To create highly satisfied affluent clients that are actively looking to give you more business and send you qualified referrals, you must focus on a homogenous core of wealthy individuals and then get systematic. In other words, you need to create systems where high-touch relationship management happens without necessarily requiring your day-to-day involvement.

Affluent investor satisfaction can be divided into two components—satisfaction with investment performance and satisfaction with the relationship. Based on extensive research, we’ve shown that your relationship with your wealthy clients can be as important as investment performance in the long-term retention and cultivation of them.

Our research on relationship satisfaction identifies four specific categories that culminate in a high-touch, high-profit relationship. Those four categories are what we call the “C.L.A.S.” relationship management model.

The four categories are:

• Client focus—your level of focus on the affluent investor’s needs, interests and goals.
• Leadership—proactively providing solutions to your wealthy clients based on their unique financial motivation.
• Attention—understanding and providing the level of desired attention and motivation for attention.
• Shared values—demonstrating that you share core values, common grounds and personal goals.

A Model For Improved Satisfaction
High-net-worth psychology helps you understand what each type of affluent investor seeks by way of the C.L.A.S. relationship management model. For example, “leadership” applies to all nine high-net-worth personalities as a strategic need, but it means something far different to a family steward versus an independent.

To a family steward, providing “leadership” means proactively providing solutions on how to fund college for their children or grandchildren, how to build up or distribute a nest egg to the kids so they can use it as a down payment on a house. Contrast that with leadership for independents, which means proactively providing them with ideas on how to retire by 50 and to ensure that their money lasts through their retirement. These are the same strategic goals, but they mean something tactically different to each of the high-net-worth personalities.
The  exhibit above provides tactical examples of how the C.L.A.S. relationship management model can be applied to each high-net-worth personality. It’s important to keep in mind that these are only possible courses of action and that your understanding of your affluent clients will be instrumental in refining the methods.

Implications
Integrating high-net-worth psychology with the C.L.A.S. relationship management model provides you with a clear path to follow with each of the nine personalities. This allows you to positively impact your affluent client’s overall satisfaction level, increase assets under management per wealth investor and disproportionately generate client referrals. By consistently implementing these proven methods, you will be able to build a practice that is highly productive, efficient and profitable.



Russ Alan Prince is president of R.A. Prince & Associates Inc. and executive director of Private Wealth magazine.
Brett Van Bortel is director of consulting services for Invesco Consulting, the sales consulting group within Invesco Distributions Inc. The opinions expressed are those of Russ Alan Prince and Brett Van Bortel, and are based on current market conditions and subject to change without notice. These opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals.