Aaron Grady, Advisor Consulting Director at USA Financial: Welcome back to The RARE Advisor. I've asked Allan to join us again today to talk a little bit about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. When it comes to the the coaching that we do with the advisors we work with, there's an underlying theme of helping our advisors build practices that promote and foster client advocacy. And you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can build client relationships and try to drive client advocacy inside of a financial advisory firm. But the one that I really want to focus on today is the topic of Moments of Truth: a topic that was coined to kind of encapsulate a series of events that happen in a client's life. This is a unique opportunity, and some advisors do a pretty good job of addressing this, but quite frankly, what we find more often than not, is that this is an underserved opportunity that often is neglected. And as our friend and mentor Steve Phillips would say, it's a it's a human nature thing. These are things that, in your normal life, you would do. And so why you wouldn't you do this as a financial advisor, especially for some of your best clients? So, so let's talk about it - Allan, what are moments of truth?
Allan Oehrlein, Practice Management Consultant at USA Financial: So Moments of Truth can simply be defined as the seminal moments in a client's life, either positive or negative, planned or unplanned. It's a time for you, the advisor, and your team to show your very best clients that you're paying attention to the things that matter most to them, and it's also a great opportunity for you and the team to provide that superior level of client service. It's something positive, like having your first grandchild. Or on the other side of the spectrum, it could be something negative, like receiving a diagnosis of a terminal illness or even losing your spouse. These are all very important times in your clients lives, and they're definitely worth acknowledging and showing again that you care.
Aaron: I love how you share the idea of these are planned things that we can anticipate, and things that are unplanned that come out of the blue. As we go a little bit farther, we're going to talk about some best practices. But I think there's a great opportunity here to share an idea. How do you address the unplanned, right? How do you deal with something that you can't anticipate happening? And I think what you're sharing is that if you have a process to address the unexpected, you don't get caught off guard and you can be less reactive and more proactive in the approach. Is that a fair statement?
Allan: Absolutely. Again, as no surprise, a common theme throughout everything we ever talk about is centered around having that process and not having to reinvent the wheel every single time something comes up. So, yep, you hit the nail on the head here.
Aaron: And I love the term Moments of Truth. We use another term in some of the coaching we do - we talk about 'critical financial and life events', but I think the term Moments of Truth is kind of a softer tone. Critical financial life events are more of the "hey, we need to change your plan because life events have caused changes, or the markets changed, so we need to make mechanical changes to what we've built". Moments of Truth are more focused on the relationship. So let's shift focus. We know what the "what" is. These are events in a client's life where an advisor and their team can spotlight and, more importantly, acknowledge the events as they happen as an opportunity to build on that relationship and deepen that relationship with their clients. Now, who typically would you do this for? Is this what you do for all clients?
Allan: Usually you'd limit this to to your top clients. We're talking the AAA clients and your AA clients. You know, we always preach that you don't want to be all things to all people. You want to be able to protect your time and throw in these additional above and beyond services for the types of folks that you want to duplicate. So it's something to always keep in the back of your mind as far as when you're spending the majority of your time on the specific sector of your client base that you want to duplicate.
Aaron: I think that's a good thought, the idea of who we are wanting to replicate. Who are we wanting to turn into advocates? And so you focus there. This is a conversation I always have with advisors. Hey, at the end of the day, you're not heartless ghoul. You're still human being, right? And if one of your clients, who's not one of your top tier clients, loses a loved one or there's a serious illness, it doesn't mean you're not going to acknowledge those things when they happen to them. The response just may be different. The idea here is, this is a way that if we're going to drive client advocacy with our best clients, when we talk about the things we do when building a practice around client advocacy, it's identifying your ideal client and then start building all your processes focused on that group. Then you can expand from there, if there's capacity for the team. Because the beauty is when it comes to things like Moments of Truth, this could be something that's done with a solopreneur/individual advisor/no staff, or an advisor that has a complete team. Is that a fair statement?
Allan: Yep, there it is again - it all comes down to process. No matter how large or small your team is, if you've got defined steps laid out on exactly what the event is, what action is to be taken, who receives the gift or the card or whatever it happens to be, and then any additional notes, you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. And some of these events might happen every few years or so. So instead of having to recall that memory of what exactly did I do, where did I buy it, you can just simply go to a spreadsheet or a workflow you've created, and, like I always say, just follow the bouncing ball and and take the same action that you did before - saving you a tremendous amount of time.
Aaron: I like the idea that you build the approach and you build the process, so that you don't have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to get there. And that works great too, especially with things that can be anticipated. Perfect example is birth of a grandchild, and that's one that a lot of advisors will draw a circle around and say, "Hey, a new grandchild is something we'll acknowledge for one of our best clients". For some, they'll buy a pink bear or a blue bear, or a pink blanket or a blue blanket, or a book that the grandparent can read to the grandchild, and they can pre-stage some of this. They can pre-order some of this. There was a really unique one from a team I had in the past that would order these wooden step stools with the child's name as a puzzle on the top of it. It's a great way to not just connect with your client, but it's also a way to connect with their family. And, it's not a topic for today, but one of the conversations we have a lot is about how do you connect with that next generation? How do you start building inroads with your best clients' families, so that those relationships stay when the clients have passed? So there's ways like that. Do you have any examples that you've seen with with teams?
