← The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners
The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners
379: The Client Experience Mistake That Undermines Your Thoughtfulness
00:21:03
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
You've heard me talk about the importance of gathering, you know, kind of those personal details about our clients, right? Who their sports team are, what they're involved in, their hobbies, their interests. And there are definitely ways to do this wrong, like totally dead wrong, where your efforts will just be completely undermined. So in today's episode, we're going to get into what not to do and also what to do to gather intel in a way that is authentic and doesn't actually damage trust and have like opposite effect that you were hoping for. And welcome back to another Efficient Friday. Every week in 20 minutes or less, I want to share a super tactical tip idea, process hack or something with you that you can implement in your business right away. You can also watch this Efficient Friday as a video over on the efficient advisor YouTube channel. And I, as always, am your host of the Efficient Advisor, Libby Griwe. And I built from scratch and a 100% referral only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter. And frankly, I liked taking vacations and having some white space. And I'm here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do the exact same. To help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling while organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business. We are about to transform your practice. So move over exhaustion and get out of the way advisor Add it is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love. And before we dive in, I want to make sure you know about T2M works, it's our newest podcast sponsor. Because I have the same conversation with RIA owners all the time. Right? They've integrated a bunch of AI tools. Maybe it's notetakers, a ChatGPT or Claude code, right? They're getting a ton of value from it, but they're not asking that question. Is our environment actually set up to support this properly? Not just from a productivity standpoint, but for governance and compliance? That's where T2M works absolutely shines. They help RIA firms build and sustain a governed foundation. So so AI can be used and this is important confidently and defensibly, but with the right information flowing to the right place at the right time. For Efficient Advisor listeners, they are offering a complimentary AI governance assessment. Check out t2mworks.com the efficient advisor. And speaking of AI and super cool AI stuff. I want to tell you that quinn, I released 15 new integrations this week. So if you've ever had that client meeting, you know, where you felt amazing about how it went and then all of a sudden it's like task central, right? Hours of follow up applications, CRM updates, all of the things Quinn is. If you haven't heard about it yet, it's an AI assistant built for advisors. So not just like ChatGPT, but agenic AI that automatically does does all of the things. It's so much more than just a note taker and it will literally give you back, I don't know, anywhere from 10 to 15 hours a week. You can even talk to it while driving and have it handle all of your admin tasks. So road warriors, I'm looking at you. It is finally like having that dream assistant we all talk about wanting. So thank you to T2M Works and Quinn for making this podcast possible. You can learn more about quinn over at Heyquin IoadfficientAdvisor. You can also find the links for all of our sponsors in the show notes and over on the efficient advisor.com under resources. All right, let's dive into this week's content. Last month we were talking all things first 100 days and client experience. That was kind of the theme of May of 2026 on this podcast. And one of the things that I mentioned, you know, throughout the episodes was this concept of needing a client intel process. And client intel process is really just a method for how will you capture personal preferences, personal data, likes, dislikes, the warm fuzzy color that is our clients and then how will you actually use that effectively later? For the full process and a free fillable download, you can check out episode number 306 of this podcast, but I want to share a couple of do's and don'ts. So. So we just did a live Q and A happy hour event for advisors who are inside of our first 100 days course. Just to answer questions, help smooth over any friction points. Just really make sure that advisors are implementing and maximizing the course. And one of the questions came up and I hear this a lot, so I thought this would be the perfect efficient Friday is to talk about what not to do when collecting client intel. So client intel, the process itself is going to start before you ever even meet a prospect. Once you have a client's name and information, you can start doing your recon. So let's say they were a referral. I'm guessing your clients have shared a little bit of information about those, about those individuals with you, and we start the process, then you can certainly go do. And I, this was a healthy practice that I went and visited. My, my business coach for a while was an advisor with Ameriprise and she had me come out to her office for a couple of days and I followed them around