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How often do you get a physical health check?
How often do you go to the dentist?
How often do you service your motor vehicle?
The answer to all these questions, for most people, is at least “once a year”.
WHY? Because we want to make sure ……
- Everything is in good condition and can last a long time.
- We can comfortably achieve our goals and reach our desired destination.
- There are no unforeseen issues that could cost us a lot of money.
Every year we schedule appointments with specialists who provide a thorough review and prescribe valuable solutions so we can optimize performance.
It almost seems unimaginable that we would not get a physical, dental or motor vehicle check/service every year. I am sure we would be very worried about something bad happening if we didn’t.
So why don’t we do FINANCIAL health checks every year? Don’t you want to optimize your financial performance?
And as bankers, why are you not scheduling annual financial health checks with your customers to review ALL their financial affairs and prescribe valuable solutions that will help them achieve their goals and avoid financial problems.
To be clear, I understand that certified financial planners help customers with their finance goals and commercial lenders conduct annual loan reviews, but ANY banker can conduct a comprehensive review of a customer’s financial affairs and make recommendations that will make the customer’s life better.
Here are five simple steps ALL customer-facing bankers can do to provide highly effective annual financial health checks:
Customers are always “too busy” to talk about their broader financial needs. Yet EVERY customer does have broader needs you can help them with.
Leverage the physical, dental and motor vehicle check up analogies to highlight to your customers the importance of doing an annual financial health check.
Position yourself as a trusted adviser who wants to simply check on the “condition” of their financial affairs, help them get to their financial destination more easily and avoid any costly undiagnosed problems.
Encourage your customers to schedule a complimentary 30 – 60 minute financial health check appointment with you every year. Book them well in advance and send reminder notices.
Before reviewing their bank accounts and loans, ALWAYS take the time to explore their desired financial and personal goals.
As finance professionals / experts we have access to resources and solutions that can help our customers more easily achieve their desired goals.
Certified Financial Planners tend to focus on retirement plans, however ALL bankers can help customers achieve their more immediate 1 – 5 year goals.
Ask your customer to describe what their ideal financial position would look like in 5 years time based on their current circumstances and any desired changes.
By confirming and understanding their personal goals you build long term trust and commitment to annual financial health checks.
Specialists do an excellent job of diagnosing potential problems and offering great advice to help you avoid / overcome them.
One of the biggest causes of anxiety for people (customers) is the management of their financial affairs. The annual financial health check is an excellent opportunity to help alleviate any stress by diagnosing any issues/concerns in the following four key areas of financial management:
(a) Earning Power of Their Money
- Are you generating regular monthly income from investments?
- Are you happy with investment returns and flexibility?
- Do you have a financial adviser?
(b) Accessing Their Funds and Information
- Tell me about the way you have been using your accounts and doing your banking.
- How do you pay bills, creditors and other people (staff)?
- How do you reconcile your accounts?
(c) Purchasing Power of Their Money
- Have you made any major purchases over the past 12 months?
- Did you use credit to fund purchases?
- Any major purchases you would like to make over next 12 months?
(d) Risk Management
- Do you have a strategy for insuring assets you own and related debt?
- If something happened to you how would that impact your family / business?
- Have you done any retirement planning?
The above are just a few examples of questions you can ask to diagnose any problems. It’s important you now develop a comprehensive and insightful questionnaire that you can use for your financial health check meetings.
Now that you better understand your customer’s goals and have diagnosed any potential financial management problems/concerns, it’s time to prescribe some customized solutions.
To be clear, you DO NOT need to be an expert on all the amazing solutions your bank offers. Just be an expert on your area of specialization – day to day banking, commercial loans, mortgages, etc. – and provide great advice that can help the customer.
Then, like all doctors, dentists and mechanics, you can refer the customer to other specialists who can help them with their other goals/problems.
It is your job as the customer’s primary care “finance doctor” to then schedule appointments with other department experts/specialists.
Consider developing proposals that can be tailored to the customer’s goals/needs and confirms the compelling solutions you are prescribing.
Great doctors, dentists and mechanics follow up their patients/customers to ensure they are gaining benefits from all the wonderful solutions (and other specialists) they have prescribed.
This is a huge differentiating factor and demonstrates that you are genuinely interested in helping improve the financial well-being of your customers.
Schedule a follow up call, email and/or visit with all customers after you complete their annual financial health check.
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It is important that all customer-facing bankers believe they are “finance doctors” who are highly qualified to diagnose their customer’s problems and prescribe wonderful solutions.
Yes, this may require a coordinated effort across all bank departments and regular cross-department meetings/training, but the end result will be a bank that genuinely cares about making their customer’s lives better.
Customers who rely on you for their annual financial health check will not only use you for ALL their financial needs, but they will highly recommend you to others who are not getting this service from their bank.
Now that sounds like the perfect prescription for greater client retention and growth.
Click the link below to watch my 13 minute training video about how to create financial health checks for your customers.
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Article written by Joe Micallef – Sales Strategist & Coach – Grow UP Sales. For more advice on how to create annual financial health checks please email joe@growupsales.com or visit the webpage www.growupsales.com
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