Financial Advisors: Fun Ways to Segment, Personalise, and Wow Your Clients!

So grab a coffee , sit back and let's get ready to blast off . I'm your host , frans de Tuer . Alrighty , so this is where does this come from ? Why are we talking about this today ?

Last week , we were talking about lead generation and all sorts of things , and I just also want to mention on that note that if you watched last week's show where I was talking about lead gen , those are the powerful but simple to do things that anybody can do .

I'm also going to do a follow up on that , on more nuanced sort of approaches to lead gen , where we're going to be looking at other things , but there I'm going to have guests , so we're going to talk about that with guests . They're really looking forward to that one , so do keep an eye out for that , but for me , it felt like the natural .

Well , maybe this one should have gone before that one , but it doesn't really matter . It's just important because I've had been having a lot of conversations with people where I make comments and then people push back rightfully so and I really enjoy that , because my role is pretty much being a devil's advocate . It's pretty much planting seeds .

It's pretty much , you know , disagreeing with , but not just for the sake of disagreeing , but bringing different points of views to the table , because we never sit down and think about is the way I'm doing it still relevant or is this the most efficient way or effective way ? And if the answer is yes , then fantastic , at least you had a look at it .

Or you're going to come to new insights and say , oh , maybe I can tweak it , because it's not always about really changing things , you know , just throwing things on its head and starting from scratch . That's not what we want to do .

We often want to tweak , and one of the things that I realized this week , actually traveling , is that you know , there's a lot of things that I've read and watched and listened to over the last few years and there are a lot of things that I , at the time , was not ready for and at the time , you know , things weren't really in place for me to do those

things . At that point I know that's what I needed to do , but I almost felt overwhelmed when I heard , like you know , now , when I listen to the same stuff again , which is powerful , when you listen to things again , I find that now suddenly , ah , those things are in place , now the next thing .

I'm reminded of things that I need to do and reminded of things that I can now implement and suddenly , oh yes , the next step , and now I'm ready for that next step . So just also , you know , wherever you are at this point in your journey , just be sort of mindful of that , because that is important .

So some of the things I'm going to show you going to be ready for , some of the things you won't be ready for , but you might be ready for tomorrow or next year or whenever . So this whole thing came from . You know several discussions and sessions that I presented where I've always been saying that you know , I don't say .

I asked the question Do you service all your clients the same or do ? The other way that I asked this is do your clients all receive the same level of service ? And then people go yes , they try to , and then I go , but should they ? And then the answer again is yes , they should .

Now that's where I disagree , and I think there's just a small difference in our view that makes me disagree and that makes you maybe disagree with me . So this is what today is about . I want to go through this and talk about , you know , three things that we need to think about , and everything starts off really , with segmentation .

You know , the most incredible phenomenon for me is that people are not thinking about these things that have been done for many , many years , that work . They're not going to work for me , why not ? There's a reason why businesses do this . There's a reason for this .

Maybe the tools we used to do are changes , and maybe the way we approach it might be a little bit different , but at its core , segmentation is still important , but why ? Because we need to understand who we are talking to .

So I want to share just a couple of points , just very briefly , about why segmentation is so critical and why we need to consider this Well . One , if I segment , remember one of the trends we spoke about last year at Ascend and it was one of the top six trends globally is hyper personalization .

So if I segment well and I have a philosophy around that and I say , are you and me In our businesses ? We have a philosophy for segmentation . There's a process and there's a way that we do this .

It will enable you to provide really , truly personalized services , and there's nothing more that speaks to somebody than something that's well , this is made for me , or , you know , this is just well , this is exactly what I was looking for . How amazing is that ? We don't even have to say that we personalize it for them . It is simply just what will happen .

The thing is that when somebody resonates with what it is that you say and what it is that you do for them , there is a bond that forms there that is stronger than anything else . So it's really , really important . It will obviously drive satisfaction , loyalty and , specifically , advocacy that I spoke about last year . So enhanced personalization is the first one .

The next one is increased efficiency , because you know we will be able to say well , because there's a segment , there are similarities , there's common characteristics , there are overlaps , and then , based on that , we can put together the rest of the things that we're going to talk about today , which is value proposition and client servicing .

