We’re often asked for our thoughts about the events we attend because we’ll offer our unbiased perspective. This week we’re breaking down the news that came out of Snappy Kraken’s 2023 Jolt! Conference in Las Vegas, which drew wealth management executives from around the country to discuss marketing.
Here are our top takeaways:
Developing Human Connection at Scale Needs to Happen.
60% of adults identify as lonely! This may seem like we’re living in a dystopian future run by technology and void of human connection. But really technology helps by enabling your storytelling, accelerating your path to client connection (Jolt! formula: Effective storytelling =your story + client story + exceed expectations + repeat).
Our addition is to use tech tools to develop and manage impactful content, use multiple media: email, video, etc, and respond quickly to inquiries with automated notifications. (XYPN has done a great job using tech tools to help foster community for their advisors all across the country; check them out).
Wealth Managers have a Differentiation Problem.
We see the same jargon over and over again to describe services and client experience. The same emails. The same client portals. The same reports. Advisors are leaning too hard on peer comparisons. Instead look inside. Dig deep into which clients are your most successful and which ones are not? What are the key needs and wants and challenges of those successful clients? Replicate those experiences. Then, take it a step further and optimize your CRM to segment client personas; add data to further your understanding of your clients. Differentiation will blossom from there.
We’re in the Experience Business.
Your biggest competitor is apathy. People don’t care enough to work with you or anybody. Your job is to make them see that they have a solvable problem so that they’re willing to trade their time and money to do it. Some cool tech tools can help advisors build experience businesses. Think outside the box. Engage your audience at in-person events with digital tools like Slido, Mentimeter (used at Jolt!) and Slides with Friends. Plus, explore tools in systems you already have. For example, Riskalyze Check-ins and InvestCloud’s Financial Happiness indicators, which can identify which clients you should reach out to and when.
Mirror Innovations in Other Industries.
This has been a consistent theme at advisor conferences since I first started going to them in 2017. We’ve got to bring in ideas from the outside. Emily Binder advised wealth management firms to look for gaps in the current market and take risks to evolve. Imagine how you can raise anticipation (think Domino’s order tracker) for activities like client onboarding and money movement orders. We think it’s important to explore what technology other service-oriented businesses use. Appointment scheduling tools were time savers in other industries before they were widely adopted in wealth management…what else should we implement?
Two minutes wasn’t enough? Get in touch with Doug Fritz for more about how these insights can help fuel your wealth management business.
