Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 159: You NEED This Onboarding Document to Help Set Client Expectations

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159: You NEED This Onboarding Document to Help Set Client Expectations · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: If you've heard me do a keynote in the last 12 months and I have just done a lot of speaking, both virtually and in person and it feels like at almost every event the keynote is centered around the three layers of every process.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: So you've probably heard me mention this before and the three layers that exist in every process.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: So the way that I think about process is that if you are focused on just the paperwork side of it, then you're totally missing the boat, like you are missing so much opportunity.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Every process, no matter how mundane or small, is an opportunity to connect with your clients at a deeper level, to show them exemplary customer service, to go above and beyond.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna share a little bit about what I mean today.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But there's really three parts to every process that I have sort of identified for myself and for others over the last couple of decades.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: That there's the paperwork part of the process which is like the first part, so that's the nuts and bolts, the standard operating procedures, the checklist, the templates, the paperwork to get you know money from Schwab to Fidelity or whatever.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Then there's the second layer, which is setting expectations.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So this is setting expectations for your team, this can be setting expectations for yourself, and this is definitely setting expectations with your clients.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And then the third layer is the exceptional layer, where you are going above and beyond to be exceptional to your clients.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: This is where you can do a little extra client experience to really enhance and build that human to human connection.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: And in today's episode I'm gonna share with you about a document that we used in our business called expectations of our engagement, and I'm gonna share why I think you need to have one as part of your onboarding process.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So there's this amazing phrase expectations are the death of appreciation.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: What does this mean exactly?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: When expectations are out of alignment, that's when things go terribly wrong.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So think about your relationships.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So if your husband expects a huge birthday celebration and we're talking breakfast in bed you take the day off of work and massage his feet all day while he watches you know action movies, and then you hire a sitter like this is it like he wants you to hire a sitter to watch the kids and maybe take you out to his favorite dinner location where all of your friends and family are waiting for him as part of a big adult surprise party, where you then bestow lavish gifts upon him and then send him and his buddies off to some private bourbon tasting or something afterwards.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: If that's his vision, right, if that's what he's envisioning, and setting the expectation like this would be the ideal or great birthday.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And then you come in all hot with what you think is a really clutch birthday, and so maybe you have the kids make him a sweet breakfast of burnt toast with like a weird little blob of peanut butter on it, because they made it all by themselves.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And you come home after working a full day and you've planned a special dinner for your family, maybe out, including your children, and then you come home where you've bought his favorite dessert, and then you open some really great presents with the kids and while you planned under normal circumstances what you thought was a terrific birthday and it is right that sounds like an amazing birthday If his expectations were this big, extravagant, totally unaligned with what you delivered on.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: That's where the death of appreciation occurs.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Right, he will not appreciate all of the things that you did in the same way because his expectations were so high and this term has also been used I've heard it used in a lot of different psychology and stuff recently, especially in terms of relationship that when in the beginning of a relationship.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: So think about this advisor client.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: When you're doing something that is like, wow, that's really amazing, and that becomes the expectation of your client, right?
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So in the beginning they might wow, this is really different, wow, we really appreciate this, wow, we're getting all this additional value that we weren't anticipating.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Then that becomes the expectation, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: This is something just to be aware of and we can actually use it to work in our favor when it comes to our clients.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So it's the same thing with a client relationship.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It's just important to lay out what to expect from the relationship so there are no misalignments and everybody's on the same page.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And there's several categories and topics to make sure you cover, to address in your expectations of our engagement document, and in this episode I'm gonna tell you exactly what you should cover and share a little bit about the document that I used in my own practice and how I saw that really work in our favor.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So, all right, let's dive in.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: My name is Todd Pisarczyk and I'm the CEO of Momentus Wealth Management, an advisory firm based in Washington State.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: We had never worked with any sort of business coach or consultant in the past, so I was not entirely sure what to expect when we started working with Libby.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Just under one year in, I can now say with certainty this experience has far exceeded any expectations we had.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I've commented to Libby many times about the fact that I have been in this business for almost 25 years and everything she has taught us makes me wonder what in the world I was even doing and how I was even able to run a firm before going through this process.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Over the last year, libby has helped us implement her series of systems and processes, which we had none of before, that have allowed us to transform our firm in the way that we do business.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: We have now reached a point where I feel like we are truly running our business rather than our business running us, and we can be proactive in the way that we operate rather than spending each day putting out fires.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Most importantly, I also feel better than ever about the experience that our clients and staff are receiving every day.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I feel like the process Libby took us through is customized to us and centered entirely around who we are as people, our strengths and the weaknesses and our own personal goals.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like Libby was trying to put us into a box, like some of the other consulting programs we had looked into before.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Libby is genuine.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: She's super fun to work with and I can tell you from the start she truly cares for her clients.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: If you're on the fence about this, I encourage you.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Just make the jump.