Enhancing the Client Experience #2 – Kim Payne – Transcript

Fraser Jack 

Thank you for joining me Kim Payne.

Kim Payne 

Wow, this is so exciting Fraser not only to be speaking to you, but also to be talking about such an important topic. Yeah, I could be here for hours though just wanting you

Fraser Jack 

a warning this episode could could get very long. Margie would say, it’s a fun episode. It’s a fun conversation or something that we both absolutely love. We’re talking about, of course, the user experience, and how clients to surprise and delight clients and make them feel amazing about joining you in your practice. Before we get there, though, Kim, let’s start with a little bit about you This is quickly go back in time, tell us about your history and how you became to do what you do.

Kim Payne 

Well, funny, Fraser, My surname is Payne. And I actually always wanted to be a doctor. And it wasn’t until I got to year 11. And I was doing all the maths and science. And I literally needed one more subject and the only subject that fit with the curriculum was economics. So I took economics and I fell madly, deeply in love with it. And that kind of got me down this path. But probably the more relevant piece that is more interesting is I started out in stock broking and spent many, many years in stock broking and relationship management within the kind of stock broking background. And then I decided to become an advisor. So I did what was called the DSP back then I know it’s now the Advanced Diploma. But anyway, I was 29. So Young, and I’m female. And I’ll never forget, I was sitting in front of an older client going through their advice. So back when they were called financial plans, not statements of advice. And the woman, not the guy, the woman, in the middle of me talking through and explaining what we were doing and why we were doing it literally put her hand up, like in my face and just said, Stop. What gives you the right to give me advice. You’re young and female. Now, it’s really funny, because ever since then, I’ve come up with some of the most amazing comebacks that I could have had, but at the time, I was just mortified. And it really set me down a path to understanding Okay, well, there’s there’s obviously a challenge she that she’s even considering that I wouldn’t be, because I was young and female, I wouldn’t be qualified or positioned to give her advice. So understanding what clients really value in a relationship, and how to make that experience, one that allows them to want to continue on became a bit of an obsession since I was 29. So that kind of started my journey. And in to be honest, Fraser when I was an advisor, I was actually more interested in how the business was going. So why were we only able to use certain funds? Why do we have to do things this way, not that way. And I became very interested in how the business was functioning. So I left that role as an advisor and actually joined MLC and was in their training team for a little while. And then I became one of the consultants and I was a consultant with them for nearly 10 years, helping advisors build and grow their business. Then I left when I had my first baby, I joined Steve Crawford for three years, we joined a business where he ran the financial planning side and Iran, the consulting side of experience. Well, three years in, we just decided we had different agendas. So we went separate ways. And I’ve been running my own show within financial advice ever since then, and still doing the same thing really getting in and helping an advisor work out, you know, what is their value? How do they deliver it? How do they make the experience for clients more exciting, so that they continue on the journey, and bringing that human element into it. So even though I was a bit of a mess, science geek, and still am, don’t tell anyone else other than everyone who’s listening to this, I do really love how you can then bring that human element into the numbers and the maths and the science and the logic to actually make it a better experience overall.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I love we love geeking out on the logic side. So we’ll get into that. But it’s really interesting, isn’t it with them, when you talk when you hear people’s stories, and their backgrounds, and you get to that defining moment, you know, that that moment that you still remember so clearly where somebody challenged you, because, you know, on on your, on your on what you can bring to the table and, and from from then on, it’s really interesting to watch you then grow and make sure that there is never going to be that argument again, there is no way that that argument can can rock you again.

Kim Payne 

Yeah, and you know, I laugh because this is back, you know, 20 odd years ago, if somebody actually stopped you now and young. Yeah, that’s fine, but said because you’re female with obviously the way the world is now. And, you know, all the diversity and inclusion and all of that. Yeah, I wonder how she might have got away with that. Had we sort of had that conversation 20 years ago. Yeah. And

Fraser Jack 

wondering from the clients perspective is is a really good place for us to start this conversation because that, you know, whether it was she was trying to impress her husband or whether she was, you know, I don’t whatever that place that that came from is interesting, and as you mentioned before the logic and as geeking out on that it’s an interesting son Reo is that whether it’s right or wrong, or what is the next step. But where does that come from? What are the clients thinking when they come in the door? And what? What are all the what ifs inside their brain that need to be answered before they can make decisions and all those sort of little things around. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about. When we talk about the client experiences, the client experience that happens inside their head, most of the time, and not not the necessarily the external things that are happening to them, but what’s going on inside their head that as we were out in so I guess that’s, that’s a great way to frame up the conversation we’re going to be having, let’s kick into the the concept of user experience. And just that, tell us about why you believe that’s such an important thing to focus on as a business.

Kim Payne 

I think it’s critical, because the number one thing we live in our minds, okay, now, I’m not a psychologist, but have done a lot of work around the mind how the brain thinks, how we think, act and behave in our everyday not just in terms of financial planning. And what is so important is how you make someone feel doing what you do, right. So you do your thing, whatever that might be, in this case, it’s providing advice to allow people to live a better life, but how are they actually making people feel, because 90% of our decision making is based around how we feel, our emotions, our needs, our wants, and all of that only 10% is the facts and the data. So understanding how that works in the advice space is critical. And it actually I feel becomes your competitive advantage. That you know, you can commoditize what you do and how you do it. But the way that you make people feel, and there’s that old, one liner about you know, it’s it’s how you make people feel. But for me, it’s the critical piece of the puzzle that not enough in our industry have been focusing on. And if ever, there was a time to get really serious about this, after the last few years, people want that level of connection, they want to feel seen, heard and understood more than ever before. So I believe that if you really want to stand out, and you want to be the one that clients are not only coming to because I know at the moment, the bigger challenge is not getting new clients, it’s being able to look after and keep happy, the ones that you’ve got and make sure that they don’t go anywhere, then you’re the whole experience that they have in working with you is the number one thing that you’ve got that you can control to a degree that can actually allow you to stand out ahead of the rest. Because honestly, phase if I’m getting a good experience from someone, the chances of me at the end, and I know in financial advice, thinking about every 12 months, whether there’s opt in, or whether it’s a whole new agreement, if I’m having an amazing experience with you, I am not jumping out and I’m not going elsewhere. So for me that really is not only a competitive advantage, but we often look at, you know, when you’re looking at running a business from you know, how can we get a better return on our investment? For me, it’s about how do you get a better return on the experience that the client has was actually helps you build a better business overall. So yeah, so that’s, that’s one of the things I really love. The other thing too, Fraser is obviously off the back of the last couple of years, and the big focus on productivity and compliance and how hard it’s been for advisors and the uncertainty. One of the biggest threats for those out there now that want a sustainable business and a profitable business is actually unhappy clients, that is, to me the biggest issue. So being able to focus on what makes them happy, what gives them the rewards that they need to continue on the journey, that that’s critical, and those that are spending the time and I get a lot of people that go Yeah, but but Kim, I don’t have a marketing department or you know, there’s only one or two of us in the business, I can’t do any of this stuff. And my pushback always is if you can prioritize keeping your client happy, and making sure that they enjoy doing the work they do with you. I don’t care how important it is, you’re going to struggle to keep them on board. So yeah, I to me, it’s it’s it’s a deal breaker if you want to run a successful business today.

