Will Your Clients Move In 2012? |
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The last four years stunk. Performance stunk. Communications stunk. I need to make a change. Is this what your clients are saying to themselves? To their friends? Even to you? Are they thinking such thoughts and you don't know it? FA Digital research suggests this sour mood is widespread and could get worse. "I think you will see a lot of movement in 2012," John Anderson, director of practice mangement for the SEI Advisor Network, told Investment News. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study in June found wealtheir clients feeling much less loaylty to their advisors. In a three-part series completed last week, FA Digital reported there is more than a 95% chance that when your clients die, the heirs will take the inheritances you managed and run. This is because you never took the time to know your clients' children, resulting in serious communication gaps between you and your clients' families. Poor communication, patchy service, persusasive competition and piecemeal advice have long been cited as reasons clients -- and clients' families -- pack up and leave their financial advisors. . But a recent survey of investors with portfolios of $100K or more showed that information and education are what clients want most from their financial advisors. Customer service, long the leader in such surveys, dropped to third place. How do you inform and educate clients and prospects? If you're still "snail-mailing" quarterly reports and emailing periodic newsletters, you may be out of touch. Bill Winterberg, the noted technology columnist for Morningstar Advisor, says "text msessaging is quickly becoming the predominant method people use to communicate with one another. "Key benefits of texting with clients are its immediacy and brevity. Texting tends to avoid the inbox clutter of lengthy emails and the procrastination often associated with voicemail," Winterberg wrote. FA
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