You will plan a year of reviews and contact for every client on your book or a sample of ten.
Wei Ling looked at her diary one December and found eleven reviews crammed into three weeks, on top of year-end leave, her own family and two new clients who wanted to meet before the new year, so three reviews slipped into February and one dropped out of the year entirely. None of those clients complained. That was the worrying part: they had simply stopped expecting her to call.
A servicing calendar is how you stop that happening. This exercise builds one for twelve months, for your whole book or a sample of ten clients if you are just starting.
List your clients with the date their annual review is due. For most, that will be the policy anniversary or the date of their last review. Sort the list by month.
Now look at the spread. Reviews tend to bunch, because clients often buy at the same times of year, such as after bonuses or before year-end. If one month has far more reviews than the others, move some of them earlier, so they spread across the year. Moving a review a few weeks earlier is fine and usually welcome. Moving it later is how reviews end up missed. Tell the client when their review will be, so the change is not a surprise.
Next to each client, add the dates you know and they have chosen to share: birthdays, a wedding anniversary, a baby due, a child starting primary school, a planned retirement. Add the contact points from your rhythm in lesson 7.3, Keep clients informed between reviews, such as a short message at the policy anniversary or a check-in after an event.
Only include what clients have told you or would expect you to know. A calendar built from information they shared for servicing is part of looking after them. One built from scraping their social media is not, and it would sit uneasily with the PDPA points from module 6.
Work out how many reviews you need to do each week, and block that time in your calendar before you block anything for new prospects.
The calculation is simple. Divide the number of clients due a review in a year by the number of weeks you will actually work, then round up. If you have 80 clients and expect to work 48 weeks, that is 80 divided by 48, about 1.7 reviews a week, so you block two review slots every week. Your own numbers will differ. Rounding up matters because weeks with leave, illness and claims will always eat into the slots, and two slots a week gives you room for that.
Then put the slots into your calendar as recurring appointments, at times that suit clients, such as weekday evenings or Saturday mornings. Prospecting then fits into the time that is left. When a new prospect wants your only free evening, you offer another time.
A calendar shows what you planned. You also need to see what happened. Add a column for each review: done, rescheduled or missed, with the date.
Once a month, look at the misses and give each one a follow-up, which means a call or message to rebook and a note in the file. If a client declines a review, record that they declined and when you will offer again. A missed review with no follow-up is how clients drift away without anyone noticing, which is exactly what happened to Wei Ling's December clients.
Here is a sample of ten clients from Wei Ling's book. The dates and numbers are examples.
Four of the ten have anniversaries in December, one each in March, April, June, August, September and October. She moves two of the December reviews into November and one into October, so only one stays in December and no month has more than two of the ten.
She adds birthdays for seven clients who have shared them, Hafiz and Nadia's daughter's first birthday, Siew Lan's planned retirement date, and Ravi's work anniversary, because his group cover depends on that job and he mentioned he might move. She adds a note at Kumar's daughter's row to check in on the anniversary of her father's death, with no product mentioned.
Across her full book of 80 clients and 48 working weeks, she blocks two review slots a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Her first prospecting block goes on Wednesday.
At the end of the first quarter, her tracking column shows one review rescheduled and one missed. She calls the missed client the next day and rebooks.
When you are done, you have a twelve-month calendar for at least ten clients. Reviews are spread across the year, with no month overloaded. Birthdays, known events and contact points are in it. Recurring weekly review slots are blocked, sized from your own numbers. And there is a column to track what happened, with a monthly check of the misses.
The activity below asks you to build that calendar for ten clients and set the weekly review block.
Build a 12-month servicing calendar for ten clients with review dates, contact points and a weekly review block.
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