Fraser Jack 

So tell us about some of the advisors that you work with and what they’re doing in their practices.

Kim Payne 

So it’s interesting you say this, because often some of the advisors I’ve looked at when they think of client experience, they think of how can I just wow, and delight and what have you and yes, that is absolutely part of it. But one of the things that’s really important is going back to the basics and getting the basics right first. So as an example of Fraser nothing to do with financial advice over the last year or two. The kids might have got kids they’re 11 and 13. So you know when we’re away or on road trips, and that we end up getting McDonald’s. I’m not a fan of McDonald’s, but anyway, can’t keep them away from it all the time. And lately, whenever we’ve gone and got the order, and we’ve done it through Drive Thru, we’ve then driven off. And there’s always been something missing or something wrong, which given McDonald’s normally prides themselves on their processes been really disappointing. And I was looking at one of the guys serving me the other day, and he literally put everything in and just handed me the bag. And it was wrong, the order was wrong. But he didn’t actually just look back in the bag, and reconcile what was in the bag with what was on my order. So, you know, there’s no point doing all the WoW stuff if you can’t get the basics, right. So I’ve seen a lot of businesses that have really focused on the client experience, go back to the basics first, and have a look at okay for someone to work with us. What are the kinds of things that they expect? And I call these your rituals? What are the things that you must do things like you must confirm, you know, meetings before they’re coming up, you must ask for their preferences and how they want you to communicate with them. So that that’s all the stuff that really I think’s got a got to form and be looked at critically before you actually look at the WoW stuff. But the WoW stuff, some more fun stuff. And if I can have a look at some of the things that advisors are doing, it’s having a look at where in your process, is there something that you have to do, right, you can’t escape it, and maybe it’s a compliance thing, or they’ve got to fill in information or complete information or get information back to you, you can’t avoid that. But if they’ve got to do it, how can you make that more enjoyable? So one, one advice business up in Queensland, we were looking at how they could do it. And they’ve got a lot of older clients. So they’re still doing paper based questionnaires. So I know that that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, a lot of move to digital, but this was still very relevant for their their business. And we workshop as they’re filling in this paperwork, how would you like to do it? If you were doing it at home? How could you make it more enjoyable? And the whole team said, Oh, well, if I had to do something really boring, I’d like to do it with a glass of wine, or, you know, a beautiful cup of tea. So what they did is whenever before, they would send out that questionnaire for a reasonably new client. And they would do this after the first appointment. And they would do some what I call polite probing, to they would know what the client’s drink of choice was. So we’ve, if they do drink wine, it’s not just that they drink wine, it’s that they drink Shiraz not, you know, cab SAV, or something like that. So they became very specific, or if it was tea, what kind of tea and I did that subtly. And then they would send out the paper base form with a bottle of the drink or a thing of the tea or whatever and a gorgeous, like postcard saying, as you complete the questions in here, do it with this cup or or do it with this bottle of vino, whatever it might be, and really enjoy the experience that was something really small that it was showing that they were getting inside the client’s mind, like you said at the beginning, thinking about, well, how would they feel given that they’ve got to provide this information? And how can we make that a little bit more enjoyable. So that was one that I really loved. Another one that I loved was a business that did a lot of insurance. And part of obviously, when you’re getting someone to sign up for insurances, they’ve got to do medicals. And what they would do is they would organize for the nurse to come on site to do the Bloods and do the medical, and they would go into a little room next to their boardroom. And the nurse would come on site and do that. And of course, you’ve got to fast as well. So the clients knew that they were going to be coming with an empty tummy and thirsty and what have you. And as soon as that was done the they’d taken the Bloods and done all that the advisor came and joined the nurse for the last part of the conversation, which meant that they could get access to some of the information that they needed to complete the insurance application without the client having to speak about it or share it again. And then as soon as they done all of that bit, they took them into the next room where they had a beautiful breakfast laid out. And again, they’ve done some beautiful probing, so they knew that they like croissants and orange juice or they liked gluten free bread and jam, whatever it might be. And it was just a beautiful way of making an unpleasant kind of more compliancy experience more enjoyable and this kind of thinking is it doesn’t have to be hard. Like it doesn’t have to be you don’t need a marketing department to bring that to the table. You just need to go okay, how are they feeling? This is something that’s a little bit more intrusive, a little bit uncomfortable. How can we make it more pleasant? Some other ones that some advisors have done is another group. They worked with a lot of clients that were at retirement age and a lot of these clients would go on holidays, right and a big part of what they did was help them fund the holiday. And inevitably, when people take a whole lot of photos and come back from a holiday they’ve got a whole reel to share. I swear some of the family do tend to try and avoid that next catch up because they don’t want to be inundated with 1000 photos. So what they use to do is I used to actually have after every time the client will go on a holiday, a meeting. And this meeting was just for the client to share all their holiday pictures with two of the staff members from the company and go through so that they didn’t have to bore the family, but they could relive and retell that holiday. And they made that part of the process. And part of helping us get you the holiday is you’ve got to share the pictures with us when you get back. And you know, seriously, which client wouldn’t get an absolute joy out of doing that. So they just could seriously talk to you forever about some of these. But one other piece, which I found really interesting is I’ve been doing a lot, a lot of work with a woman over in Canada called Julie little child, and she runs a business called absolute engagement. And very much the whole business is around, how can you better engage your clients and have a more meaningful relationship with them, so that they’re going to get more out of it. And as an advisor, you’re going to be of more value. And they were they were running a pilot program called Client connect, and I was lucky enough to be the coach. So I did the pilot program. And this whole pilot program program was around, how can you get inside the client’s mind before they come in? Get them thinking about really important things going on in their life? And how can you then help co create an agenda that when they come in for that meeting, they’ve actually had more input into, and they’ve had time to actually think about it, process and even talk maybe with their partner or spouse or other people that are really important before the meeting. And what we found in doing that, and we ran through a whole pilot were a whole series of questions in a poll were asked if the clients in advance, then it was all compiled. And a lot of them were also around, how were you feeling about you know what’s going on, because often things can go on in a client’s life that have got nothing to do with their financials. And on paper. F
inancially, they’re still sound, but it’s really derailed their confidence in the achievement of what they want out of life. So being able to investigate some of what’s going on, that’s on the more personal nature, and then bring them to the table. Fraser The results were phenomenal. The conversations that the advisors were then able to have with clients, even clients that they’d had on their books for years and years and years, and already had a good opera a good understanding of a good relationship with it took the relationship to a new level, it enabled partners or spouses that had typically been, you know, more of the silent player, it allowed them to more openly to contribute. It allows them to feel and understand about what their views are, and how they’re perceiving and how competent they are in relation to what’s going on. It was absolutely mind blowing. So this whole thing about co creation and doing it with the client, as opposed to just doing it and giving it to the client. I think this is something from an experience point of view that clients are really jumping on board with and loving.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I love that idea of CO creating the agenda or CO creating it with the advice as well. But even just starting with the agenda is really interesting to be able to say, how do we do that? And so many great examples, and I love the concept of enjoyable focusing on in a process and how do we make that enjoyable? Often we focus on making the process quicker, right, where this is a horrible process. Let’s bring it to you quicker, and let’s make it you know, let’s bring you a horrible process quicker, which doesn’t make any sense. But actually for stopping that and slowing down and going No, and that’s how we make it enjoyable and people within the office will have their own consumers. They’ll have great ideas and yeah, it’s amazing.

