Advisor's First Meeting Process. What's Missing Since Moving to Virtual Meetings with New Clients.

In this post, I'm going to share with you a way to add back one of the main pieces from first meetings with potential new clients that we lost when we all had to go virtual back in March 2020. 

Before then, you might have had an initial phone call to see what the prospective client was looking for and put together a sample plan or simple recommendations, and then you would have had another meeting in person to share the proposal or finalize an agreement for working together. 

But for the last year, we’ve all had to transition to every first meeting with prospective clients being just a phone call or a Zoom. And there are a lot of key pieces that are missing by not having in-person meetings, but one of the biggest ones has to do with establishing credibility with that new contact. Specifically, the potential new client no longer comes down to see your nice office and get that comfortable feeling from having a couch meeting and looking around to see that you have a credible firm. By being in your office, it adds trust and credibility and we don’t get to do that anymore. Since we’re meeting through a screen, people don’t know if I’m working out of my closet or a real office. This may not seem like a big deal, but it does play a big role in the credibility factor. 

Here’s my recommendation:

After the first meeting, and if they agree to a second, send them a quick pre-recorded 30- to 60-second video. You only have to do this once and it’s as easy as walking through your office recording with your phone and saying something like this: 

“Hey, I really enjoyed meeting you the other day and I’m looking forward to putting some things together for our next meeting, but I wanted to take a minute and send you this quick video, just to show you around our office. We may not be able to meet in person, but at least I can introduce you to some of the team.” Then walk through the office and introduce people, “here’s Heidi at the front desk, she’ll be on the other end of the warm voice you hear when you call in … and here’s Caroline who will help compile your forms ...” 

Something like that, you can script it out yourself, but they’ll be able to see that there’s a team and a nice-looking office and it will help the prospective client feel more connected. This simple video can really add a lot of value in the first meeting process. 

I’d love to know, so please leave a comment, are you already doing this? If you are, I’d love to hear about how it’s working for you.