Mark Lang, founder of Formidable Business, said in a recent SMSF Association members’ webinar that there are three ways to ensure SMSF clients understand the value of the advice provided.
“You make your advice tangible for operational reasons using a detailed advice model that builds three assets. Firstly, you must write an advice model, which is a tangible asset that explains exactly what you do. The second thing you’re going to do to make that tangible is to detail the client experience, and then the third thing is to develop a proprietary advice process,” Lang said.
Lang said the purpose of having a written advice model was to ensure clarity.
“The model defines your expertise, the advice you provide, and the client experience. This ensures you have a consistent delivery of high-value advice and strengthens your branding and enhances the perceived value of your advice,” he said.
“For the advice, what it means is you’re capturing all your intellectual property and value in one spot. What I like about it when I’m sitting down with clients and reviewing how to improve the advice is that I’ve got this tangible document,” he said.
The step, Lang said, was to innovate, and it was here that advisers should think about pricing.
“When you’re planning your market and go through the advice model and think about what elements of advice you want to work on, it’s a great training tool. I’ve had clients, particularly when they’re establishing relationships with a centre of influence, take this particular statement with them to see the referral source to say, ‘this is the process. This is the way we deliver our advice’,” he said.
“The other practical thing when you’re doing this is you highlight specific issues. In one instance where I went through this process, I found a platinum client was the least profitable because they were being over-serviced and over-resourced.”
He said in another instance he conducted this process as a team building exercise with a large firm and asked all the advisers and senior administration staff to generate ideas on how they could innovate to improve their advice.
“It was good for the whole team, because one of the themes that came through, particularly from the less experienced and more administrative client staff, was that they thought they were too expensive for what they provided to clients,” he said.
“So, when talking through their advice model, they got an understanding of the value of what they provided.”
The second element to making advice tangible is to have a structured client experience or the human touch, he said.
“This is from the stage where you initially engage a prospective client, through to having a long-term relationship – a structured client experience. The whole purpose of it is to set the benchmarks for delivering every aspect of your advice and ongoing servicing,” he said.
“This is part of building trust and giving certainty. One of the things with this is to go through and look at each of the key interactions, and provide frameworks.”
One of the things advisers want to make sure they benchmark is the best client service they can deliver.
“The other thing about it is premium clients, clients that we want to work with, what personal advice they don’t want. None of us want to be serviced by an algorithm,” he said.
“And advisers should encourage feedback. If a client feels they didn’t get the service they were expecting, no one’s going to get in trouble. You want that feedback, and ultimately, it’s okay.”
