Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

Speaker 1:

This is The Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week, we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by your hosts Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practice's marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Adviser Podcast.

Draye:

Hey everybody, Draye Redfern here and welcome back to The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This week and for the next few weeks, you're going to get the boys, Bryan Sweet and myself really taking you through a client first series we want to walk you through on how you can elevate your client service, how you can continue to improve the interactions that you have with them, get more positive reactions and really take it to the next level with your prospects and your clients.

 So that being said, we want to take just a brief second sort of dive into the fact of why this is important. Because the reality, at least for both of our standpoints, is we wholeheartedly believe that your business actually depends on having amazing service because the reality is you could have a driver or a three iron in any one direction depending on most cities and you could hit half a dozen financial advisors. They're everywhere. They're a dime a dozen. They're commoditized. What actually makes a financial adviser different?

 One of the main things is service. The fact that you go out of the way, the fact that you take things to the next level, the fact that you genuinely care, the fact that you take the by the hand and actually help them achieve and walk them through the process to achieve their dreams, their goals, ambitions, and so on and so forth.

 So that's what we're dedicating this series to. And more than anything, Bryan, I think I'll just hand it off to you to lead us off of the fact of how this has been, where our client service was years ago and what the Sweet brand, at least as of now is embodying in regards to client service.

Bryan:

Yeah, I think this is a great topic, Draye, and I'm looking forward to this four part series that we're doing on it. It does seem a little odd though that we don't have Brittany with us today, but this kind of guy only thing's kind of neat.
 

Draye:

There may be something to it.
 

Bryan:

There might be something to it. So yeah, hopefully she doesn't mind too much that we steal her thunder today. But no, if you look at the industry as a whole and you look back at history, it was much more transactional in nature a number of years ago. But if you look at the standards today, you really need to look at that a lot differently. It's much more relational oriented today and really worry about things that help differentiate you to get any kind of exponential growth. And I think really one of the big differentiators is how you serve clients. And as you mentioned, the investment component to a certain extent can be a little bit commoditized and you could literally find do it yourselfers and get all those services somewhat for free. So if you want to stand out and get more and more successful, you really need to have not just satisfied clients anymore, but you really need engaged clients who really then become your advocate and are out telling others about what you do and how you do it and how you're different.

 And I think one of the key things that you need to do is until you really check in with your clients, you're really never going to know how they're reacting or what their experience is. So I think one of the key things to service is trying to get a feel for who your clients are, what they desire, what they would like you to do that you're not doing. And so just a quick check in it at reviews is really an excellent way of kind of getting their temperature, if you will, and then finding out what's important and making alterations. Because you really want to do everything you can to stand out and to deliver exceptional service. Because in today's world, when you're really good at the service game, it really does stand out. And I don't know about you, but I very notice when I'm in like a restaurant or someplace and how people act towards you and the level of care and delivery of whatever service that they have. And so if you do anything like a step above, you really, really stand out.

 And when that happens and people notice that they love to talk about that with their friends and other components of their lives, and that's a great way of kind of assuring yourself that you're always going to be getting a constant referral stream. So I think one of the things that you talk about a lot in the podcast, Draye, that I think really is appropriate right here and maybe you can elaborate, is your concept of over promise and over deliver.

Draye:

Yeah, it's something that I've, you hear the old adage under promise and over deliver, like that's the old adage. Set the expectation low and then blow them away. I don't like that because I think that it if everybody has the same sort of thinking or methodology, then what is the differentiation? And part of everything that we do. And we talk about what the podcast and everything else is, what can you do to be different? And if you set the expectation up front of we like to over promise and over deliver, it catches people off guard, like that's not what that saying is supposed to be, that's not what that means. Like, wait, wait, what? It catches them off a little bit. And then it creates a conversation point.

 And also really more than anything, it creates an elevated standard from the outset of a relationship. From the very beginning, from the first moment, you can have this expectation that we are going to over promise and we're going to over deliver on that over promise. And that really intrigues people and that really gets them interested, but more than anything is it creates what psychologists call a forcing function. And we've talked about forcing functions a little bit in the past. But if we were to say we want to over promise and over deliver, then we have that as a forcing function inside of us, inside of our agency, that you know what we have to actually live up to that standard. We set it now we've got to actually fulfill upon that. And so that makes it, like we said it, we got to live up to it sort of expectation from our side, that makes us and everyone on my team want to continually give an elevated level of standards and service and all of these sorts of things so just to continually up the bar. Because anyone and their mother can under promise and try and over deliver, but over promise sets the bar a lot, lot higher. And I think that when you go through that, it just makes it easier to have a higher quality of service and a higher expectation of what you do and how you interact with that.

 I don't know, maybe you can take that and elaborate on that, how Sweet uses of a portion of that for the higher quality service there, Bryan.
 

Bryan:

Excellent points, and you made me think of a book. It's not in the financial services arena, but it's an excellent book on client experience, service first, taking care clients and it's called Setting the Table. And it's actually the number one restaurateur in New York who has, I don't know exactly how many restaurants that are very, very highly rated. Danny Meyer is the gentleman's name. And it's an excellent book. It's several years old. But it really talks about the level of which he goes to make people feel good, including somebody spilled wine, they bought a brand new dress to, it's just amazing. And I think that is an example of the level of care we need to think about when we deliver client service. And he uses the word hospitality, which I actually very much like, because you want clients to feel like family, feel like they're home, make them feel comfortable.

 And so we really spend a lot of time honing our craft, if you will, as it relates to service and something we spend a ton of time on with our team members. And really when we hire people, one of the key factors in our hiring process is your ability to take the client to another level and really care about them. You can train people for a lot of things, but just being a really good caring, nice person is something that you either have or you don't have for the most part.

