Being a financial advisor means dealing with clients, so it’s important you can handle them in the right way. However, this can be a challenge, and it’s something that financial advisors often struggle with.
In this blog, we’ll provide top tips for handling clients in the financial sector and how you can provide a better service by overcoming the challenges of client communication.
Let’s start with a pet peeve for lots of clients, financial jargon.
1. Avoid industry-specific financial jargon.
There’s nothing more off-putting to somebody seeking financial advice than being made to feel inferior for not understanding the jargon you use on a daily basis.
Just because certain acronyms and terms are second nature to you, if you overuse them or don’t explain them, it will have negative repercussions with clients and leave a sour taste.
It’s a fine line, however, because you don’t want to come across as condescending by oversimplifying what you’re offering. The key is to speak in plain language and to explain any acronyms or industry jargon you find yourself using. This way, your client understands what you’re talking about and isn’t put off.
2. Be proactive and process driven.
As a financial advisor, one of the worst things you can be is on the back foot. You should always be proactive rather than reactive, foreseeing clients’ issues before they happen and coming up with ways to tackle problems that may be on the horizon.
This applies to financial planning and client communication, and you should always keep your clients abreast of developments, what the future might hold, and how that might affect them.
Thorough tracking in your CRM system will help you achieve this, and following robust processes with each client enables you to track and improve your service. This improves loyalty and trust in you and your business.
3. Plan for the future and plan for the client.
When it comes to meeting and speaking with clients, the best approach is to plan for the person you’re speaking to, not the meeting itself.
Ask yourself questions like who is the client? Are they new, existing, or potential leads? How did they come by your business? Have you not spoken to them for a while about their portfolio? Asking questions along these lines will help you plan conversations better, resulting in a more personalised, effective service.
And perhaps the most important question to ask yourself before any client meeting is, what do you want to discover during the meeting? This will help guide your approach and what you should be offering each individual client.
4. Tell your clients about your technology.
If you’re a financial advisor, you should have access to various technologies that improve your service.
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Even though this is generally the case, a lot of financial advisors take for granted the technology they use and don’t explain to clients how beneficial it is for their strategy. This is a common mistake, and you should always be explaining the technologies and tools you utilise to improve their financial situation and how they’ve benefited them.
Again, this will encourage loyalty and trust in what you’re providing and will help retain clients because you’re showing them the behind-the-scenes of how you operate.
5. Check in often and communicate well.
At the very least, you should carry out annual check-ins with your clients, but ideally, you should check in throughout the year as circ*mstances change.
Checking in to see if their goals have changed or how happy they are with your service includes your clients in the process rather than leaving them out in the cold. It also enables you to spot shortcomings in your approach and rectify them rather than allowing them to grow and become problems that result in lost clients.
When it comes to checking in, it’s also important to keep it personal. Remember things about your clients to bring up when you speak to them and offer a personalised approach to how you communicate.
This one goes without saying, but it is a pretty common failure of financial advisors who tend to talk at their clients rather than talking to them and listening to their concerns.
6. Provide access to industry information
While you don’t want to bog your client meetings down with jargon, you do want to show that you’re providing a valuable service to your clients. That’s why you must provide access to information they wouldn’t be able to access otherwise.
For the most part, clients simply aren’t aware of the massive amount of options that are available when it comes to investing, so it’s also important to make sure you provide this information in an easy-to-digest way. This will go a long way to inspiring trust in you and your brand and encouraging loyalty from your clients.
7. aixigo’s Cash Flow Planner
Another great way of handling your client's needs is by making sure you’re as efficient as possible when it comes to cash flow planning. That’s where the aixigo Cash Flow Planner comes into play.
Our tool can help you streamline your operations substantially by offering one simple, multi-integrated software explicitly designed for the UK market. With the ability to handle a range of different financial services in one place and make calculations that consider tax bands, thresholds, regulations, and rates of increase for every region, the aixigo Cash Flow Planner delivers best-in-class performance across the board.
It makes the complex seem simple with an easy-to-use interface, all solutions are built into our API-based platform for ultimate simplicity of use and effectiveness, making your and your client's lives easier.
Get in touch.
If you need more information regarding client relationships, cash flow planning, or anything else at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.