Kim Payne 

Oh, Fraser, do you know, one of my favorite things that I’ve learned over the years is called the doorman fallacy. I don’t know if you’ve come across it. And it talks about you know, when you go to a fancy hotel, and typically they have a doorman at the door who, you know, they they open the door and they greet you or they help you with your luggage and they point you to where the reception desk is. And then you might go up, refresh, you know, come down and then you know, where’s the latest restaurant? Or if I want to go and take my kids to a fun park, where do I go and they point you in the right direction. That is such a beautiful experience. However, it is not the cheapest way of doing it. Those glass revolving doors are far more efficient, and they’re a lot cheaper. They don’t need meal breaks or lube breaks. They don’t have emotional needs. They don’t break down very often they can work 20 477 days a week for quite a while without needing you know breaks or sleeps or what have you. But the whole concept is around there are times when you do want to look at what’s more efficient, what is a cheaper, quicker, faster way or better way of doing what we’re doing. But what’s really important is then weighing that up against Well, yeah, that might be quicker, faster and cheaper and to Technology is a great example. But is that going to be more effective? Is that going to deliver a better experience to the client? And at times making the decision considering both not just going from the efficiency point of view? So the doorman? In those fancy hotels? Yes, it costs more. Yes, it has higher and greater emotional needs and what have you, but it is so much more effective at creating a better experience for the clients than the glass revolving door ever would be? And how can we bring that trade off into the decisions that we make? I think that’s something that really needs to be your focus, in an advice business. And there are times, you know, even look at hybrid meetings. And, you know, yes, we have all gone online and digital. But some people actually do want to go back to that face to face. And if that, yeah, maybe it’s not as efficient. And yeah, you might not get through as many appointments in the day. But for those that crave that human connection, then rolling it out, can be quite detrimental. And that’s just one example. But yeah,

Fraser Jack 

as you say that I sort of feel like at the premium, the premium experience and financial advice to me, is often a premium experience, isn’t it? It’s yes, you could probably do things more effectively or efficiently online. But if we’re talking about the client experience, it’s really is needs to needs to come back into that premium bracket, rather than just to conflict type thing.

Kim Payne 

Yeah, and if you look at one of the biggest challenges in advice, at the moment, it is the affordability and accessibility challenge. And that, you know, being able to profitably serve clients that have less money to afford to be able to get advice, it is a bigger challenge. But for those that are, you know, charging, even at the lower level, the three to 5000, when you look at what it costs to produce just just standard advice, then it’s gonna come with a better experience, because otherwise, it’s going to be more challenging to get clients to sign up year on year on year. So yeah, they might sign up on the first year. But if you want to keep me coming back for more, yes, there’s other components that you need to delve into and what have you, but you’ve got to make that experience, one that really touches my heart and gets inside me, to keep me coming back. And those that really do look at it from that perspective, that they’re the ones that are doing it and doing it more easily than the rest.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, now, you’re talking about the, you know, being aware of the three B’s sort of run through that part, as well.

