July 26, 2011
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Given the importance of client reviews, advisors should always be alert for ways to make them more effective. Recently, I spoke to an advisor who made a simple change to meeting agendas and saw a significant improvement as a result.
First, let’s review some ideas to make meetings more productive that I’ve highlighted in past articles:
- Write down key objectives in advance of meetings
- Use agendas to keep meetings on track and improve the sense among clients that they’re getting value from the time invested
- Use research on what leads to positive recollections of experiences – and ensure you end the meeting on a high note
- Employ technology to make telephone meetings look and feel more like face-to-face meetings
- Kick off your meetings with a strong question to engage clients
Starting meetings by engaging clients
Last year, this advisor started using meeting agendas, employing a three-step process that I laid out in one of my articles:
- When setting up the meeting, start by asking clients about any questions they’d like to cover, and then mention the items he wanted to cover.
- Follow up with an email to clients with the agenda that arose from this conversation.
- When he sitting down with clients, have the agenda include all the items they’d discussed moved down one spot, with the first item blank.
He’d start meetings by saying:
“Here’s the agenda we agreed to, but you’ll notice the first item is blank. That’s in case anything’s come up since we spoke that you’d like to talk about or in case we’ve missed anything.”
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