When the easy ones get away

The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.

Kelly Welles couldn’t figure it out: she seemed to have little trouble keeping the tough prospects; it was the easy ones that got away.

Kelly, a veteran advisor of fifteen years, had been on target last year to break through the two-hundred thousand-dollar barrier, and would have, had she not lost a big account she thought she’d had in the bag. Unfortunately, she’d lost many ‘in-the-bag’ cases over the years.

Early last year, one of her closest clients introduced Kelly to her uncle Harry, a wealthy sixty-eight-year old with over three million in investable assets. Within the first few minutes of their first appointment, Kelly and Harry were talking as though they’d known each other for years; in fact, she felt like Harry was one of her own uncles. Furthermore, he loved her ideas about what he should do with his money. Kelly promised to send along a proposal by the end of the week.

By coincidence, on the same day Kelly met Harry, she had her first appointment with Lyle, another wealthy senior. However, Lyle was curt and negative and seemed unimpressed with Kelly’s ideas. In fact, Kelly had second thoughts about even bothering to follow–up with Lyle, but Lyle was the father of another close client of hers and she felt duty-bound to at least go through the motions. She promised to send Lyle a proposal by the end of the week as well.

I interrupted Kelly at this point in her story and asked, “The first person you sent a proposal to was Lyle, right?”
Kelly looked surprised, “Yeah, how did you know?”

I told her I’d explain in a moment.

She finished Lyle’s proposal on Thursday, couriered it the same day, then called him to see that he got it. Their conversation lasted all of two seconds, enough time for Lyle to say, “Yup,” and hang up.

She spent the rest of Thursday and Friday morning putting together Harry’s proposal, but unfortunately, something urgent came up in the afternoon. She didn’t get around to sending off Harry’s proposal till the following Tuesday. She called and apologized for the delay, explaining she’d gotten swamped at the end of the prior week. Harry didn’t seem bothered and they chatted for over a half-hour on the phone.

When Kelly followed up with Lyle later in the week, she was surprised to find that he’d actually gone over her proposal, but disappointed to hear he didn’t like that she hadn’t taken into account investments he had in a European bank and shareholdings in a variety of businesses. When Kelly mentioned that Lyle hadn’t given her this information before, he dismissed her comment, and gruffly asked for another proposal in two days' time. He was leaving for two weeks on business and wanted to look over her proposal during that time. 

Though the account size had just grown, she wasn’t optimistic she’d get it, and didn’t relish the idea of working on another proposal.

To meet Lyle’s tight deadline, she had to put a number of tasks on hold, including the follow-up call to Harry.

She completed Lyle’s plan on time and drove it over to his office personally. Lyle was in the lobby when she dropped in and flashed her a brief smile, the first sign of a personality.

When she finally contacted Harry, he told her he liked what he saw, but was concerned about some of the investment options she had illustrated. He reminded her that he was interested in ethical investing, and some of her suggestions didn’t fit. She remembered him telling her about his wishes and, embarrassed, she apologized. He told her not to worry and said he looked forward to seeing another draft.

Kelly was off for March break the following week and when she returned to the office, she was surprised to find a message from Lyle asking her to call him in London, England. When she called, he asked her a couple of procedural questions. She answered them and he said they’d talk when he got back. After they hung up, she thought, for the first time, that they might actually do business.

She hadn’t been counting on getting both accounts, but she now realized that if she did, she’d have her best year ever. She worked diligently over the next few days lining up everything for Lyle so that when he got back all he’d have to do was sign on the dotted line.

When they met, Lyle grilled her on why she’d balanced one of his accounts a particular way and why she’d suggested one of her tax strategies. After she gave her reasons, he nodded then started signing the papers.

She called later that day to bag her other elephant, but when she got Harry on the phone, he seemed like a different person. He told her it had been two weeks since they last spoke and he’d expected to hear from her way before then. She didn’t know what to say; this was the first time Harry seemed concerned about how things were moving. She said she was sorry, then he told her that this was the third time she’d apologized to him. She felt like apologizing again. When he told her he’d prefer to look elsewhere for advice, she was shocked.

She couldn’t believe how badly she’d misread Harry. She told me she’d never noticed that other side to him.

“Kelly,” I said, “you certainly misread Harry. But not because you overlooked his ‘other side’. Harry was being himself from day one. The mistake you made was not seeing and treating Harry as a high-trust person.

High trust people immediately impute trust into the relationship. They are very easy to get along with, which makes many advisors take them for granted. Because high-trust people rarely provide a sense of urgency, advisors tend to let response time and service issues slip. But all people, including high-trust people, have a limited tolerance. And when you reach that limit, the trust instantly collapses.

By contrast, it takes low-trust people much longer before they feel a sense of trust. For them, trust is earned and built gradually. Typically, as with Lyle, they will hold important information back until they feel you’ve earned their trust. Ironically, when trust is established it tends to be stronger than the trust given so freely by high-trust people. Low trust people like Lyle make you jump through hoops and constantly provide a sense of urgency —forcing you to provide your best service possible. These prospects or clients always become the advisor’s priority clients. Advisors will deal with any service issues for low-trust clients ahead of issues for high-trust clients because they think their high-trust clients will forgive them for any delays or missteps.

Kelly said she hadn’t thought about it that way before, but it was so true. She definitely took advantage of prospects and clients like Harry, and always gave her best to the demanding ones, like Lyle. It wasn’t fair, and it obviously wasn’t good business. She agreed to change her ways.

I ran into Kelly a couple of weeks ago. She told me she had never felt better about her business. She’d taken what I’d said to heart, and now gave the same high level of service to all her ‘A’ prospects or clients. Over the last quarter, she had called on a number of high-trust clients she knew she’d been neglecting, and had uncovered lots of opportunities for future business with them. She’d also recently closed a big account with another high-trust prospect, one she knew she would have taken for granted a few months ago. And this year, she was on target to exceed the elusive $200K mark.

Lessons Learned

Kelly learned four important lessons about high and low-trust prospects and clients:

• Within any client segment, your prospects and clients will fall into two groups of people: high-trust and low-trust.
• Advisors tend to take their high-trust prospects and clients for granted and give their best service to low-trust clients.
• High-trust people want and deserve the same level of service as low trust clients, but unlike low-trust people, you won’t find out they’re not happy until it’s too late.
• The best advisors provide a consistently high level of professional service no matter who their client is.

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The Covenant Group is referred to by many as the place entrepreneurs go to become Business Builders. They are considered to be thought leaders and have authored the best-selling books, The 8 Best Practices of High-Performing Salespeople, The Entrepreneurial Journey, and The Business Builder.