But it means that we can streamline everything , which just makes it more , more effective . Now , what happens when we are more efficient or more effective ? Well , funny enough , we improve our service delivery . Of course , things for certain things become more predictable and we get into the groove . We understand .

So that's the third one improved service delivery , very , very important . Then , lastly , and this is one of the big reasons why you want a segment , if this is the only reason why you're segmented , it's still very valuable . But this is targeted marketing We've been on about . You know . Just think about the stats that were shared this morning as well .

You know , if you talk with people where they want to be spoken to in the way that they want to be communicated with , through the means that they want to be communicated with , suddenly they're more open and they listen and they hear . But when you segment , well , and you're talking to that specific person , all of those specific people will hear you clearly .

So targeted marketing for me is like that's a win . It's a massive , massive win .

So let's just say you don't get to improve your service delivery , it's just say that you don't get to increase your efficiency and you don't even personalize your services or anything that you provide to clients , but you just use it for targeted marketing , whether it's through any of those means that will shift , that will have a profound impact on your business .

So this is why segmentation , for me , is critical

. Now , what are some of the criteria , though ? We said there's some fun ways and things that you can do this , and often for me , what is segmentation ? It's not to say that segmentation is where I can say you are platinum and gold and diamond and silver and that kind of stuff . We like to give names like that to these segments .

But what is it really about ? I think when you have a specific segment , you must be able to tell a story about that segment . So that segment , however you define it I'm gonna go through the things that I believe you can sort of think about when you wanna segment , but you must be able to tell a story off of that .

In other words , you must be able to describe that person to me through a story . That's what segmentation really is , and when you can do that , everything else becomes so much easier . It's so much easier , right ? So what are some of the things Now ?

For me , there's really two parts to segmentation , or to ideal client profiles , or call this whatever you want , but there's sort of two aspects . On the one hand , we've got these factual things , the things that they do , the things that maybe where they are in life , et cetera .

So one of the things maybe we can group people together as far as their financial goals are concerned . You can sort of segment this . So you have a home saver . People provide that they wanna provide a deposit to buy a home , for example . So all of these people you wanna help . Or you have people who wanna invest into startup businesses .

Or you've got people who want to start businesses . So you can sort of think about those financial goals , or that we only work with people who are serious about their retirement . If you wanna be that dry , you can absolutely do that . So financial goals is definitely one of the things .

But you can see , it's a very do you want this , do you want that , do you want the next thing ? And then you can sort of say , oh , so you fit into this segment . So that's one of the things , and also some , just by the way , you can use these things in combination .

It's not that you'll pick one of them , but you could also say , well , maybe through our assets under management , or net worth or profitability , maybe you can segment according to that , right , you could maybe think about life stages , so you could segment your clients around life stages .

You could also think about maybe I don't know if that's really valuable , but risk tolerance , for example , is something that you could do . And then the other thing that we use a lot and that we've been taught to do is actually demographics . It's what they do stuff , right ?

So it's males and females and I don't know according to income and jobs and geographical location and I don't know qualifications . Those kind of things are the demographics . So those are all important and you can sort of use them maybe in a combination of things , cause maybe some of these things are important to you , right ?

So you want people who are going to retirement , you know , so maybe that's a financial goal , so they want to retire . That's also a life stage . You also might need them to have a minimum amount of assets under management , for example . Or at the very least , you want to say , well , these are the people , and then we want to do it that way .

Now , also remember that in your business , you could have multiple segments of people and you can have different target markets within your business , particularly depending on the size of it . But these are some of the things to think about . Now , the one thing that trumps all of these ?

Right , there's one thing that trumps all of this , and for me that is who they are . So it's more the softer side of things than the hard side of things . So the hard side of things are the boxes I can tick and say , oh , the client meets these specific criteria .

But you know , I also want to know that if these are my criteria , not all of those people who tick the boxes are in fact people I want to work with . Why not ? And this is sometimes where we don't think about this .

So I always say , like you know , when the phone rings and you go like , oh , I want to answer this call , then you know it's not really somebody that you should be working with or somebody who's just .

