You will be able to set up light, regular contact that keeps clients informed without sales pressure.
Siew Lan opens a letter from her insurer saying her premium for one plan will rise at the next renewal. She has not heard from Wei Ling since her review eight months ago. She calls a friend first, who says representatives only call when they want to sell something. By the time Wei Ling hears about the letter, Siew Lan has already decided she was not told. Wei Ling had known about the change for weeks. She just had not got round to saying anything.
Between reviews, the most valuable contact you can make is to tell clients about changes that affect them, before they find out some other way. Premium revisions, changes to policy terms, a fund in an investment-linked policy being closed or merged, a change to how a benefit works, a new form the insurer requires. Any of these, discovered first in a letter or a news article, makes the client feel you were not watching.
The same news, from you first, does the opposite. "Your insurer is revising premiums for this plan from next year. Yours will go up by roughly this much, based on their notice. It's still within the budget we worked out, but if it causes any difficulty, let's talk about options." The client feels looked after, even though the news is bad. Keep any figures exactly as the insurer gives them, and point to the notice itself.
Make a habit of reading the notices insurers and your firm send about existing products, and of asking: which of my clients does this affect? Then contact those clients, in a short message or a call, and note in their file that you did.
The second kind of contact is personal. When you know a client has been through a big event, such as a new baby, a wedding, a bereavement, a hospital stay, a new job, check in. Not with a product, and not with a suggestion that their needs may have changed. Just a short, genuine message.
"Heard about your new job, congratulations. Hope the first week went well." "Thinking of you and your family this week." If the event is likely to affect their plan, you can add one line: "When things settle, it might be worth a quick catch-up on your cover. No rush." Then leave it with them.
Clients notice the difference between a representative who only appears with a proposal and one who remembers their life. It is also simply part of servicing well: a client whose circumstances change and who hears nothing from you is likely to drift, or to be picked up by someone else.
None of this works from memory. With a handful of clients, you might remember who had a baby and whose premium is changing. With fifty, you will not.
So use a simple system, whichever kind you will actually keep up. A CRM, a spreadsheet or your firm's client management tools all work, as long as the system reminds you when something is due. The minimum is a list of clients with their review date, the life events you know about and a notes column, and a way to be prompted when a contact is due. Lesson 6.3 of Prospecting, The minimum CRM fields worth tracking, has more on choosing fields that stay useful.
Wei Ling keeps a spreadsheet with a row for each client and a reminder in her calendar for every review and every known event. On Monday mornings she spends fifteen minutes on the week's contacts. It is not elaborate. It means nobody waits eight months to hear from her again.
Contact between reviews still counts as communication with clients, and your firm will have rules about it. Many firms require client communication to go through approved channels, so that records are kept. Some restrict using personal messaging apps for business, or require them to be archived. Content that mentions a product or a recommendation may be treated as advice or marketing, with the requirements that come with each.
Check your firm's communication policy and follow it. If it requires you to use a particular app or to copy messages into the client file, do so, even for a short congratulations. The record protects you as much as the client.
A contact rhythm is a short description of how often each kind of contact happens and what it contains: the annual review, notices about product changes as they arise, check-ins after known life events, perhaps a short note at the policy anniversary or a birthday message. Too little and clients drift. Too much and it starts to feel like marketing. In the activity below you set out your own rhythm for your book, with each touchpoint, how often it happens and what it says.
Set up a contact rhythm for your book that lists each touchpoint type, its frequency and what it contains.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).