Base promises on your capacity

Successful practices that have built high levels of customer loyalty ensure their promises to clients never exceed their capacity to deliver.

In situations where a task is important to the client but low on the firm’s capability, firms sometimes seek to remove the variability of the outcome by outsourcing. Outsourcing to somebody else to deliver your promise is a significant step, but as the rise in multi-asset funds and model portfolios shows us, advisers are increasingly outsourcing investments to focus their efforts where they add most value: in the client relationship. Where the firm has a high degree of skill or knowledge in the practice, this should be leveraged in the client offering as it is an aspect that can easily be controlled.

Consider the key deliverables from your firm and plot them on the graph below.

Getting your people on board to deliver the promise

Delivering on your promise requires engagement from your workforce:

Client proposition checklist: defining your customer promise

Putting together a compelling promise that clients will be delighted to pay for is not an easy task. It takes considerable understanding of your target market alongside successfully setting out what sets you apart from the crowd. What makes you different?

Be authentic, honest and sincere about your capabilities and what you can do for your client. Conversely, it is also good practice to spell out what you don’t or can’t do.

You can use the following metrics to help describe what your clients can expect from you:

When you have worked out the benefits to the client, thread these through your client interactions and reinforce them at each opportunity – for example, on correspondence or during client reviews.

It may also be useful to complete a client value proposition checklist to help define what are the most important things you can and must do for your clients. An example of this is as follows:

Example of a client value proposition checklist:

What are the next steps?

With a well-defined and compelling client promise, you can look to ensure you keep those promises by systematising and automating your processes.

The best advisory businesses have learned how to automate a personal approach. The systems and processes of your business should also be optimised to ensure effortless delivery of your promise. Automate any highly repetitive, but vital, processes whenever possible and save human interaction for the value-adding personal aspects of the client relationship. Take a look at our piece on Human vs Digital for more on this subject.

Summary

To successfully build trust with your clients you will need to promise within your capacity and capability, work with a competent and motivated team and engage systems and processes to enable efficient and effective delivery.

Client value proposition checklist

Use this checklist as a tool for you to use to ensure that your company’s CVP effectively communicates the unique benefits and value that you offer to your clients.
 

Download checklist