Today’s video is about the importance of choosing the rights words to help your clients understand your message.  

If you prefer to read it … see below. 

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Sometimes just a slight change in the words that we use can make a massive difference to whether the client understands what it is you’re trying to say or not.  

So, I was listening to the Becoming Referable Podcast, with Steven Wershing and Julie Littlechild.  

And if you don’t listen to it, it’s a really good one for Advisers.  

And they were talking about doing a client survey.  

Anyway, in one of the surveys that Steven had done with a client, they were asking the Adviser, who by the way sees their client every single quarter, and after every quarterly meeting sends the client an email summarising what’s happened and the changes they’re going to make, etc. 

Anyway, one of the questions in this survey to the clients was, “How often is your financial plan updated?”  

And they had options which were quarterly, half yearly, annually, every couple of years, or I don’t know.”  

And interestingly enough, the majority of the responses were ‘I don’t know’.  

So, when the Adviser and Steve Wershing got this information, they were quite puzzled, because remember I said, they had quarterly meetings with their clients.  

So, they got the clients in and asked them what this was all about and explained that we catch up with you every quarter. 

Here’s the thing though, in the follow-up email that they would send after every quarterly meeting, they didn’t mention that this was an ‘update to their financial plan’.  

They mentioned all the activities, all the follow-up action items, all the changes that were being made.  

But they never mentioned the word financial plan.  

So, what this advice business did… really, really scientific, they just changed the title of the email, the quarterly follow-up meetings, to say, “Quarterly update to your financial plan.”   

That’s all they did.  

And what a remarkable difference it made, because now the clients thought that their plan was being updated every single quarter. 

So, a great lesson in that, that sometimes we think that we’re doing something, or we say that we’re doing it, and clients just don’t understand. 

So, where could you potentially have a slight change in language?  

Maybe the change in a heading?  

Maybe the change in a document that you’re providing, to make it crystal clear what that is and what the benefit is to the client.  

Because after all… You are A Valuable Adviser.