and checked out of their processes and things they were doing. And one of the things that they did that I thought, oh my gosh, this is so incredibly smart, they would pull up all of their pending prospect appointments and they would do searches for them on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram to see what kind of information they could glean or find out about the clients before they ever even walked in the door. They not in like a creepy way, like we're not talking, like in a stalker kind of way, but in like our. Are they a dog person? Like, where do they work? Do they switched jobs recently? Do they have kids? Like, kind of just trying to gauge what their world was like. And I thought about them like, wow, that's actually a really interesting kind of concept. And as we started building out in my practice, our client intel process, which was really just a way of gathering information about our clients that doesn't show up on your traditional data gather form. Right. We're so used to as advisors finding out details about their 401k balances and how they're allocated and when they want to retire and what their pension amounts are and what kind of benefits, benefits package they have. But this is really a process of gathering likes and dislikes. Like, do they play pickleball? What kind of charities are they involved in? Where do they go to church, who do they hang out with? What do they do in their free time? What types of vacations do they like? What kind of Starbucks drinks do they bring into the office with them? Are they coffee people? You know, in that first 100 days, we talk about in phase three, doing some sort of gift or gesture. And whenever we get into that gift and gesture part, there's always a little bit of head trash that comes up for some advisors. And they'll say, Libby, I don't know this kind of detail about my client. Like, I don't know when their wedding anniversary is and I don't know if they're fancy restaurant kind of people or if they can drink wine or if they're gluten free. Like, I don't know these kind of details. So when we talk about gifts and gestures, we talk about the importance of. And I am, I am not anti swag. In fact, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, I mean, I'm drinking out of a Stanley right now. That is a State Street Stanley that I got at a conference that I was at here recently. I love swag. I'm here for the freebies. But we do have to recognize that swag is not a gift. It is marketing. Right? State street is hoping that I will drink this Stanley somewhere, and people go, oh, straight State. Tell me more, or it'll lure me over to their booth, which, obviously, it worked. It'll lure me over to their booth at a conference so that they can engage with me to tell me more about their products or services. It is not a gift, right? It is a lure. It is marketing. And so we want to do something personal for clients towards the end of that first 100 days. Something that says, hey, we know you. We see you, we value you. We want. The human condition is to want to be known. And when we send a gift basket of swag, right, it doesn't make the client feel like, oh, my gosh. I don't even remember telling her how much I liked this. An example that I love to give is we had a client who loved mermaid tchotchkes. Like, loved mermaid tchotchkes. I've said this before, but, like, I can't picture anything else in my life that I would hate more than a shelf full of mermaid tchotchkes that I have to dust. But this client loved mermaid tchotchkes. And I remember being out at a store and seeing this cool little mermaid, and it made me think of her. And I bought it. It was no more than, like, 12 or $13. I bought this little mermaid. We sent it to her, and she was tickled, right? It made her feel so known. So we have to have a process in our business that helps us gather that information. Now, there's a couple of things we need to. We need to know how to gather this information in a way that feels authentic and not like an interview. We need to store this information. We need to have a way to access it quickly, and then we also have to have a strategic plan on how to use it. So if you go Back to episode 306, I dive into all of those details, but something that I didn't dive into that I want to make sure I address, because this came up again in the live Q and A happy hour is we do not. The number one way we don't want to gather intel is we don't want to do it in a way that's like, here, tell me all of this stuff about you so that I can use it later, right? It feels very inauthentic. So we do not want to give a clipboard with a piece of paper on it that's like, hey, fill out all of these details. Tell me if you're a coffee or a tea person, tell me your favorite restaurant, tell me your favorite mantra or quote that you live by. Because then later when you go to use it, it's not going to feel the way that we want it to feel, right? We want a gift to hit differently. We want to surprise and delight our clients. We want to shock and awe our clients. We don't want to, hey, we gathered this information from you strategically early on so that we could use it later to send you something that feels. That pretends to be personal but actually isn't really genuinely personal. And that's where if we're just giving them a sheet of paper to fill out. Another office that I was doing some