You walk out of that meeting and you phone your assistant and you say , oh , you just do it yourself and just cancel all your upcoming meetings because you are so drained . And there are clients maybe that's just keeping you busy , keeping you busy , keeping you busy , but they can never make a decision or they can never stick to a decision .

You know , those are the kind of things and then the one thing that really they can even be great people to hang around with . They might be able to give you energy and make work fun for you and really make you feel like you know less is the oh . I would bribe with these people .

It's absolutely fantastic , but if they do not see your value or the value that you add , they want to do it themselves .

For example , specifically the DIY guys they you can do whatever you want , like they're not going to really want to do business with you and they're always going to be challenging your fees and all of these kind of things because they don't see the value .

Now , sometimes people will start off on wanting to do them themselves , so they may want some input from you . They want you to rubber stamp what they want to do . They just want to sort of use you as a soundboard and that's perfectly fine .

I think you should absolutely do that , because what you'll often find is that those clients when they have , when they just start off and they can manage everything and they don't have a lot of money and if they make a mistake it's not a massive impact , that they'll be fine with that , and then they'll get to a point somewhere down the line where , sure , now

they don't have the time anymore , or now suddenly the decisions are becoming too big , and who do you think they're going to come to if they have a relationship with you ? They're going to come to you .

That most important part is that all these people that I really get along with , that I get energy from that it's really great to help , because you'll find if you look at your existing client base , you know you will easily be able to sort of identify the people that you really enjoy and they may have the same amount of things with you and you may make the

same amount of money off of both of them , but one person you really love working with and the other person you don't .

So my suggestion is that you go and write down what are the traits of the person you really love working with and what are the traits of the person you really don't like working with , and then say , well , which other clients have these traits that I don't want to work with ?

And then you should really have a plan to sort of , you know , get rid of them over time and getting rid of them obviously sounds very , very like not great , but to sort of , let's say , pass them on to someone else is better suited to work with them . But this is really important

. So again , just very briefly , I mean we want to see if we can personalize , we want to increase efficiency , we want to improve service delivery and , of course , we want to do targeted marketing . So that's why we want to do segmentation .

And then we sort of have these , these factual sort of aspects , the hot facts about how we do that and the things that we want to consider , and you've got to go sit down and write those down for yourself . Don't overthink it . Just say what are the things that's important to me in my business , where am I going ? Like , write those things down .

And then the important part is , like , the kind of people that you want to work with . So think about that .

When we then have those client segments and we really have a deep understanding of those clients and we really are able to tell that story about that client , then we have a much better starting point to hone our value propositions or to align our value propositions to those client segments . Now , what is a value proposition ?

Well , for me it's just the value you add , but that doesn't mean anything for an show ? Yes , it doesn't . So for me , it's about the difference that it makes .

It's about whether you can in fact take that person from where they are to where they want to be with a high degree of certainty and a high degree of likelihood that you would get them there right , because sometimes things happen that you don't have control over .

But at the end of the day , it is the fact that I understand you , I really , you know , can put myself in your shoes , and if you do these things that we can do , and if you do these things and you follow what we share with you , you will get to where you want to get . And there's loads of things around that .

Remember , it's not just only I want a certain amount of money . It's about the lifestyle , it's about the things I want to do , it's about the experiences I want to create and things like that and sort of things that's important to me . But why do you need a value proposition ?

I mean , there are like 30,000 financial advisors and planners in South Africa , and I've been talking about people who are in fiduciary and work in other areas . I mean , there's probably close by 200,000 people . That's around .

But if I just look at financial advisory there's about 30,000 , 30,000 , maybe 35,000 people that are in this and they are spread across the different places in the profession and the industry . But one of the things that you want to do is be able to differentiate yourself , because everybody does the same thing .

Right , we all do risk planning and estate planning and tax planning and you know these kind of all of us but . But but most people , when you look at their websites , it will say how we do estate planning , we do this planning , we do that planning , we do that planning . None of it really says like , but what is that ?