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I promise you won't regret it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's enough to make a girl cry, but if you are looking for this type of organization and transformation in your business, join us for the next round of the group coaching and the systems to scale group coaching and mastermind program.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It starts January 9th and if you're looking to, you know, finally get organized once and for all and just take the time to build those systems and processes that I know that you know that you need to turn your business into a well-oiled machine.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I've got exactly the thing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I've spent the last 20 years building businesses in the financial planning world and I've learned a thing or two about exactly what it takes to create a clear vision and a plan for the experience that you want your practice to deliver and how to build the systems so that this experience actually gets executed day in and day out without anything slipping through the cracks.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: So spots are limited and we are currently two thirds full at the time that I am recording this.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: So for more information, you can check out the show notes or my website and click on the coaching tab.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: All the details will be there and, for an even more detailed experience, check out last week's podcast, episode number 157, about all the ins and outs of the group coaching program.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let's move on to the good stuff.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so today we are talking about a specific document that I created and used in my business, called the expectations of our engagement, and I want to be totally clear that I did not come up with this idea.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: This is a reiteration of something that I gleaned along the way.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Right, and if you go back to the any of the episodes that we did on onboarding, it's one of my favorite topics.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the easiest processes that exist within a financial planning practice and you know there's seven of them, but I think it's one of the easiest ones to talk about when we talk about how these three layers inside of your planning process really matter.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Or really, I should say that there's three layers that exist in all of your processes, including your planning process, but I think onboarding is one of the easiest ones for us to kind of dissect and break down into the three different layers.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Right, cause we've got this layer, that is, the paperwork part of it.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: We actually getting clients set up and organized and functional to work with you.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: We've got the paperwork side of things to get the money from, you know, schwab to a mirror prize or whatever your, whatever your transfer situation is right.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We're taking applications, there's standard operating procedures to get them set up on a client portal, all the things.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of that paperwork component.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Then one of the missed pieces I think in onboarding is a lot of this opportunity to really set expectations with our clients.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So I mentioned in the opening right that expectations are the death of appreciation.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: So if we come into a relationship with our clients with misaligned expectations of whether it's our expectations of them or their expectations of us, it often leads to disappointment.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So I think getting ahead of that and using a formal onboarding process or a formal onboarding meeting and having an expectations of our engagement component to that is just super helpful.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I know for me in my own business when we started using it it was like okay, look, we can lay out all the things and we can just be really open and discuss like all the, all the ways to communicate with us and what they can expect and what they're, you know, can not expect and just making sure.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So it's having a conversation with an advisor the other day and they do a ton of tax planning right, lots of tax strategy, lots of tax analysis and they brought on a bunch of clients last year and they were starting to have some conversations at the end of the year this year about tax harvesting and Roth conversions.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And they were shocked to find out that almost every single one of their new clients that they brought on this calendar year assumed that they were going to be doing their tax preparation and was actually a little perturbed that that was not the case, that this office would not be, you know, compiling their taxes and filing them for them.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And again, so this is where that expectation comes in.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So they had worked really hard this year to really build a brand and create a lot of content around tax planning and in our clients' minds that can mean one thing, where in our minds that could mean something else.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: So that's just one of those examples of you know areas that we can get tripped up.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And, of course, if these clients are thinking, well, gosh, I'm paying for X, y and Z and we thought that included, that that's just another you know cost on top of it, while if they had known from the beginning, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal because that's what they would have expected.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: So let me let me kind of dive into this expectations thing and where it sort of falls into the process.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: So if you've listened to my keynotes ever on onboarding or if you listen back to, let me find the episode number quick Okay, it's episode number 44.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It's all about the first 100 days of your client relationship.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: But if you've heard me talk about this before, you know that I'm a big believer in trying to set once the client says yes, I hate, we've done your planning.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: We want to, you know, engage with you on an ongoing relationship and we want you to be our advisor, you know, forever and ever and ever.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: This is when the onboarding part starts and we want to have a plan or a process to initiate these three layers right the nuts and bolts, paperwork part.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: We want to execute the expectations part and then we want to do some little fun extras to really build that human to human connection and go back and listen to that episode and I break down kind of the whole thing.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: But part of that process is having for us we had what we would actually call our formal onboarding meeting and we had this meeting after the clients and I say we buy, as in my directive, operations, I, at a certain point in my business, stepped out of the process once the client said yes and my director of operations took over.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: So Lori would host these meetings with our clients and she would sit down with them and sometimes I would participate kind of depended where and what client and all the things.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: So don't hold me to that completely.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: But we would host a meeting where we would, you know, the client had said, yes, we've already done all the paperwork, all of the money is in motion, the applications are in underwriting, all of the things, and then we would have the client in for a formal onboarding meeting and in this meeting we would sit down and go through kind of a checklist to make sure that they were working with us in a way that was super functional, right?