Kim Payne 

Oh, that’s sorry, I love it. So the three bays, and these are the areas that I find that when you’re looking at your overall experience to really get a really good grasp on. So the first one at the baseline. So this goes back to what I was saying before about, get your basics right, and your baselines and making them getting them right, but also making them enjoyable things like your meetings, things like, you know, collecting information from the client looking at that, but looking at how can I make that a better experience for your client? The two danger ones, though, Fraser that a lot of advisors miss if your blind spots, and your blind spots are the areas typically just before a meeting. So in the couple of days before the meeting, what are you doing? Because that’s when the whole meeting experience begins? What are you doing to get the client excited? What are you doing to get them prepared? And what are you doing to really prime them for what’s going to take place, and a lot of advisors brush over that too quickly, or they just send a confirmation of appointment email, or here’s something that you could read, rather than really getting them excited and getting them on board. So that’s why I call it a blind spot. The other blind spot is the 24 hours after the meeting. So often, there’s follow up that needs to be done. And usually the follow up is, you know, we’ll get back to you with you know, what we’re going to do now or what you need to do, and sometimes that follow up can take a couple of days to put together. But just after the meeting in that 24 hours, especially if there’s decisions I need to make, like, am I going to proceed with you? Or am I going to proceed for another 12 months with you, then in that 12 or 24 hours afterwards? That’s when I’m going to be really looking for the validation that the decision I’ve made to keep going is the right one. So a really good example is they say that the biggest readers of car magazines are actually after someone’s bought the car, not before. And the reason that happens is when they’ve made that decision. They want to validate that they’ve made the right decision. So I don’t know if you’ve ever done this phrase, I find myself doing it all the time. So I’ve gone and bought a new iMac right Big Apple Computer. I’ve bought it right I’ve done all the research, I buy it, I’ve pushed purchase, and then I spend the next 24 hours googling IMAX, and it’s like this is ridiculous. Like I’ve just bought it and we do that that’s human nature. So what can an advisor do in that 24 hours afterwards? And often I say even have a standard and it can still be a template That amo, that one that’s just validating, yes, this is a great decision, we’ve got lots of goodness to explore here, we’re going to be a couple of days before we’ll come back to you with X, Y, and Zed. But in the meantime, check this out, or just something that’s about the human relationship. And that’s why I call it a blind spot, because it’s often missed. And it’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss. So before and after meeting, see your blind spots, your black holes are those areas in between when nothing’s happening from the clients perspective, you might be super busy. But it doesn’t mean that the client is so you know, earlier on in the process that might be after you’ve met them for a few or a couple of meetings, and then you’re putting all the advice together. If it’s at the implementation stage, you’ve you’ve met with them, you’ve had to go away and you’re doing paperwork, you’re liaising with third parties, but they’re sitting there twiddling their thumbs doing nothing now not twiddling their times in their own lives, twiddling their thumbs because they can’t see the momentum. So and you know, I see so many advisors still that are having annual meetings, but not a lot of goodness in between that that’s what I call a black hole. They’re the danger zones. And they’re the zones that you’ve got to really focus on and make sure that that even if there is time in between making sure that you’re filling it with some relevant content or relevant experience so that they don’t feel left out and forgotten. And often, that’s what it is, I feel all your love, you’re all over me like a rush at the beginning. And then suddenly, it’s like, ah, do I even exist? And so that’s why I call it a blind spot and a black hole. These are the areas where if you’re going to start having a look at what you can do, how can you make those more enjoyable? How can you feel those, but in a really relevant and remarkable way? Yeah, it’s

Fraser Jack 

really interesting, because obviously, you mentioned the concept around how do you want your clients to think, think, feel and do at the beginning, and you mentioned being heard and understood as a really important thing. And I guess that’s just covers up on those times, to let them know that they they are not lost? And, you know, and ignored, I guess, when they’re not being heard and understood.

Kim Payne 

And face it, just think about the experience we have as humans now in online shopping, I don’t I don’t know how much online shopping you do. But I tell you, they have got it right. In that they you get constant updates. Now, I don’t even care that the updates are done, automated or with technology. But I know that they’ve got my order. I know that the orders processing, I know when the order has been dispatched. I know that the orders out on the delivery truck, and it’s going to be a couple of days. I know when it’s coming on the day it’s coming. And again, I’m I’m totally cool with it being automated, because it’s keeping me in the loop. And this is actually something that’s really interesting to that Dan Ariely, a behavioral economic economist and his book predictably irrational was an also another guy, Rory Sutherland, who wrote a book called alchemy, I love them both. They talk about people don’t mind waiting. But what’s really frustrating is not knowing how long I’ve got to wait for, which is, you know, for example, if you’ve got a tradie, coming over to do something in your house, and they say, I’m going to come between eight and 12. So between the hours of eight and 12, I can’t go and have a shower, because I don’t know, if the five minutes I’m going to be under the water and no clothes on the inner turn up at my front door. So it’s really frustrating. So even the ones that can say, I’m going to be there between eight and 12. However, I will send you a text message half an hour before we’re coming. Even though that doesn’t mean my weight is any less, it means I now know what I can do in that time of the weight without having to waste it. This is also why Uber has been so successful. It doesn’t mean the cars gonna come any quicker than a cab. But what I know is how far away it is. So just say I’ve been to the pub, and I’m I’ve gone out and I’ve ordered the Uber. If the Uber is going to be 10 minutes, I can we’ve been for another quick one, have another quick drink before I have to whereas if it’s two minutes away, not gonna have the next drink. I actually have to stand on the curb. So you’d use it. I mean, like it’s so simple, but yet it makes all the difference. So if I’ve got to wait, because just say there’s the underwriting processes happening, for example, then that’s okay, I’ve got to wait and I can’t change the wait time. But just keep me in the loop keep me apprised of what’s going on or let me know that yes, you have been in touch with them. And they’ve said there’s still a number of days or something. Just take a leaf out of the online shopping book and what they’re doing to keep me in the loop because I don’t know any client that’s going to go you know what, you’re communicating with me too much and keeping me apprised too often. I don’t know anyone that’s going to do that. So yeah,

Fraser Jack 

I love the pizza analogy. How good was it when the pizza told you it was being cooked or when it was delivered? How many minutes away? It was the and I guess when we think about other other industries and other professions and other things other stuff? service models. There’s some really great examples that, you know, we can go through that, you know, has nothing to do with advice, advice and go actually, that’s really good. That’s a good idea we should be doing that with our, with our clients. Oh, absolutely.