What are the outcomes that we're trying to create here for you ? So you want to differentiate yourself by how you structure your , your value proposition . So this is something that will really help you if you just focus on your unique strengths and your approach . Right , that's the value proposition . This is your way of doing this .

Just think about articles that are being written and are being posted . You know some of you will agree with those and some of you will go like but that's not how we do it . We do it this way same problem , same type of client , but we have a different approach . That's the value proposition and you've got to be proud of that .

So differentiation is a big reason why you want to look at your value proposition . The second thing is funny enough , going back to segmentation and the targeted marketing as well is client attraction . Why ? Because if you have a clear value proposition it will attract that potential client . Why ?

Because this value proposition is aligned to that line segment that you've just created .

So if you know and understand the person and you can all the business whatever and you can tell a story about them , and Now you have a value proposition that helps them go from A to B or from A to Z the way they want to go , then suddenly this makes a massive difference and they go like ah , that's for me Right , so that's important .

So client attraction . The other one is client retention , because it was the other side of it . We've gone forever be sort of trying to acquire clients . Obviously at some point become more and more about maintaining and retaining . But even in the build phase you know you don't want to lose that line You've just acquired . Why ?

Because it's costly and it takes your time and it also hurts when you lose the client . So you want to make sure that you can retain them . So you got to make sure that the value proposition still aligns with what they need and where they're going . And you also got to be clear from the beginning .

You know , am I going to help you through a certain phase in your life or am I going to be there for the rest of your life ? Be very clear around that so that people know what to expect . Then you know if you say , well , I'm only here to help you through this phase because that's our speciality , then that's great .

But then you know the time is going to come in , they're going to go out and off , they go to someone else or you should have other people in the business that can take you from a certain level to the next level . So those are all important . And then just you know marketing efficiency again .

So you'll see already , like , if I start aligning sort of the four things that we spoke about that's critical for clients segmentation , and I align the four things that's important for all the reasons why you want to create a proper value proposition that's aligned to that , it's because they link up .

So marketing efficiency , if you can articulate your value proposition well and it's simple , I think we often think we've got to create these brochures that are , you know , like millions of pages long and really Use very formal language and all sorts of things like that . No , it's explaining . You know what is your process , what is the difference you'll make .

Showcase that you understand the problems and challenges for that specific client , and that's it . It's really not that hard . So those are important

. How do I , though , tailor my value proposition for each of the client segments ?

This is important , so , you know , if you understand each of those segments well and you're able to tell that story that I've been talking about , you'll be able to highlight the key characteristics out of each of those , because that's where it starts off , like what do these people have in common , or what are the main things that are important to them ?

What are the main things they might be doing ? You know what are the traits of these people that we really love working with , what are those things , and then that forms the basis for your valid proposition .

If we then know and understand those specific needs and how do I know what their specific needs is , I don't assume ask , do some research , ask them and see what those problems are , and have that conversation with them . The only problem with that is that it's very time consuming .

So there is another hack that you can use to sort of get going more quickly and rather test it than maybe try and figure it out from scratch . And there are ways that you can use AI to sort of create these different personas and to create these different situations and key characteristics for clients and sort of .

You can use that as a basis to start off with and test some of those with your clients and just run your client base through that and see whether those are true of your clients or not . So there are quicker ways of doing this .

So I would probably , if you're already down the line , rather maybe just take a set of things and start testing it with clients but make it quick and don't spend too much time on that and just see where you are in alignment and where you're not , and then you can make those changes . Also important that you've got to highlight the relevant benefits .

So just think about everything you do Not everything you do applies to that or to every client of yours or every prospective client of yours . So you want to make sure that when you're talking to me , you only highlighting the benefits that are important to me .

I listened to something the other day which was a guy that was selling real estate and he was selling more than entire teams of people in the area where he was working .

Now , this was quite fascinating to me , to be honest , because what he did was he would have these conversations with people , find out what is most important to them and he would only sell that to them .

So one of the stories that he told was that there was a person he has some classic cars and everywhere he lived before it's been an issue with parking and that the parking is either too narrow or there's not enough parkings .

