Participants:

Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild

Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable. The podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and this week is a little different because Steve and I are talking to each other about a topic that we really believe is critical for anyone thinking about client engagement and growth. And that is how you can incorporate feedback to help you design an extraordinary client experience and drive more referrals. So we talk about the evolution of client feedback to reflect co-creation of value, which is one of the most important trends impacting how you engage with clients. And we go into detail on the different ways that you can gather feedback. From surveys, to interviews, to advisory boards, and how to choose the right methodology based on your objectives.

Julie Littlechild:
Steve not only shares a step by step on how to create an advisory board, but really great examples of how advisors have used that process to achieve some really significant results. And with that, let’s get straight to the conversation.

Steve Wershing:
Well, Julie it’s just us today.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh, what did we do with our guests?

Steve Wershing:
Well, actually, we’re going to have just a conversation today. And as much as I love all the guests and it’s really been exciting to have those guests over the last few months, it’s also nice just to be able to talk with you. And we’re doing that today because we’re talking about something that you and I know a lot about that has some particular relevance for advisors today. We’re going to be talking about client feedback, and you’re the guru of client feedback. And we’re going to talk about the two different basic kinds of client feedback, and what you can get from each of them, and how you can do each of them. And we each have new projects that relate to those, so we’ll talk about those later in the episode. But let me start out by asking you a question Julie, how do you see client feedback fitting into the business of an advisor today and what’s been changing about that?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. You know what? When I think about client feedback … And I’d be interested in your perspective on this, because we’ve always thought of it as a tool to validate service. And some people think it’s a great thing to do, some people think it’s a great thing to do but they’re afraid to do it, but it’s always very tactical. One of the things that I really believe though is that involving the client more actively in designing the client experience is one of these big client engagement trends that we need to look at. So, we often talk about co-creation of value, and client feedback is a big part of that. So I don’t think it’s just a tactic, I think this is part of a much bigger trend.

Steve Wershing:
Well I agree, and I think that the forward-looking advisors will really get a lot of value out of this because I think handling it tactically is kind of the superficial and the way that it’s been done traditionally. But I think the advisors who are going to get the most out of this learn how to do this tactically, and like you said, learn how to bring the client in to co-create that experience. It’s one thing to find out from clients what they think of you, and how much they enjoy the service, and those kinds of things, but if you can involve the client in designing the experience, that’s what niche is all about. And so I am all about, bring those clients in somehow, and let’s find out what they find most valuable, and let’s drop the stuff they don’t find valuable. And let’s hear from them and use that feedback to try to discover new things that we can deliver to them that would really set us apart from other advisors.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that when you get into that mindset you start to think a little outside the box from the way we’ve thought about feedback. So in the past, it’s one to five, how do you love us so far? And you know, it was kind of … And it’s helpful as a measurement tool, but when you think about it now it’s what are the challenges that you’re facing? What do you care about? What does an extraordinary client experience look like for you maybe outside of this industry? That starts to get the creative juices flowing in terms of what is going to really set you apart, and you need clients for that. We need their input.

Steve Wershing:
Well yeah. They’re the experts. If we’re going to have the experts at designing the ideal solution, you go to the people who you want to consume that experience. I’d love to hear your perspective on something that I run into a lot that’s a challenge. A lot of advisors are really reluctant to open the door that wide, because a lot of advisors have sort of a …. They’ve designed an experience, they’ve designed a value proposition, and they really like that, and they think there’s a lot of value, and there is a lot of value in it, and that’s what they want to deliver. And so, there’s some reluctance sometimes to ask questions that would relate to that. How do you respond to advisors that express that kind of concern to you?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I think it is a real concern. I’ve often asked groups of advisors, what’s the number one reason you don’t gather feedback? And it’s fear. So the self aware award goes to the advisor… Because that’s what we say. But I think that when you are truly focused on creating something great, and truly focused on setting yourself apart, we need to find the confidence to ask for input on it. I mean this would apply to any area of life, let’s face it. So the input isn’t to suggest there isn’t value, and the input is almost never, at least from what I’ve seen to say you’re doing a terrible job. The input is so that you can tweak and innovate and set yourself apart. That’s I think where it really starts to become helpful. And the other thing I would say is, one of the biggest reasons that we can maybe set aside our own fear, is that the majority of our clients say that it’s important. We just actually asked this question on one of our recent surveys of investors. And two thirds of them said that being asked for their input was somewhat or very important.

