4 Ways to Give Clients a 'Wow' Experience

2. Strive to impress.

As broker-dealers mature or advisors get accustomed to their client bases, they can sometimes fall into complacency and take customers for granted. They might get lazy and stop making the effort to impress.  

Does your spouse or your family members like it when they are taken for granted?  Your client’s don’t either. So whether you are a BD or an advisor, striving to please will keep retention of these relationships high.  

For advisors, knowing clients’ passions, hobbies, charitable concerns, sports interests and more importantly their children and/or other relatives brings opportunities for personalized gifts and planned activities that show you know and care about them. This also will help you keep them as clients and set the stage for retaining their children as clients in the future. 

For broker-dealers, advisor counsels that let advisor concerns influence company policy, reward trips for those at multiple levels of production, as well as communications from management to advisors on an individual basis (not firmwide memos) make advisors feel significant. 

Furthermore, awards for different accomplishments, such as plaques and crystal trophies they can display, are very motivating to top advisors. Examples of the focus of these awards include those with the most asset growth for the year, most production for the year, most advisory production for the year, most new accounts for the year, and most charitable work in their community for the year.

We’ve known some BD presidents that make a practice of calling up to 10 advisors per week to connect with them on the quality of their service and business processing, as well as to request suggestions advisors may have for improvements. 

Firms that take these extra steps help build a culture that’s perceived as advisor driven.  

3. Pursue what’s meaningful, not what’s expedient.

“Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient,” is Rule No. 7 in Canadian clinical psychologist and psychology professor Jordan Peterson’s 2018 self-help book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos.” We include Peterson’s rule No. 7 in our top four “Wow” points, because we find that the most successful advisors and firms have taken a path to pursue being meaningful.  

In his Rule No. 7, Peterson encourages us to “Stop doing what you know you shouldn’t be doing. Do what you know provides your life meaning. The expedient path would be to indulge in short-term pleasures and put off long term commitments. You do what feels best today, indulging in your basest desires all the time.”

Peterson continues, “Acting with meaning, you will attain more security and strength than would be granted by a short-sighted concern for your own security.  What you do will matter to you.  In turn you’ll feel better about your existence, and the evils and injustices of the world are more bearable, because you will know they can be overcome. 

“Meaning regulates impulses and recognizes the value of making the world better,” he explains. “Expedience rejects responsibility, it doesn’t have the wisdom or sophistication to look ahead and plan carefully; it has no courage or sacrifice; it’s the easy way out. By providing deeper meaning, meaning gratifies all impulses.”

On an advisor level, the term “closer” pertains to representatives that excel at manipulating clients and prospects to buy whatever it is they are pedaling. (A rep with a product-driven investing style is an example of an expedient person.)

The financial planner who works slowly and deliberately, with all investing decisions supported by a financial plan and adhering to a fiduciary standard would be someone advising in a meaningful way.  

For broker-dealers, self-serving expedience can be characterized by: 

• Prioritizing profit centers over their advisors’ ability to effectively adhere to a fiduciary standard; and
• Compliance policies that cater to the lowest common denominator, with paperwork and processing business considered “burdensome” at best.

For BDs doing business in a meaningful way, their operating motives looks like this: If we do what’s best for advisors and their clients in the long run, we too will benefit. 

Broker-dealers that take a long-term approach are frequently (but not always) privately owned, because they don’t have the potentially disruptive obstacles of pressure from shareholders or ownership changes from private equity firms. 

It’s worth noting that by working and living meaningfully, you’ll create Wow experiences that are shared with all those around you. 

4. Do many things extremely well.

What we’ve seen to be universal in making the end client say, “Wow” are broker-dealers and advisors that do many things extremely well. They build a culture that people are drawn to and want to experience. 

Technology, operations, processes and compliance have been refined over and over until they operate with such accuracy that mistakes and errors are rare occurrences. These firms and individuals are always learning and keeping up with changes, always honing their craft to deliver a better experience. 

We encourage you to read through Janus’ “The Book of Wow” to learn what others have done to exceed normal expectations and to come up with your own Wow experiences for clients that you feel are a better fit for your personality and client base. 

Wow experiences are similar to “unexpected acts of kindness,” which can be infectious and very gratifying when put into regular practice.