Crisis Communications for Financial Advisors
Marie Swift / Steve Wershing Conversation March 23, 2020
MARIE: Hey everybody, Marie Swift here from Impact Communications and I wanted to get this message out quickly to all of the advisors in the financial advisory world because as you know for nearly 30 years I have been working with advisors like you and bringing the best ideas and solutions to all of you, at least I hope that’s what you perceive, that’s my goal and my mission but I wanted to bring today, Steve Wershing whom you will see here on camera with me to talk a little bit about one new and fresh approach that Steve is creating right now to help you connect better with your clients in a meaningful way and to inform how you’ll be doing your client communications from here on out.
So Steve, you are with The Client Driven Practice and you’ve been known for you know many, many years, I want to say 20 but you can correct me if I am wrong bringing great ideas particularly around niche marketing, referrals and also client advisory boards so, would you share a little bit about what you’re doing now with your virtual focus groups?
STEVE: You bet, thanks Marie – thanks for talking with me about it. So yes, we are in an unprecedented time and this is where financial advisors can really add value to their clients -- this is where they can save them from doing something that they can’t recover from. If a client panics and sells out, you know they can blow up their financial plan pretty quickly and so it’s really important that financial advisors be communicating with their clients and reassuring them so that they can in fact stay-the-course so that they have the fortitude to get through this.
What we observe, however is that we’ve heard from some clients that some of the things they’ve been hearing have not necessarily been calming them down – maybe they’re being communicated to too frequently, maybe they’re getting stuff that’s too technical and the technical nature of it is making them nervous.
I did a podcast last week with an expert in confidence who said, “When you communicate with people who are anxious, people who have lost confidence, it’s incredibly important not to operate at the same kind of level that you normally operate but you have to bring it down to a point where people’s cognitive system can deal with it while they are in a highly anxious state.” He says, “me here now.”
Anyway, the point is that some of the communications that advisors may be sending out may not be having the desired effect of keeping people calm and so because we’ve been doing qualitative client feedback for so long, doing advisory boards and those kinds of things, we thought this would be a really good time to be able to go out to the advisor community and offer a service where we can organize a small group of an advisor’s clients who can meet virtually and we can help them process how they have been receiving the communication from the advisor. Are they hearing frequently enough or too frequently? Are they getting messages that calm them down? Are they communicating the right thing? What things are the advisor saying that help a lot, what things are they saying that are not helping and what’s really most on their minds at this point and so we can come together, do a quick virtual 30-minute meeting with a small group of an advisor’s clients and then give the advisor a recording of that along with a little worksheet so that they can pull out the points that they think are important and develop an action plan to sort of customize / tailor that communication strategy to make sure that they can keep their clients calm and keep their heads during this difficult market.
MARIE: Yeah, I think it’s a fabulous idea and it’s so quick-to-market as well – you’ve priced it so affordably too, just under $500 and is there a way for advisors to sign up on the website? Talk a little about getting started and the mechanics of it all.
STEVE: Yeah well, you know for us, speed is critical – we want to get out to those clients and get this feedback as soon as possible and so we’ve lined up you know, all of our different facilitators and we’ve created the processes around it.
If advisors want to go to ClientFocusGroups.com they will find out a little bit more information about the program and they can sign up right then if they click on the buttons and say “Yes, sign me up”, we will be in touch in about a day to get them scheduled and start walking them through the process so really they could have that meeting done really just in a matter of a few days.
MARIE: Now, some people might be wondering why would a client take time out to do this now. What are you hearing from advisors and their clients?
STEVE: Well, what we’re finding is the same kind of response that people are giving to advisory boards, you know if clients have the opportunity to give feedback to the advisor so that that can have a say in what kind of service that they receive, they’re enthusiastic about that. They’re more than happy and you know the fact is many of our clients are now stuck at home – they may not be able to go to work, they may not be able to do what they normally do and that creates an opportunity to be able to talk with them -- it also creates a challenge because there’s less to distract them from the anxiety that they may be feeling – if they’re sitting at home with a less-full schedule – that can just leave things to fester a little bit so we haven’t seen any difficulties in getting clients to participate so far and we anticipate that will be true moving forward.
MARIE: Yeah, for sure, a lot of people will be experiencing boredom, cabin fever or some sort sense of “let’s be connected” so you’ll be using something like this -- with web cams on to the extent that clients will do it and is the advisor invited to participate or is it better for them not to sit in on these virtual meetings?
STEVE: Because this is going to be so brief, we’re feeling in this case – you know in client advisory boards, we feel it’s really important for the advisor to be there – in this case we think it’s probably better for the advisor not to be there although that’s really up to the advisor, whichever way they want to do it. But we really want to get the unfiltered feedback, we want to get it fairly quickly and we don’t want this to be a discussion, we want this to be one-way from the client to us and then we can share that with the advisor.
MARIE: Yeah, should be great feedback in fact, I’m already out there promoting this to some of my clients because I think it’s really important for them to understand if their messages and cadence and all of the types of content that could be going out, if it’s actually achieving the result that they’re hoping for and even if they’re working with a professional marketing team like mine, you know, we need to validate that we’re doing the right thing so that we don’t make things worse, that we actually make things better. And so I’m really excited to hear from my clients what they’re learning and for us to adjust the course of our communications for their clients as we go through this process with you, Steve.
