In the manufacturing sector it's quite common to monitor the speed and performance of individual parts of a manufacturing process, to assess where the bottlenecks are and what improvements can be made. We rarely do this in financial services, yet there is still a ‘product’, even if that’s now financial planning and advice rather than a tax wrapper.
One area where this is really apparent is the first few months when a client is new to your business.
It shouldn’t be underestimated how significant a commitment it is for someone to select you as their financial adviser. Whether they look at other firms or not, it’s a big moment for anyone, a real leap of faith. It might be a choice they make once in a lifetime, but we see it every day, so it’s easy to forget the significance.
In the process of signing up to your services, and expressing their hopes and dreams for the future, that client has disclosed more honest and personal information to you than they would give to almost anyone, possibly even their friends or family. They have trusted you with the burden of their financial future. They will feel exhilarated, liberated and excited.
And then... silence.
So often the momentum is lost as the advice gets stuck in the process.
It’s rarely anybody’s fault. Financial planning takes time and effort and a lot of information. It can easily get stuck with planners and paraplanners as they work through the detail. It can commonly get stuck with the client who hasn’t responded with all the information you require. It can even be sat waiting on a signature which you need to proceed. That’s without mentioning the telephone queue at an insurance company.
Silence can cause trust to break down.
What can help is visibility on where the advice is up to in the process. If you order anything nowadays you’ll receive countless emails and text messages telling you where it is, so this culture of constant service updates is becoming the norm, not the exception. It’s rare that there is a desperate need for a financial plan to be delivered quickly and by a certain date, but if your new client knows where it’s up to, and that everything is moving as expected, then that keeps in place the same level of trust and confidence that they had in you when they signed up to your services.
We can help in two ways:
We can identify where each client is in the advice journey, how long they have been there, and where you might need to step in to make improvements. You will have the management information to make process improvements just like a manufacturing business.
We can fill the silence with useful information. At each step of the journey we can automate emails, SMS or WhatsApp messages which give your clients whatever information you want to share with them. This needn’t be just service updates. You might want to provide them with some reading material or questions to consider ahead of a meeting, calendar invites to book in a meeting, or reminders about documents which haven’t been returned. You can automate as much of this as you like so it happens with no extra thought or effort.
Hatch is a solution designed to help business managers make great decisions by using high quality information.
Talk to us about how we can help.
Book a demo today and lets talk.