Being the Buoy: Choppy Seas Make Valuable Client Experiences

I’m not sure if it's just me, but these past two weeks of news have felt like an insane game of Risk meets Bingo.

I’m wrapping up our family's vacation in Colorado, where we saw friends and made memories in the mountains.

Here’s this week’s Connected Advisor:

1. Being the Buoy: Choppy Seas Make Valuable Client Experiences
2. Resilience, Mentorship, and the Power of Persistence with Lori Van Dusen
3. Gain Deeper Knowledge of Nitrogen’s Integration Suite
4. Milemarker On the Road 

Here we go. 

Being the Buoy: Choppy Seas Make Valuable Client Experiences

I’ll assume that you agree with me that it seems like the sea of life is a bit choppy at the moment.

The future feels uncertain regardless of the flag you fly or the state, province, or country you vote in.

It's likely you feel the rough water on multiple fronts—in your personal life and in the lives of your clients.

Of course, our feelings, while valid and worthy of evaluation, are never the true gauge of what’s true.

What We Know

I have always loved an old but powerful Dimensional presentation that discusses the past 100 years through the framework of Time Magazine’s historical events.

See How TIME’s Cover Evolved Over 100 Years

On the occasion of TIME’s 100th birthday, Creative Director D.W. Pine explores how the magazine’s cover has evolved over the course of a century.

time.com/6257376/100-years-of-time-covers

Regardless of what was making headlines – massive world wars, economic collapses, or times of tyranny, the video demonstrated a pattern of market efficiency over time.

To Dimensional, this concept became their guiding principle, one that has brought them great success.

This principle gives everyone who works there confidence to endure all of the unknowns. The efficiency of markets over time, along with the research of many people and the performance of the investment team, forms a buoy.

Being the Buoy

You don’t need to sell investments, returns, or guaranteed income to instill confidence. You do, however, need to help instill confidence.

After all, confidence, strategy, advocacy, integrity, and discipline are values we need to instill in our client experiences.

We can think about each of these tenants as buoys.

Buoys have been used in navigation across the oceans and seas since 1295.

If you study them, you’ll find that they serve all sorts of purposes — military, maritime, fishing, regulatory, light, sound, data acquisition, marking, or moorings.

All buoys have an objective purpose. They are placed strategically and specifically to help people navigate well.

They are made to endure unsteady seas without ever losing their objectivity.

Steady through the Storm

Your clients come to you for guidance about how to reach their desired financial outcomes, but you can’t speak to each of them daily. Instead, you must create buoys of truth that help them navigate the rough seas of headlines. They need someone who can remind them of objective truths.

You need leadership that doesn’t waver from a vision formed by objective principles in your firm. You need someone who is tied to something that is time-tested and buoyant.

Of course, you aren’t required to behave like inanimate objects.

Humans aren’t machines (at least not yet). Having emotions about what’s happening around us is part of what makes us more than moving parts. Factoring in how our clients feel is important, not just because they might fire you for not understanding how significant their negative feelings about a market downturn might be.

Understanding how your clients feel gives you the opportunity to expand their view from isolated events with binary outcomes to a worldview with greater depth and purpose.

So, how do we find our buoys—the principles that anchor and define us and emit purpose, confidence, and time-tested resilience?

Finding Your Float

1. Identify What Your Clients Need to Stay the Course Ask great questions. Be students of those you serve and look for repeated themes in the questions you’re receiving from them. Create videos, audio recordings, articles, or fact sheets that help explain why headlines should or shouldn’t change the course of their financial plan.
2. Anchor to Principles You need this. Your team needs this. Your clients absolutely need this. These are the non-negotiables that you anchor everyone to. These are values that your firm holds to and that everyone can recite with their eyes closed.

Let me know What are your principles, and are you leading your team and clients with them?

Related: What In-N-Out Teaches Advisory Firms About Managing Exceptions