For Sustainable Success--Become Your Clients’ Most Trusted Advisor

Certainly, building trusting relationships with clients makes it easier for them to hire us. 

There is however, a more significant outcome of maintaining trusting relationships. 

As the trust continues to build, your clients will begin to see you as a trusted advisor.

You will be their ‘go-to’ person whenever they think you can help them. 

Obviously, this continues to make it easy for your clients to do business with you, facilitating more frequent purchases and referrals. 

And as an added bonus, you might also benefit from referral fees earned by connecting your clients with your referral partners.

Traditionally, professionals like lawyers, accountants and financial advisors have willingly assumed the role of most trusted advisor. 

My Most Trusted Advisor

Throughout my career, I have had the good fortune to having had the support of many trusted advisors. 

Regardless of the nature of these relationships …supervisor, friend, colleague, or paid service-provider…the benefits of their trusted advisor support were nothing short of phenomenal.

At the beginning of my career, my supervisor in my first permanent job quickly become my most trusted advisor … ever.

Sixty-five years older than me, there was nothing that Bert had not done in the field of social services.

He had come out of retirement … for the fourth time … to help implement a county-wide response to the then rapidly growing problem of substance abuse.

My role was to develop and implement an appropriate strategy … with Bert’s support and assistance.

Ultimately, that process brought business, social services, service clubs and health care organizations together to develop and provide appropriate resources.

Here are three lessons that I learned from Bert, that can help you become a most trusted advisor for your clients.

Deliver Exactly What Is Needed

Given Bert’s experience he could have overloaded me with information and told me to figure out how to make something it.  Too much!

Alternatively, he could have just to me to develop a plan for the project and once it was ready to let him know. Too little.

Instead, Bert provided enough information to help me understand the range and nature of issues to be addressed. 

Then, through a series of question- and-answer conversations, applying strategic questioning and engaged listening, I developed my own plan for how to achieve our desired outcome. 

As a professional you probably have loads of useful information readily available and at your disposal. 

For information-rich professionals, a common approach to serving clients is to overload them with information and tell them what to do.

Definitely TMI … too much information.

Another common approach is to downplay the issue and give some knee-jerk advice, the equivalent of telling a patient to take a couple of pain-killers and go to bed … it’ll pass.

Although that approach may well resolve the presenting issue, it doesn’t always reassure clients that everything will be all right.

The best approach is to deliver exactly what clients need… nothing more and nothing less.

In practice this would mean enough information that clients can understand what’s involved with resolving their issue, but not overwhelmed by too much theory and detail.

It also includes the reassurance that not only do you fully understand and appreciate their issue, you can and will help them address it.

Sometimes issues that we see as trivial or insignificant, loom large in the life of clients.

Invariably, our clients want … and deserve… our reassurance that that we can help them as much as they do the actual services that we provide.

Selflessly Serve Clients

With more than 70 years’ worth of work experience, there was no end of stories that Bert could tell.  And tell them he did. 

Whatever the story and whatever the occasion, he enjoyed his stories as much as his audience did.

Consistently, Bert’s stories were totally selfless: if the stories were not for educational or informational purposes, they were just for fun and entertainment.

We all know people whose stories are little more than self-centered ego-trips and self-absorbed attention-getters.

By selflessly telling our stories we can help our clients learn more and learn whatever they learn more effectively.

But story-telling is not the only way in which we can selflessly serve clients.

Whatever your service area and nature of service, your clients want and deserve your selfless undivided attention when you are with them.

Nothing positions you as a trusted advisor more than clients feeling that you have their full attention.

Protect Clients

On one occasion, I was preparing to leave the office and Bert asked where I was heading.

When I told him, he asked what the meeting was about and what I was hoping to achieve.

On hearing the details, he suggested that we have quick discussion before heading out.

It turned out that individual with whom I was about to meet liked to challenge strangers over one thing or another when meeting for the first time. 

Bert’s suggestion was that instead of responding immediately to the first couple of challenges I pause for a couple of seconds and say something like “Hmm, good question” and pause again. 

He explained that the recognition of the “good questions” would effectively derail the challenges and pave the way for a productive conversation.

Following Bert’s advice, I recognized the good questions and enjoyed a very productive and mutually beneficial conversation.

What a great job in protecting me from potentially unproductive conversation.

How many times has one of your advisors protected you from a potentially problematic or costly situation?

How do you feel about that advisor that provided this protection?

How would your clients feel about your protecting them?

You As Your Clients' Most Trusted Advisor

My intention in sharing the stories about Bert was to illustrate how the concept of most trusted advisor applies in real life.

Regardless of your experience in life or as a service provider, chances are good to excellent that you have both witnessed and experienced the effect of a most trusted advisor.

Once you have this story in mind, reflect on a situation in which someone helped you similar to how Bert helped me.

As a service professional you have what it takes to be a judicious trusted advisor for clients.

Although you may not have thought about it, you can probably deliver to clients, the same kinds of benefits that you identified.

Starting from your personal brand, what would your role as a trusted advisor look like?

What benefits could your clients expect?

And last but not least, what difference will that make to your marketing?