Kim Payne 

And you know, one of the things that we really don’t take advantage of is all the five senses that humans have. So if you ever walk into one of the crown hotels, there’s a certain smell, and it’s beautiful smell, but it’s not a dirty smell, there’s a certain smell. And for me, it always reminds me of male aftershave, which I love. But it’s just glorious. And every time you go in there, that they had that same smell. And so whenever I smell that smell outside of crown, it makes me think of it. And funnily enough, I went and bought the oil, I did some research. And I was talking to someone who knew what oil they use, I’ve gone and bought the oil. And I’ve been using it at home, just out of a little oil evaporated dispenser thing. And my family came around for dinner the other night, and they walked in went, Oh, wow, this feels like I’ve just walked into one of the crown hotels, and they only ever go to the Crown hotels when they’re on holiday. So what did it make them feel like they’re on a holiday. And that’s a really good example of using Senate real estate agents, you know, encourage people when they have open houses, to have the coffee smell through the house, we don’t look at the other senses when we’re looking at the whole client experience in financial advice. Yet, we could do something like that we could have that beautiful smell that becomes synonymous with coming to the office with us and meeting with us that they could do. So being able to look at some of those beautiful examples. And can I just share a two other ones that I just adore? One is it’s a locksmith over in New York. And there are locksmith, right. So if you lock yourself out of your house, or you’ve got a new rental property, and you need to change a lock, there’s times when we need to change our locks. So they come along and they do their their locksmithing and change the lock, whatever it might be put a new one on. And then at the end of the appointment, the guy says, if it’s okay with you, I would like to just go around and check all the other locks in your house, just give them a bit of an oil because over time, they can get a little bit rusty and not work and do a bit of a safety check. Now he’s not doing it to get more business because often there is nothing they need to know or anything they need to do. But he goes around, does the oil does the check and comes back and says they’re all great. They’ve all had a little oil, so there’s you know, they’re defaulter for us. So that’s going to be good. And he just does that as a result of that. He’s never ever had to advertise, he’s so bogged down in the business has grown so much. And look at us, we’re out here in Australia, talking about a locksmith in New York. Now the problem is, if we did a new lock, we can’t use him because he’s over in New York. But it’s just the power of that one little thing that they did that’s relevant, relevant is such a key with client experience, that it really does make them think, wow, the other one phrases that I love too, is when you buy a new house. And this is the real estate agent that might have sold you the house. When you buy a new house. Usually you move in and you spend the first couple of weeks unpacking that. And there’s always going to be things like if you put your beautiful bedside tables down, you’re gonna plug the lamp in, but you find that the power outlets actually on the other side of the room, not where you want, right. So I was like, Oh, and there’s all these things on the shelves too high for the painting you’ve got, I need a painting on that wall, and I can’t hang I don’t know how to hang it. So what these real estate businesses were doing, when they had the house that was being sold is they’d say to the buyers, after you’ve moved in six weeks later, we’re gonna send around a tradie for three hours. And they’re gonna fix all of those little nuances to make your life easier. So just take note of them. So you know, PowerPoint moved from there to there, neither like there need this there need that move there. And then it’s on us. And they do that instead of putting the big ball around the property or the big hamper of gluten products when someone’s celiac or what have you. And it’s made such a difference to the experience because people would then all shank and most of us don’t use real estate agents regularly, right. So to have a word of mouth, you got to use these people because of XY and Z. It just makes it so much easier. So how can advisors use this type of thinking in their business to try and create that kind of experience that really does become something that I remember, it’s easy to recall. It’s easy to replicate, okay. And it’s just something that makes the whole experience more remarkable overall. So they just say, I could talk about those forever, but they’re just a couple that have really stood out from other industries that I’ve seen work really well.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, exactly. And when we do put these things in place, it’s interesting How to you know, you could try it is for works. But then if it does work, you have to go okay, great, let’s how do we actually implement that into a process or a system and make sure we do it do it every time and it doesn’t get missed. It’s not

Kim Payne 

1. And that’s the biggest challenge over the last couple of months when I’ve been working with advisors. And a lot of them has said, Yeah, I used to do this before COVID. I used to do X, Y, and Zed, and then we’ve just stopped, and I get it right, the world changed. We were doing business differently. But now we’ve gone back to a lot more face to face, it’s like, okay, well, what were you doing before that used to work? And how can you put it in place? Or how can you do something? So when I was talking about that 24 hours after the meeting, yes, you can have a templated email, which you can also then add a bit of a one or two line that’s relevant to what you just spoke about with the client. But you can do that easily. You know, have it so that the trigger for as soon as you know, you come out, you didn’t know you enter something into x plane, or whatever your software is, and it must go out in the next 24 hours. So yeah, I do agree like how can you make this easier and easily repeatable without having to spend too much time and effort thinking about it. But spending that time upfront thinking about it is actually what a lot aren’t doing. But if you can do it really, really get in the minds of your clients? Gold visor? Absolutely. Gold?

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Now I want to I wanted to go through a bit of an imaginary scenario that if you and I were starting up for financial advice, business, what what what would be some of those, you know, foundations, those that you mentioned that, you know, the baselines? And what was might be some of the surprise and delight things that we would say, Well, if we were sitting up from scratch, we didn’t have any clients. And we had maybe a bit more time to put this in place. What would be those must haves? So for

