Welcome back to The RARE Advisor. I'm your host, Aaron Grady, and today we're gonna talk about one of my favorite topics. It's the idea and concept around the moments of truth and how you can leverage these moments of truth to deepen client relationships. Now, to start with, when we think about moments of truth, they really fit neatly inside of another concept that we often talk about, which is critical financial and life events. Critical financial and life events could be any number of things. Some of these things are planned, retirement, the purchase of a retirement property, maybe you buy a recreational vehicle. Some of them are unplanned. It's the serious illness. It is a death of a loved one. But these are these moments in time where you as an advisor are called upon to bring your expertise to bear. Because often these things, both planned and unplanned, both good and bad, can have a positive or negative impact on the financial plans that you've put in place for your clients. And so there's an element of these critical financial life events where you as a financial advisor have to step in, provide guidance, education, and a shoulder to lean on often to help guide your clients back onto the path of where their life's journey is taking them.
Now, the element of this that really speaks to me and to me as a person are the moments of truth. And these are those moments inside of those critical financial and life events that allow you, the advisor, to deepen relationships. Because it allows us to acknowledge these, not through the financial lens of my planning process, but more as a person and a human being, and allows me to acknowledge these seminal moments and let them know that we've seen them, they've been heard. It's been said this way. As an advisor might say to a client, we're not here just to provide guidance around your money. We're here for your life's most important moments. And I think for advisors who can do this and can do it well, it really works to create what we would call professional contrast, to set yourself apart from advisors who are just simply managing money. It allows you also to create a client environment that just fosters referability or introductions, but most importantly, it deepens that client loyalty and those moments that matter the most to your clients.
So let's talk about some of the execution of this. Now, this is not about getting into the gift giving business. That is a part of what we're talking about here. But this is really about taking a systematic approach to driving and being forefront in your client's mind. Staying top of mind, acknowledging these seminal moments and using it as an opportunity to promote client advocacy inside of your business because these are those moments in time when you respond that it gives a client a story to tell that they can tell to someone else. And so what I typically would tell an advisor is start with creating a list. Crumb up with a list of five to 10 things that you think you can acknowledge. Now, most advisors are already acknowledging some of these. They're acknowledging birthdays and they're acknowledging certain holidays. But we're not just talking about the birthday. We're not talking about a holiday. We're not even talking about wedding anniversaries. We're talking about our seminal or those milestone birthdays or those milestone wedding anniversaries. Those are the ones you can plan around. But we're also talking about all those other things. We're talking about personal health events. We're talking about major career transitions. We're talking about the birth of a grandchild. We're talking about the date of planned retirement or early retirement. We're talking about the sale of a business or purchasing of a retirement home or downsizing. These are all those moments in time that sometimes can be a little emotionally charged. And this gives us an opportunity to say, we're here for you. We're here for you to be not just a shoulder to lean on, but to acknowledge that we're here as part of this process. Again, for those life's most important moments. And so I would tell an advisor is create a list. Create a list of your five or 10 items that you think that you could acknowledge on a regular basis. Milestone birthdays, milestone anniversaries, serious illness, death of a spouse, birth of a grandchild. So come up with a list. The next step is to start figuring out what are the responses gonna be. How am I going to respond in these moments?
