What's your focus for 2025?
In my latest blog here, I share from experience that the most successful advice businesses have a clear vision—one that isn’t just understood by leadership, but by the whole team. When everyone knows where the business is headed and how their role contributes, momentum builds. 👉 What’s one key focus for your advice practice this year? 👉 How are you getting your team on board with your vision? Keen to hear everyone's perspective!POLL: Advisers, what do you wear to client meetings?
I just listened to the latest episode of the Upfront podcast where financial adviser and host Emmanuel Asuquo chats with personal branding expert Jennifer Holloway. It was a fascinating discussion about how the choices you make with attire ultimately influence the level of trust your clients have in your service. The interesting part to me, at least, was not whether you should or shouldn't wear a hoodie to meetings but how consistent wearing said hoodie is with your brand. So I want to know from the advisers here – what do you wear to client meetings and what impression do you think clients have of what you're wearing? Do you have any stories of mistaken first impressions?Creating your vibe
You need one thing above everything else, to create a vibe which is genuine and personal for your clients – you must truly know your clients. Unfortunately, it’s our experience that very few practices are taking full advantage of their CRM functionality to capture the information they need to create that key personal, relationship building information. And, even if it’s being collected at the onboarding stage, few practices deliberately maintain this information. Simple info such as their children’ names (and their occupation or education level), details of the client’s preference for morning or evening meetings, coffee or tea, in-person or virtual meetings, wine or the ballet or both (will allow you to provide interesting content for your communications, plan events which appeal and so on), what the client is planning to do once the retire, when’s their next major holiday and so on. In other words - the ‘life stuff’. What info do you collect (and maintain) to build meaningful, long term relationships with your clients?