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: So we double checked that we had the right banking on file and that was associated with all of their accounts.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: We've got them, you know, all registered for their account online.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: We help.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: We sat there and actually helped them do them.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: We walked them around the website showing them all of the different pieces and parts and here's how you find your tech stuff and here's where this is and here's where that account is.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: We help them nickname stuff, if that's an option for you.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: We also would get them linked to our blog and we'd have them, like our social media and stuff, right there while we were sitting there.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: We'd set them up with eDelivery.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: We got the mobile apps downloaded.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: We went through the calendar of any upcoming client events.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: We made sure we had any correct third art party authorization forms or trusted contact person form signed.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: If you have forms to give you them, to give you permission to speak to their CPA or their attorney, we want to have those on file.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: We really wanted to lay out our behind the scenes checklist of hey, here's what we're going to be doing between the times that we see you and here's what our meeting cadence is going to look like and all the things.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: So it was really a meeting designed around getting super functional and setting expectations with our clients, and in this meeting we would give them this document that we had called expectations of our engagement, and the idea behind this is exactly what we've been talking about this whole episode.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Right Is, can we establish and lay down a plan so that our clients know what to expect in working with us, so that there aren't any misalignments or miscommunications, and we want our relationship to be as functional as possible.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So by them knowing exactly how to communicate with us and exactly when our office would be open and closed, like all of these little details made everything so much easier.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: So let me explain.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So this was actually like a piece of collateral that we had put through compliance that we would give to clients in their onboarding packet, and basically what this expectations document was is a couple of different categories that we just wanted to work through with our clients ahead of time to set expectations, and these categories just had kind of had come out of you know I mean, I'd been in the business for a long time when we built this it had just kind of come out of like what were some of the missteps that we had made along the way, what are some of the things that our clients would potentially come back to us and have a question about, or you know where did we get tripped up or maybe have some confusion?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: But our document and if you are in our group coaching program or you coach with me, you absolutely will get a copy of this along with sort of a expectations of our engagement agenda creation not agenda and expectations of our engagement document creation guide with these categories.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: So some of the things that I like to include on here, but the basically like.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: It looked like this like it was a we're so delighted you're working with us paragraph.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That was just about like we're so happy that you've chosen to become part of our you know, financial planning family, and we'd just like to take this opportunity to lay out the foundation of how we're gonna work together and we find it beneficial to describe to our clients.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You know how things are gonna look and we recognize that a lot of our clients have worked with an advisor previously, so everybody has their own way of doing things and we just want to clearly communicate where you can expect working with us so there are no misunderstandings in our future.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So a couple of different things that we included on here.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Hours of operation so my office was completely closed on Fridays and we communicated this to the clients.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: We were open from this time to this time Monday through Thursday.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Fridays, our entire office was closed and we gave the reason why you know and we shared that all of the people in our office were parents and that we all worked really heavy hours Monday through Thursday so that Friday we could actually take the day, and that was the day that we all did our parent things.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: We did the doctor's appointments, we ran the errands, did the returns, so we could volunteer at school, you know, freely, without having to take time off of work to do those things, so that we can be fully present with our families on the weekends.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So by giving you know, so I would just say by giving everybody the day off, you know our employees are happy and they get to be fully present with their families, where you know everything matters the most.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So we would communicate hours of operation.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: We'd also communicate how to communicate with me and my team.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: So when we switched to we were previously everybody had their own email address and clients would email me and I was back to back to back to back to back to back Literally the whole day as client facing as humanly possible, or I was doing planning and really necessary work in order to prep for upcoming meetings.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: So it would often take me a really long time to get back to clients and I was drowning in my inbox.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: You can go back and listen to the episode I did with Amber De La Garza on.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You know, stop the impacts and sanity.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: My inbox was the bane of my existence.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I hated my inbox and while I had set times and I figured out ways to work around that and to control that, I was getting inundated with emails.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So we ended up creating a team email address and re-onboarded all of our clients that, hey, you know, we're gonna start using this address.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: And again, anything we do, it's for the client, right it's.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: How does this impact them?