Let's take a step back and let's think about this for a second. Now, I'm asking you as an advisor and as a team to elevate some of what you do, to try to take a deeper, more meaningful approach to building client relationships, creating professional contrast. You can't do this for everybody, quite frankly. What I would encourage you to do is say, we're gonna narrow our focus and we're gonna focus on doing these moments of truth for our top tier clients, our AA's and our AAA clients. Our client advocates and our clients who are ideal to the practice and we wish to make advocate clients. Now, understandably, most of you are not heartless ghouls. If something tragic happens to one of your clients, big or small, you're going to acknowledge it in one form or fashion. And quite frankly, as a financial advisor, there's some minimal activity that you have to do on the planning side if something significant like that's happened. But what I'm talking about is really taking a intentional approach for your AA and AAA clients. And so start by picking 5 to 10 of the items that you feel that you're comfortable that you can execute on an ongoing basis, and then define what the response is gonna be. Now, something is better than nothing. If it's simply that we wanna start off by, look, we're gonna send a card, or maybe we'll send flowers. Or we'll pick up the phone and we'll make a personal phone call. Anything is better than nothing, but it's a place to start and to build off of. And as you get more comfortable, you could start doing things like maybe it's a stuffed animal, maybe it's a pink one or a blue one for the birth of a grandchild, maybe it's a children's book or a blanket, maybe it's for a serious illness, maybe you found a company close by that you could send food. One of the things we've learned is, flowers are great, but now we gotta deal with flowers at the hospital or what have you and take them back. But a thoughtful note and then food to help people out when they get back, when they're wore out and they can't find the time to do it themselves. These are those meaningful moments when people talk about them. And then define who's responsible for this activity. If you've got a team around you, make someone the delegated person responsible. Advocate person, that ambassador, the client experience ambassador for your firm. If it's you, if you're a solopreneur, by defining these moments and having clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish, it's going to allow you to be more proactive, less reactive, and it's going allow you to be more nimble and less reactionary. So once you've actually got who's going to do it, who you're doing it for, what the response is going to be, got to make sure that you document all of this for your process.
And ultimately what this is going to do is it's going to allow you to continue to elevate the client experience. It's going to continue to allow you to deepen, widen the client relationships. It's going to drive client advocacy and it's going to build that moat around your best clients. Now again, let me finish today with a little story, a real life example. And I've got a bunch of these, but this was one that really kind of spoke to me not too long ago. I had an advisor that I was having a conversation with and he happened to tell me about one of these moments of truth.
He shared with me that one of his best clients had found out that the husband had found out that the spouse had been diagnosed with cancer. And I think many of us, we've had family members that have been touched with this terrible disease. And after finding this out, the advisor at the time, his wife had just actually made a blanket. She just, I believe, knitted a blanket for herself. She gets cold on airplanes. And so she'd knitted this for herself. But when they found out that this client had been diagnosed with cancer, they knew that during the chemo process that being cold and having chills is something that is part of that process. So, and one of the side effects, the unfortunate side effects. And so the advisor created a gift basket, a personal touch gift basket that spoke to this individual situation and the circumstances and packaged that blanket up and with his wife personally hand delivered it to the client.
Now, in and of itself, that is a very meaningful and thoughtful and heartfelt gesture that in any situation would deepen a relationship. But the client's response was what was really interesting to me. Not only did the client, you know, thank the advisor for it, but as the wife was going through chemo, the husband started sharing pictures on Facebook, was sending pictures back to the advisor of the wife wearing the blanket and showing the appreciation that the advisor, the financial advisor who has a meaningful relationship with this client was willing to take the time, the energy and the effort to go above and beyond to show that they actually care. And again, like I said, the advisor's not just there to give them guidance on their money, it's to be there for those most seminal, meaningful moments in the client's life.
And so moments of truth, it's a simple, thoughtful way to engage with your best clients. Create a meaningful connection and to elevate the client experience while digging that moat around your best clients to prevent the influx of outside ideas by creating this elevated client experience. And so if you want to know more about this, you want to hear more information, if you'd to get a list of possible gifts or solutions for these different moments of truth, reach out. We're more than happy to share those. If you like what you hear on the RARE Advisor, make sure you like and subscribe. And as always wishing you the best of success and we'll see you again in the next rare advisor video.
--
The RARE Advisor is a business model supercharged by Recurring And Repeatable Events. With decades of experience coaching successful advisors, your host, along with other leaders in the industry, discusses what it takes to grow a successful practice. With the aim of helping financial professionals and financial advisors take their business to the next level, this podcast shares insights and success stories that will make a real impact. Regardless of the stage of your practice, The RARE Advisor will provide thoughtful guidance, suggestions for developing systems and processes that work, and ideas for creating an authentic experience for your clients.
The RARE Advisor is also a podcast! Subscribe today via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your preferred podcast listening service for easier on-the-go listening