consulting with, they had a, like a Google form that after a client said yes. So a couple things with that. Number one, we don't want the. And I did an episode on this in May. We don't want the gift or the gesture to come at the paperwork signing, right? We don't want it to be a quid pro quid. Like, hey, you gave us business. Here's a trinket for you, right? That feels very like we're reinforcing that. This is a transaction that doesn't feel surprise and delight. That feels like, hey, this is part of our process. We want a surprise and delight to feel exactly like that. I didn't expect that. I didn't see that coming. Like, oh, my gosh, that's so thoughtful. And this office would do, when the client signed their paperwork, they'd send them a Google form and say, pick your present, right? Would you like a box of donuts? Would you like a pie? Would you like a. You know. And again, like, I love the thought, but I think the meaning, the meaning of the gift or gesture kind of gets lost when you yourself pick it out. And it does. It's kind of like telling, I don't know. At Christmas time, our family used to be like, let's put together a list. And it was basically like, here's a bunch of stuff I could buy myself and I'm just going to have you buy it for me. Versus when we finally put our foot down in our family, we're like, no more. I want you to buy something. Because you saw it and you thought of us. Not because I gave it to you on a list, and you just took the list to the grocery store and bought the appropriate gift card. Like, we're not doing that. We're doing something that's actually meaningful. The whole purpose of gift giving is to make that person feel seen, known, or heard. So we definitely want to avoid giving them a sheet to fill out. We definitely want to avoid having them pick out their own present. We want it to come from a place of information we gathered organically. The whole goal. The whole goal at the end of this process or when you're surprising and delighting your clients throughout the year, it's not a surprise if you gave it up to them on a list. You know what I mean? It's not a surprise if you pick it out. It's a surprise when the client says something like, I don't even remember talking about our mermaid tchotchke obsession. Or, I don't even remember telling her about how my dad used to take me to the Horseshoe when I was little. Right? So you've heard me mention it before. We want to do this process called double clicking. And you can also intentionally go into meetings with specific goals in mind of intel you'd like to gather, and you can do in a way that doesn't feel weird or creepy. So double clicking is just noticing anything in the backdrop of a virtual call when you're meeting with a client. So if your client walks in and they're wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt and you ask them the question, like, ohio State. Oh, my gosh, did you go there? And they say, no, my dad did. And in fact, he used to. Oh, tell me more about that. So your dad went there. Did you ever consider going there for college for yourself? And this is one particular story from one of our clients, and we'd asked him that question, right? Like, oh, did you go? Did you ever consider going? And he was like, no, I ended up getting a scholarship to a different college. Okay, there's some intel. But my dad used to take me. I have really fond memories of going to the Horseshoe with my dad when I was a little guy. You know, he used to take me because he had season tickets, and that was something really special that we do right now. We can use that information later. Bring it up in a conversation. Send him a cool scrapbook photo of the Horseshoe, which is the Ohio State stadium. For those of you who are not Ohio State Buckeye fans, the Horseshoe from, like, circa the era that he was growing up and would have Gone. There's all these little things that you can do with gathering that type of information. So if a client walks in the door and they says, oh, sorry, we're a few minutes late, we were out at lunch, where were you? Oh, you went to Blah Blah Blah Cafe. I've never been like, what are they known for? What did you have? What's good there? Just asking additional questions. You can also gather intel intentionally. So you might have a mission this year to be like, you know what? I never asked you guys, when is your wedding anniversary? Oh, my gosh. I want to make a note of that. I don't know why, but I never asked that question. How many years have you guys been married? Okay, how do you celebrate? Are you going out to dinner people? Are you vacation people? Oh, you're vacation people. What kind of vacation people are you? Are you beach people? Are you mountain people? Are you active vacationers? Do you prefer to lay around and read? Like, what do you do? And gathering that intel and information, do you have any trips planned? Do you have anything coming up for your anniversary this year? Right. Like finding out these pieces of information. And then of course, that third part is, so how do you find it out? How do you store it? Which I address in episode 306. But then how do we use that information later? And there's so many different ways that you can pull client intel into your business. So of course, like I mentioned before, when it comes to gift giving or gestures, you know, booking anniversary dinners or birthday