Kim Payne 

me, I reckon that like financial advice has got such an image problem. Okay, it’s still too much is thought about boring. And numbers. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I mean, that’s been, you know, pretty much how a lot of the world has viewed financial advice in the past. So for me, firstly, I’d want to make sure that it was it looked and felt exciting, even something as simple as if I was going to have an office, I don’t want it to look and feel like an office, I want that in itself to be an adventure. So there’s a business in Melbourne called Blue Rock, private wealth, and oh, my goodness, I thought I’d seen a lot of great offices over my years, this takes experience to a whole new level, you walk in there, and you feel like you’re walking into this jungle, then there’s a life size racehorse in there. There’s a life size statue of Superman, there’s a life size, Yoda, and I’m a Star Wars fan. So just that floated my boat completely. And it just felt like and then every room in their office is another whole story in itself. So that’s, that’s one of the things if you could start from scratch again. And one of the questions I asked them actually was, they deal with a lot of high net worth clients? And I said, How is this appropriate? And how did the high net worth clients feel when they come into the office and they experienced this totally mind blowing environment. And it was beautiful, because they said, You know what they might be high net worth as far as advisors talk. But underneath, they just a human being. Most of them have grown up on Superman are most of them, you know, love horses or going to the races. So, you know, being able to really relate to the fact that this is a human being, even if they have a lot of money. And they’re super smart and got a lot of letters after their name. They’re still a human being. So if I could do it phrase, I would firstly be very, very aware of the whole feel and ambiance of the office, I would make sure that I would do like a, I would start by only using language that clients use human language, none of the jargon and the words that we use in the process, because so much business speak and financial planning speak, gets embedded in all we do. So if you could start from scratch. It’s how do humans speak? So if we were having a drink, whether we’re having a coffee, or we’re having a glass of wine or having a beer, and we were sitting down talking about your life and the role that money played in your life, what words would you used to describe it? What words would you use to describe what you want and and what it looked like? And I would build the process and the language and everything we do around that kind of language. That’s something and I understand it’s harder when you’ve been doing it a certain way to try and unwind it. But if you’re going to start again, which was the question, this is the stuff that I would do. The other thing I would look at is, and this is a great book called effortless by Greg McKeon. It’s how can you make doing what needs to be done? Effortless? So every single piece, it’s okay, this has to be done for compliance. It has to be done because we have to do it. How can I either make it a lower or less effort for the client? And if the client still has to be involved, how can I make that effort more enjoyable? So I’ll give you a really Click on I bought a cat. We bought a cat about three years ago. This cute little white fluffy ragdoll kitten called coconut. And I took coconut to the vet to get her injections after you’ve got her from the breeder, and the vets that are you’ve got to change and get her registered over to your name not to the breeders name. I’m like, Yeah, cool. And I thought she was in the vet left the room, and I thought she was going off to do that for me. Instead, she came back with all this paperwork and said, You’ve got to go and complete all this paperwork. And I said to her, yeah, get that, could you please do it for me? And she said, No, I can’t, you’ve got to do it. It’s not hard. You just need to do it. I said, No, no, I understand that I’m here. I’ll pay you $100, could you please do it? And she said, No. So if I was starting a business today, I’d go What are all those sorts of things? That, you know, if it’s got to be done? How can I take that off the client? Make it easier or effortless for them? Or as I said, if they absolutely have to do it, because it has to come from them? How can I make that more enjoyable? They just a couple of little things that I would start by looking at at the infancy of the business. What about you? What would you do?

Fraser Jack 

It’s interesting as I love that language piece, I think some I heard some good advisors call it you know, talking about money, not talking about finances, and all those sorts of little words that make a big difference. I think, you know, starting from scratch, I think probably for me, the first priority is to work out exactly who obviously, you know, once you’ve worked out who your target market is, and understanding what, what language they’re speaking. And, you know, really getting into there, but I do love the idea of treating people like the human beings, you know, like too, too often I feel like we fall into this professional trap where we’re like, oh, we have to behave like we’re, you know, we’ve got to wear a suit, or we’ve got to look the look this part and and you write about the image problem, like the image problem to me, and I was talking to a teenage teenager the other day around this, and they’re going oh, yeah, but I’ll kind of learn all that financial planning stuff and accounting in commerce. And it’s like, you’re just focusing on the numbers part, which we’d love to be fair, but you’re not actually focusing on all the other stuff that actually makes a difference and understanding from that transformation piece to how do we transform you from that, to that and to the image piece is a really good thing. And that’s why I love the concept of creating content that you can then send and send and send to all of your potential clients so that they can get their heads around the fact that this is no ordinary. This is no ordinary, or when I say ordinary, I’m thinking this is no traditional, what I was expecting financial advice to be. And now they’re coming to go, you know, this is completely different to what I thought it was. It gives them something to talk about to their friends at the barbecue, right? It goes, no, no, that’s not. That’s, that’s the old way of doing it. We do it, we’ve got a new style of a financial advisor a new thing doesn’t when you when you and I know it’s not new, but it’s just not the normal

Kim Payne 

title. And this is the whole thing, right phrase it gets it is about numbers fundamentally at the core of it. But those numbers without the narrative without the story around it and my life, then it doesn’t mean anything. So if financial advice was more about this is all exciting, because it’s your life and what’s possible for you in your life. And imagine if that’s like the core of what this was about, I’d be excited to talk to my advisor not, you know, and I’m, I’ll admit this phrase that when my advisor gets in touch with me and says, Kim, we’ve got to catch up. I’m like, Who? How long can I avoid catching up with him? Fine. I love him. He’s a friend too. But it’s like, seriously, how can I really avoid this? Whereas if it was something more exciting from the beginning, and even what I was sharing about how the office looks and feels it’s absolutely got to stem from, who are your clients? What are the problems that you’re trying to solve for them and all the fundamental basics of running a business, but then putting that font around it, like I had an advisor I was doing some work with. And we were using a live case study of a client, she was just putting the advice together for him, one of the things that they were doing is the husband was a workaholic and never at home. So didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the kids. The kids are growing up and it feels like you know, their youth is slipping away. So they were talking about wouldn’t it be cool if they had a swimming pool, because it’s not about the swimming pool. It’s about the fact that the family could be together more often. The kids got to have their friends over to the house. So they’d spend weekends at home instead of you know, out and about the whole weekend. So the adviser had done all the numbers and they’d worked out that yeah, they could get a swimming pool. And it was a wait before the adviser was delivering the advice to the client. And she said, What are you doing to excite them? She said, Oh, well, I’ve sent the I’m sending the confirmation of their appointment email. I’m like, Uh huh, boring, right. I said what about even looking at instead of that, right, you know that they can get the port? She said yes. I said what about the title of the email being? Can’t Why are the discussions going to be putting your own pool or building your own backyard pool and spending quality time with a family. We’re doing this to

