381: My Script To Help You Meet Clients Less Often (Without Losing Them)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Efficient Advisor – Episode 381

Title: My Script To Help You Meet Clients Less Often (Without Losing Them)
Host: Libby Greiwe
Air Date: June 26, 2026

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Overview

In this punchy and highly tactical “Efficient Fridays” episode, host Libby Greiwe shares a step-by-step script that financial advisors can use to reduce the frequency of client meetings—without damaging the client relationship or perceived value. Drawing on her own experience building a seven-figure solo planning practice while working only three days a week, Libby emphasizes how to shift client perceptions, articulate true advisor value, and create a fair (not necessarily equal) client service model. The episode is packed with actionable advice, a real-world script, and a reframing of what “service” really means.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Problem: Over-Scheduling with Long-Term Clients

• Many advisors find themselves meeting clients more often than necessary, often due to legacy expectations set at the start of the relationship.
• Libby describes her own experience: “When I first started my business…if you gave me $30,000 in a rollover, you were my favorite person. I…never wanted to be that advisor that was like, ‘Oh, well, now I work with million dollar clients and I’m too big for you’...” (08:32)

The Value is NOT in the Meeting

• Advisors tend to “sell their value based on the number of meetings,” but as Libby stresses, most value derives from work done behind the scenes: portfolio analysis, planning, tax review, etc.
• “There’s so much that we are doing behind the scenes for our clients that drives value…We often sell our value based on the number of meetings.” (05:58)

The Reframe: Redefining Service for Clients

• Key Advice: Shift client understanding so service equals the outcomes and expertise the advisor delivers, not just face-time.
• “If your value only exists when you’re sitting across the table from them, that’s actually the core problem we need to go in and fix.” (12:16)

Handling Legacy Clients & Fear of Change

• Advisors often worry, “Won’t they think I’m doing less? Will they leave? How do I justify my fee?” (11:06)
• Libby reassures: “No client has ever woke up and said, ‘Wow, I really wish I could meet with, you know, I had more meetings on my calendar and I really wish I had more things to do.’” (10:35)
• Most clients prefer fewer meetings if the model and expectations are set properly.

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Libby’s Script for Reducing Meeting Frequency

(Main Segment: 06:00–10:00)

Libby walks through the exact language she and other advisors have used successfully to reset expectations without alienating clients:

“Hey, you know what? We’ve been working together for three or four years now. We are at a point in our relationship where I feel like I understand you guys…[and] you understand how we think and feel about the market, how we manage portfolios…Most of the value of what we do actually happens behind the scenes and not inside of our meetings. So typically at this point in a relationship with our clients, we meet a little bit less frequently…So from this point forward, we’re going to be meeting twice a year. And here’s what that looks like, here’s what you can expect.” (08:11)

Key Points to Emphasize with Clients:

• You’ve built mutual understanding and trust.
• The real value comes from behind-the-scenes expertise and monitoring.
• The shift in meeting cadence reflects your well-established relationship and the advisor’s ongoing work for the client.
• Always detail what clients can continue to expect.

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Addressing Common Advisor Fears and Client Pushback

(Segment: 10:00–14:00)

• Will clients push back?
  “Honestly, most of them won’t. Because, again, they don’t wake up going, ‘Oh, I wish I had more meetings and more crap to do.’ They want confidence. They want answers when they need them, they want to know someone is there paying attention.” (11:43)

• What if they ask, ‘What am I paying for?’
  Point to your “behind the scenes checklist”—document and articulate all the work, monitoring, and strategic thinking that happens between meetings (12:55).

• Best Practices for Setting Expectations:

  • Start with a higher frequency at the relationship’s beginning, then decrease as confidence and mutual understanding grow, but set this expectation from the outset.
  • Ideally, match service models to client segments from Day 1.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Client Meetings:

  “No client has ever woke up and said, ‘Wow, I really wish I could meet with, you know, I had more meetings on my calendar and I really wish I had more things to do.’” (10:35)

• On Service Not Equalling Meetings:

  “The goal is to shift their understanding from service equals meetings to service equals outcome planning, monitoring, responsiveness, and expertise.” (12:00)

• On Redefining Value:

