Apr 21, 20142 min read

Client Communication: Tips From The Pros

BoulterBowen WealthCare is one of the UK’s leading Financial Planning firms. Simon Boulter and Mo Bowen have happily shared with me some of their fantastic client communication tips. I think these typify the lengths to which great firms go to maintain simple, high quality communications.

Client Communication: The Cards

In this clip Simon describes how BoulterBowen explain the investment and taxation landscape to their clients using a deck of specially prepared cards.

The art of the sale is simple and effective communication with clients. This enables them to understand as much as they need to allow them to make educated and informed decisions. The cards give BoulterBowen the opportunity to simplify what is (I am certain for most clients) a very confusing area.

Other firms I’ve worked with prepare Powerpoint or Prezi presentations to clearly and simply explain common investment or technical concepts like:

How pensions work
Understanding IHT
The need for a Will
Explaining the firm’s investment philosophy

Great firms know that some conversations they have on a regular basis can cause problems for them and their clients. Once they recognise the issue, they can then take action to handle it more effectively.

Benefits

An improvement in meeting quality, reducing the time spent at each meeting and enhancing conversion and referral rates. What was a potential bump in the road at each new subsequent client meeting is now smoothed out, eliminating future problems.

Junior or less experienced advisers can use the new process to handle difficult situations as if they were an adviser of 20+ years experience, allowing you and your firm to scale your advice. Firms that don’t address these issues are constantly on the lookout for highly skilled advisers who are difficult to find, expensive to retain and often difficult to manage.

Your firm is differentiated in the eyes of the client. These innovative, yet simple approaches really make you stand out from the typical adviser working with a pad and pen, using only verbal communication to explain these complex issues.

Good For All

BoulterBowen have some seriously wealthy and sophisticated clients, yet they still use tools like cashflow models and the cards.

Why? Because these tools help all clients understand complex ideas more easily.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your most sophisticated clients won’t appreciate these simple approaches. As you work with wealthier and wealthier clients you’ll find they often want information presented more simply than many lower level clients, because they don’t want to spend their valuable time trying to understand it all. Of course, if it’s good enough for your wealthy clients, then a simple approach has got to be good for all your clients.

Take some time to notice where you or your team experience problems trying to communicate information to clients and see if you can fix just one of them by creating a new communication approach. Remember to keep it as simple as possible. As Leonardo da Vinci famously said: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”