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The first 90 days when you start working with a client is full of the opportunity to nail your experience on so many levels.
It's when we want everything you do to reinforce the value of the decision they've made to work with you and get advice.
I want to share with you a short summary of some of the training within the Leveraged/ Leveraged Online curriculum that's all about enabling your brand new client to go from:
"Okay, I'm doing this..."
to...
"So far, so good. This is what I expected"
then onto...
"Wow. This is better than I expected"
arriving at...
"This was a great decision!"
before finally setting up camp in...
"Let me tell you about this adviser I started working with..."
Experience is the mode, and value and advocacy is the target.
Do you remember the TV series 24?
It was a few years back now, but I remember it being huge.
It was a story of Jack Bauer, an FBI agent who had to basically go out and find a hidden bomb in Los Angeles.
What made this series pretty groundbreaking was that like the title there were 24 episodes, with each episode representing one hour in real-time. It was quite the day...
The point is here is this First 90 Days game is like your own personal version of 24.
The clock is ticking. Get it right and you win the client over. Get it wrong and your trigger buyers remorse. Boom!
Only you don't have 24 hours. You have 90 days.
That's about the period of time you have to take clients from an "Ok, yes" to a "Fantastic!".
So let's run through 5 onboarding principles, then we're going to talk a little bit about the 'WOW' in particular.
Principle 1: Lay out your process.
The reality is most people don't really "get" advice and when people don't fully understand how what you do works, you potentially open yourself up to all sorts of expectations spinning around the place and misunderstandings about how you work and how they're supposed to work with you.
That's where something you realise...
...your clients work with you the way you teach them to
- how they contact you,
- who they contact,
- how quickly they respond,
- what they tell you and
- what they don't
- the way that they work with you, you taught them how to do that.
The only question up for debate is whether you taught them actively or you taught them to do that by unintentionally reinforcing their actions.
The goal here is to take control of the all-important expectation game and teach clients how to engage, what to expect, how it works when they are most accepting of any information which is..... at the beginning
- What resources are available to them as part of our business?
- How do they get help?
- What do they need to ensure they inform you about?
- How quickly do you need them to respond?
Ninja tip - visuals can really help. When you're putting visuals in front of people as part of your first appointment, or even as part of your ongoing communication, you're increasing the quality and effectiveness of your communication by a factor of 10.
Principle 2. Remove resistance
Sometimes people seek advice because there are things they want to do but they don't find it easy or they don't enjoy it.
Part of giving advice is not just about working out how to help people.
Sometimes it's about working out how to help them act differently when it comes to money than they may have in the past.
Principle 3. Work the triggers
It helps to think about this in terms of triggers we want to hit.
Things we want to do consistently over this first 90 days to get clients to get involved,
- Inform them to let them know about what they need to know at the exact point they need to know.
- Pace the experience so they know where they are in the process and what comes next.
- Excite them, paint a forward picture and delight in equal measure.
Principle 4. Exceed
It's the small things that make the difference. It doesn't have to be expensive.
Principle 5. Keep it evergreen
When you're writing this stuff, when you're writing your emails to go out, when you're putting together your manual, don't put anything in there which is going to run the risk of it being unusable if small details change.
Names, dates, staff members by name - unless you're happy to re-record every time (which is an option if you know how), make sure your scaled touchpoints are reusable.
What do your First 90 Days look like?
If you like to share it with me email me back at help@audere.com.au and I'll share one tool from our program called the Let Us Know List that will blow your mind.