  “The value is not in the meeting itself…but it is also important that you do meet with clients. We also don’t want the clients who don’t show up to the meetings…We need them to participate so that we can stay ahead and we can stay involved.” (14:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:40 – 08:00: Why advisors tend to overschedule meetings and how legacy models create unnecessary work
• 08:00 – 10:30: Libby’s actual client script and method for shifting to fewer meetings
• 10:30 – 13:00: Handling advisor fears and client objections
• 13:00 – 15:00: The importance of behind-the-scenes work and setting expectations from the outset

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Episode Tone & Style

Libby’s delivery is upbeat, pragmatic, and supportive, with a strong focus on actionable strategies. She speaks candidly about common advisor fears, sprinkles in humor (“Move over exhaustion. Get out of the way, Advisor Add!”), and directly addresses real-world practice management pain points.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for advisors feeling “stuck” in an old meeting paradigm or struggling to demonstrate value outside of face time. Libby offers not just the why, but concrete how-to steps for transforming client relationships, reducing advisor overwhelm, and building healthy, scalable, and fair service models.

Recommended for: Growth-focused financial advisors, especially those scaling past mid-six-figures and looking to reclaim time without sacrificing client satisfaction.

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For more details, resources, or to learn about Libby’s Systems to Scale Group Coaching program, visit theefficientadvisor.com.

Transcript

[A]

Before we jump in, I want to share something exciting. In the next few weeks, I'm going to be curating a group of advisors who are already making $200,000 or more annually to help them grow towards their first million and beyond. It's called the Systems to Scale Group Coaching program. And here's what I know. What gets you to mid six figures stops there. If this is you, you know because you've already tried it all and you need someone inside your business showing you the way forward. So over the next 10 months, you'll work with me personally and each other to refine your business models, prepare for hiring, simplify your operations, and build a business that grows more sustainably, more profitably, and more independently of you. Details are waiting for you over atthe efficient advisor.com under the group Coaching tab, but I have to warn you, spots will go fast. Registration is currently open and the group kicks off August 20th.

[B]

My name is Jessica Cole and I just finished the Efficient Advisors Systems to Scale Group Coaching program. I run Synergy Wealth Partners in Marlborough, Massachusetts and I came to Libby drowning. We were taking on more clients through referrals than we could handle with an understaffed team. Libby helped us step back and clarify the vision of our firm and our ICAs being clear on those. Let us tailor our processes to the clients we want to service and not get bogged down with things our clients don't actually care about. We are still a work in progress, but we wouldn't have gotten where we are without Libby. If you feel bogged down, you need to sign up for this program. You won't regret it.

[A]

Welcome to another episode of the Efficient Advisor. This is Efficient Fridays, where each week in about 10 minutes or less, I want to share just something super tactical like a tip, a trick, a process, a hack, a script, like today, etc. Something that you can implement in your business right away. And I, as always, am your host of the Efficient Advisor, Libby Griwe. And I built 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 y'.

[B]

All.

[A]

