Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 187: *REPLAY* How to Design an On-Boarding Process to Increase the Life of Your Client Relationships

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187: *REPLAY* How to Design an On-Boarding Process to Increase the Life of Your Client Relationships · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You've heard it before you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and research shows that your new client's experience in the first 100 days determines the longevity of their professional relationship with you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So, long story short, your onboarding process is critical.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: What you do during this time frame really, really, really, really, really, really matters.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: You need to be able to demonstrate your professionalism, your organization, your commitment to customer service, and this sets the tone for how they will engage with you and your team.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: This sets the stage for what it'll be like for them to work with your practice and get this part right, and you'll have happy clients that turn into referral generating machines.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, we're going to do a deep dive into why the first 100 days matter most.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: What is an onboarding process?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: How to systematize and delegate parts of this process or all of it, how to lay down the law of working with you kindly, of course, how to surprise and delight your clients on any budget, why every advisor isn't doing this, and then I'm going to share with you the onboarding process that we used in my planning practice, and I know you're here because you want more systems and processes.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Right, the title of this podcast appealed to you in some way, shape or form, and my guess is it's because you know that there is this dream business that you're running, instead of it running you.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: You know the lifestyle, that you have leftover energy for your family and your friends and your hobbies, and that you can have an identity outside of the job.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I've had advisors tell me recently like man, you know, I went into this business so that I could have all of this freedom and flexibility, and this business that I love is kind of sucking the life out of me.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the Efficient Advisor, I'm Libby Grywe.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I started, built and sold by 37 a 100% referral-only planning practice, and I had grown it to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year so that I could really just be a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and all the things, while being a kick-butt businesswoman.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So I'm just here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same for yourself, to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and really just creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I want to help you transform your practice.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So move over exhaustion, kick advisor ADD out of the way.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So let's dive in.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about onboarding and the client experience in that first 100 days.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Why, libby, are you telling me that the first 100 days?
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What is it about those first 100 days?
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Why, libby, are you telling me that the first 100 days?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: What is it about those first 100 days that is so critical?
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: There is a bunch of research done by Joey Coleman you can, I'll, I'll tag some of his books in the show notes here for you guys but they did a bunch of research that shows that client relationships, the longevity of the relationship, is disproportionately related to those first 100 days.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, my first question is always okay, well, which first 100 days?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Right, because for most financial advisors, there's going to be two phases.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: There's going to be the phase where you are still bringing the clients in and maybe wooing them, going through your initial financial planning process, and then, if you implement if you're an advisor that implements as opposed to an advisor that just does planning there's going to be another period of time right, where once they've said yes to all of your recommendations and now we're taking paperwork and we're doing all of the things.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So, libby, what part are you talking about?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So, really, there's kind of two things.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: There's the planning process, then there's the actual client acquisition, bringing them into the fold process.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to be talking today mostly about that second piece, right Once a client says yes to you.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: However, I want you to be thinking about that first piece too, because how you execute that planning process is going to be critical to getting them to say yes to you as their long-term advisor, right, I know that makes sense, but there is a distinctly different mindset in each of those pieces.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: With the financial planning, it's a one-time fee, it's a little bit lower commitment.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: It's really that dating period where you're essentially taking them on a bunch of dates and if they like you and you've got a lot in common and they think, wow, you're a really handsome and charming kind of guy, maybe they will choose to move that relationship with you forward.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So think of the planning process as that dating.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: And then I want to think about bringing them into your business as an ongoing client.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like getting married.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So what we want to do is make sure that we're not like, wow, look at this dating and we're putting ourselves out there and taking them on all these amazing, awesome, really fun dates and then we get married and everything goes right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: We want those first 100 days of the marriage part of our relationship to be remarkable.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: So if your focus in those first couple of months is just paperwork, you are completely missing the boat.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: There are going to be a bunch of different components to your onboarding in addition to that paperwork that really, really matter.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So this onboarding it's really important because it confirms in the client's mind and in their heart that they have made a really good decision by hiring you to be their long-term planner or by hiring your team.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And this is really your chance to show them that you are going to deliver that same level of service that you had been giving them during the planning process, that same level of attention to detail, that same level of attention and accuracy and attentiveness.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: You are going to want to show them in those first 100 days that that is going to be their experience, day in, day out, month in, month out, year in, year out with you guys, and that you can deliver that experience consistently.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Now if you're thinking, libby, oh my gosh, I don't even know that I have the best financial planning process that's consistent and systematized.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I've got processes for it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: That's okay.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of podcasts for you to go back and listen to.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Or you can join us in the Systems to Scale group coaching program.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: We're going to be launching another round here in August.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, well gosh, I really don't know much about client experience, I've got podcasts on client experience too.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Same thing we go through that in the group coaching.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So I really mainly just want to focus today on that actual onboarding piece.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So in my planning practice, we were really deliberate about having my director of operations sitting in on and being part of the entire planning process.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So they really got to know and trust her throughout our entire relationship up to that point right, they had the same level of respect for her that they did for me.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: We presented a front where she had the same level of importance that I did and, let's be honest, she was actually probably way more important to the practice than I was Because, let's be honest, she kept the whole show rolling.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: But we made that really intentional decision to make sure that our clients were interacting with the different members on our team during the planning process so that when they officially became clients, they didn't bat an eye at somebody else coming in and taking over a lot of the process from that point forward.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: And now if you're thinking like, wow, libby, that's really inefficient of you to have her in on all of those meetings, you know it actually wasn't, because she was actually doing all of the data entry.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So it was really helpful for her to sit with the clients and, you know, glean all of that extra information that comes with you know, having the conversation around their data.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: She actually would do some of the entry while we were sitting there live.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: She could ask additional questions and she was awesome because she totally participated in those meetings as essentially like as a second advisor.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't really inefficient for us to have her be part of it and we really just kind of introduced her as the goddess of paperwork, the person who makes all of the things happen.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: The trades she was fully licensed.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: The trades, the applications anytime you want to make an adjustment or a change if you need to find stuff online.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: She was your girl and I was very clear from the beginning that my role was to really do all of the high level planning.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So we would do all of the vision casting.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I would sit down and crunch all of the numbers, I would be the one coming up with the actual recommendations and then she would be executing everything that the clients and I dreamed up together.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: And this was really strategic in the sense that it was designed to help our clients build confidence and understand that my team had competency.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I think often as advisors we tend to and maybe even from a little bit of an ego state, right.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: We tend to want to be the whole dog and pony show and have clients know that all of the ideas are our amazing ideas and that we're really great.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: However, this will totally bite you in the butt down the road when people refuse to talk to other people in your practice or think that you are the only one that can make those decisions and make those calls and that their kind of trust or their vision of the practice is you.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And I tell people this all the time that if everything in your practice depends on you, you don't have a business.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: You have a Dave right?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: If Dave is the only person that can do all of the things and the only person that can talk to the clients and the only person that can make decisions.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: You don't have a real business.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: You have something that's completely dependent on you, and if you want a business that you can step away from, that is one of those buzzword lifestyle businesses you've got to be able to build competency in your team and then confidence from a client perspective.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I at least just wanted to set the stage that my director of operations, lori, was in on all of those meetings.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: The clients were building lots of rapport with her when they would come into our office my main front office, let's see, she was probably about 30 hours a week, lisa.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: She would do all of the schmoozing and getting them coffee, getting them seated, all of the small talk, you know, making sure they felt really welcomed and appreciated.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: She had the conference rooms all set up for their arrival and made sure that they were super comfortable, so they were engaging with her as well for maybe five minutes or maybe up to 10 before we would come into the meeting, depending on how early the clients arrived.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So again, I'm not going to go into detail about how everything, but we did make sure they were introduced to everybody in the office throughout the process so that they felt really comfortable working with everyone and you're like, okay, libby, well, what does it have to do with, like, onboarding?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the onboarding piece of this.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, and why that's important is because if you want to scale right, you need to have other people doing pieces of your business.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Advisors are completely overwhelmed by their calendar and this is one of the things that you know when advisors come, whether we're coaching one-on-one or we're doing the group thing, um, or we're just chatting at a conference in the hallway, the one thing I always hear from people is I don't have time.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I, if I want to add an onboarding process or you know, anything that we talk about in their practice, the first thing that they go to is Holy smokes, where in my calendar am I going to fit that?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: So I want to set the stage that your team needs to be part of that experience and they will help free up your time, both in that actual onboarding and then in the future when your clients do feel really, really comfortable taking advice from other people or knowing that somebody else can manage something, take care of something and get it done for them.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: So our onboarding process looked like this we did our financial planning.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The client said of course we love you and we want to roll over millions and millions and millions of dollars to you.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Just kidding, they always did love us, but maybe not millions and millions.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I worked with really normal humans, okay.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So I just want to set the stage for that as well, that we worked with upper middle class clients.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Our average portfolio size was maybe six to 800,000.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I wasn't working with the ultra wealthy or the super high income.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: We had clients like that but honestly, it wasn't our bread and butter.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So I just always want to be really clear when I'm talking about my practice too, that I worked with normal, you know, Midwestern Cincinnati, ohio type of people.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But, going back to some previous podcast episodes or previous videos that I've done, one of the most important things that we can do in the onboarding is really being conscientious of how we're making our clients feel.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So everything that we did in our practice was designed around how do we want our clients to feel about working with us, and a lot of our onboarding process was really designed out of a bunch of trial and error or mistakes that happened.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: So over the years we just collected things that caused friction or problems I use problems with bunny ears, but problems that we were really trying to solve.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I had those experiences where people would call in and we didn't have the right telephone authorization on file for that client.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Or they might try to call in for their spouse and they didn't have the right trade approval forms on file.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Or they'd call with questions on how to get into their Thriventcom account and see their brokerage, because they could see their other accounts but they didn't know how to see their brokerage accounts.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So really it was just all of these little things that we got snagged up on or caused minor problems in the future that we were like you know what, let's just create this process to nip all of this in the bud.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And really then we kind of extended that into okay, well, what are all of the things that we need to have done ahead of time for these clients and how do we use this as an opportunity to explain how the office works and explain you know what to expect from us and make sure we were really talking about how it was that we got compensated.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe we had some of those conversations when we were making recommendations, but really just making sure we had this nice cohesive process that we could do the same every single time.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the client said, yes, we love you, we want to move all of our bazillions of dollars over to you.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: What would happen next?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So Lori would be in on that meeting when they would say, yes, we want to do this, this, this one and this one.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And she'd say, okay, great, I am going to do all of the applications for you.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Is it okay if I email them to you, or would you like to come in and do a separate appointment with me and have a little signing party?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And the client would kind of choose, well, which way they wanted to go.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And before we did all of that, we'd have our like, you know, like in that recommendations meeting and they'd say, yes, I want to do the things.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: We'd make sure we went through all of the details with them again about cost structure, compensation, all of that stuff.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But then they would have either a virtual signing party or they would do an in-office signing party with Lori and she would have everything prepped ahead of time so that it was a really really short, very efficient meeting.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Then we would start processing all of their business and we did our onboarding.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: You could do it kind of one of two ways.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: If you are doing business that happens relatively quickly, like rollovers, transfers, acats, things like that you could have all of the business come over and then have a meeting, like once all of the dust has settled.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Or if you're doing business that has a longer lead time, you could have the onboarding process somewhere in the middle or middle end of that period.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, when we were in the process of doing business, we would send depending on the product line we would do either a weekly update as to hey, here's where everything is at, or a biweekly email update to hey, we've sent the forms over to Fidelity, we're just waiting on this.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: If it was insurance, let's say, we've submitted your application and we're just waiting on the nurse practitioner to call you to set up time to do your blood work or whatever it was.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: But we always like a weekly or a biweekly email update to just keep them in the loop, to make sure everybody kind of knew what was going on, what we were waiting on, who we were waiting on those types of things.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: The one thing that holds true, no matter what, is people love to know what to expect next.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: So we would have them in then to do their formal onboarding and I'm going to kind of just walk you through, like what it is that what it is that we did.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: So we had a folder uh, pre you know, packaged ready to go, that had a whole bunch of things in it that we were going to do.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: So in that folder we had our expectations of engagement.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: So this was a document that we have that basically just kind of walked our clients through.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Hey, here's what it's like to work with us.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: It said something like we're delighted that you've chosen to work with us.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: We found it beneficial to describe to our clients how our practice is going to work.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So there's no misunderstandings in the future.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And we recognize that clients have had relationships with other advisors and everybody has their own method of client interaction.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So we just want to clearly communicate what you can expect from our practice.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: And then I went into talking about how our practice works at a team and that they will be interacting and dealing with different members of our team at various times.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: In the beginning it would be mostly Libby and Lori supervising the modeling of their financial situation and verifying all of the technical details of their case and making sure that they're accurate and prepared in accordance with all of the goals and objectives that we defined.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And then, once everything was kind of up and running, lori would mainly be responsible for following up on all action items related to them.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, and it was great because we got to the point where I can remember one time being in the office and for some reason, the phone was ringing and nobody answered it and I never, ever, answered the phone.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And I can remember the one time I did and the client on the other end goes, libby, and I was like, yeah, and they're like I don't, I don't want to talk to you, why are you answering the phone?
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: We need, I need to do like, I need to actually make something happen.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: And it was like, oh, yeah, you're right, I have no idea how to do that, let me, let me grab Lori for you.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So if you play this right and you introduce it correctly and you set up your team to be the expert in their area, your clients will come to expect that they are responsible for different things, not just you.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: We also in this expectations.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: We talked about how our time with the clients would be uninterrupted, so that when they were in a meeting with us or on a conference call or a zoom or whatever, they would have our complete, undivided attention and and we would say something, like you know, and for this same reason, you might reach out to one of us and be asked to leave a message.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So we just encourage you to leave as detailed a message as humanly possible with all of your questions or concerns, so that when we call you back, we can be, you know, we can do all of the research and we can be ready to talk to you and address anything that you have.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: But you know, our goal is to return calls promptly.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: But do you know, do be aware, that there are times where you might be asked to leave a message.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Then we went into confidentiality and how that worked, and this was where we could talk about referrals right, and we'd say, because we are a business based on personal referrals, you know it's imperative that we maintain the highest standard of confidentiality.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And so, while you know several clients that we work with, and we have several clients that know you, we want to make sure that you're aware that we would not discuss the specifics of your case with anybody.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: And then we talk about our goal being to exceed their expectations and if they ever had suggestions on how we could improve or if there ever was an issue that I wanted to make sure that they brought that directly to me.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And then we went through how we were compensated.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So we talked about planning fees, we talked about product implementation and then we talked about personal introductions and how you know, hey, if, if our success is really measured by how satisfied you are and if you're pleased with our advice and our service, you know we'd love for you to introduce us to other people who could benefit from the type of work that we do.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I was very passive, aggressive with referrals, so, and then we would start going through their onboarding checklist.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So we had our packet and in it was a checklist and for them it was um.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: So what it looked like was, you know, it had how to register for their new client account on our website.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: We had a you know, a whole little piece of paper on how to log in um to their different types of accounts.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Then we had a, you know, would you like to be set up?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: We had a blog called Wall Street to your Street and we showed them.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You know, live right there.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Would you like to subscribe?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Great, we'll help you.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Click the button.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: We set them up for e-delivery if they preferred paperless.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You know paperless and I remember, okay people.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I started back in 2004 when paper was like the thing.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: All we did was kill trees, chop them up and send them to clients, like on the hourly basis, so.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: But we still had older clients who preferred some paper and we had an option to be like okay, do you want to get you know tax statements via paper and other stuff, paperless?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: So we would go through their paperless options.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Then we get them set up with their mobile apps.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: We'd go through that.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Expectations of engagement.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: We'd right there and then get them to like us on Facebook and so now it would be LinkedIn for me.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: We would go through.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: We had like a little pamphlet in there with any upcoming client events that we were doing, if we were doing anything like that.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And then we went through um, any benefits of membership.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So, thrivent being a fraternal company, we had a whole bunch of member benefits that we'd go through.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: We had a signature card that we would have them file, or signs that we could have a hard copy of their signature right there and then.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So anytime a form came back in the mail to us, we could verify the signature Again.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: This is like when we were chopping up trees and mailing them to people.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: We also had third-party authorizations.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: We'd have them sign, we had them fill out any trusted contact person designations for insurances.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: We'd have them sign any telephone authorizations and we'd make sure that we had all of the correct banking on file for all of their accounts.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So should they ever need a quick chunk of cash, we had somewhere that we could send it quick and easily.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So that was their kind of like in-person onboarding experience.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And it continues beyond that.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: But that's just this part of the process.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So, a lot of advisors, you can do this virtually.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do it live face-to-face.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: But again, this is something that I wasn't even part of this meeting.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Somebody else on my team would execute this entire meeting.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So we really need to understand kind of like, well, what are some of the best practices of onboarding?
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: And then you just want to sit down and really say, okay, these are the things that I'm committed to doing.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to have a standard operating procedure of how we onboard our clients.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So whether you want to do like a signing party or whether you want to do a live or virtual onboarding, you're going to want to have that documented into a process and determine who does what parts.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: So of course, as soon as the funds arrived and we were going to do you know we were going to get them invested Lori, being licensed, would be the one that would make the phone call and just confirm that we were implementing all of the investment recommendations.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Then we'd also send a handwritten thank you note and what I call lumpy mail, and I just did a video on lumpy mail out on the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook so you could watch the lumpy mail video there where I show you a very specific example of it.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: But basically lumpy mail is something like that's not an envelope that shows up in the good old USPS mailbox.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So if you remember, you know, back in the day everybody was sending all of their you know, just collateral and prospecting via snail mail and then that all switched to digital.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Right Now your inbox gets inundated with all of the marketing and it's actually more rare to receive something in the mail and everyone talks about the benefits of a handwritten thank you card 100%.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: You need to do some sort of handwritten thank you to your clients again within this window of time so you could include.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: We always chose something.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: You know we had to follow, of course, all of the you know spending limits in Ohio which were like crazy low.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But we would do a little box just like the one I show you out on the Efficient Advisor community, but a little box with a handwritten thank you card and a Godiva bar, so a little chocolate, and in the summer we mixed that up and did other stuff that wouldn't melt.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: But we tried our darndest to do the Godiva bars and we'd put you know, if there's two clients, we'd put two of them in there and those are just some nice fancy fun chocolates for them.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: We would also lay out for them I forgot to mention this a second ago in the onboarding meeting we would lay out for them what the cadence for the year was going to look like.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So I don't know what you want to call it, it might be your annual roadmap or what that looked like.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: So for us it was quarterly themes.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: We would sit down and say, based on their client segmentation, here's how many times we're going to meet face-to-face digitally.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Here's the stuff that we're going to do for you throughout the year.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: That's behind the scenes that you probably won't even see, but we want you to again to be aware of what's happening.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: And I also just did a video on the behind the scenes checklist out on the Efficient Advisor community, where it's just really making sure that all this stuff that you're doing my friend, steven Jarvis, just said this in a podcast.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: He called it the dishwasher rule, and I'm like that is just a genius way of visualizing it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Right, you don't get credit for doing the dishes unless your spouse knows that you did the dishes.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So same thing with your clients.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: You don't get credit for all of the behind the scenes work that you're doing unless you're telling your clients that you're doing all of the behind the scenes work.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: So that needs to be part of your ongoing process anyway.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: So some other things that you could include in that onboarding packet.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Or I have seen some advisors do this onboarding meeting and then they mail kind of like an official welcome packet to the clients and those might have I don't know a welcome letter in there.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Often I'll see people put in their mission statement or their company's values.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: You might have just information about the parent company that you're with, or maybe profiles on each of your team members, and I've also seen people do this via video.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: So something that this Joey Coleman that I mentioned in the beginning talks about too, is really being able to hit clients on a bunch of different types of levels.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: So you can do what he called a communication audit, where you look at, well, what are we doing actually live, face-to-face, in person?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: What are we doing with them via email?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: What are we doing over the phone with them?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: What are we doing via video?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: What are we doing with them via email?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: What are we doing over the phone with them?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: What are we doing via video?
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: What are we doing via snail mail?
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And then we'll talk about here in a second, like what are we doing from a gift perspective?
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Can we give them something tangible?