dinners for clients, sending them presents, of course, but other ways. So we had some clients that were going on an African safari, which, by the way, I'm going this July on one with my two teenage boys. And I am beyond excited. DM me if you've been on an African safari, DM me all the tips and tricks. I want all the information. This is our first time doing it, so I'm really excited. But we had these clients who are going on African safari. And I remember asking them, like, that's so cool. Who is your travel agent? Who booked it, got their travel agent's information, called the travel agent and asked where they were staying their first night. Could we send a bottle of wine to their room? Because they were going to celebrate a pretty substantial thing. It was like 25 or 35 year anniversary. And they were so delighted when they got to their hotel room that first night after a very, very long day of travel and there was a bottle of red wine waiting for them. And we knew they were pinot people. We had a Bottle of pinot waiting for them in the room with a note that we were so just in amazement of what a beautiful marriage that they have and wanted to honor and celebrate that and hope they had an amazing vacation. Those are the little things that you can do with client intel that go a really long way. But it doesn't even have to be that elaborate or that complicated. It's literally a process of. In our practice, we had our client intel inside of our client's digital folder. So if we were calling a client back, we would just open up the sheet, breeze through it really quickly, and see if there's something on there that we could weave into the conversation. So let's say we knew our clients were big pickleball players, right? We'd look at the sheet. They play pickleball when we call. Hi, Jim. How are you? How's it going? Okay. How's the pickleball game going this summer? Have you guys been getting out a lot? It's been raining a lot. Was just wondering if you've had a chance to improve your skills or what. Like, you can just weave that stuff into conversation. And that is the stuff that makes our clients feel seen. They make some feel known beyond. Hey, you're just Jim and Jan, and you have $750,000 invested with us and a moderately aggressive portfolio. Right. Like, we want our clients to feel that deepened relationship. And you can use process. And this is why I love it. And especially as someone with adhd. I was just talking to Ellen Rogan. We were recording a podcast, and after we stopped recording, you know, she said, I just love how you literally shows everything. I was saying you built a process around it live on air. And she's like, I'm really not great at seeing process. And I was like, well, actually, that stems from having adhd. This is how my brain. I can't remember multiple steps. I have to have one trigger. Like, okay, a client said, yes, now I do this one thing, and then all of the other stuff cascades from there. I can't remember all of the steps. I'm not going to do it. I don't stay focused long enough to do those things. Building a process around how we use this information. Information. How do we gather this information to actually deepen the human. Human connection? So it's not inauthentic to gather this information knowing that it's part of a process and that you're going to use it later. Like, it's not inauthentic. It comes from a place of like, hey, I want to know you deeply and I want to be able to collect this information. It's just nearly impossible. We have so much going on in our world. It's impossible to remember all of these details about, you know, 150 client households or more. Right. So capturing it actually shows that you care. So anyways, those are a couple of ways that I don't want you to capture client intel and a couple of ways that I want you to. You can certainly pick one category on the client intel sheet from episode 306 and just say, you know what, I've never asked them about their faith life and where they go to church or synagogue or what they're up to. I've never learned about. And yet you learn. So just asking those questions like I've never asked this before. And you learn about their childhood and their upbringing and more about their relationship with their parents and that like all starts to fit together in this big giant puz puzzle of who they are and why they make decisions, the way that they make decisions and how they feel about money and the world. And it just using process to deepen the human to human connection is absolutely worth the time and worth the effort. So this is your sign to build your client intel process. All right, well, I hope you guys found this episode helpful and I hope you all have just an amazing rest of your week. And don't forget, we start registering for the Systems to Scale group coaching program next week on June 23rd. I am so excited about some of the updates and other things we've made to this round of coaching. I would love for you to join us. If you've ever thought to yourself like, man, this feels harder than it should be. I really need to come up with some strategy and build more processes and systems. I would love to invite you to check out our group coaching program. You can learn more over atthe efficient advisor.com under the tab Group Coaching. I hope you guys just have an incredible weekend and that you all are enjoying your summers.