Fraser Jack 

pool or not to pool. Yeah, just pull it under what absolutely

Kim Payne 

like something creative, that make that the even the email title and in there, of course is, hey, the pool is happening. It’s all systems go the numbers all stack up. Looking forward to talking you through the data when we catch up this day, this time this place.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, you can you can get stuck into that email. Can you put your tags on? I’ll see. Yeah,

Kim Payne 

yeah, pictures of the pool during all of that kind of jazz. And the whole thing is Fraser is even though the meetings a week away one I’m really excited about the meeting to any kind of catch UPS I’m having with friends or family over the next week. What do you think the topic of conversation is going to be? We’re getting a Paul Christmas at ours this year? Do you know what I mean? So it creates that excitement. Now this has it again, you don’t need a marketing department to do that. That is just changing the topic and the focus of an email that was a standard baseline email that you had to send to the client anyway, to confirm the appointment. So again, if we were going back to starting from scratch, I would be looking at every single opportunity like this, that I could look at what’s in it for me from the client’s point of view, how can I make this more effortless? Or how can I make it more enjoyable? Yeah, brilliant.

Fraser Jack 

Thank you. Now, for a lot of practices that are that aren’t starting from scratch, like we just went through. Probably looking for some quick wins or some some ideas around what they can start implementing in their practice. We’ve talked about baseline stuff earlier. But what about Tom? Once we get through the baseline, what’s some of the quick wins you can you think about for advice firms?

Kim Payne 

Oh, my goodness. Okay. So one of the things I suggest is a lot of not all, but a lot of advice businesses have gone through and mapped out their end to end process. And it’s great. And they’ve done it from the view of the business and from an efficiency, efficiency perspective do difficultly right there. How can we get more efficient? How can we inject technology into it? That’s all cool. What I would then do is go okay, how can we now look at it purely through the lens of how can we make the experience more enjoyable for our clients? Where are there those, those baseline sessions that I said that we could make it more effortless or enjoyable? Where are the blind spots? So the 24 hours or the couple of our days before the meeting and 24 hours after the meeting? And where all those black holes, were those those periods of time when nothing takes place? And what could we do in there? So that’s one thing I’d be looking at. The second thing is to also go back and look at from the beginning to the end? Where can you where you’ve got to take say something like compliance? Where can you either add some common sense, or make that part of it more enjoyable? So really, putting, like, seriously putting goggles on and looking at it purely from if I was a client? How would I feel before this, during this? And after this? So if it’s a meeting, and how do we want them to feel so almost going back through it and and then going, Okay, well, we want them to feel excited, or we want them to feel safe, or we want them to feel comfortable. And then what have you got to do to make that happen, I would do a complete audit of my the journey that the client goes through from the perspective of the clients experience and how the clients feeling at each stage. So that’s, that’s one of the quick wins, I would do. The other thing too, is I would really try to enable creativity. And what I mean by that is, I was on the phone with an advice business. And they were sharing an example where this guide called in to hear he had some questions that he had to ask of the advisor. And he called in and the advisor wasn’t available. But this guy and the advisor then called back, you know, however many hours later and didn’t get the gun. And he doesn’t have an answering machine because he’s an older guy, and he doesn’t have a mobile phone. So they couldn’t get in touch with the guy. Unless he was at home when he wasn’t at home anyway, they kept trying to ring a number of times, and they could never get through to him. So about a week later, the guy calls up and says, pretty paved. nobody’s bothered calling me back and the receptionist like oh my god, we tried, we tried, there was no way of contacting you. So we use this as a bit of a case study. So I said to them, okay, where do they live? And one of the guys and we did this as a team, one of the team members at all, they live five minutes around the corner from me, and I said, okay, so they live five minutes from you. What could you have done knowing that they don’t have an answering machine and they’re not contactable, and they said, Well, we could have gone and put a note in their letterbox and I said, Yeah, you could have right or you could have put a note in their letterbox or put. They know that this kind drinks B you could have put a six pack of beer with a card on it at their front door saying hey, We’ve tried to get in touch, we appreciate We can’t leave a message. But we have tried to call you Please can you check in with the office at this time or whatever it might be? So it was about allowing the staff to be creative that if you can’t come up with something, what else could you have done. And when I say giving them an enabling that creativity, that staff member could have actually done that on their way home, without having to then get permission from the adviser to do that, because it shows their initiative. That’s the kind of quick wins that you can create within your business is allowing people to do things that would let them to go over and above but to help fix that little problem, as opposed to a Yeah, but that’s not my job.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s interesting, because we did talk about the idea of being able to have some processes in place to make sure we cover those blind spots in those black holes. But yeah, this is a different scenario. This is like trusting your staff to take the initiative to, as you said, to be creative and to get the focus on the end result. So they can it doesn’t matter no matter how you get there, we just need to get there.

Kim Payne 

Absolutely. And Fraser, another really easy thing, too, is, especially, we’re actually not even a specialist, especially when a client’s knew that I don’t know what to expect, right? You know what to expect you’ve been doing it, you do it every single day, I don’t. And this is why humans love progress bars, right? We love progress bars with anything. And there’s a gorgeous book I’m reading at the moment, by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan called the gap and the gain. And too often we measure ourselves against the gap, which is how far we’ve got to go to get to a certain point as opposed to the gain, which is how far we’ve come and how much progress I’ve made, you know, like, even how much progress I’ve made, you know, over the last 12 months, and I’m not talking just about how my portfolio has grown. Right advisors are quite apt at doing that beautifully. I’m talking about what are some other things that I said were important to me, and how much progress have we made over the last 12 months, even though maybe my portfolio or my financials aren’t in the position that they were that’s that’s really important. But even something Fraser as simple as a one page that shows you know, the key steps that we’re going to go through in client language, not financial advice, language, that shows me, you know, we’re going to catch up, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. And this is how you’re going to feel it or how we’d like you to feel at each point that you’re excited about the next step. And just a visual, that shows me where I’m at, in that process. So that I’m not left wondering, again, going back to the whole shopping experience when I’m buying online. I know at all points where I’m at in that process, why we could do this to clients, and that experience for them means I’m never left going, What now, and I get a lot of advisors say to me, oh, yeah, but Kim, but I tell them this, I gave them that when we first met, or I’ve told them this is just because you’ve told them or just because you gave me something six weeks ago does not mean I remembered it. Because outside of being with you and in your company, I’m going back living my life. And I’m not remembering any of this. This is also really important throughout, you know, over the next 12 months, that you continue to let me know where we are at what stage you know, we’ve got a couple of months until we meet However, that doesn’t mean things haven’t changed what’s going on, keep me keep that progress and where I’m at and how far I’ve got or how far I’ve come keep that alive. And again, this can be something really, really simple, but I don’t say done enough.

