When we run a practice there are so many things that we always need to think about today, but we also need to continually think about tomorrow. I think one of the things that we must continually work on is “value”. Value can mean many things that are measurable now as well as things that can’t currently be measured but may affect us in the future. Let’s talk about the “value” of our business which includes clients, staff and how value affects our ongoing success.
Let’s start this series with value that our clients want for the services we provide. I am mostly talking about the financial or retirement services industry but can relate to many different types of service industries.
Value that we provide currently is somewhat easy to identify. For retirement service professionals that includes things like calculating current plan contributions, helping them be prepared to have enough money for future retirement and assuring their retirement plan stays in compliance. For advisors, that could include things like advice on investments that fit the client’s current needs and will allow for the long term growth they will require.
As I said earlier, some of the value we provide will not really be “appreciated” until later, but we need to continually remind our clients about the ongoing value we provide in our services. Figuring out how to communicate our value regularly is difficult but when they see the deductions on their tax return or the investment return, they have made is somewhat “easy” but in years where they don’t make a big retirement plan contribution and don’t have a big deduction or in years when the market is down, it is a LOT more difficult to have clients remember the value we provide.
Reminding clients of what our services include and why we are different than others providing the same services needs to be continual process and part of our ongoing “marketing” efforts to assure we stay relevant to our clients. We should think about ways to provide those ongoing efforts with communications including things like articles and webinars to share with our clients.
