Whether you love sports or can’t tell a baseball from a hockey puck, you’ve probably heard the expression “the best offense is a good defense.” It means that defending what you’ve got can be one of the surest paths to tremendous success.

That’s certainly true for financial advisors, who stand to gain much by ensuring that they’re keeping their top clients highly satisfied and loyal. In fact, playing good defense today has become more important than it’s been in years.

Here’s why it’s the perfect time to redouble your efforts to serve your current clients extremely well—and some key action steps that can help you get the job done.

Key Takeaways:

• Empirical research into HNW investors and best practices of top financial advisors.
• Actionable, proven strategies designed to propel advisors to the pinnacle of success.
• Powerful combination of CEG Worldwide and CEG Insights.
• It’s crucial to cement existing client loyalty in today’s environment.
• Reach out to clients more frequently, using their preferred communication methods.
• Be ready to lead your clients through the current uncertainty.
• To access the Pay to Win Report discussed in this podcast, click here.

FACE THE FACTS

CEG Insights research reveals that, unfortunately, far too many clients of financial advisors today are unhappy—and open to replacing their existing advisors.

• 28% of investors with $1 million to $5 million in investable assets currently rate their advisors as neutral, fair or poor.
• 26% of investors with $5 million to $10 million in investable assets rate their advisors as neutral or worse.
• Nearly 40% of the wealthiest clients—those with $10 million to $25 million—are either open to switching advisors or actively considering switching in the current environment.

INSIGHTS INTO ACTION

These findings should be a wake-up call to all advisors and their teams to take effective action steps aimed at protecting the clients they’ve got. For example:

1. Don’t assume “it’s not me.” One trap some advisors fall into is to assume that numbers like these don’t apply to them, but only to “the other guys” out there. Maybe—but are you truly certain that you’re not one of the advisors with clients who aren’t thrilled with you and may be eyeing a replacement?

2. Mind your own house first. New client acquisition is the area of business development that advisors get most excited about. But in an asset-based business where your revenue is based upon assets that you have and recurring revenue, the foundational block of revenue growth is keeping the revenue that you have. So in this environment where we’re seeing around 25% of high-net-worth clients neutral at best with their relationship, the opportunity is for advisors to cement client loyalty now.

3. Improve the frequency of your client contacts. In times of uncertainty like we see today, increasing the frequency of your contacts with clients can have a big impact on satisfaction and loyalty. For starters, every advisor should know how often each client prefers to be contacted and what method of contact each client prefers—phone, email, video update, and so on. Next, exceed that expectation. Clients may say they want a phone call from you once per quarter—but that doesn’t mean they’ll be disappointed by hearing from you more often. A quick video message, text or email from time to time is a non-intrusive way to boost engagement.

4. Enhance the quality of your client contacts. Clients today want you to reach out to them with substantive insights. They want to know how they should react to inflation fears, recession fears and other hot-button issues on their minds. Your role should be that of a leader. A person climbing Mt. Everest when a storm comes in doesn’t want their guide to tell them how they’re doing—they want to know what they should do next based on the guide’s experience in this type of environment. That same idea applies to you when having conversations with clients. Clients today crave leadership. If you give it to them, you cement loyalty. If you don’t, you create a vacuum that allows other advisors to eat your lunch.

5. Impart these lessons to your people. Financial services executives should be systematically emphasizing to their advisors the importance of knowing clients’ preferred communication frequency and methods of contact. Additionally, firms can provide tools to enhance the quality of advisor-client communication—such as providing talking points for advisors and putting together white papers or videos with insights on key topics.

Ultimately, the dissatisfaction seen among so many high-net-worth clients means it’s vital to focus on making things as good as possible for your existing top clients—the ones who have helped get you to where you are today, and who can empower you to become preeminent in the months and years ahead.

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