As for #1, let’s say only that I am thankful for clients who, as it turns out, run customer-feedback surveys for giant tech companies and are experts in the matter, and furthermore are willing to share their thoughts after year one’s sub-optimal effort.
Moving on…
As you read below about what clients get out of meeting and talking with us, I’d love for you to take a moment to imagine what it could be like for you to have someone (a financial planner) in your life whom you could meet with and talk with in this way. Would you love it as much as our clients do? If so, what is holding you back from working with a planner?
The not-well-made-but-still-useful 2023 survey and the 2024 survey gave us many insights, but the biggest one across both surveys was: Clients value meeting with us. A lot. (Most clients, most of the time.)
From 2023’s survey, we learned that clients want meetings more proactively scheduled between their Annual Renewal Meetings. We had been proactive about scheduling that one, lynchpin meeting every year. But we often then left it up to them to reach out when they wanted to meet mid-year. (Turns out, wanting to meet and getting around to scheduling a meeting are two very different things. As a result, some clients weren’t meeting with us as often as they wanted.)
So, in 2024, we made a simple but surprisingly powerful change: In our annual meeting, we scheduled not only next year’s annual meeting but also a mid-year meeting with the client.
Usually, that mid-year meeting is six months out. If there is something specific going on in a client’s life that needs sooner or more frequent conversations, we schedule meetings accordingly. Clients now always have at least one meeting with us on the calendar, which you know is reassuring! (Well, almost always, because I can’t guarantee anything.)
From 2024’s survey, we learned that, out of many different things we do for clients (tax return review, open enrollment advice, email reminders, etc.), clients value the meetings, or perhaps more accurately, the conversations with us the most.
Why do clients get out of these meetings? The meetings can (paraphrased from the survey responses):