And then what he did is that he just focused on because he only had like a few buildings on the same street where he was selling apartments , and he would just focus then on selling the parking bay or the parking space . That was it , and that's what people bought , because that is what was important to them .

Often we feel like we've got to talk about everything instead of just the thing that's bothering that person or just the thing that's important to them , because we feel everything else is important as well and we can see that in the way we run our businesses too is that we feel everything is important and we can't distinguish between what we should be doing or

what we shouldn't be . But that's what I mean with highlight the relevant benefits . Then use language that resonates , talk their language . Don't use , obviously , things we all know that and then showcase some success stories . You can anonymize these . I have a client that did this .

We had a client this was a story and things that align with this , and even sometimes , when I didn't say you should lie , but I mean when you want to bring certain concepts across , use stories . So those are very , very important as well .

So , aligning , then , the client service with your segmentation because this is now the big talking point , right , so we want to talk about do you do , do you give everybody the same service , or are we just looking at , saying , well , so these are different levels of service that we give to different types of clients , but because we stick to those , whatever we

promised them and whatever we agreed to , it means that they're still getting great service . Of course , we meeting expectation or even exceeding expectation , because what is great service ? Great service is a service that meets or exceeds expectation . It's when there's a misalignment of expectation that somebody perceives your service to be bad .

We just think about how you give the same level of service to two different clients . The one things you're walking on water . The other one things you are the worst thing since sliced bread , I don't know . Well , that was the best thing

Anyway . So it is absolutely because there was a different expectation the one you meet , or you exceed it , the other one you did not meet . And that's the only reason why people feel like service bad . If I expect to wait for an hour and I wait for an hour , I'm gonna be unhappy .

No , if I wait for an hour and 15 minutes , you bet I'm gonna be unhappy . But if I expected that I'm gonna wait for 15 minutes and now I wait for half an hour , which is a lot quicker than the hour , I'm also gonna be upset . Right , if I'm expecting to wait for an hour and it takes 45 minutes , I'm gonna think , wow , fantastic .

So it's all about expectations . That's what servicing is really about . So it's not about providing everybody with the same service . It's about managing expectations and then delivering in line with those as well , and we can all bring this , or we can bring all of this back to the value proposition and to the segmentation . So all of these things are linked .

So if we think about some strategies just for aligning your client's service with segmentation , again , just you know , if we've done the segmentation and we've done the value proposition , we've got a deep understanding of these slides and we can now develop specific service models . And that's what you should be doing develop a specific service model .

Okay , you want to be catering to the unique needs . Some people there will be urgency , they need things now . Other people no urgency , we can take more time to do this and alleviate some of that pressure . So those are some of the things that we can do , but very important so think about .

The things that you could probably differentiate on is things like just what you promise in terms of how long something will take . Also , just your communication frequencies . So with some people , you might be communicating more and with some people you'll be communicating less . So that's a thing . And also the access to advisors .

So some clients might only have online access to information and they can call somebody once a year and most people go like , no , we can't do that . Okay , but go , think about that .

A lot of this comes from sort of the traditional days where we were really focused on that we want to do these things , and whatever I do for people , it'll always come back to me Somewhere . You never know who they talk to , you never know what happens to them . You never know . So I'll do all these great things with the hope of a pay off somewhere .

And I think business is actually a little bit different . Business is much more about being intentional . It doesn't mean that I don't serve . It doesn't mean that I don't care . It doesn't mean that I don't do my best .

It just means that you're more intentional about the people that you work with and increase the certainty that you have about the outcome at the end of the day . So those things are really important . You've got to leverage technology appropriately as well . I mean this always comes in .

You've got to think about if you have , let's say , tech savvy clients , how do I utilize tech for those ? Can I make digital tools available ? Can I communicate with them in a different way ? Those kind of things , so we can really think about those . I think you've heard me speak about that quite a bit . Things like platforms .

Consider , for example , the investment platforms that you use . You know what functionality do they bring to the table ? It's not always that you and I need to get our own technology and implement our own things .

Often , the service providers that you work with has certain things that you can use in their value proposition , so can you piggyback off of some of these things ? Well , one is that you're not then liable to or responsible to manage and maintain those things , but also it doesn't cost you anything .

