I was an Investment Advisor for seventeen years. At the peak of my career, I worked at TD Waterhouse Investment Advice, a major bank-owned brokerage firm in Canada. As a Managing Director and SVP, I was advising 325 families with over $100 million in client assets. For nine years I sat on the company’s National Advisory Council, and was asked to advise four consecutive company presidents. I also won “Manager of the Year,” after building a top ten branch from scratch in 4 years. It was all good. But, at age 48, I retired to pursue my second act in life.
Back in 1998 I was thinking about how to improve my investment newsletter. Each newsletter had five ‘canned’ articles, which were of course actually written by Marketing and edited by Compliance. I was concerned that these newsletter articles were noticeably not written by me, and may even be going unread. To make a connection I wrote a couple of paragraphs of non-business content on the back page. My Personal Update section was all about my life, my family, and my hobbies. I then decided to survey what my clients liked or didn’t like about my newsletter. Guess which section had 100% readership and recall?
A high percentage of clients said the only section of my newsletter they read was the back page. They all felt my personal content was important and relevant, since it helped them know me better as a person. In retrospect, it was clear why clients wanted to better know the person advising them on their life’s investments. While the newsletter acted as a continuous vehicle of professional communication, there was no strategy for maintaining a personal connection with each client. I knew the personal update note was a great way for me to communicate, simultaneously, on a personal level – with each client. But I also knew that I wasn’t likely to ever find time to hand-write 300 personal notes on a regular basis. So, I put the personal-note-to-all-clients idea on hold.
Meanwhile, out of the office, I was building a personal portfolio of landscape photography. Sony Classical had been licensing some of my images for album covers, and my original work was selling in a few galleries around North America. Then my father died, after a great medical career, and a retirement full of illness. Sadly, he left the planet with a number of goals unfulfilled. Coming to grips with his death led me to realize just how fast life goes by. I decided to retire (from the greatest business in the world) and focus on achieving my unfulfilled life goals, while I still had lots of time and energy.
LongTerm Clients.com is my long imagined personal note service, fully realized.
Helping relationship-savvy advisors improve the personal side of each one of their client relationships, through the proper use of the personal note, became the primary goal of my company.
Mail-bonding by using our Personal Note Service is a cost effective and highly efficient client retention strategy that is being embraced by top advisors across North America.
Why? Because advisors from all professions understand that connecting with clients on a personal level as well a professional level is just good business.
All the best in your career.
Frank Grisdale, CEO
LongTermClients.com
PS: The Note Coaches and I look forward to helping you do some mail-bonding with your clients.
The writing assistance provided to me by my Personal Note Coach has been fantastic. You people are true wordsmiths – and you understand the advisor-client relationship. Your focus from the start has always been on making my client notes word perfect.
D. A. S, CFP, New York
You guys are good! Your virtual assistance is making my life easy. You’ve earned a place on my team – even though it’s just for one or two hours a year. Thanks again.
Mike Miller, Financial Advisor, Minneapolis MN
