Steps to Take When Ending a Client Relationship

Steps to Take When Ending a Client Relationship

For everything it takes to secure a new client, it seems counterintuitive that a financial advisor would fire one. But, under certain circumstances, that’s precisely what you must do to keep your practice on the right growth trajectory while keeping your sanity.

Holding on to clients who stray outside your profile of an ideal client, or when they become too demanding or no longer follow your advice, can weigh you down. Your time is too valuable to spend it with clients who aren’t a good fit for you.

So, you need to fire them. But how? Ending a client relationship is a delicate process, but it doesn’t have to be awkward for you or the client when handled with care and professionalism. Much like a structured onboarding process, you should also have a clearly defined “deboarding” process to make it easier on everyone. Here are some steps to consider when ending a client relationship.

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5 Scenarios When Advisors Should Fire Clients with Conflict of Interest

5 Scenarios When Advisors Should Fire Clients with Conflict of Interest

We’ve posted several times on the topic of conflicts of interest created by financial advisors when their objectivity may be compromised, and their interests are not necessarily aligned with their client’s best interests. We talked about the harm it can cause to the advisory relationship. Financial advisors caught up in ethical dilemmas, whether intentional or not, must be ready to take corrective action to save the relationship and keep the trust of their clients.

But what about when the tables are turned, and the client creates a conflict of interest or ethical dilemma? It happens more than you might think—when a client’s personal interests or values don’t align with their advisor’s. The conflict may not be egregious or illegal, but even if it just rubs you the wrong way, it might be time to cut the client loose.

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5 Risks You Run If You Grow Your Practice Too Fast

5 Risks You Run If You Grow Your Practice Too Fast

It’s natural to strive to grow your business, but too rapid a growth can bring with it a host of problems. By taking on too many clients and ‘running before you can walk’ you might damage your practice in the long run.

“The fuel of persistence is patience, the ability to tolerate delays while persisting.”

Elite advisors all share an important trait – that of patience. It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. If you don’t see that success requires time and effort, you will remain at a mediocre level.

Here are five consequences of attempting to grow your practice too fast.

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Top 10 Posts Financial Advisors Read the Most on Our Blog in 2018

Top 10 Posts Financial Advisors Read the Most on Our Blog in 2018

As 2018 is coming to an end, we decided to do a quick recap of the top 10 posts that thousands of Financial Advisors and Wholesalers read on our blog throughout the year. They are on various topics – from practice building, to prospecting and relationship building, to establishing trust and storytelling.

We hope this quick recap will help you finish the year strong and give you some pointers on how to improve your practice in 2019. Enjoy!

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5 Reasons Why You Should Only Work with ‘Ideal Clients’

5 Reasons Why You Should Only Work with ‘Ideal Clients’

Rather than pouring all your energy into searching for any and all new clients, you should be working out how to attract your ‘ideal clients’. If you agree to work with everyone who comes your way, your business will not continue to be sustainable.

Here are five reasons why it will pay you to drill down to your target market and decide only to work with these types of people.

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Best Practices for Letting Go of a Client

Saying goodbye to clients often seems counter-intuitive to new advisors, whose primary concern is to grow a customer base. But failing to ‘weed out’ unprofitable clients is a bad idea for any advisor’s business. To succeed in this industry, you need to spend your time servicing your most profitable relationships and this necessitates dropping unprofitable accounts from time to time.

There can be many reasons why certain clients are no longer a good fit for you. Perhaps you’ve identified a need to downsize your business because it’s become impossible to serve a multitude. Or maybe you’re working with clients who ignore your advice, are too needy or blame you for poor market performance.

Whatever the reasons your focus should be on providing great service to your most valuable clients – which means you need to let the others go.

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5 Signs That It’s Time to Let Go of a Client

5 Signs That It’s Time to Let Go of a Client

Signing up a new client – any client – feels like an achievement, especially for new advisors. Keeping money coming in is after all the number one priority. Over time however you’ll find that you have two types of clients: Clients you actively look forward to speaking to i.e. those who are pleasant to do business with, make realistic demands on your time, and are fully onboard with your ideas. And then there are the others – the ones you come to dread dealing with.

As a financial advisor you should aim to only work with clients who are enjoyable to deal with and profitable. It’s not only acceptable to prune out bad clients – but essential to keep your business healthy.

So how do you know when it’s time to let go of a client?

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