So we've got to start thinking a little bit differently about this . But again , it goes back to do we understand our clients ? Do we know what it is that they're looking for and is there something that they would be using for ? Because having this and clients are not using it doesn't really then pay off much .

And also , you've got to and this is one thing that Maria Tappen said to me many , many years ago . I think it was 2019 or so . She said that the one thing that we never do with clients is ask them how they want to be communicated with . That has always stuck with me since 2019 .

It's not just what we communicate , it's how we communicate , in other words , the portal or the means or the tool that we use to communicate . It's how long , how much detail versus how little detail do you want ? Do you want high level stuff , or do you want detailed stuff , like all of those things ?

And again , this is where technology will help you , because it's very hard to do those things when you want to do their manually and sort of data that way . But just think about that .

And then also your other communications apart from that , where you do it more from a one to many perspective , is that make sure it talks to that segment and not to your entire business . So just let it talk to that segment . So these things are all things that will make a massive difference from that point of view .

And then just think about some specific segment approaches . If you think about your team , just they need to understand what the different needs are of these different clients and so forth . So really some things . I just want to give you a couple of examples before I end off with some customized service offerings . So I mean , there's things like it .

So you've got tech savvy clients . Are you offering them a mobile app ? Of course , for them it might be important to be able to view their thing . So do they have a portal ? If you will , if you don't have a mobile app and you don't have to have a mobile app , are you working with somebody who offers that and that clients can then access through that .

Think about implementing like these days with virtual agents . Something we'll be talking about at the tech event as well is like implement a virtual agent that can answer questions at any time of the day or night . So those are some of the things that you can think about for your tech savvy clients .

If you think about high net worth individuals , right , maybe there's a dedicated financial advisor that they can speak to and that's always on call , et cetera . Those kind of things you can do a lot more one-on-one consultations . Maybe you still go and visit them , for example . Whatever . That is right , these things can blend , but those are some of the things .

Maybe you offer them webinars and training sessions that are just for them around . How can they sort of optimize their tax , for example , or what are the important considerations for state planning and those things , because maybe some of those aspects don't apply to other types of clients .

So think about what we can do in addition to what we're just doing , our normal thing . And then , for young professionals , a lot of educational content . I just bought my kids books that I said to them like they and their partners need to read these books . I don't want them to get to 40 and they realize like I wish I knew these things .

They need to learn this as soon as possible . But you can do the same for your young professionals . They get taught their expertise , but what they don't do is they don't get taught how to manage money and to grow businesses and to build businesses . So there's a lot that we can add in that space and so on and so forth . I mean there's quite a few things .

So , just ending off with practical steps for simplified segmentation I know I'm a little bit over time , just bear with me Define clear segmentation criteria . Be clear on what you wanna do , like all the things that we spoke about earlier , and we've got some tools available .

I'm gonna see if we can do maybe a little bit of an ebook on this and maybe make that available . Then , once you know what your criteria is for your segments , then go ahead and segment your existing client base , but also think about not just your existing client base , but what is the future clients that you wanna attract ? What do they look like ?

Then you sort of look at that and say , well , if I can tell a story about them , how do I add value to them and then sort of develop your value property for each of those segments . Align your service offerings to that . So what I'm gonna do for them . So don't confuse service with value . Value is the outcomes , it's the difference that we make .

Service is just the things we need to do in order to unlock that value . So they're not the same thing , although they're very closely or they work closely together . And then think about your communication plans . Those are very important . Make sure that you train your team and just keep on looking at all of this .

Alrighty , so that's that for today and I hope you enjoyed that . I'll be looking at the comments now , in a second , but thank you very much for joining us . We'll be back next week same time . Well , I'll be in a different place , in a new place , but hopefully the studio will be back . We'll continue this amazing series .

So I just want to wish you a fantastic weekend . Thank you very much for being

here . Live . You watched the recording this fall . Thank you very much as well . Remember to subscribe and just enjoy your weekend , stay safe , be blessed and prosper and continue to raise the ball . Love you very much . Bye-bye , all right , folks . That's the wrap for this episode of Propulsion .

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