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So there's all of these different ways that we can communicate and interact with our clients now, and some of this stuff can be done via video.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: So I have worked with advisors who had like a welcome intro video that they would email and the clients could watch it, and it visually showed them, like, here's how you log into your accounts, and so some people are visual learners, some people are kinesthetic and they like to do it right there with their hands in front of you.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: You know, some people can listen to it over the phone and get directions Great.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: So, however your clients learn best, you're going to want to hit them where it helps.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So having variety of ways that you interact.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So this is including too.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: You could have a like a welcome nurture sequence in your email, like letting people know and saying, hey, here's what you can expect, and kind of piecemealing it out over a couple of emails, or, you know, in lieu of doing it live or in addition to doing it live.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, you can tell I don't script these podcasts, I just kind of start talking.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But don't get it twisted.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I am an organized person and I always at least have an outline.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But I'll be honest, sometimes I take a hard right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: That I don't intend on.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But regardless of how you choose to communicate with clients, what we're trying to do is connect with them on a personal level.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: So they're not wanting to engage with their brand, they're wanting to engage with you and the individuals on your team.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So another example.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to start throwing out examples here, if that's okay with you guys.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: So if not, just hit that like skip 30 second button a couple of times.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: But I love examples personally.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: So I had clients that did a email nurture sequence where each week they sent a short video about each individual on their team and the individual would introduce themselves, how they'll interact with the client, like hey, we're so happy to be part of it.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: They share about their husband and their kids and their fur babies.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Or perhaps they share a couple of really personal, random facts about themselves, like gosh.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: The one I remember hearing recently was I used to work at Starbucks.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: So if you want to know anything about the secret menu, let me know.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I'm your girl.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I can share with you all of the stuff that you know, the good stuff that nobody knows about.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: So not necessarily pertinent to financial planning, but again this idea that we're meeting people at a personal level and they're getting to know us as humans.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I can remember one time sitting with a client who had just recently moved all of their stuff to us.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: We'd been through the onboarding process and maybe like six or seven months into our relationship, I just remember her saying something to me that stuck with me and she was just commenting to me about how she feels like she knows me and my children and my husband and she loves coming in and hearing all of the antics that my kids have been doing lately or about vacations or just whatever.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And she made a comment to me she's like I feel like I know you guys like friends, where my previous advisor I don't even know if he had kids.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So this personal, this deeper connection, it does matter.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: And this is also too where, as your team is sharing kind of fun or random facts about themselves, that your clients might find additional connections like oh, I didn't know, you love pickleball.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I love pickleball.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you were a big fly fisher.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: That's really cool.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I had done a lot of joint work with a guy who was a big hunter and I had some clients who opened up about hunting that I had never heard talk about and I would have never in 500,000 years guessed that these people were hunters.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: So it's just really cool when people can make those really, really personal connections.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Another cool example is I was working with an advisor recently and we decided for her to add into her onboarding a video meeting to review with their clients after they received so insurance contracts when they got their big giant insurance contracts in the mail, she would schedule an appointment with them to just kind of quickly go through some of the basics of their insurance contracts.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: And I've also heard advisors who do this after the clients receive their first quarterly statement, they call any brand new clients to the practice and say hey, you got your quarterly statement.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I just want to schedule a 15 minute call with you to go through it, to make sure that you're comfortable reading it and that you understand it.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And again, this doesn't have to be done by just you.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: You can have an insurance expert on your team that does the contract reviews and you can have somebody on your team your investment folks that do the first statement review.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: There are also some other teams that I know of or have worked with that do periodic throughout the year.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: They do like welcome dinners for new clients or appreciation events for new clients or appreciation events for new referrals, so kind of setting a stage for a referral mindset like, hey, if you make referrals, you know this is how we grow our business.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: So as a referral you get something kind of fun and special.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: So the people that you refer will get a fun and special experience as well, and often we want to surprise and delight our clients.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: So a lot of people like to send.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: You know we sent those like little chocolates with our thank you cards.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: We also did personal thank you gifts and it kind of depended on where they fell, where the clients fell in our client segmentation.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: But if they were going to be a top client we would do a thoughtful gift for them.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: And I can't express this enough and I know you guys have heard me say this before but stuff with your logo on it is not a gift for them, right?
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody is dying to have a Vantage financial coffee mug, right?
