Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide, previously worked as a financial advisor and firm executive. He served successively as CEO of Reinhardt Werba Bowen Advisory Services and Assante Capital Management.

Wow Right Now

The experience that you provide to your clients has never been more important to the health of your business than it is today. Lots of investors are still shaken from the market volatility of the past few years. Even many clients who stayed calm are uncertain about the state of the economy, the markets and their own financial futures. And plenty of them are asking themselves, "Is my current advisor the right advisor for me?"

We know that the answer in many cases is "no." As I've mentioned in previous columns, a 2008 study showed that four out of five affluent investors were dissatisfied with their advisors and were looking to make a change.

Of course, nowhere near 80% of those clients actually jumped ship in the past two years. For that, many advisors can thank inertia; it's not because clients suddenly became much happier with their advisors.

The Wow Formula

But it's foolish to bank on such complacency. Starting now, you need to delight your clients if you want to keep their business and maintain their loyalty going forward.

Providing what we call wow service is about giving each client a unique and memorable experience—one that differentiates you and your practice in a way that clients find unforgettable and competitors find hard to match. By delivering a consistent, high-quality experience at every point of contact, you will truly wow your clients, which will mean great things for your business.

For example, amazing service creates highly satisfied and loyal clients. That means less client (and employee) turnover and fewer hours you need to spend on marketing and prospecting. Strong client loyalty also means more assets for you to manage.

Consider that clients identified as loyal clients in our whitepaper, Building Client Loyalty: The Case for a Wealth Management Solution, gave their primary financial advisors $376,000 in additional assets on average over a 12-month period. By contrast, the clients who were just moderately satisfied with their advisors provided only $17,000 in additional assets.

The same situation is true for referrals. Loyal clients gave their advisors 11.8 referrals on average—versus just 0.1 referrals given by the moderately satisfied clients, according to research cited in Breaking Through: Building a World-Class Wealth Management Business.

So what can you do to truly delight your clients and wow them in the current environment? Here are four steps that advisors in our coaching program have taken in recent years that are having a big impact on client satisfaction and loyalty.

Rediscover Clients

Think you know everything you need to about longtime clients' situations? Feel confident that they're happy with your service offering? Don't be so sure given the huge changes we've all experienced in recent years.

In these times you must play good defense by going the extra mile to protect your client relationships, and you must go on the offensive to guarantee their satisfaction while possibly gaining additional assets to manage. The best approach is to conduct rediscovery meetings with every client you value and want to keep on board.

Schedule a time for them to come in and talk with you about the biggest concerns, needs, goals and values they have today in the wake of the market turmoil. Ask them how those issues have changed or not changed from the last time you discussed them. Armed with up-to-date information about where clients are now and where they want to go, you can do a better job helping them close the gap.

The value of doing such rediscovery is clear: You will reconnect with your clients by showing them that you are highly focused on their well-being and by reassuring them that you want to know them and their concerns on a deeper level. They will be reminded that you are the best advisor for them, no matter what the economic circumstances.

So don't worry, as some advisors do at first, about asking longtime clients to go through this process. Chances are, they'll thank you—and even reward you with new assets and new referrals—for taking the time.

Team Up With Experts

The needs of clients—especially affluent ones—become more complex with each passing year. That complexity has really ramped up as investors try to navigate their way through new legislation and uncertainty about a wide variety of taxes. They will look to you more than ever for help in managing their entire financial lives-not just investments but also wealth-transfer planning, wealth protection and charitable gifting.

The upshot: You need to provide—or offer access to—expertise in key areas that are important to your clients and prospects. Rather than try to do everything themselves, top advisors build teams of experts outside of their firms that are capable of bringing the necessary expertise to their clients.

The specific expertise you need will depend on your client base, of course. But in nearly all cases, we see that advisors can add value to their clients' financial lives by creating a team that includes a private client lawyer, an insurance specialist and a tax specialist. These three professionals working together, with you coordinating their efforts, should be able to address all or nearly all of the issues your clients face.

In building and working with such a team, experience doing rediscovery meetings can be a big help. If you already have a process for methodically identifying your clients' most important issues, you will find it relatively easy to find experts who will meet your clients' advanced planning needs and to identify the key issues for each expert.

Offer Second Opinions

Think about the fact that 80% of affluent investors are unhappy with their current advisors. That spells opportunity for you in two ways. First, it means that many investors out there are looking for a new advisor.

Second, it means that you can build greater loyalty among your existing clients by making sure that the people they care about most are being properly taken care of. Whenever you meet with a valued client, make sure you offer to provide their friends, family members and key business associates with a second-opinion service. Offer to evaluate their current investment plans, determine any gaps and identify any opportunities they have to do better.

Don't present this as a business development pitch, however. Instead, offer it as a value-added service.

If your review finds that they are getting what they need from their current advisor, you will say so. If they are not, you will discuss the possibility of working together—or referring the person to an advisor who would be a better fit. This has been an extremely effective way for our coaching clients to wow their existing clients while building up a stream of referrals.

Pick Up The Phone

It's unfortunate, yet true: Simply reaching out to clients during periods of ambiguity can differentiate you from much of the pack these days as many advisors are failing to make client communication a priority.

Start by contacting the top 20% of your clients and then move down the list. For your largest clients or those who will need the most reassurance, an in-person visit may make sense. Also, don't speak only with your most active clients. Those with long-term, buy-and-hold strategies need to hear from you as well.

To prepare, create some talking points. Get a good read on what's happening by touching base with your institutional partners or your favorite economists, analysts or money managers. Then reinforce the validity of a long-term perspective and demonstrate the impressive historical recovery of the markets after periods of unrest.

While you obviously cannot anticipate the direction of the markets in the short run, you can provide your clients with a valuable historical perspective. Keep in mind that in many cases, your clients will simply want some reassurance.

By the end of the call or visit, make sure to move off the topic of the markets. Ask your clients if their family is in good health, how the children are doing in school, whether they've followed up on getting their wills in order and so on.

Clients want you to care about more than just their bottom lines. Asking them about non-investment issues also can help you identify other ways to add value to clients' lives-such as revising their estate plans or helping them with income protection strategies.

Obviously some of these wow service techniques are ones you can implement right away, while others may take some time to develop. Regardless, the key is to make wow service a true priority today. Otherwise, your business tomorrow and in the coming years could become less successful.

Reprinted from: Financial Planning