Allan: First and foremost, that's a great example, because both of my daughters actually have the puzzle stools. They're beautiful, handmade quality, and the kids love them - not only for the puzzle aspect, but like you said, they're functional. They sit on them. They use them to stand on to reach things they shouldn't reach, and to brush their teeth. And every time I look at them, I think about my sister-in-law who gifted both of our daughters those gifts. So it's a fantastic gift that never goes out of style. Another popular one that I've seen recently is during the time of a new home purchase. It's kind of an older tradition that you might have seen from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" where you come over with a beautiful basket with a loaf of bread, a container of salt, and a bottle of wine, and within the card you can inscribe "the bread is so that you never go hungry, the bottle of wine is so that you never go thirsty, and the salt represents, maybe future tears, hopefully they're all happy ones". Something as simple as that is a great gesture. It's thoughtful, it's memorable, and it's something that the client will not only remember, but will end up talking about to their peers and their neighbors.
Aaron: There are so many great ideas. And that's the beauty of this whole concept of Moments of Truth, is there's no monopoly on great ideas. There was a team that one of their top clients had a family pet who passed away, and it was a big deal for the family losing a loved one. And so the advisory team had a pencil sketch done of the dog and had it framed really nice with a condolence card, and sent it to the family. And that family hung it on the wall. And every time they looked at that photo, it was not just reminding them of the loved one lost, but it also reminded them of the unique relationship they have with their advisor. These are all great ideas. There's so many, we could spend all afternoon talking about these. We had a team who had a client who got diagnosed with cancer, and the advisor's wife was really big into knitting. She had just made a new blanket for herself. But instead they packaged it up, knowing that the client, as they go through cancer treatments with chemo, they're often really cold, and had personally delivered the blanket to the client with some additional items in a little care basket. And the family was sharing back pictures of the loved one going through chemo, wearing the blanket, and acknowledging how much it was appreciated. And again, this is just human nature. It's basic human decency and, I know for most advisors, it's not that advisors don't want to do these things. Often times, it usually comes down to one of two camps: it's either I don't feel I have the time, or I'm not creative and I can't think of what to do, and so then I get hung up on the execution of it, and then next thing you know we're so far past I don't want to do anything. So, now let's talk about a couple of best practices as we kind of wrap up our conversation today, so we understand what this is. It's a way to engage with your best clients, to really drive client relationships outside of what's expected as a financial advisor. And you know, we really kind of harped on some of the negative. There's lots of great things, like retirement and a kid going off to college, and we can provide lists of detailed examples that you could choose from. Okay, so we talked about the why - the making the connection with your clients. So let's talk about the how - the blocking and tackling. What are some best practices that advisors and their team should look at when they say, "Hey, I'm going to commit to this, it's something we're going to do going forward. We're going to make it a point of leveraging Moments of Truth to drive client engagement". What are some best practices?
Allan: I kind of alluded this to before, but it starts with putting pen to paper and getting those thoughts out. Simply think back at maybe the last 5 to 10 Moments of Truth that some of your best clients encountered, and just start writing those down in an Excel sheet. If you had some unique ideas that you executed maybe include those as well, but it really just comes down to listing out the Moments of Truth - who gets it (if it's directed towards the spouse, the client, or both, if it's directed to the child of the client, etc.), what action is going to be taken, who is responsible for it (whether it's the advisor, the assistant, or a combination - say the advisor signs the card, or the assistant gets everything together, assembles it in the basket, and then the advisor themself is delivering it), and then any other additional notes that are priority. So if you're ordering something from a particular website, have a link to the website, and just any other tidbit of info that's going to be helpful and expedite the process and make it more efficient that you can list in there. So really, that's the starting place, and it's honestly the most important part, I think, of creating the process around how you're going to recognize, remember, and then execute on these moments of truth.
Aaron: I love that you said to start small. I have teams that will do 5. They'll do 10. Even teams who do 10, I will usually say to set 10 as the max number. And know that there will always be one-off Moments of Truth. There will be things that fall outside of the norm of these. But find the 5 or 10 you can commit to. If it's 5 for right now, great. And then, as you build out the process, and you build out the response, understand that this is a living breathing document. This is a living breathing process. As you start seeing the impact that it has to your client relationships, as you start seeing the types of outcomes that you're you're seeking, you can evolve this process. You can add steps. I have teams that started off, they said, "Hey, look, we're going to do 5, we're going to do it just for our top two tiers of clients". And then as they got better and better at this, they started saying, "Well, okay, we still want to acknowledge if it's this type of event - maybe it's a serious illness or death. Maybe we're going to acknowledge all clients, but we're going to get a little more specific as far as what is the response based off of who it is. So maybe for our top tier clients it's a different response than for our some of our lower tier clients". And so this process can be customized, it can be tailored, and again, there is no monopoly on great ideas. There's so many really, really cool things that you can do to to engage, but it's about the process. And by standardizing that, it takes away the need to do those mental gymnastics. If I've got it written down, I've got a process so that when this happens, if you have a team, your team can get the ball rolling and start executing the process without having to wait for the advisor to even come into play. I love how it makes the team be less reactive and more proactive. And then lastly, probably what I would share too, is if you have a CRM, if you have technology that can help streamline and automate this process - whether it's workflows, activity, templates, tasks, documenting and putting it in your procedures manual - I would say any of those things we would highly recommend as part of the process. So with that, Allan, do you have any final thoughts around Moments of Truth?
Allan: I just really want to drive home the importance of acknowledging these Moments of Truth. These days, being a great advisor is the expectation. It's all about going above and beyond and displaying this professional contrast. What makes me different aside from being a great advisor? So really take advantage of the opportunity to show that you care, to acknowledge it, to incorporate that human nature component, and again, strengthen the relationship side of the time with the client.
Aaron: Thank you for the time today. If you want more information on Moments of Truth, reach out to us here at USA Financial and we will be more than happy to share some ideas and insights to help you make an impact on those client relationships.
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