Plus you’re a trusted resource, an old-time friend of mine – I know that anybody watching this video could trust you to do a great job with their clients and your facilitators as well. Would you give us the website one more time and with that I think we should go about our busy days and take care of the business at-hand.
STEVE: You bet. People can find out about it at www.ClientFocusGroups.com.
MARIE: Alright Steve, thank you – wishing you well – thanks for taking time today.
STEVE: Thanks for having me.
So Steve, you are with The Client Driven Practice and you’ve been known for you know many, many years, I want to say 20 but you can correct me if I am wrong bringing great ideas particularly around niche marketing, referrals and also client advisory boards so, would you share a little bit about what you’re doing now with your virtual focus groups?
STEVE: You bet, thanks Marie – thanks for talking with me about it. So yes, we are in an unprecedented time and this is where financial advisors can really add value to their clients -- this is where they can save them from doing something that they can’t recover from. If a client panics and sells out, you know they can blow up their financial plan pretty quickly and so it’s really important that financial advisors be communicating with their clients and reassuring them so that they can in fact stay-the-course so that they have the fortitude to get through this.
What we observe, however is that we’ve heard from some clients that some of the things they’ve been hearing have not necessarily been calming them down – maybe they’re being communicated to too frequently, maybe they’re getting stuff that’s too technical and the technical nature of it is making them nervous.
I did a podcast last week with an expert in confidence who said, “When you communicate with people who are anxious, people who have lost confidence, it’s incredibly important not to operate at the same kind of level that you normally operate but you have to bring it down to a point where people’s cognitive system can deal with it while they are in a highly anxious state.” He says, “me here now.”
Anyway, the point is that some of the communications that advisors may be sending out may not be having the desired effect of keeping people calm and so because we’ve been doing qualitative client feedback for so long, doing advisory boards and those kinds of things, we thought this would be a really good time to be able to go out to the advisor community and offer a service where we can organize a small group of an advisor’s clients who can meet virtually and we can help them process how they have been receiving the communication from the advisor. Are they hearing frequently enough or too frequently? Are they getting messages that calm them down? Are they communicating the right thing? What things are the advisor saying that help a lot, what things are they saying that are not helping and what’s really most on their minds at this point and so we can come together, do a quick virtual 30-minute meeting with a small group of an advisor’s clients and then give the advisor a recording of that along with a little worksheet so that they can pull out the points that they think are important and develop an action plan to sort of customize / tailor that communication strategy to make sure that they can keep their clients calm and keep their heads during this difficult market.
MARIE: Yeah, I think it’s a fabulous idea and it’s so quick-to-market as well – you’ve priced it so affordably too, just under $500 and is there a way for advisors to sign up on the website? Talk a little about getting started and the mechanics of it all.
STEVE: Yeah well, you know for us, speed is critical – we want to get out to those clients and get this feedback as soon as possible and so we’ve lined up you know, all of our different facilitators and we’ve created the processes around it.
If advisors want to go to ClientFocusGroups.com they will find out a little bit more information about the program and they can sign up right then if they click on the buttons and say “Yes, sign me up”, we will be in touch in about a day to get them scheduled and start walking them through the process so really they could have that meeting done really just in a matter of a few days.
MARIE: Now, some people might be wondering why would a client take time out to do this now. What are you hearing from advisors and their clients?
STEVE: Well, what we’re finding is the same kind of response that people are giving to advisory boards, you know if clients have the opportunity to give feedback to the advisor so that that can have a say in what kind of service that they receive, they’re enthusiastic about that. They’re more than happy and you know the fact is many of our clients are now stuck at home – they may not be able to go to work, they may not be able to do what they normally do and that creates an opportunity to be able to talk with them -- it also creates a challenge because there’s less to distract them from the anxiety that they may be feeling – if they’re sitting at home with a less-full schedule – that can just leave things to fester a little bit so we haven’t seen any difficulties in getting clients to participate so far and we anticipate that will be true moving forward.
MARIE: Yeah, for sure, a lot of people will be experiencing boredom, cabin fever or some sort sense of “let’s be connected” so you’ll be using something like this -- with web cams on to the extent that clients will do it and is the advisor invited to participate or is it better for them not to sit in on these virtual meetings?
STEVE: Because this is going to be so brief, we’re feeling in this case – you know in client advisory boards, we feel it’s really important for the advisor to be there – in this case we think it’s probably better for the advisor not to be there although that’s really up to the advisor, whichever way they want to do it. But we really want to get the unfiltered feedback, we want to get it fairly quickly and we don’t want this to be a discussion, we want this to be one-way from the client to us and then we can share that with the advisor.
MARIE: Yeah, should be great feedback in fact, I’m already out there promoting this to some of my clients because I think it’s really important for them to understand if their messages and cadence and all of the types of content that could be going out, if it’s actually achieving the result that they’re hoping for and even if they’re working with a professional marketing team like mine, you know, we need to validate that we’re doing the right thing so that we don’t make things worse, that we actually make things better. And so I’m really excited to hear from my clients what they’re learning and for us to adjust the course of our communications for their clients as we go through this process with you, Steve.
Plus you’re a trusted resource, an old-time friend of mine – I know that anybody watching this video could trust you to do a great job with their clients and your facilitators as well. Would you give us the website one more time and with that I think we should go about our busy days and take care of the business at-hand.
STEVE: You bet. People can find out about it at www.ClientFocusGroups.com.
MARIE: Alright Steve, thank you – wishing you well – thanks for taking time today.
STEVE: Thanks for having me.