I just like taking. I just like taking vacations. 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 or organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business. We are about to transform your practice. So move over exhaustion. 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 share with you if you don't know Quinn. Quinn is an AI agenic assistant that I talk about like all the time and they are doing a big webinar on July 1 that you don't want to miss. You can go over to Heyquin I.O. and check it out and Quinn is adding all of these new integrations so if you haven't checked it out in a while again, take a look. It is like that dream assistant that you've always wanted. It can handle meeting notes and follow up emails and CRM updates and schedule reminders and literally give you back 10 to 15 hours a week. You can even talk to Quinn while driving and have IT handle admin tasks for you. In fact, I was driving the other day and my family and my boys and I were getting ready to head to Africa on a safari and I was asking Quinn to do some research for me on some excursion opportunities and I was doing it in the car and by the time I got back to my office, y', all, it had done a bunch of research, it had looked stuff up. I mean it is such a cool app and it's finally like having that dream assistant that we all want. It does so many things inside of your business. Trust me, you will wonder I how you ever managed without it. Learn more in the Show Notes or over at heyquin IO efficientadvisor and speaking of AI, I have been hearing from a lot of RIA owners lately that they are using all of these new tools, right? They're integrating so much AI and they're getting a ton of value from it, but they haven't figured out yet exactly how does this handle information, right? Is our environment actually set up to support this? Not just from productivity standpoint? Of course it is, but from governance and compliance. Like the scary stuff. That's where T2M works comes in. They help RIA firms build and sustain a governed foundation so that AI can be used confidently and defensibly, which is really important 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. You can check out more at t2mworks.com the efficient advisor or head over to the link in the show notes or over to theofficientadvisor.com under the Resources tab. All right, let's get into this script today, I'm going to give you a very simple script that you can use with clients to talk to them about how you might want to be meeting with them less frequently. So inside of our group coaching program, the Systems to Scale group coaching program, we just finished up with one of our cohorts and the module around client service model where we take a bunch of KPIs, we take a bunch of time, study, analysis, and we start plugging it all into a client service model and really looking at our revenue per hour, the amount of impact that we're having, how much time are we giving different segments of our book, how do we actually deliver a very high quality planning practice in a way that is very fair but not necessarily equal if you're segmenting your book. And so one of the things, or even if you're not, one of the things that comes out of this often. So we were having this conversation and an advisor was looking at his client service model and realizing there are clients that he's meeting with three or four times a year. And one of the measures that we use is what we call Impact Score. And I was asking him this question of like, well, how impactful are those meetings? And he's like, honestly, we've just been kind of doing them because they're long term clients. And 10 years ago when I brought them on, we said we would be meeting quarterly. And so I see this a lot inside of the group coaching program where we have legacy clients that we've always done something that way by default. And often we realize that our value isn't necessarily always inside of the meeting. There's so much that we are doing behind the scenes for our clients that drives value, right? Portfolio analysis, tax sensitivity, planning, reviewing their estate document. I mean, there's so much happening between meetings and we often sell our value based on the number of meetings. So it happens a lot, right? So if that's you, you're not alone. There's a lot of advisors who have a lot of clients that they're meeting with more frequently. So what's an advisor to do? So this was me, right? When I first started my business. If you gave me $30,000 in a rollover, you were my favorite person. I was grateful for your business, right? And I never wanted to be that advisor that was like, oh, well, now I work with million dollar clients and I'm too big for you, right? So I wanted to figure out a way, how can I serve everyone? How can I serve them well? And ultimately, right, we do have to sometimes pare down the book. And we have to eliminate clients that don't meet our definition of an ideal client avatar anymore. Like, so that stuff is true, right? And that's all stuff that we cover inside of the group coaching program. But for those clients that you're like, off, like, man, we set a precedent. We've been meeting with them too frequently. Maybe they're a little high maintenance. Here's a script that we used and it worked really, really well. So I would say to a client, if it's been a couple of years, we would say something to the effect of, hey, you know what? We've been working together for three or four years now. We are at a point in our relationship where I feel like I understand you guys, how you think and feel about the market, how you feel about taxes, estate plan. I feel like I really understand financial plan and your investment strategy at this point. And I feel like we've been working together long enough that you understand how we think and feel about the market, that how we manage portfolios, how we do financial planning. And I know, you know, that most of the value of what we do actually happens behind the scenes and not inside of our meetings. So typically at this point in a relationship with our clients, we meet a little bit less frequently. So we've been meeting four times a year. We're at that point where that's no longer necessary because we have this great relationship, right? We understand you, you understand us. So from this point forward, we're going to be meeting twice a year. And here's what that looks like, here's what you can expect. And we have a lot of fear around this, right? We fear that our clients are going to all of the sudden think that our relationship is less valuable because we're not meeting as frequently. And it's really, it's genuinely all in the pitch and how you discuss this with your clients. Of course, but we want to. No client has ever wok up and said, wow, I really wish I could meet with, you know, I had more meetings on my calendar and I really wish I had more things to do. So I know what you're thinking