Intimacy is a strong basis for business
There’snothing quite like getting to know your clients intimately as a way of truly servicing their needs and expectations. But just how intimately should a planner go?
For Barbacan Benefits planner Carolyn Berezovsky, a planner should get to know their clients as intimately as the client feels comfortable in letting them get. It is a view that she is passionate about, but one that is too often lacking, she believes, in most planning practices.
“To work intimately with clients is a strong basis for business,” Berezovsky says.
In a refreshing presentation free from any slavish reliance on PowerPoint slides, Berezovsky assumed a hypothetical client character, Sheila, as a means of communicating to planners attending her session what exactly, in this instance at least, a client expects from a planner.
For Sheila, recently widowed to a successful businessman, she is suddenly inundated with advice from a wide variety of quarters — lawyers, accountants, bank representatives and planners. “But,” according to Sheila, “no-one was prepared to take the time out to listen to me or explain to me what was happening.”
For Sheila, it was important for these advisers to:
learn about her and talk about her;
find out what is important about her; and
make her feel like an individual, with specific and unique requirements, not just another client.
“I want [my financial affairs] to be handled by someone who is thinking about me, listening to me, understands me, educates me, inspires me. All these things will empower me,” Sheila told delegates.
Reassuming her true identity, Berezovsky restated the obvious, that to know your clients is to respect them and to listen to them. She pointed out that the simple things can matter the most in building client relationships, like personalising letters, demonstrating a genuine interest in the life of your client, and ensuring that regular client portfolio reviews are used as an opportunity to talk about things of interest to your client, not just about their investments.
“That’s the way I want to work with all my clients — at an intimate level. I listen to them, work with them and respect them. It’s enjoyable,” Berezovsky says.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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