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: How is it good for them?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So you can get faster response rates, so you can get your questions answered more quickly, so you can get what you need.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, if it sits in Libby's inbox, you know, good Lord, it might just disappear.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: You don't know.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So for our clients.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: So as we onboarded new ones, we shared like look, you are not going to get a fast response if you email Libby directly.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: We have a team email that gets checked all day long and we will be able to do the research, do whatever, and be able to call you back much more quickly than should you, you know, directly reach out to Libby.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So here's the best ways to communicate with our team.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: If you can do texting, give them your you know information and tell them when you check your text messages so you might say, hey, this is an option, you are able to text with our office.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: However, I do turn off my work phone after 5 pm and I do not check it on weekends.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So that I can, right, I love that phrase, so that I can.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I also love the phrase I hope you can appreciate.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I hope you can appreciate.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: At 5 pm I turn off my work phone so that I can be fully present with my family in the evenings and on weekends.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: If you don't have a family, you know I turn off.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I hope you can appreciate.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I turn off my work phone at 5 pm when I leave the office, right, so that I can unwind and actually have a life outside of these four walls.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: We'd also go through everyone's roles and I explain what everybody on the team did and how they did it so that they felt more.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: It was always about building confidence in the competency of the team, so I wanted people to understand who did what.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So when they called in with questions, they either knew who they should talk to or they felt confident talking to that team member answering their question.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: And so how many times does a client call in and go oh my gosh, I need to talk to Libby.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I need to talk to Libby.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Libby calls them back, turns out they didn't need to talk to Libby.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It was a question that they could have had answered by literally anybody on the team, or even and we'll talk about that here in a second.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: But I can just vividly remember being in the office one day on a Friday morning, I think I was just in getting caught up and nobody was there and the phone rang and, for whatever reason, I answered it, which was like really weird.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I probably hadn't answered my business phone in I don't know forever, and so I remember answering it, which I did super awkward, and the client on the other end was like Libby and I was like yes, and they're like oh, oh, I don't wanna talk to you because you don't know how to do anything.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And I just died laughing and I was at first I was like slightly offended.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I was like that is absolutely not true and I was like you know what?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Actually, that's pretty darn accurate.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I actually really don't know how to do anything and it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, this is actually a pivotal moment for me.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Our clients recognize that I don't place trades and that I don't get them money and I don't problem solve anything inside of their accounts.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: My job exclusively was to manage the overall vision for their financial plan and their investment strategy and that we had somebody else that actually did the execution of that, that did the paperwork for that, that did the research for that and they knew who did what on our team, and that was really important.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: We also would discuss privacy and this was a great passive, aggressive way to talk about referrals.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: We would say something to the effect of like hey, we are a 100% referral-only office and we wanna make sure that you know how seriously we take that and in the future, if you were to refer anyone, we want you to know that you can trust that we maintain the highest level of privacy and we totally get that.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of situations where our clients know one another and then we'd always joke that we had, in fact, like a full six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing totally happening in our office and it was really just a great opportunity to talk about referrals very passive, aggressively, and that this was part of our referral process.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Right, like hey, we are adept at handling this.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: We take your privacy extremely seriously and that anything that you share with us within these four walls even though we might know a lot of the same people that you know isn't gonna leave here.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: So if anyone finds out, it ain't gonna be from us.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: We also would talk about meeting cadence so that they knew what to expect.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: If you go back to that episode number 44 on onboarding, it's really important that your clients don't feel like they're dropping off of a cliff, like it's hard.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: When you first are doing financial planning for somebody.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: You're seeing them all the time, right, you're having discovery meetings, you're talking about their goals, you're getting data, you're emailing back and forth, you're maybe holding a rough draft meeting or you're doing a clarifying questions call or you have all of these other steps inside of your process, thank you, and you're seeing them and talking to them.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And then, let's say, your client surface model is that you meet with them to do a strategy session once a year, and so if you're seeing these clients like literally every two weeks or every three weeks for a six month window or whatever that looks like for you, and then all of a sudden they don't see you for a year, right, they feel like they dropped off this cliff and so you know, I'm a big believer in having like a let down process.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: So that's where.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Go back to that episode and you can hear that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And we also did not default straight to our client service model.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: In year one we would have like a couple extra meetings again to kind of just slowly let them down.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So we never wanted anyone to feel like, oh great, I gave them all their money and now they're ignoring me, you know, because a year is a very long time in a new relationship.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: So we would just establish the meeting cadence, we'd share that, hey, we meet more frequently and then we slow those meetings down once you get to know us and we get to know you and you know our philosophies and how we think and feel about money and vice versa.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And then here's what that will ultimately look like, you know, and, of course, subject to change, we would review compensation and just reiterate how we got paid.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Right, I was super transparent when it came to fees, so we just reiterated that it could look like planning fees.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: It could look like, you know, aum, it could be a commission, it just you know.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And we wanted to be very clear, you know.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: We walked through like here's what your fee is going to be like.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Just, there is no questioning, there is no unaligned expectations here, because we were very clear with how we got compensated.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Then we would also talk about our niche and say you know, we spend all of our time, energy and education, specializing in blah blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: And you know and this was how we talked about referrals so we want to be very clear that this is the type of client that we do our best work with.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I am at my best when I am working with clients like blah blah, blah, blah, blah and, as I mentioned before, we are a referral only office and we you know we we get lots and lots of referrals, and there's nothing worse for us to have someone like you who trusts us and care, and you send someone that you love and trust to us and then we have to say no, that we can't work with them.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: You know that's that's really painful and we just want to avoid any of that in the future.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So here is our, here's the type of client that we do our best work with, and being very, very clear and saying and, of course, if you send someone and it doesn't work out.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: We have other great, wonderful resources and you're going to have your Dear John process.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So if you're in our group coaching program or you coach with me, we're going to establish your Dear John process so that you have really great resources to send not right fit referrals to Um.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: But you're going to want to talk about that in your expectations of your engagement Um.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: We're also going to want to talk about detailed messages.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: So this kind of falls under that communications umbrella of hey, when you call in, there's a strong chance you're not going to get to talk to Libby.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: In fact, you're not going to talk to Libby 99% of the time.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: You're going to talk to somebody else and we just ask that because Libby is so busy.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Or, you know, if I was not the one executing these onboarding meetings, um or Lori would even say, like you know, there's a strong chance you're not going to get either one of us because we're, you know, working with our clients.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: We're helping our clients all day, every day.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So if the more detailed message that you can leave, the better research we can do before we call you back and we just kind of say, you know, like there's nothing worse than when you're calling us when it's convenient for you and if we aren't available, we're going to have to play phone tag and we don't want to call you back only to then have to go do more and from you know research and then call you back again and wait for you to call us back and then us call you back.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: You know it's a whole thing.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: So the more information you know we want you to trust the competency of everybody on our team the more information that you can leave for us.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And I go and, frankly, honestly, most of the time when you call, the person answering the phone can handle whatever it is that you're looking for right there and then, but if they're, if they can't, they're going to grab us between meetings and ask us your question and then give you a call back.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: So you're giving them permission, the client, to leave a lot of information with your team and then giving them the heads up that there's a strong chance that they're going to be the ones to call you back with the information or that they're going to be able to handle it right there and then, so that it's not always Libby returning calls, you know, and we'd even joke like, yeah, you know, I'm back to back.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: So it's going to be hours and hours and hours, and then sometimes at the end of the day, I just have no more words left and I don't want that to happen.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So we want to be able to get you the information that you need as quickly as possible.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So often the girls will grab me between meetings and ask me some questions and they'll give you a call back with the answer.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So or they'll grab Lori between meetings and ask her, you know whatever that looks like, but establishing that they can, that you want them to leave detailed messages on your voicemail or with the team if somebody answers, so that you can do the right research before you call them back.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yep, Nothing is worse than than phone tags.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: So we talked about hours of operations, how to communicate with your team.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: You know everybody's roles privacy, meeting cadence, compensation, niche and referrals, detailed messages.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, and then the last one would be if you see something, say something.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: So we would always have kind of.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: You know, our goal is to really exceed your expectations, and if you ever have a suggestion of how we can improve, or if you ever have an issue, please come to me and Libby directly and I will make sure that it is taken care of.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: This is something, as a business owner, that I don't know it if I don't know it.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: So if you see something, please, please, please say something to me.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: And really we set the expectation that you know our success is measured by how satisfied you are and how pleased you are with our advice and service, and we want to be able to deliver a really high client experience, and you're our partner in that.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So if you are ever dissatisfied, you know we really genuinely want to know those things so that we can fix that.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's really kind of the essence of the expectations of our engagement document.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: It's designed to lay out and you might have some things that you wanna add to it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Right, just because I say these are the kind of the common things that I think need to be addressed ahead of time.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: There may be some things that you wanna add to it.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: So think through, like, what are some other frustrations that you've had in your practice of?
