Secrets of a good service offering revealed

Addressing the ifa Business Strategy Day in Brisbane on Tuesday, Human to Human founder Michael Back said it was important that throughout each stage of their relationship with their clients, advisers needed to reinforce the tangible outcomes they’d achieved through the advice relationship, such as funding a home renovation or overseas holiday.

“Most businesses are good at working out what a client’s goals are and what they are striving towards up front, but the problem is they aren’t revisiting that frequently enough,” Mr Back said.

He gave the example of advice firm Verse Wealth, who he had recently worked with to develop a regular review process where clients revisited the values, challenges and goals they had set at the beginning of the advice relationship to see how far they had come since engaging the firm.

“They have a constantly evolving list of values that their clients hold close to their heart, the goals that they’re focusing on and the challenges, and then every review meeting they sit with the client in front of them on the screen and cross out certain goals,” Mr Back said. 

“It's a very powerful experience to reinforce that we’ve caught up six months ago and look at all the things you’ve done, those challenges you had last time we spoke are no longer challenges and if it wasn’t for us being in your life, those things wouldn’t have [been] achieved.”

He added that the typical questionnaire used to onboard clients and conduct reviews could also be targeted to highlight more tangible outcomes over the course of the client relationship, by making the questions more psychological in nature.

“A typical question you’d ask a client before a review meeting is ‘has there been a significant change in your income or expenses?’ but why not ask questions like ‘how happy are you with your current lifestyle?’ or ‘how happy are you with the progress you’re currently making with your finances?’” Mr Back said.

“You can measure that before you start working with someone and after everything’s implemented. That shows how [the client is] changing how they feel about these things, to articulate the value of what you do and revisit that through the review process.”