Strategy Highlights

Week 20
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Strategy 5: Nail the Wealthy Client Experience

The Total Client Profile

To determine your clients’ and prospective clients’ needs, you must comprehend their entire financial pictures. These go far beyond specific asset management or estate planning requirements and into the realm of their most important values, relationships and lifelong dreams. Uncovering these will be the critical skill that you bring to the table: To excel as a wealth manager, you must excel at profiling your clients and prospective clients. In fact, the Total Client Profile will become one of your most important tools for building deep client relationships.

The Total Client Profile consists of seven categories to help ensure that you delve into all areas that are key to deeply understanding your clients and prospective clients: values, goals, relationships, assets, advisors, process and interests.

You will create a Total Client Profile for each qualified prospective client or client during the Discovery Meeting by using the Total Client Profile interview guide as you document responses with mind mapping.

There are four elements to every mind map:
  1. The subject. This is the center of attention and focus of the entire map. For wealth managers, the subject is the client or prospect.
  2. Major themes. These are major topics that radiate from the subject. For most clients or prospects, these themes should correspond with the seven categories of the Total Client Profile: values, goals, relationships, assets, advisors, process and interests.
  3. Branches. These connect the subject and major themes with each other and with associated details.
  4. Structure. The entire structure of the mind map is held together by the branches, forming an interconnected picture.
To create a Total Client Profile using mind mapping, use an artist’s pad or notepad (preferably with unlined paper). Start by writing down the client’s name in the center of the paper and circling it. Then begin your interview. Your first topic is the client’s values, so “values” near the client’s name, circle it and connect it back to the client’s name with a line. As you uncover the client’s most important values, note these and connect them with one another as appropriate. You may find that you need several levels of detail to accurately capture the client’s responses.

As you progress through the interview, do not let the mind map constrain your conversation. It is intended to do just the opposite: to trigger connecting questions, stimulate subsequent thoughts and capture random yet important details. You do not need to “finish” one branch before moving on to other topics. Instead, let the map flow along with your discussion. Look for fact patterns—sets of facts that are conditional on one another.

We have found that most clients enjoy the interview/client-profiling process and like seeing their financial situations presented in a graphical way. Many will actively help you to fill in any holes or gaps in key information. By the time you have completed your interview, you will have a profile that has captured the most important issues, is packed with relevant detail and suggests the next steps.