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: That's not personal, that's more for you from a marketing perspective than it is for them.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: A personal gift for the client might look like something that I don't know, let's say, like their kids just went off to college and you get them a coffee mug from the kid's school or a, you know, a t-shirt like the I'm a Purdue dad t-shirt or whatever, but something that's personal to them.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Or, as you've learned about their kind of unique hobbies.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: So let's go back to fly fishing, which I know nothing about, but I'm assuming that there's like cool little lures and stuff.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's a fly fishing lure and again, I'm 100% guessing that that's a thing and I love.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: In one of the Joey Coleman books too, he talks about like, well, what do you get those clients who literally have everything or they're really really hard to?
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Um, you know they're really successful.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: They're really hard to buy something kind of fun or special for.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: You can also buy something fun or special for somebody else in their life and have them give it to them, like, oh, you know, you mentioned that your mom loves blah blah, blah and I saw this little thing and I wanted you to give this to her.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: That brings people so much joy.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: It is almost, as you know, like receiving a gift is great, but it's almost so much better when somebody actually like gives you something that then you can turn around and watch somebody else's face, receive and enjoy.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty cool idea too.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're going to sit down and create a standard appropriating procedure and really sit down and think about okay, what are all of the things that we could get tripped up on later that we want to address right now, like, can we create a document or can we create, like a little process here where we can share all of these things with our clients that are really, really important to us and to the DNA of our brand.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So for me, that was really setting expectations, really explaining how we work.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: You know anything that like, like I said, that tripped us up, like if a client was like, oh, it's so frustrating when I call, I can never get you directly, like right away.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Well, great, let's include that in our onboarding process and talk about how there's a really strong chance that you most likely won't get me right away and then I'll have to call you back.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: You know how can we set the stage for the smoothest relationship possible?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: So in this standard operating procedure you are going to want to, you know, determine what is your onboarding process.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: We're going to define each step and then determine who is going to do it and when it's going to be executed, and then we're going to create all of the workflows to facilitate that.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: So, for example, client signs paperwork on this date.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly three weeks later, the thank you letter goes out and, exactly you know, 45 days later, the welcome packet, blah, blah, blah, whatever that looks like for you.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: You're going to want to create a standard operating procedure and if you are a coaching client of ours, or if you were in the first round of the group coaching, I have uploaded my onboarding process standard operating procedure into the group, so go take a look at it and if you are in our future group coaching, this is something that we're going to help you create and I'm going to give you mine as a chassis to work off of.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And while we're on the topic of onboarding and this falls a little bit more under the surprise and delight category, but be thinking of these like little personal things that you can do throughout the year that are leveled up right.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So, on a client birthday for your top clients, maybe instead of just sending them a birthday card signed by everybody in your office, maybe it's taking a quick video on your phone where you just kind of walk around and have everybody in the office say hey, happy birthday, um, and you could send that to them instead.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it's calling them on the phone and singing happy birthday, you know.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it's like, if you have some clients whose wedding anniversary is coming up and you want to be super thoughtful maybe you know what their favorite restaurant is you could try to have somebody on your team thoughtful.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe you know what their favorite restaurant is.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: You could try to have somebody on your team grab dinner reservations for them like six months in advance and then give them a you know a shout, maybe three, four months out, and say like hey, I know your anniversary is coming up.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you have for as far as plans go, but my team and I took the liberty of getting you guys some reservations at this restaurant if you'd like to have them.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: If not, let us know and we'll call them and release them.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: But we just thought that might be something.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: We know everybody gets really busy and it's something that we thought of for you guys.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the kind of stuff that doesn't just surprise and delight your clients, it really shocks and awes them.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: And these things I'm telling you guys, these things, in addition to being like a really good planner and having an onboarding, you know, or, excuse me, an ongoing planning process, that's really good and making sure that you're adding tons of value to their lives, but these are the things that are going to get you to the place of becoming a 100% referral only practice, when we hit that point where we literally had $0 in marketing budget because it was just getting ideal client referrals over and over and over.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: That's when all that pressure started to melt away.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, I knew in my back pocket, I knew what to do.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I knew I had those really great marketing tools, including our white glove, referral events and things like that that we could always fall back on.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: But this idea of just like, if we put the effort in on the front end and we do these little things throughout our client's experience, they're going to refer people and honestly, I can't tell you how many referrals we got just from clients, like in their first 100 days, that were in the midst of this really kind of curated and concierge level onboarding.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And in the intro to this podcast I said I want to talk about why most advisors aren't doing this.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: And most advisors aren't doing this because so many of us are just really working on what's right in front of our nose and these are the things that sit on that list of good intentions, right Like the oh my gosh, someday I would love to implement this and oh, someday it would be so cool if we could implement that.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: And, man, I'd really love to have an onboarding process, but I don't have the time.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So here's what we're going to do.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: We're going to schedule some time on our calendars right now to sit down with the key people on our team and sketch out our onboarding and start, even if it's just one small piece of it, start there and continue to build that out and have a system.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: So for me it was having quarterly CEO days, which I know we're going to talk about on the podcast here a whole bunch.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I get questions about those all the time, but in my CEO days I had this dump sheet of like here's all the stuff that would be super cool if we could do in the future, and my goal was every quarter to take one of those things off the hey, that would be someday super cool list and implement those into the business that quarter.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: So this is your quarter project is creating an onboarding process and, if you already have one, going back in and continuing to fine tune it.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Look at what you can do to go faster, better, smarter from an efficiency perspective on your team side, are there parts of this process that you want to level up?
