Building Trust with Clients (8)

Do you actively build trust with your clients, or is your only contact with them related to your work or expertise?

If you keep in touch, clients are more likely to trust you, give you repeat business, and refer you to their contacts and colleagues. However, many professionals do not ‘keep in touch’ with their clients. They have difficulty ‘following up’ with their contacts when networking. They don’t want to ‘pester’ their clients or ‘push their product’.  

In article 4, we explored how we all hate product push, or what I call the innate fear of the influence of strangers. Newsletters from an organisation can be sent to clients like they are sent to your network, but they are unlikely to have a high open-rate because they are often assumed to be ‘pushing product’ and ignored.

There are four ways to sidestep this fear, which we explored in article four which are as follows:

Education - tell something that your client would like to know more about

Aggregation - tell your client your message alongside other professionals

Reciprocation - give your client something of value - show them you care

Case Studies - tell your client a story about your typical client and what you did to resolve their problems.

Your clients maybe companies, funds or charities but they are staffed by human beings and have beneficial owners who want them to succeed. They come to you with a concern you can resolve. They are not experts – you are, but they do not want to be bored by stuff that you find interesting and they don’t they want to know how it is relevant to them. 

The idea is to engage your clients like your network in a manner which engages them. They want to feel you understand their situation and want to build a trusted relationship with them. Your clients know you and what you do for them they want to engage further if you let them.

In blog 3, we explored the client types you are best suited to working with and why it made sense to network with these professionals.

Let me give you an example of client types and active networking. 

When I took over as head of the private client group of Simmons & Simmons, I did an audit of the work, which I thought would be better served by other firms. One such file acting as a trustee for a trust of which Mrs W T was the principal beneficiary. 

I kept this file because I liked working with David Bulteel of Investec, even though the work was not profitable.

David Bulteel was also a trustee and an investment manager. When asked what he did, he would probably say, “I manage my client’s money, to make sure we return upper quartile returns for them”. 

However, if you asked Mrs W T, she may say, “I like David. He always calls me back and will reassure me if the economy looks gloomy.’ She was not too bothered if his returns were in the upper quartile. She wanted reassurance that her money was in safe hands.

Once a year, David would invite Mrs W T and me to lunch at his offices. He would ask about her family and her requirements, such as her need for a new bathroom. She often confided in us that her children demanded money from her, such as for their child’s education or a family holiday. Mrs W.T. could hide behind our protection to say that this expenditure was not up to her but would be considered by the trustees of her trust. We would then write to her children to say that Mrs W T was our primary concern and she must have sufficient for her needs and future requirements.

We would  then spend at least half an hour going through what the fund had been invested in and how well it had performed. David knew Mrs W T’s spending habits, age, likely lifespan and the expectations of her children and grandchildren. Mrs W T trusted David and me to protect her money and look after her best interests.

David was calm, professional, and exceptionally good with his clients. I would happily have recommended him to a client, but I rarely had any clients with whom he could show off his skills. Of course, David was part of my network, but I knew full well that I was unlikely to be able to refer work to him or him to me -but I liked him and so met with him once a year with Mrs W T, but apart from that spent no further time actively networking with him - there was no point.

David’s ideal client I would guess were widows, orphans and charities who needed an expert to invest their funds and provide support. My ideal client on the other hand is a first generation entrepreneur with adult children, an active family business held in trust and international interests. Rupert Murdoch would be my sort of ideal client and my ideal work would be to set up a trust structure to which he could give Laclan voting control after his death to avoid unnecessary litigation.

Clearly David and I do not have similar client types.

This distinction is essential to recognise because if I want to network more effectively and efficiently, I need to network with people who work for my ideal client type. These professionals could include a family trust litigation KC, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, a family business tax consultant and an insurance specialist.

David would be better to network with a probate specialist, an immigration lawyer, charity expert and an estate agent in a central prime property location. 

Once we have identified our ideal client and the professionals they work with - ‘client mapping,’ we can start to network ‘actively’. Each professional identifies five other professionals who work for their type of cient from outside their organisation with whom to ‘network’. These professionals are invited to a private networking event. 

A speaker relevant to their client type or to this networking method can be invited to give a brief presentation. Then if there are several professionals they are divided into groups of six called a ‘marketing pod’. Each professional is then asked to share a three minute case study which is recorded by video.

This recording is then sent to be edited to Caroline’s Club which will be uploaded onto its library of video case studies available for public view. Each participant professional is then asked to send to their clients the link to their case study video. 

In this way the Client is given something relevant, interesting and informative from a professional with whom they have or are working. If something is of particular interest they can ask their professional for an introduction.

Using this simple method a professional can keep in touch with their clients, while at the same time build strong working relationships with a highly specific network. It is effective, efficient and fun and can be repeated in different with different guests and case studies for greater exposure to a broad targeted market.

In next week’s article Episode (9) I want to share with you how I would like to enrol the assistance of events organisers to bring together professionals who work for similar client types to facilitate the creation of effective marketing material. At the end of the article I would like you to tell me who are your favourite events organisers, and their contact details. I would also like to hear from you as to whether you would like to attend events designed specifically for your ideal client type.