by James Woodfall and Cliff Lansley, authors of “The Heart of Finance“
Your ongoing relationships with clients are an important opportunity to develop and grow trust by acting with emotional intelligence to enhance the service you provide your client with. After the onboarding stage, you might assume that trust has been earned as the client felt comfortable enough to do business with you. However, trust needs to be maintained and nurtured. If you charge an ongoing service fee, you want to retain your client for as long as you can, and for them to do more business with you in the future and recommend you to friends, family and colleagues as an important source of new clients. In one study into how people found out about their financial adviser, word of mouth accounted for 34% and referrals 24%.
Our definition of trust is as follows: ‘a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another.’
Inviting your client to be vulnerable in your presence by sharing their hopes, dreams and fears about their business with you, and reciprocating when appropriate, builds trust. In the definition above, the client is also vulnerable because they are relying on your professional expertise. If you have delivered on their priorities in the implementation meeting, you will have begun to earn their trust.
We might assume that trust continues to grow with relationship duration, and research supports this, but the correlation is small. There are other moderating factors which influence ongoing trust in a relationship. Take the metaphor of a trust account. Trust needs to be maintained, and the actions of you and your firm can either credit or debit the balance.
However, if duration isn’t the main method that trust continues to develop in a professional relationship, there are other factors we need to pay attention to. When we pay attention to and are careful with the emotions of others, trust grows. When we are neglectful of others’ emotions, trust withers. So, we need to pay continued attention to the client’s emotional as well as business needs in our professional relationship.
There are several emotionally intelligent strategies that can be used to maintain and manage ongoing relationships. This article will focus on two, the first, adapting your communication strategies to suit individual clients, and the second, how to spot and deal with contempt before it develops further.
Personalised communication strategies
If you have paid attention to how the client communicates in various media (face-to-face, email, phone, etc), you may have picked up on their preferred style. Is this a person who wants bullet points, or do they need a lot of detail? Do they prefer visual representations to written explanations? Aside from considering any communication preferences for those who may have visual, auditory or other neurological impairments, capturing and using individual styles can help your clients understand you and engage with your ongoing service.
A good starting point is asking clients what their preferred styles for communication are, rather than assuming. For example, with some clients, instead of creating a written proposal, you could:
- Create an infographic
- Use charts, graphs or slides
- Record a short video of you talking about the proposal
Consider the tone and adjust accordingly as some clients may expect a more formal tone than others.
When writing emails:
- Use clear headlines to make them easier for your client to understand
- Use bullet points to get important information across
- Highlight important action items if you need the client to do something
Ongoing communication is an area where obtaining feedback from your client is key. Ask your client periodically if you are getting it right. There is a sweet spot for communication. Too little leaves the client worried, but too much may overdo it. Each client will vary in terms of what they need.
You may also need to increase the amount of communication around key events like market movements or legislative changes with some clients. Other clients may need reminders about the long-term benefits of the work you are doing together to help them stay on track.
As you implement your ongoing service and communication strategy, you may spot signs of upcoming issues you need to address, which we explore next.
Keeping relationships on track – how to manage contempt
It’s important to watch out for signs of contempt from your client, as this is the key to proactive relationship management. The aim is to spot problems before the client has vocalised them so that we can get them out in the open and attempt to resolve them. This will help maintain and grow relationships.
John Gottman identified contempt as one of the ‘four horsemen’, which are attitudes or behaviours that we need to watch out for because of their potential for causing destruction in relationships. The four are:
- Contempt, showing a lack of respect
- Criticising, complaining or attacking that can be personal
- Defensiveness, self-protective responses
- Stonewalling, being unresponsive
If you notice contempt, or any of these behaviours, you may need to acknowledge that there might be something wrong that the client hasn’t disclosed. Responding with, ‘I get the sense that there may be a problem here that needs addressing’, gives the client the opportunity to open up. If they don’t vocalise what is troubling them, you might follow up by explaining that you value your working relationship and are happy to address any concerns the client has. If they still don’t respond, they may not want to discuss the issue with you, or you might not be the issue and something else may be on their mind. If you follow the process of acknowledging, clarifying, responding and reassuring, you can hopefully address any issues early and proactively before they grow into problems that later may be more difficult to overcome.
Research suggests that there is an emotional cost of withholding complaints. A person who withholds complaints may ruminate, playing thoughts of what is troubling them over and over again in their head. This can lead to emotional exhaustion and passive-aggressive behaviours which we looked at in the last chapter. By helping your client voice their grievances, you help remove the weight of the problems, and that is positive for your relationship.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed how to use EI to maintain client trust and ways to deliver value to your clients by providing non-business specific support, such as offering personalised communication and adjusting strategies when faced with contempt to stop any potential problems developing further.
With any relationship, business or personal, it’s important that you make the effort to maintain it. Ongoing service may involve a retainer for regular plan reviews and proactive management, including project updates and customer service. Without a retainer, interactions may be more sporadic, with occasional calls or emails. Your efforts need to go beyond that first meeting. To build trust, good communication and attentiveness must be maintained.
*This is an adapted book extract from The Heart of Finance by James Woodfall and Cliff Lansley.
James Woodfall is a highly experienced former financial planner who, through his business Raise your EI, now works with financial services firms consulting on how they can use emotional intelligence to improve individual and company performance. While studying for his Masters, Woodfall researched the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance in financial planners.
Cliff Lansley is a Director of the Emotional Intelligence Academy and has worked with clients across the globe and in many sectors – including the military, intelligence, law enforcement and business – helping them to read, understand and influence others when it matters.
