Responding within the same day to prospective clients can help a business generate three times the assets under management than if they were to leave it another day to respond, delegates were told at the FT Adviser Financial Advice Forum.
During the Lightning Talks session, Tim Grimsditch, chief marketing officer at Unbiased, talked about how responding promptly to prospective client queries can impact the growth of a business, while Belinda Parmar, chief executive of The Empathy Business, spoke on how the most successful businesses are those that are empathetic.
Grimsditch said: “If you have people coming to your firm who are interested in becoming clients, if you respond within the same day, you will generate 3.4 times more assets under management (AUM) than if you leave it 24 hours to respond.
“So the day that somebody makes an inquiry through your website - through Unbiased through a Google App, through a social media post - if you contact them that day, you're likely to get an 80 per cent conversion to a first meeting.
“If you leave it 24 hours, that number is going to be down to 25 per cent and that conversion rate flows through all the way through, through your marketing process, through to the actual AUM you bring into your business.”
Grimsditch said these findings had been obtained using data generated through the Unbiased platform and information provided by large advice businesses.
Also, customer reviews left on the Unbiased website have shown that “speed is critical” particularly as people have busy lives, he added.
Emotional assurance is also important to attracting and retaining a client.
Grimsditch said: “For people just coming into the industry, we need to remember they are unclear on what the first contact will be like with a financial adviser…they're often fuzzy about fees.
“They don't really know what to expect, so emotional reassurance is an important part of the journey. We hear from consumers who put an inquiry in through Unbiased and are phoned within 10 minutes by their matched adviser, and that feels like one long, flowing, and very reassuring journey.”
Empathy
During her talk, Parmar spoke about the importance of empathy in finance, emphasising its role in customer communication and business operations. She said the biggest myth about empathy was that it was the same as sympathy - “being nice”.
According to Parmar, empathy is defined as understanding one's emotional impact on others and distinguish between cognitive, emotional, and behavioral empathy. It is about understanding and supporting others.
Practical tools for fostering empathy include changing language to be more supportive and clear, using emotional labeling to address feelings, and matching the emotional tone of the person you're communicating with.
“I can disagree with you, but I can say, ‘I don't share your perspective. I'd like to understand your perspective and also share how I feel’. Language is key.
"The other myth is that, when people think about empathy, they think it's not going to make them more money [but] it does make you more money. More empathic companies make more money.”