So, yes you understand them, and yes you deliver something great, but they’re still telling us that it’s important to have that two way conversation.

Steve Wershing:
Right. And one of the things that you and I found on that study that we did a couple years ago, was that advisors who involve the clients in the experience also tend to get more referrals. And we were talking about really tactical, really minor things like, do you ask the client for input on the meeting agendas for your review meetings? So that’s a really simple straight forward tactical kind of way of going about it. I can only imagine how powerful it could be if you involve the clients more deeply, and like you said, co-creating that experience that you offer to people.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. Actually I think that’s a really important point here. That often when we use the word feedback, people think a survey. But feedback is involving the client. So yeah, what should this review look like? What are you covering? What’s the overall experience look like? How do they feel about key issues? It’s all of these different points at which we can gather input to refine the experience. So a lot of people would refer to that as kind of voice of the customer. Which I think is what we’re talking about is how do we find all the different ways to incorporate a client’s voice?

Steve Wershing:
And you’ve spoken in the past about different kinds of feedback. So can you tell us about the basic categories of feedback, and lets start teasing those apart and examining each one individually?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah sure. Usually the way I think about it is, it’s qualitative or quantitative. Even though both can have a mix. And I think the right choice for most advisors has to do with your objectives. So under qualitative, I might put things that you know a lot about, and I want to talk to you about, like advisory boards or focus groups, or group discussion, whatever label we want to put on those.

Steve Wershing:
Right sure. Even individual meetings with clients like things that you can tag onto the end of a review meeting and just ask a few questions about your service. So I get it, yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
That’s exactly it. So kind of the client interview process. Quantitative is really where you’re getting more quantitative input. And that can be on satisfaction levels, it can be on what they’re interested in, it can be on what they’re challenged by. There’s a whole range of things, but it’s really more you go out to all of your clients and you get more of a quantitative benchmark on what’s going on.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. And I see that as a great tool to use over time to track trends. Just in terms of how people are feeling about your service and what they value related to other things. Anything that you can do quantitatively that you can do over time. Because you know it, when you do a survey, things like a general satisfaction rating in and of itself is not all that valuable, and that the average is usually pretty sky high. So the number’s not that important, but the trend can be potentially useful. Am I reading that right?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And some things you want quantitative reads on that might be one time. So if I was thinking about launching a more comprehensive educational campaign, was going to do some workshops for my clients, or what have you, on one survey I might go deep on what they’re interested in learning more about, or get them to rate the potential value of topics that I’m considering. Now I might not do that on my next survey, so it’s not a benchmark in that sense, but I really do want a quantitative read on it. I don’t want two guys telling me this is of interest and then I build my whole plan around that.

Steve Wershing:
Right, that’s a good point and as an example on how you can skew things when you do that qualitatively, we did an advisory board not long ago where we asked people about the use of the portfolio reporting system and the experience of this advisor, like many advisors, is there’s a very low rate of clients logging in and actually accessing a lot of that. So we wanted to find out. We wanted to ask them some questions just to see is it worth it? We pay the value of a small car to have this every year. So, does it make sense for us to keep it up? As it turns out, there were 10 people who logged in I think over the last 90 days, and seven of them were sitting in the room. So it’s like okay, this is the wrong group to ask.

Julie Littlechild:
Exactly. See, we’re right, continue doing it. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And when you do that kind of qualitative, it’s great for going deeper on why. Like what do you value? And why do you value? And how is this important? That’s the kind of stuff you can’t really get in a survey.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. And one thing I like to do, and we’ll probably touch on this a couple times is starting with the quantitative, and then using the qualitative to dig into the results. So what you might do is you might list the discrete services that you offer, and then ask people to rank them or to rate. And you’re going to have to tell me this, because you’re the expert at this stuff. But then when you put all that together then you can bring that to a focus group or to an advisory board or something like that and start digging into, this is something that’s kind of marginal based on your feedback, and we should explore, do we enhance it? Do we drop it? What do we do with it?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And it could also be … A quant can be a good prelude just to a deeper conversation with a client. So even if you weren’t doing the group, which can be helpful for so many reasons, just being able to sit down with a client and say “Well this was the level of satisfaction you provided, it was a four out of five, I’m thrilled about that. Thank you so much. You know one of the things I’d love to know is what we could do to be a five?” Well you can’t ask that in a survey, because you can probe a little more deeply. So it’s always a prelude to a deeper conversation I think, quant.

