The Do's and Don'ts of Maintaining a Great Relationship With Your Clientele

The Do's and Don'ts of Maintaining a Great Relationship With Your Clientele

As a Financial Adviser [or any Sales Role], it's essential to maintain a great relationship with your clientele. After all, they're the reason you have a job! But what are the do's and don'ts of building and maintaining strong relationships with your clients?

In this newsletter, I’ll give you some tips on how to make sure your clients are happy and keep coming back for more. Follow these guidelines, and you'll be well on your way to success!

Do Put Your Client's Best Interests First

It's important to put your clients' best interests first. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your clients feel valued and appreciated:

• Stay up-to-date on their financial situation [or life situation] and provide advice accordingly
• Regularly keep in touch, even if there's nothing new to report
• Make yourself available for questions and provide prompt responses
• Send personalized thank-you notes after each meeting

One great tip that works for me: keep NOTES of each client met. Their likes, dislikes, children’s ages and names, favorite foods or hobbies. By being able to recall their details and bring them up in conversations, clients will feel like your their friend. Which is a huge step in relationship bridging!

It's also important to avoid doing anything that could damage the relationship, such as:

• Making decisions without consulting your clients
• Not responding to messages in a timely manner
• Being unavailable for consultation
• Failing to deliver on promises

Imagine the last time a salesperson did the above to you. Don’t know about you, but to me, instant contact block. Right?

Do Make Sure You're [Always] Accessible

It's so important to always be accessible to your clients, both physically and emotionally. When they have a question or concern, they need to know that they can come to you for an answer—and that you'll be available to listen.

Make sure you're always reachable by phone, email, or text, and set aside time every day to review your messages and answer any questions. Don't forget to follow up with clients who have reached out to you, even if it's just to say that you're looking into their question and will get back to them as soon as possible.

Well, one rule of thumb here though: if you are setting aside office hours to do the above, then specify it in your out-of-office reply. It is crucial to let clients know that you are working on it. Yet to keep your sanity, it is necessary to cordon off your personal time and space!

Do Build a Rapport With Your Client

Take the time to build rapport. This will help them feel more comfortable opening up to you and sharing information.

Be sure to ask questions about their family, their job, and their hobbies. The more you know about them, the better equipped you'll be to provide tailored advice.

Make sure to listen carefully to what they're saying and show that you're taking their concerns seriously. Remember that they're trusting you with their money, so it's important to make a good impression.

A strong guiding principle I use now: what do you know of your BEST friend? How about your acquaintance? Of course, you know all the juicy details and bits of your best friend, right? Now, HOW do you make your client your best friend? By knowing their juicy details too! [The way to get there? Share some of your own details with them, so they are open to share their own!]

For the above tip, I share details that are deeper than surface level, but not top secret information. For example, stuff happening about my kids or hobbies [which they can see on my social media pages], but I’d avoid talk on health conditions, etc.

Do Be Transparent

Be transparent. Trust is the foundational block of any relationship. This means being honest and upfront with your clients at all times, and never trying to hide anything from them.

Being transparent builds trust, which is essential in any relationship. It also allows your clients to be better informed about their finances [or product choice], which can help them make better decisions about their money.

So always remember: honesty is the best policy when it comes to relationships!

Don't Be Pushy

Now that you know the basics of how to maintain a great relationship with your clientele, what do you AVOID?

it's important to remember not to be pushy. Be respectful and understanding of your clients' time and needs, and that means knowing why they say no to you in the first play [read: EMPATHY… See:https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-build-skill-empathy-clarence-cheong-b-eng-chem-eng-/ ]

Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Don't call or email too often. Try to limit contact to once or twice a week at most.
• Don't bombard your clients with sales pitches. Instead, try offering helpful information and insights that they can use in their own financial planning [or product decisions]
• Don't be pushy or confrontational. Remember that your clients are not obligated to work with you, so try to be understanding and accommodating.

Don't Make Promises You Can't Keep

Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t ever make promises you can't keep. If you can't follow through on what you've said, your clients will quickly lose trust in you. This can be a really damaging blow to your business, so always be honest and upfront with your clients.

Instead of making promises you can't keep, try to focus on setting realistic goals that you know you can achieve. This will help to build trust and credibility with your clients, and they'll be much more likely to come back to you in the future.

Right… Last words!

Remember that at the end of the day, relationships are key. When focusing on building the right relationship with your clients, think “friends first, client later”, and you should be on a great track to building a long-lasting and fruitful connection with your clients!

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Inspired??drop me a DM ?- always looking for like-minded individuals to connect and exchange ideas with :) Have a great day!