 But just to give you an idea of the level of service our team members go through, and we don't really ask them to do this necessarily, but a lot of our team members have been known to give out their personal cell phone numbers out to clients to make them feel like they're within reach, especially new clients where maybe it's a new situation, maybe their spouse passed away and they're not really comfortable dealing with these things themselves, just to make somebody feel like, "If you have a question, call me even if it's not office hours." It's an amazing little touch that has a big, big, big personal touch.

 And as we go through this series, I'm going to give you a story about a person like that, that we just had recently. And so I'll keep you kind of interested here for another podcast that we'll tell that story on. But it's amazing doing those little things and making clients feel like maybe you're their only client where you're really willing to go above and beyond. And this level of service that we provide, I'll give you another example here. One of the things that we do is part of the dream architect process is we create a dream board and the dream board is all individualized to clients and it's pictures of things that they're trying to accomplish or want to work on or find very important in their life. And we've got some clients that do extensive amount of travel. And what they did, because this was so impactful in how we've taken care of them over the years, they would actually travel with their dream board. And then whenever they would get to whatever country they were in, they would have their dream board on their nightstand or by the pool or on some monument that they were visiting or some landscape thing and they would hold that up and take a picture and send it to all of us and say, "Thanks for making our dreams come true." And it was just part of that whole client service thing.

 And I think the big thing out of all that I've been saying is it's really the little things that make such a big difference and you just need to be conscious and aware. And on our next podcast, we're going to talk about how do you create these experiences? Because I think you have to be proactive and think about it, great processes and things like that. But it's actually very easy to do if you really want to make a wow and you want to get clients involved. So Draye, you've probably got some interesting stories also you'd love to share.
 

Draye:

Yeah, you know, it's funny you say giving out personal cell phone numbers. My team does the same thing. Because in the middle of a launch or something is going on or something's broken, people want to know they can actually get a hold of somebody and I think that goes a long way.

 But the other side of that, too, is really just, and we can talk more about this in the next episode, like how to frame some of this and actually accomplish some of this, but part of it ultimately comes down to listening. Like what do your clients like? What have they expressed interest in? What have they told you? And a lot of times like, "Oh, that's pretty cool." And you go in passing and you don't give it a second thought. But in every conversation with every client, especially early on in the relationship, when you ask things or you prod for information, maybe prod's a bad word, but when you're exploring, I would take notes. And we have a process that we'll cover next time.

 But as an example, we've got a client who is a new client the last few months or so. Said early on that he, he made fun of me because I'd never wear a tie. I only own one tie. And he says, "You know what, Draye? I've worn Zilli ties for the last 20 years. And it's the only tie that I wear." And it's just like, "You need to go try some of these things out." So what do you think that we did as we were sort of kicking off the relationship? We sent him a Zilli tie. And these are not cheap ties, these are 150 to $500 ties. They've got some weight to them with very nice silk and so on and so forth. But actually like just, "Hey, I heard you and I acknowledge you and we're excited to work together."

 And it's little things like that. You're like, "Holy smokes, this person gives a damn about me. They actually heard what I had to say." That goes a long way. And in the grand scheme of things, a hundred bucks is not that big of an investment in a client. But you know what'll end up happening? And we'll talk more about this next time, because as Brian said, it creates stories. And so he goes off and tell somebody else, "You know what? Look what they did for me." Or when he wears the tie and he gets complimented on it, he thinks about us and giving it to him back then. Maybe he brings up the fact that you work with him. It creates more opportunities for referrals and stories and all sorts of things that you can't keep track of and your analytics dashboard can't measure these sorts of things and all of these sorts of ... but it's an amazing amount of goodwill and client service showing that you actually listened and you do something to go out of your way.

 And when you do those things, that's really how you can embody that sort of like over promise over deliver approach, is by actually listening and then doing something about it. So that's just one example. I think next time we'll talk about how you can actually create an experience and maybe we go into some more of those examples next time, Bryan. But anything else that you want to share before we wrap this lesson up?
 

Bryan:

No, you made me think of something that I thought very applicable to what you just said. I think one of the key things is you want to make sure all of your staff have their ears open and listening because they're going to hear things when a client comes in at the reception desk and they're chit chatting and having all the friendlies back and forth and your client service people doing paperwork and requests form. So if they hear something about Johnny Jones was going hiking or they're going to go on this trip, make sure they let you know or you just have a process, which we'll talk a little bit more about creating experiences, where when you hear something like that, that all of a sudden gee a book pops into their mail box on that place that they're going or they get this tie or they find this thing for their grandkids that they were talking about. They're going to a new college or taking a new course.

 And it is those little things that when you find out that as Draye said, you're listening to them and you actually care because you took a step to hear them and then make that scenario even better for them. It's amazing. So I just wanted to throw that out and make sure people were having their team members keep their ears open.
 

Draye:

I love it. So, so true. And we'll go through some processes and things that you can do in the next episode. But the recap for this episode, if I can do Miss Brittany Anderson any justice, is basically find ways to create an elevated standard inside of your practice. Maybe for you that is over promising and over delivering. And find ways that you can basically either coach your team to be open and be willing to share more and give more to that client base. Maybe that's giving their cell phone numbers out. Maybe that's additional things that continue to help elevate the quality of service. But also creating avenues or systems or resources that could help to support the client base like a dream board, something that they're so excited to have, to bring with them because they're actually crossing items off their list. And you are truly helping them live their best life and meet their dreams and goals and expectations.

 So that being said, thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. I'm so glad that you're here and we'll see you next week on another episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. See you there.
 

Brittany:

Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you're hearing on our Ultimate Adviser Podcast, don't keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to UltimateAdvisorPodcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out UltimateAdvisorMastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the Ultimate Advisor Community and we look forward to a continued relationship.