For financial advisers, good communication with your clients is just as important as the advice itself. If your client leaves a consultation not comprehending your suggestions, they can’t act on them. Luckily, financial modelling software is continually providing methods to help your communication be clear and concise.
The Risks of Poor Communication
To understand the importance of good communication, you need to know the risks of poor communication. Poor communication can represent a number of things, such as:
- Not giving your clients enough facetime
- Being overly technical and confusing
- Delayed responses
- Illogical reasoning
All these behaviours can jeopardise your relationship with your clients. How clients respond to them can also take many forms, like:
- Feeling like you don’t see them as a person, just as a case
- Becoming frustrated or dissatisfied with your service
- Losing trust in your abilities
- Doubting your integrity and credibility
All these reactions can lead to a client going to a competitor. Therefore, for the sake of your business, your relationships with your clients must always be prioritised.
The Benefits of Good Communication
The other side of the coin is the benefits of good client communication. Where poor communication can cost you clients, good communication can help retain them. Some examples of good communication behaviours are:
- Making your clients feel valued and understood
- Ensuring that your advice is comprehended and appreciated
- Impressing clients with fast turnaround times
- Demonstrating the logic behind your assumptions
Financial advisers that display these positive behaviours provide a better service, and get rewarded for it. Clients who have had a good experience are more likely to:
- Feel a personal connection and sense of loyalty towards you
- Get the results they deserve because they can action your advice effectively
- Feel more confident in your abilities once they see the results
- Understand how you arrive at a conclusion, leading to trust in you and your process
If your communication behaviours provide a positive experience for your client, they will naturally remain loyal to your service, and will be more receptive to providing testimonials or referrals.
Learn more about the value of communication in the client-adviser relationship.
If you’re reading this and thinking that you already display the right communication behaviours, you will still be excited to know that you can become even better at them. If, on the other hand, you find yourself exhibiting some of the poor traits, there is a solution – financial modelling software.
What is Financial Modelling Software?
Financial modelling software assists professionals in the financial services industry. Most softwares offer a range of strategy-assistance and time-saving tools, such as:
- Easily comparable models
- Simply adjusted variables
- Strategy formulation assistance
- Baseline comparisons
- Faster data entry
- Readily available legislative information
- Template-based document writing
While all of these features could clearly help you with modelling, you might be wondering how they help your client interactions.
How Does Financial Modelling Software Improve Communication with Your Clients?
For many financial advisers, the pressures of increasing workloads make it tempting to put client relationships on the backburner. It’s understandable. The problem is, this is a ‘chicken or the egg’ scenario. If you sacrifice client relationships to focus on results, sooner or later, your clients will begin to leave, and there won’t be anyone to get results for!
Shorter Turnarounds
Financial modelling softwares removes much of the legwork – data and value entry, calculations and simulations can all be completed by the software. This means if clients come to you with unexpected or urgent information changes, you can re-model for them quickly.
Turning around high-quality advice quickly and with minimal fuss will endear your clients to you. They will feel like they are a high priority for you, not just another case in your database.
Compare Strategies in Real Time
Presentations are always more engaging when the audience can interact with the information. A meeting with your client where you provide them with modelled scenarios is no different.
Financial modelling software will allow you to present multiple scenarios as talking points, while you workshop the most suitable option with your client. Your clients will appreciate the effort to include them, and as a result will appreciate your results much more.
Less Time on Compliance
Legislative compliance is a vital, but laborious, task. Clients expect you to be compliant, but don’t understand the time it takes to stay across legislative changes.
Financial modelling softwares often provide up-to date legislative information at the click of a button. This greatly reduces your compliance burden and lets you spend more time on your clients.
Comprehensive Reporting
Financial modelling softwares don’t just simplify data entry, they also simplify data presentation. Information compiled in reports is in plain-English, and clear for your clients to understand. You can present your final advice to clients with minimal editing, which is much faster than having to compile the data yourself.
Comprehensive reporting is one of the single most important aspects of a service business. Clients need to be able to understand the advice they have paid for, otherwise they can’t act on it. With financial modelling software, you can stress less about how easily digestible your reports are.
Comprehensive Documents
There are many documents that need to be prepared, both for yourself and your clients, during an end-to-end financial advice case. Most financial modelling softwares offer easily downloaded and populated document templates.
Rather than expending mental energy and time on repeatedly preparing similar documents, take advantage of templates. Templates mean you are just adding information, not figuring out how to structure it. The time saved can then be spent on clients. Not to mention, your clients will also benefit directly from receiving consistent and easy-to-read documents.
When combined, these five improvements will keep your communication with clients clear and productive. The question is, which financial modelling software is the right one for you.
Optimo Pathfinder
Optimo’s Pathfinder is capable of all the features listed here, plus more. Its class-leading software handles the busywork for you, letting you focus on your strategies and your clients. With a free trial option, see for yourself how its simple to use features save you time.
Learn more about how Pathfinder can improve your business and client relationships.