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Are there parts that are obsolete, that need to be deleted?
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Are there parts that you can start to train somebody else to do and delegate away and then, of course, like just making sure that it's staying top of mind for everybody and making sure it's getting executed.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: So that's.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: The other thing is, I have a lot of advisors who come to me and go yes, I have processes, but we're like not doing them or we're not intentionally going back as leaders, ceos of this business and actually seeing if we're executing the way that we're supposed to be and if we're not figuring out what are the you know the symptoms.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: We're not doing it.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But like, what's the diagnosis?
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Like what's causing?
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Is it we don't have the right systems?
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Is it, you know, we haven't trained people properly?
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Is it we don't have the right licensing to do the things that we want to do?
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: What is actually causing the hiccups in the process?
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Is it that people don't have a really clear picture of what it is that they're doing and why they're doing it?
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: So that is your go-to takeaway action step for this episode.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I hope this has been helpful for you and I love talking.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Onboarding is like one of my favorite things to talk about.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: So I would love to chat with you more, answer any questions that you guys might have out in the Efficient Advisor community.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I know I've been saying this a bunch lately, but this group is just exploding and it's getting super cool.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited because people are starting to ask questions and share resources and give feedback to other advisors and it's just becoming exactly what I had envisioned for it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: So I love hopping in there and chatting with you guys and I can't wait for my kids to get back in school because I can do that more frequently.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Summer has been a little crazy and I know a lot of you probably feel that I feel like the older kids get.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: You think it's going to be smoother, but it's actually the opposite.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I will have a couple links in the show notes for you guys of everything I talked about today, including the Joey Coleman books.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: If you're in the group coaching, make sure you go out to your coach site and download that standard operating procedure for our onboarding process so that you can use that to develop your own or to fine tune your own.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And I am going to be live at a pre-conference for the XYPN live in October.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: So if you are planning on attending, let me know.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Let me know so we can be intentional about meeting up there.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: I love meeting listeners live and in the flesh and I will be speaking with Matt Jarvis and the Perfect RIA, giving a female slash broker dealer slash just different perspective on how to run an efficient practice.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: So I'm really excited to to deliver that message with them and if this podcast has blessed you in any way, shape or form, it would mean the universe to me to get a review from you guys out on iTunes or Spotify.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I love reading them and I read every one and I seriously I get so excited because it motivates me when you guys are sharing that you're actually taking things from this episode and making a huge impact in your business, and I love all the direct messages and the emails.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: So thank you, guys.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is when I have a download or a workbook that goes along with an episode and people send me copies of the work that they've done.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: That is, to me, just so, so awesome and I love then giving feedback.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: So reach out you guys.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I am here and I'm available to you.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: This is my passion project, so I want to help in any way, shape or form that I can.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: All right, that's enough yapping from me.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys sit down, develop that operating procedure, get it implemented, start doing it, testing it, tweaking it and tracking it.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I say that all the time you guys test, tweak and track.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: You need to be tracking to make sure that the things that you're putting this time and effort into are actually getting executed in the way that you want.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: And don't forget to ask your clients for feedback that we did an episode on that here recently on how to get genuine feedback from your clients to help you fine tune your business to be exactly what they want.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Until next time,