Steve Wershing:
Yep, I agree. I agree. And one of the things that I really like to do is to use the quantitative stuff, or to use the qualitative feedback to dig into surprising answers that you get. So there’s one example, a great example of an advisory board that we did. And they did a survey not long before we did this particular board meeting. And this is a firm that does some really deep technical financial planning. These folks have some serious technical chops. And so they really pride themselves on the quality and the frequency of the planning that they do for clients. So they put a question on their survey, when was the last time your plan was updated? And they had answers like, within three months, within six months, within a year. And the last one was, I don’t know. And 43% of their clients responded, I don’t know, and their heads exploded. Because they’re like constantly doing it. And so we were able to dig into that in the advisory board. We were able to say, “So this is the result that we got. We were really surprised about that. Can you shed a little light on it for us?”

And so we had a really interesting conversation about it. And I actually found a really simple thing, what turns out that they didn’t update and reprint an entire financial plan every time they updated it. They would work on it on the phone or in person, and then they would send a follow up letter. So to them, the follow up letter was the plan update. And people weren’t perceiving it that way. So all we did … And this was suggested by one of the clients. All we did was we printed at the top of the letter, plan update, and problem went away.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I don’t know is a really powerful answer. I’ve often seen people try to remove that, and say no we want to force an answer. Well no, because if the real answer is I don’t know, that’s important information.

Steve Wershing:
Exactly. And like you said, that can be the most important information. It’s a lot more important on a particular question potentially to know that people are really not sure how to evaluate this than to know whether or not it’s a four or a five.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Because there are so many ways to use feedback I think that … Like you’ve just given some examples of probably ways that people wouldn’t even associate with feedback. Because we often think of it as, how am I doing? And that’s nice. Or a lot of people are using Net Promoter Score. Which I think can work in its true sense well, depending on what you’re trying to do. But when you think about it, if you do it well you can include questions that lead to more referrals. You can literally tease out your referral opportunities. We’ve had some interesting questions included like, just trying to understand some of the big challenges faced by a group of clients, which then led to tailoring a communications plan. We’ve seen people-

Steve Wershing:
Can you tell me more about that example, because that’s fascinating?

Julie Littlechild:
Yes. So let’s assume … I’ll take a general segment, like you working with pre-retirees or something like that. But really digging in on what are the challenges that they faced moving into retirement? And of course, we all know, it’s about far more than the money. So if people started talking about … I’m trying to think of the top two in that case, but it would be like effectively, what am I going to do with my time? Like there were more emotional responses. Well, that could lead to just a simple follow up, like bringing in an expert to talk about the psychological transition to retirement. And so it was really connected. The client said this, and now there’s a communication. That’s pretty powerful.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, that’s a great example and that’s really interesting. I’d also like to go back and ask you a little bit more about net promoter score. Because you’ve made the point to me before that net promoter score can be really good and powerful in more transaction-oriented businesses. But in a relationship oriented business like this, the relevance of it changes. So can you tell us a little bit more about that because I think it’s a really important insight?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. So net promoter was really designed as a transactional thing. You know you rent a car, and you get this, and you’re rating the transaction. It was then brought into our industry, which we all I think would agree is far less transactional. Now, the only caveat however is that the question, which is would you recommend your advisor in the next 12 months, or are you likely, excuse me, to recommend your advisor in the next 12 months, it’s actually a pretty good and maybe even better than satisfaction way of getting at the quality of the relationship. The problems with it of course are, I might give you a low number, not because I don’t think it’s a great service, but maybe I’m just not going to run into anyone who I think I can recommend. But some of that washes out over time. If you just look at it as a quality of relationship metric, it’s not bad. If you think it has something to do with whether they’ll actually refer, that’s a problem, because it’s really not. The one place where I think it can work transactionally is if you’re trying to really improve a particular part of your business. So for example, we’re working with a team that is entirely focused on redesigning their review process.

