In the three decades I’ve been in this amazing business, I have encountered lots of businesses where I would walk into an office, and the first thing I’d be presented with, apart from a cup of tea or coffee, is a brochure. People get really fixated with the quality of their brochures; they’ve got to be glossy and have lots of pages. But fundamentally, they tell us what people do, not who they are.

So, what we created is a PDF brochure with a couple of main ingredients: No. 1 is copies of articles that we have written so that clients have this perception. Perception, after all, is reality. People perceive what they see and subsequently believe it. When you become an authority on a subject, that is what people conclude when you write articles. On the platform VOUCH, where clients get the opportunity to rate your service on a five-star basis, our clients rate us highly. Because our average rating is five stars with lots of lovely testimonials, we embed those into the PDF brochure.

In 2020 we had our best-ever year at Forte Financial by quite a margin, about 62 percent. I put it down to a number of things, but the main one we found that really played to our advantage was getting on the front foot when every other advisor was moving on to back foot thinking, This is not a conducive environment for me to do lots of business in. I’m just going to wait for the blue skies to return so I can then start telling people how great I am again. It is, unfortunately, what many fall into the trap of doing. When times are difficult, we tend to take that step back. When times are good, of course, we want everyone to know what we are doing and how good we are.

What I wanted to do was reach out to people, and even though I may not necessarily be making more sales — and “sales” isn’t a swear word by the way — even though I may not be producing more revenue, meeting more clients, I wanted to do something to help people because it’s all about culture and that provision of service. We engaged a marketing company. They charged me something like $900 to produce a 79-page PDF COVID-19 self-help magazine, which is still as relevant today as it was three years ago.

We sent it out to 450 clients. This was information about mental health, managing finances, homeschooling, a whole range of different subjects. We encouraged them to pass it on to as many people as they felt would benefit from this magazine. We discovered, because we tracked the progress of the click-through, that 3,150 people had subsequently been reached. We got absolutely swamped with new inquiries for financial planning. So sometimes it’s just little things that come across as a very proactive, caring-culture based, rather than all about the transaction, the financial planning, and the end result is something worth considering.

One of the paradigms I learned as a young lad joining the business for the very first time was that the clients are somehow always in control. The clients would choose me; I wouldn’t choose the clients. I would become very subservient to the process, and I would be worried about the fact that they might reject me or come out with an objection I couldn’t handle. And if we walked away from each other, I felt really bad about it. I learned very quickly that there are things that I could do to take control of the relationship, and the best place to do that is the very first time I meet with a client formally.

In that first meeting, there are two rules that I want to share with my prospective clients before we go any further. This is not the clients telling me what they are or are not going to do. This is me saying, “Before we go any further, there are two rules,” but I don’t use the word “rules.” “There are two reasons we are meeting today, Mr. and Mrs. Prospective Client. The first reason, I believe, is that we are going to decide whether we like each other, trust each other and can work with each other in the future.” You normally get a nod of appreciation and an understanding that that seems fair and logical.

“The second reason is, I would like to see if I can help you. At the moment I don’t know if I can help you. What I’m going to do is gather some information confidentially, and then at the end of that process, I’ll put together a financial plan, and then we’ll make that decision.

“However, the quality of advice I’m able to give you is based entirely on the quality of information you give to me. Let me repeat that. The quality of advice I’m able to give you is based entirely on the quality of information you give to me.”

What I’m doing subconsciously is two things. One, we get an equal choice around whether we work together. “You can decide whether I’m going to become your advisor or not; that’s fair. I am also going to decide whether you become my client because the basis of any great relationship, whether it’s spousal, siblings, father, daughter, mother, son, has to be an equal two-way process.” And yet in financial services for decades, it’s not been that way. We’ve adopted this really subservient approach to relationships, and I don’t think that’s the right way to be.

“So two things: No. 1, we are going to make a mutual decision. No. 2, you are going to become accountable for the advice I give you. So you can’t say, ‘I don’t want to give you that information. I’m reluctant to tell you that in detail.’” You then circle back to those first two rules at the start of the first meeting and say, “I totally respect that you may not want to give me this information. It may be difficult or sensitive, but the quality of advice I’m able to give you is based on the quality of information you give to me.” No one ever holds back information when you make them accountable. And it’s much more difficult to complain in the future if you, yourself, are accountable for the advice that’s being given.

Please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your service proposition, which is a one-size-fits-all approach, is going to meet the needs of every client, because it won’t. You will grow great relationships with some, but you will leave others behind.

The killer question is a very simple one. When I decide to engage with new clients and they decide to engage with me, and when we’ve concluded our business, the first and most important question is this one: “Mr. and Mrs. Prospective Client, what does great service look like to you exactly?” The word “exactly” is important because you want the micro detail behind what great service looks like. Not “Our service proposition is this.” It is “What does great service look like?” All you’ve got to do is to deliver on that service expectation.