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Written by: Jeff Thorsteinson
The insights you'll gain from a client advisory board will improve your practice, increase client satisfaction, uncover new opportunities, and drive referral business.
How will you improve your practice and strengthen business opportunities this year? How are you planning to "up your game"? As we are ending 2024, creating a Client Advisory Board is the perfect way to engage clients, discover new needs, uncover gaps, and improve existing services. Organizing a Client Advisory Board is a powerful strategy for client engagement and strategic planning. While these meetings may validate things you already know, they will often also bring unexpected insights. Sometimes, the information can be essential and jarring. While this article will discuss why you should create a Client Advisory Board, ' 'we'll follow up with more tactile articles to help you get the most from these meetings and provide guidance to help implement change.
Consider these top 5 reasons for creating an advisory board now:
1. Learn what makes you different from the competition
When I helped advisors assemble their advisory boards, I always suggested including some clients who had previous advisor relationships. Then you can ask, "Why did you switch from your previous advisor to me?" or "What did I offer that the others didn't?". Learning about your competitive environment will improve your business development and client service efforts.
2. Learn about how to talk to clients
In some instances, I found myself using jargon only to observe glassy eyes in the recipients of my babble. Oops. Other times, I noticed I was very casual with friends and family, hoping I might help. Use your advisory board to help you balance out your professional expertise with your great relationship attributes. Ask your advisory board, "How would you describe me and what I do to your friends?" Use this information to learn how to relate and talk with your clients and prospects.
3. Accumulate testimonials and stories to tell others
The path to deep, trusted professional relationships is through stories. When talking about your favorite professionals and advisors, you probably don't even know you're sharing a story. Encourage your advisory board to share positive stories about how you have helped them. Listen carefully and use these powerful stories to tell others how you made a significant difference in your 'clients' lives.
4. Develop ambassadors for your practice
As you accumulate your testimonials and stories, you can incorporate these into your business development efforts. In addition, you can share them with your advisory board, who will now be armed with how to talk about you with their friends.
5. You will learn if you need to calibrate your practice
The biggest lesson I learned from my advisory board was that I was delivering way more than my clients wanted. I would provide and go through reports at a higher frequency than most clients desired. The advisory board is critical to help you learn how to calibrate your practice to deliver the appropriate services to each defined segment of your practice. Sometimes, over-servicing can work against you. Stopping the delivery of undesired services can free you to focus on growth or accomplish other desired goals.
Many advisors make the mistake of writing their strategic plans based solely on what they think should be improved. Please take the opportunity in the new year to pull together some of your best clients and ask them what improvements they would most value. Having that conversation is one of the most effective ways to help you get more clients like them.
Related: What’s the True Worth of Your Financial Advisor Practice?