Well all of the sudden, having a rating affectively of that review and what went well and what didn’t, makes sense. Because it’s not about the overall relationship, it’s about something that just happened. And so I think it can be powerful in that way, but we have to be careful.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. But that’s not technically NPS right? Because NPS is the ultimate question. And I’m assuming that’s why it came into our businesses is because the ultimate question is all about referrals, but this sort of misses a big part of that, at least in our business. It may not for rent-a-cars but-

Julie Littlechild:
Well it does, and even the people who designed NPS don’t say it’s one question anymore.

Steve Wershing:
Oh I see.

Julie Littlechild:
Over time there are … At a minimum it’s two, one being an open end, why did you provide that rating? And more often than not, we’re seeing people ask a couple of questions after it. So it has morphed overtime. I still think it’s an okay way to gauge the overall relationship. But if that’s all you ask, I think we just lose so much rich information on what we can do.

Steve Wershing:
Oh yeah. No, I totally agree. It’s really the depth of feedback that you can get is where a lot of the power is. You can get so much more in designing and upgrading your experience than we have a 40 net promoter.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah exactly. What do you do with that? I mean you pat yourself on the back and maybe you notice that there are negative trends or positive trends. But unless you know what to do with it and with whom to do it, it’s not as powerful an exercise.

Steve Wershing:
And figuring out what to do with it, I see that as a great opportunity for the qualitative feedback.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I’d love to ask you about some specific examples as well, because I know you’ve had the opportunity and I’ve suggested so many advisors talk to you who are thinking about advisory boards. First of all, because you need to understand how they work and what can make them great. Actually in fact, often I here a bit of confusion as to what exactly and advisory board is. Maybe I could just ask you that.

Steve Wershing:
Sure.

Julie Littlechild:
Can you explain that to us?

Steve Wershing:
Well a client advisory board is an ongoing facilitated conversation with some of your best clients about what it’s like to go through the experience you provide, and how you can improve it. So typically an advisory board is around a dozen of your target clients that you bring together a couple, three times a year, and then ask them a series of questions about what it’s like to work with you.

Julie Littlechild:
And so you said target clients, I assume that’s important. So you’re not trying to get a representative sample of all of your clients.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. I’m sort of interjecting some of my recommendations into that description. So a client advisory board can be made up of any group of clients. But to me the most relevant would be your targets. Because getting the feedback and designing the experience specifically for the people you most want to attract is, from my perspective, the most profitable way. But any group of clients could be an advisory board. Now that’s distinguished from, for example, a focus group. Which is typically a one time kind of thing. And not uncommonly a focus group can even be people who are not clients, but people who are in the target population that you want to reach.

Julie Littlechild:
Are there other characteristics of the people that you would invite to make sure it really works the way you want it to?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. There are a few things that I think contribute to how valuable it can be. One is, make sure they’re the target profile. I encourage advisors to choose clients who embrace the advisor’s full value proposition. So if you’re a financial planning shop, you would not for example bring in investment only clients, even if one of those clients is one of your biggest, because they’re not leveraging that part of it. So either they don’t value it, or they can’t give you good feedback about it, because they doing experience it. Or that they’re good connectors. So people who currently refer, or people who are in the networks that you want to better get exposure to. Those I would weight more heavily when you invite people in than people who are not connected or not referrers.

Julie Littlechild:
And do you recommend that people have people rolling on and off at different times like you do with other-

Steve Wershing:
Yes.

Julie Littlechild:
Okay.

Steve Wershing:
So there’s a whole process that we go through, and we don’t usually start rotating a membership until the third or fourth meeting. But yeah, I think that you roll off members so that you can bring in new ideas, new insights, and those things. And also, it’s a nice way of first not imposing on people’s willingness to participate, but also if somebody is not really contributing that much it’s a nice convenient way of sort of … We say graduating from the board. So that they become board emeritus members. And that way you reduce the number of times you might have to have that uncomfortable conversation of asking somebody to leave. If you had this automatic process then I think there’s all kinds of benefits to rotating membership.

