasts, client seminars and client appreciation events, but once you have a system, the events will run like clockwork.

Make “engaging your clients” one of your 2009 resolutions. Your efforts will pay off in client loyalty, client referrals, and incremental business.

Kristen Luke is the Principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a consulting firm specialing in marketing solutions for independent financial advisors. Visit www.WealthManagementMarketing.net for more information.