Best Practices for Strengthening Client Relationships

Let’s face it, mid-year for your clients isn’t always literal. Depending on when you started working with a client, their mid-year review could happen any time throughout the year. But let’s take this opportunity to talk about mid-year reviews and some best practices for making them effective and ensuring your clients are getting the most out of them.

Conducting Effective Meetings

Reviews are common deliverables that should be included in any financial professional’s service calendar. Regular reviews are critical because financial planning is an ongoing process rather than a single end point. As your client’s life evolves, their plan must be continuously monitored and adjusted.

Our research has found that financial planners who embrace technology and financial psychology in their practices see the best client results overall.1 These practices are ideal to incorporate into your client meeting workflow to help you work more efficiently and more effectively while increasing your clients’ trust in you.

For a step-by-step guide on creating an efficient meeting workflow, read our blog, Your Guide to Creating an Efficient Annual Review Workflow.

Keeping Financial Plans Current

The final step of CFP Board’s 7-step financial planning process is to monitor progress and update the plan, ensuring the financial planning process is ongoing. The discovery that takes place at the beginning of the financial planning engagement must be continuous. Many of the questions you asked your clients previously must be asked again and again to ensure their plan is as dynamic as their changing lives.

The mid-year review is an ideal time to revisit these questions. Learn more about the art of effective questioning by watching our on-demand webinar, The Art of Asking Questions.

Checking on Motivation and Accountability

A mid-year meeting is an ideal time to do an in-depth check-in with clients to discuss how they are doing in achieving their goals. We know that keeping clients motivated is one of the most difficult parts of ensuring successful planning outcomes. Despite your expertise, careful analysis, and thoughtfully crafted recommendations, many clients remain stuck in the gap between good intentions and meaningful action.

One way to help clients stay motivated to meet their goals is to establish accountability. To learn more about how to build a motivational process based on accountability, watch our on-demand webinar, Driving Client Motivation Through Accountability Strategies.

Our research found that clients want to be part of the financial planning process.2 Conducting regular meetings to collaborate with your clients is one way of ensuring they do. You can read more about this research in our eBook, A Guide to Planning Better Together.

Sources:

1. eMoney Beyond the Plan Research, July 2023, n=504 advisors, n=1,003 end-client investors.

2. eMoney, “Planning Better Together” Research, October 2024.