Julie Littlechild:
And so, what do those conversations look like? How do you figure out what you should be talking about?

Steve Wershing:
Well it’s all about the client experience. So where we start is with what I call the value questions, which is, why did you choose us from among all of the advisors you could have chosen? Of all the things we do for you and importantly, how we do them, what’s most valuable to you? What would we inadvertently do that might prompt you to leave? And if you had to change one thing about the relationship, what would make the biggest positive change from your perspective? So that’s usually the first meeting or so. But then we go through and we systematically deconstruct the entire experience. And we start with what’s most relevant to ongoing clients. So we would deconstruct review meetings, and we would deconstruct service models. If there are specific services like tax preparation that you do, we might take that apart. And eventually after they’ve done a few of those, they’re willing to help you with working with prospective clients. So at that point we can deconstruct the onboarding experience, deconstruct the planning process, those kinds of things. And then we get their feedback on the communication. So we start again with things that benefit the existing clients.

So we talk about, do you send out newsletters, e-blasts, those things? How do you perceive those messages? What’s useful? What’s not useful? What should we stop doing? Those kinds of things. And then eventually we get around to things like critiquing the website and that kind of stuff to get feedback on that. So, is this reflective of the experience we provide you? The stuff we have here on our website, does that reflect what’s most valuable to you about us or what different about us in your perspective?

Julie Littlechild:
So I can see where … Because you mentioned to me in the past how you like the qualitative and quantitative working together I guess. The quantitative makes sure that you’re not basing a decision on a sample of 12. But the 12 gives you the color and the direction.

Steve Wershing:
Exactly. It’s where you can do your deep dive.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. So what are some specific examples of discussions that you’ve had and outcomes? Just to get more granular about that.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. So some great examples of digging into that client experience, there was one firm that I worked … Actually, there was one I can remember very clearly, because the board member articulated it so clearly. But I hear versions of this in an awful lot of the ones I do. And we were taking apart the review meeting, talking about the allocation of time across the different agenda items, and what people enjoyed. And one person said it, this is almost verbatim. He said “Listen, spend less time presenting the portfolio to us, and spend more time talking with us about our issues.”

Julie Littlechild:
Oh interesting.

Steve Wershing:
To me that’s really significant. A firm that adjusts that can radically change the value perception on the part of the client.

Julie Littlechild:               
And so, then how did that play out in terms of how they went through those planning meetings?

Steve Wershing:
Well they cut it way down. They cut down how much they were spending. I’ll give you a more concrete example of that. We critiqued the actual written … For a different firm, we actually critiqued the financial plan itself. And the plan was … It had a fair amount of bulk to it. But a lot of us-

Julie Littlechild:
How long was it, like a big one?

Steve Wershing:
It was-

Julie Littlechild:
Like the big lengthy plans that we see sometimes?

Steve Wershing:
Well, a lot of it was the portfolio stuff. I’ll focus on that because that’s where the feedback focused. There were a lot of portfolio analytics and there was a lot of stuff about the portfolio in there. And so you ended up with a document that was like a half an inch thick, maybe a little less. So we were asking people about it, and they said very clearly, “This stuff doesn’t have any meaning to us. When you explain it, we understand it, but we hire you to do that, we trust you. So you should take a lot of this stuff out.” They reduced the size of their financial plans by like 75%.

Julie Littlechild:
Wow.

Steve Wershing:
Because they said “Oh well, if you’re not getting any value from all these Morningstar reports, and all these different analytics we’ve put together.” They were perfectly happy with an allocation chart, recent performance graph, and maybe one or two other little things. Because that’s what was meaningful to them. They didn’t need to see what the sharp ratio was, and all the statistics that come out of those reports. Now the clients have a document that they can really relate to a lot more, and they feel better about it because it’s a lot thinner.

Julie Littlechild:
You mentioned it at the beginning, this is about niche markets as well. So the fact that you’re talking to your target, you could have another advisory board where they say we could use twice as many analytics.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
But it’s a different group, right?