Fraser Jack 

I love this idea. I love that the concept of you know, you see it so often within something filling up or progress by the steps along the process. And and you write about that I’ve seen some companies that do a great little infographic on that this is the process we follow. And this is where we’re up to so people know exactly what we’re up to in the process. And, you know, I think it’s all very well that we say it’s a good idea, but it’s about you know, actually going and putting it in place and starting somewhere, isn’t it and just getting it getting in there. And you can you can improve it later.

Kim Payne 

Oh, do you know what this goes back to like get the basics right? First, you don’t have to have it all pretty and fancy. Just just even even if you just draw it out, like on a piece of paper or some just do something. And then keep reminding me of it. It doesn’t have to be complex. And you You’re right, you can always improve it over time, but at least get it started. And you know, the one thing that I think has dropped off a lot since COVID. And since we’ve gone back to kind of business as usual, that is live as well is follow up. We’re not doing the follow up that we used to. And partly that’s because I know advice businesses have been so busy. But we know when you’ve asked me something or when you’re waiting on some information, don’t don’t let it go weeks and not chase me up. I mean, I’m off living my life and I’m off busy and doing my own things. But gee, if You keep chasing me up. And this is another really good example, I saw a business where they needed this nurse, she was a nurse, she needed to sign some forms. And of course, she had to sign them. And they had to sign the hijab a paper based form, it couldn’t be a digital form. So she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t use any of the digital tools available now, like DocuSign, or what have you. And that the adviser was whinging to me about you know, I keep bringing her telling her she’s got to do the forms go to the form, it’s like, yeah, get that she’s obviously not doing it. So how can you make it easier? And we thought about this. So he rang her and said, I appreciate your work. What if I drive to the hospital where you work at, in one of your breaks, I will be there, all you’ve got to do is nip out to reception or to the front desk sign. And it’s all done just by saying that she actually filled in the forms and return them because she didn’t want to inconvenience him. So he didn’t even have to do it in the end. But that follow up because he couldn’t go any further. He couldn’t initiate the implementation that had to take place without that form. But it was his if his responsibility is to try and get it filled in, what can he do to make that happen? So, you know, it doesn’t have to be that radical. But mind you, like I said, he didn’t even have to go to her just by saying that he was going to got her into action. So how can you even look at the follow up piece, clients are not bad, their intentions are usually honorable, they just get back. It’s like, why I didn’t go in. By the way, my cat is still registered to the breeder. Is it hard to do? No, it’s not. But I haven’t done it. You know, like somebody just to take that off my plate audit to follow him up. Nobody’s followed me up. So quite frankly, if the cat needed any attention, the Raiders gonna get notified, not me. The vet could have done something to make that a different result. So how can advisors do that to phase it just that thinking? I think so important?

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, definitely. In that follow up space that you mentioned. Now, I bet you’ve got a million of these examples. As you mentioned, you can talk about it all day long. Tell us about someone wanted to continue this conversation with you. Tell us about how you work with advice firms?

Kim Payne 

Yeah, so one of the things I do is I run workshops on exactly this Fraser. So we get teams together, and we look at all the different ways that they can create that experience that makes their clients go, Yeah, wow, I want more of it. So we look at all the things that we talked about, we looked at how can you get the basics and the fundamentals right first, then we look at how can you make that experience more enjoyable, more rewarding, and take it to that next level of well, at the same time. So I do half day workshops, full day workshops, a couple of day workshops, I’ll create little programs off the back of that. The other thing I do is I do one on one coaching. So I work with a lot of advisors one on one, where it might just be, you know, you’ve got all this great, great stuff that you want to bring to the table, but maybe you’re lacking the confidence to bring it to life. Or maybe you need to build up some of your own business skills in order to be a better leader. So I work one on one with advisors and do that. And the other thing is I like speaking so I went as I like speaking, I like sharing some of these insights and wisdom at a conference PD days, you know, advisor Development Day, whatever that might be. I love doing that. So they’re probably the three ways that I fundamentally work with advisors and help them address these issues. And I’m, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook, and I have a website. Nine rock is the website, which is the number nine are ok.com.au. So I can be found there.

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, you’re everywhere. And you probably people could probably pick up a copy of your book when it’s finally get published.

Kim Payne 

Yes, phrases. So I’m 80,000 words into a 50,000 word book. Yeah, go figure. Right. I, I find them very well, actually, I said to the editor, as they wanted to give you the 80,000 words, and you split it into two. And the book is called valuable and it’s about how can you be more valuable? How can you build a more valuable business and I touch on a lot of what we’ve skirted across the surface on today I go into a lot more detail in that. The aim is fazer that I at least have it out well next year, early next year, but at least the transcript or the manuscript ready by the end of this year.

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. Kim, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. It’s been amazing. The conversation I haven’t said too much. And you’ve just had so much great stuff to talk about. And I just wanted to let you keep talking. Thank you so much. Like I said, if people want to get ahold of you, they can go to an iron rock, your website or find on LinkedIn.

Kim Payne 

Thanks, Fraser. I just hope that there’s some goodness in there for everyone to take away because it’s such a fun experience to share with with you and with everyone else. Thank you