Comunicazioni

From Planipedia

Thanks to PlanPlus and WEA for sharing their material for this Best Practices Guide.

Contents 1 Communication – Your key relationship builder 2 Effective communication 3 Being an effective listener 4 The power of questions 5 Frequency of communication

Communication – Your key relationship builder

Maintaining a healthy relationship with your clients is a function of many factors, but the one that probably has the greatest impact is your ability to communicate effectively. Each client will have their own personality when it comes to their needs for communication, but it’s probably safe to say that regardless of their idiosyncrasies, if the client knows when to expect to hear from you . . . and you keep that commitment, then they will be happy. This is true even in cases where you have to communicate bad news. While we all are tempted to avoid unpleasant news, facing it honestly and up front is much more effective than avoidance.

Effective communication

With so much riding on the quality of your communication, you should be compelled to be the best communicator possible. This requires that you take 100% responsibility for all communication in which you are involved. That means having good command of both ends of the communication process.

The first rule of effective communication is to be a good listener. Honing this skill will benefit your practice in the following ways:

1. Accurate information – Good listening allows for an accurate exchange of information, which is critical for you to serve the client properly.
2. Reduced misunderstandings – Good listening helps eliminate misunderstandings, increasing client satisfaction with your services and enhancing their perception of your competence.
3. Quality relationship – When clients feel you understand them, it creates greater trust. Good listening improves trust and rapport and maximizes the probability of getting referrals in the future.
4. Differentiation – Since most people are poor listeners, good listening skills will make you stand above the crowd.

Being an effective listener

There are two tests of effective listening:

1. Is the information being received and understood by the listener?
2. Does the speaker perceive that he/she is being understood?

By necessity, most advisors are reasonably proficient at the first. Since they rely heavily on information the client provides, they listen carefully to get the facts straight. Many advisors are not as good at creating the perception that they are receiving the information. This causes them to lose rapport with their clients.

The power of questions

The human mind is compulsive about answering questions. When you are asked a question, your mind instinctively begins searching for an answer. Even if you decide not to give a verbal answer, one will, more often than not, pop into your mind.

Used properly, questions can be a very effective tool to facilitate excellent communication with your clients. Questions are the key to taking control of a conversation. Even though the other person is speaking, you are directing the conversation. Asking questions has another effect besides improving your understanding of the information. It also creates rapport. Relevant questions show interest in what the client is saying. When the client perceives you are interested, it creates a feeling of mutual respect. This is an instant trust builder.

Frequency of communication

Setting expectations relative to when your client can expect to hear from you and delivering on that commitment is very important. Putting in place a routine service schedule that is used for all clients based on their segmentation best does this. When we say that your client base is segmented, we mean that you have grouped your clients.

This Best Practice guide includes an example of how you might develop a process to do segmentation of your client base. Our example we’ll assume your segmentation identifies your good, better, and best clients. Let’s look at some examples of communications that you might schedule for your clients depending on this type of segmentation.

Activity	Good	Better	Best
Plan review	Every 36 months	Every 24 months	Every 12 months
Portfolio review	Annually	Annually	Semi-annually
Quality assurance survey	Annually	Annually	Annually
Total contacts per annum	2.3	2.5	4

In addition to these structured communications, you’ll also have a number of implementation meetings for the purpose of putting into action the recommendations made in your planning report. There cans also be a number of marketing or “client touch” activities that occur throughout the year.

If your client sees these activities scheduled on their action plan checklist, and you follow through to ensure that these events take place, it will provide a fine foundation for effective communication. It’s common in our industry for clients to complain that after their advisor sold them something, “I never heard from them again.” Needless to say you don’t want these conversations to be created. While it might appear from looking at this program that conducting frequent meetings can be problematic given our schedules, it makes the need for efficiency even greater.