Steve Wershing:
Exactly. And it does have a lot to do with the group. So for example, one of the things we talk about is client events. What events have you come to that we’ve held over the past couple of years, and which did you most enjoy? And what did you enjoy most about them? It’s really interesting, because what I find is that sort of a middle income, up to the mass, affluent oriented firms, they have an affinity for social oriented events, and they like having an educational component. But they also really like the social part of it. The higher end firms, the ones that deal with the high net worth and ultra high net worth, they’re not interested in the social part of it. If they’re going to come and invest an evening with you, they want something really useful. And not just an overview of the markets. They don’t want that. Well one of the board members said to us, teach us something useful. And in their case, it had to do with having a session on how to be a trustee, how to be an executor. And that was interesting on a whole bunch of different levels.

But it’s interesting to see. How the differences in the client profiles can give you different responses that can guide. So one firm is going to do socially oriented events, and another advisor is going to do strictly educational or orient them differently based on their client based preference.

Julie Littlechild:
Do you see firms also starting these when they’re going through, maybe it’s a change in the structure of the team, or there’s an acquisition? Is that a natural time to really start this? Because I imagine there’s some fear around that too.

Steve Wershing:
Well it’s interesting because there’s fear on both sides. There’s fear among the clients and there’s fear among the advisors to put it out there. But it’s the experience of the firm that we want to maintain, and that we want to protect. And whenever there’s anything that’s going to affect the ongoing relationship with the clients, if you really want to leverage it strategically, that’s exactly what you want to bring to them. There’s one firm that uses us … So we have a core advisory board that we meet a couple times a year, and go through different client experience things. But they’ve been acquiring firms, and one of the things that they do, is as soon as they acquire the firm, we convene an advisory board. And we find out from them, what’s most on your mind? We’ve sent you communications about us, and what are you concerned about? What kinds of things do we need to pay really close attention to as we put these firms together. And then we meet six months later. And we say, “This is what you told us last time, how did we do? How ya feeling? You good? Did we do these things? Is there anything that’s sort of hanging around out there?”

There was one board that was … This was a very long time ago. A firm that was bought by a bank. It was a fairly large firm. And their marketing people had put together a really comprehensive communication program to explain about it and address people’s issues. And six months had gone by, and so they’d gotten all the communications, and they’d been meeting with their advisors. And we got the advisory board together, and the first things we asked was, “Well you’ve seen our agenda. Before we get to this, what’s on your mind?” Everyone in the room said we’re really worried about this bank thing. And so we just crumpled up the agenda, threw it away, and we had a very productive conversation about the acquisition, and found out that there were some issues that hadn’t been addressed because nobody could anticipate them.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. And being willing to do that I think is important. It’s funny, I was doing a presentation on referrals not long ago, and we had a structured piece of it and the second was workshop. And whatever question I asked them at the outset, that was it. We were gone in a completely different direction. You’ve got to be willing to do that right?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
Let me just ask you about referrals, since you know, we are becoming referable.

Steve Wershing:
We’re hoping.

Julie Littlechild:
I know how a lot of this leads to it, just because I’ve been doing it. But let’s get specific. How do you think advisory boards can help advisors either understand referrals maybe, or actually generate more referrals?

Steve Wershing:
Well a few different ways. First, we have conversations with advisory boards about referral behavior. So we ask questions like, if you’ve ever recommended this advisor before, how did it come up in conversation? And when it did, what did you say? And once we find out what clients are actually saying, we have the opportunity to develop some strategies to help guide some of that language over the course of time. As you know Julie, through your studies, the average advisor thinks that they get referred by 4% of their clients every year, and your studies show it’s more like 30%. And so people are out there referring us seven times more than we think. Why the gap? Well a lot of the gap of course is language that clients use when they go to refer.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, and you don’t know that unless you hear them say it.

Steve Wershing:
Exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
And that’s the beauty.

Steve Wershing:
But also stuff that you talk about a lot, about client engagement and about involving that client, co-creating that experience. I mean that … When you can get clients to help you do that and then give you the language for it, then starting to describe your business in those terms, and saying it over and over, so people start picking up on that language can be a very powerful driver for referrals.

Julie Littlechild:
And you’ve mentioned a few times, I know a lot of people work with you on advisory boards, and you take a very hands-on approach. You know you get in there, and you facilitate. Sometimes, I can imagine that’s a great idea, because it’s frankly not most of our skillset to facilitate the meetings and to know what to ask. So that’s absolutely an option, but can you just also walk us through what are the steps for an advisor who’s thinking about either doing this themselves, or just understanding it? I don’t know if you’ve got resources available for that person who really kind of wants to say well, I think we can handle this ourselves, thanks very much.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well the basic steps are knowing who to invite to the board, knowing how to invite them so that they’ll accept, developing the right agendas, picking the right venue, sending out the right preparatory kits, and then of course critically, choosing the right person to facilitate that meeting. It’s really ideally somebody who’s not … If they are a part of the firm, that they’re not a part of the client relationships. They might be in the marketing area or something. But it’s really important that you have somebody who doesn’t have a vested interest in how you want it to be, and who also has some facilitation experience. Because just like financial advice, it’s a skill. But we do have … So besides the service of being able to offer this to advisors in a whole, where we take that hands on approach and guide them through it, and facilitate the meeting, and send them the reports, by the end of April we will have a kit that advisors can buy. And it’s a step by step manual that will take you through each of the steps to do that, and it comes along with templates and worksheets, and all the resources that you will need to do that. Whether you’re doing it yourself, or whether you’re bringing in an outside facilitator, it will guide you through step by step in how to do that.

Julie Littlechild:
So is that based on feedback – hey, I like how this is all coming full circle – that you got, that people also want just the steps. They don’t always want somebody to come in and do it for them.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. There are some folks that they … Working with us is something of a commitment. It’s a big project. And some people want to be able to do it themselves. Or they have people that they can tap to help them put this stuff together, and they’d just like a little bit of the specialist perspective on it. On what makes these advisory boards different than advisory boards that might be done by consumer products companies, or some of the others.

But you have … I wanted to ask you too. Because I know that you’ve been working on a new survey service. And I know that your early reputation was based partly on the client surveys you did, and you’ve got something new to offer there.

Julie Littlechild:
Well yeah, it was something that I did for many years. And I stepped away mainly because there was just some changes that I wanted to make in the business. And it’s almost like where my heart has always been. So irrespective of what I’ve been doing, I keep going back and saying, you’ve got to talk to your clients, you’ve got to co-create, you’ve got to talk to Steve about this. And so, the opportunity arose where we said look, we’ve really got to take all of the new research that we’ve been doing, because we still go out every year and talk to investors about what’s driving engagement, and really build a new offer, a new interface, a new dashboard, new ways of using information. So we’re actually just in the process of launching that right now. So we’re pretty excited about it. As I say, it’s just something … When you believe in something so fully, it’s exciting to see it get out there.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah exactly. So when can people find out about that, and where would they go to learn more about it?

Julie Littlechild:
Well, on our website we’ve got a Work With Us page and the program’s called Client Insights, and you can actually go and you can look at that right now. It’s already launched. We just haven’t done a big splash as yet. And you mentioned, end of April, for you is that right for accessing that kit?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
But to talk to you about advisory boards, what’s the best way reach you?

Steve Wershing:
Well the best way is to go to theclientdrivenpractice.com, and there is a page about advisory boards there. And you can also go to get.advisoryboard.solutions, and find out more about this kit that you can buy right there.

Julie Littlechild:
Like you said at the beginning, I love our guests, but I’ve kind of enjoyed talking to you today too.

Steve Wershing:
I know, well same here.

Julie Littlechild:
Because we don’t get to do enough of it.

Steve Wershing:
Exactly, that’s right. And that’s half the fun of doing these programs, is to talk to you as well as the guests. So it’s been great to just be able to chat about this stuff, just the two of us.

Julie Littlechild:
Well perfect. Well I mean, I guess that should wrap it up for today, but it’s been great chatting.

Steve Wershing:
It’s great to chat with you too and I look forward to talking with you and our next guests. And thanks everybody for coming.

Hey folks, Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really helps. You can get all the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes, at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. So until next time, so long.