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Like ugh, I wish our clients understood this better.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Or geez, wow, we were really out of alignment with what they thought we were gonna do for them versus what we did do.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Then, of course, we have to look at ourselves first so self-awareness being kind of a critical component here and saying, did we not deliver on something that we promised?
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the first thing we always have to ask ourselves.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Second is, how do we make sure that that doesn't happen again?
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: And that's really where having a really solid onboarding process matters.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: And again, if you are like, oh my goodness, I know I need to do all these things and I could use a little help, I could use the templates, I could use the tools that you've got, you know, please consider joining us for the Systems to Scale Group Coaching and Mastermind program that launches on January 9th.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It's just a great environment.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: You're going to get so many samples, examples, templates.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: We're gonna walk through processes together.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: We're gonna get your processes down on paper and then we're going to elevate them.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Then we're gonna add these layers of, you know, these three layers of process to all of your processes.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: How can we make it more exceptional?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: How can we make it better expectations setting?
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: How can we do the paperwork side of things better?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Our cohort that started in August.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: We are right smack dab in the middle of their financial planning, start to finish process, from prospect to client, and we're just getting stuff down on paper right now and coming back and adding in the little extra layers, Like we haven't even come back and jujged the whole thing up yet and it's already fun to see the transformation that's occurring for people of the oh I need to create that, oh we've got that done, oh, I'm doing this and I'm doing that.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Like the mastermindless sharing component, I think is a really cool experience because, as a financial advisor, I think often we can feel a little siloed in this business.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: We can sometimes feel a little lonely, and if you're looking for a diverse group of people to speak into your business, to share ideas, to clean insights from people who are running, you know, adjacent practices to yours, but doing it slightly different for a slightly different ideal client avatar in a slightly different way and charging a different method, and it's just so fascinating.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: There's just so many ways to do this business successfully and so much insight to be gleaned from other advisors.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: So if you want a track to run on, if you want accountability, if you want all the things, please make sure you check out the Systems to Scale Group Coaching Program.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions about the program at all, go over to LinkedIn and send me a message and I'm happy to give you more details or to chat with you briefly to see if it's a good fit for you.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Also, go ahead and take a listen to last week's episode, number 157.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: And it's got all of the ins and outs of the group and kind of who it's right for and not right for and what it is and what it's not, and you could take a listen to that and see if it might be a good fit for you.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But if you are looking to invest in yourself and your practice, I encourage you to check into it at least.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: So, looking forward to it, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week and, as you know, I hang out over on LinkedIn and also in the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: It's a group of about 1,900 advisors now who are all super cool, I should say advisors and their operations teams who are sharing templates, sharing resources, answering questions.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: If you've got a question about anything about running a financial planning practice, what software tech stacks to use, how are people doing this?
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Does anyone have a template for that?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: This is just a really cool group of people who are willing to share resources and if you've got that, all ships rise together in mentality.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Come on in, you are welcome.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, and I wanna.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I was laughing.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I had someone ask me the other day hey, I really want to leave a review for your podcast, but could you help it one of these techie not so techie sisters out?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And what do I do?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my gosh, that's hysterical because I don't know that I've ever.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I've asked like, hey, do me a solid and leave a review or at least just like click five stars.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: So on your podcast app on your iPhone, when you click on the show the efficient advisor podcast if you scroll down, you'll see like the show rating pop up in funny but true story or maybe not so funny but true story.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I only have one review.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: That's not five stars and it's from my ex husband.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So if you wanna do me a solid and help like make his not so impactful, I'd greatly appreciate it.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you just scroll on down, you can click the stars and then underneath, where you put however many stars and obviously should be five Underneath that you can click, write a review and add something that you think would be helpful so that, as other advisors are considering different podcasts and considering different shows, that they're kind of knowing what to expect from that particular podcast If you've never listened to it before.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: So I really appreciate you doing that, and I know other advisors who find the show appreciate that as well, and we are one of the top performing podcast for financial advisors and I can't say thank you guys enough.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like I have the world's greatest community and it's just so much fun.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys so much.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you.