is, wow, won't they think I'm doing less? Will they leave? Like, how do I justify my, my fee? So what if my client thinks I'm providing less service? Like, this is typically one of the biggest fears. And the answer is they're only going to feel that if you have indeed taught them that meetings are, are the service. So the goal is to shift their understanding from service Equals meetings to service equals outcome planning, monitoring, responsiveness and expertise. So if your value only exists when you're sitting across the table from them, that's actually the core problem that we need to go in and fix. From the onset of the relationship, the next frustration or question that I get would be, well, what if my clients push back? Honestly, most of them won't. Because most clients, again, they don't wish up. They don't wake up going, oh, I wish I had more meetings and more crap to do. They want confidence, they want answers. When they need them, they want to know someone is there paying attention. And in fact, some of the clients, like, I know for us, I can remember telling a couple clients, like, hey, we're no longer going to be talking quarterly. And they were like, thank God, right? Like we didn't want to be meeting that frequently anyways. Another question is, how do I know which clients are ready for this? I actually love this question. So here's what I would say. It's up to you. It's your business, I trust you as the owner and the CEO of your business to decide which clients this makes sense for, which ones you have that relationship with. Then what happens if a client says, what am I paying for? Again, we need to tie your value to your behind the scenes checklist. So like in our group coaching program, we just went through our behind the scenes checklist and I recommend doing this. And if you took the first 100 days course, you'd hear this too. Where in the beginning we start articulating that the value is what's happening between meetings. The value of what we provide to our clients isn't happening inside of the meeting. It's what we're doing between meetings. So this is where having strategy sessions, as opposed to annual reviews, this is where being able to deliver value ads and doing things for our clients, being able to have a behind the scenes checklist of here's all the stuff that we do for you between meetings. We want to tie the value to the outcomes and to the strategic planning, not to the cadence of meetings. So that script, so telling our clients like, hey, I feel like we're at this place, or I've seen a lot of advisors do this, and we did this with some clients as well, is when we started off the relationship, we did have a little bit higher of a frequency. So you could start the relationship intentionally meeting with a little bit more frequency and then over the next couple of years, again, setting the expectation that, hey, we're going to meet a lot in the beginning and that will slow down as we get to know each other, as you get really confident in our strategy and we get really confident in our understanding of you guys and your financial plan. I personally think best practice is to start right from the beginning with the service model that that is appropriate for that client household. Right. And we want to language everything in a way that articulates that the value is not in the meeting itself, but it is also important that you do meet with clients. We also don't want the clients who don't show up to the meetings. If clients don't show up to the meetings, that means they, even if they're saying, I love you, I trust you, do what you want. We need them to participate so that we can stay ahead and we can stay involved. We have to set that expectation that it's somewhere in between. Right? There is this expectation that you're going to meet with us throughout the year and here's what that looks like. And then the expectation is also that the meeting itself isn't the value. That's our relationship building time, that's our rapport building time. That's where we're connecting with you and staying up to date and learning all of these things. But the real value of what we do is happening between meetings. So anyways, I hope this script was helpful for you and if you need help with your client service model, with your languaging, with understanding your key performance indicators and how to actually articulate that into a client service model that is fair and is where your best clients aren't subsidizing your lowest clients. I'd love for you to join us in the August cohort, our upcoming cohort of the Systems to Scale Group Coaching program, where we're going to get you all sorted out, get your calendar organized, help you figure out when and how frequently you're going to see clients and serve them in a way that is equal or I'm sorry, that's fair, but not necessarily equal, but right in a way that is fair and get you clearly defined on how it is that you do business. I thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week. And again, I would love just to invite you into the Systems to Scale Group Coaching program. If you're like, I really do need to start rethinking about my client service model and I don't just want to make some guesses. I actually want to use a lot of KPIs and logic and thinking to strategically plan for not only your client service model but literally your whole business, start to finish of your client journey. I would love for you to check out more [e-mail] you can grab a discovery call with me to see if it is a good fit for you and those do go really quickly. But again, I'd love for you to join us and you can come as you are. It's not a program for advisors who are just getting started. It's for advisors who have been at this a little while. Things are going really well. Clients aren't mad. You're doing great, you're making money. Everyone is happy. However, underneath the surface, it still feels a little chaotic and a little messy. I would love to walk you through building out some of the most important systems and processes for your business with all of the tools and templates for you done for you. Plug and play, make it your own. If you would like for me personally to coach you through all of that over the next 10 months, I would love, love, love for you to check it out. It's a great time. We just graduated a group of advisors and they are now going to be in our alumni community just focusing on implementation. And y', all, the last call was so good. The feedback of what people were sharing that what's changed for them in their business over the last 10 months is insane. I love hearing advisors saying they feel more freedom, that they feel more calm, that they feel more organized. Y', all. That stuff gets me fired up. Anyways, I would love to chat with you about it more. Check it out over at theofficientadvisor.com under Group Coaching. Thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week. Sam,