One of the biggest challenges that independent advisors face is communicating to clients and prospective clients all the services their firm and employees perform on their behalf. Back on June 30, in my blog titled "Death of the Rainmaker," I mentioned using "client service calendars" as one way of creating client awareness—and appreciation—of what their advisors do for them throughout each year. Since then, we've received a number of requests for more details on what those calendars might look like.
Because advisory firms are almost continuously doing something on each client account—and with today's technology, if an employee isn't, a computer probably is—it's often hard for advisors to provide the right balance of information. That is, providing enough detail that clients are sufficiently impressed with all the services that a firm provides, but not so much that it makes clients glaze over or, worse, think that you're just making stuff up.
When most advisors attempt to communicate all the things they do for their clients, they usually come up with a list of activities performed by the firm. While better than nothing, a list fails to capture both the regularity and frequency with which many services are performed and lacks the visual impact of an actual calendar.
As you'll see below, client service calendars don't need to contain "too much information," but they do have to be comprehensive enough to let your clients know that you and your firm are actively taking care of their finances throughout the year—even when they don't hear from you.
We encourage our advisor clients to take the time to create complete calendars that include every action that needs to be taken for every client during the upcoming year. Here's an example:
