You're listening to the “Truest Fan Podcast”—and now, here’s your host, Rob Brown.
Rob: I was watching a great playoff game the other week and, as the away team’s quarterback was walking off the field after a last minute heroism had brought his team victory, the noise from the small group of away fans who were there was unmistakable. They were loud. They were probably louder than the whole stadium seemed during the rest of the game.
They were truest fans of that quarterback who had produced those incredible results. But instead of just walking off the field with a faint wave, he stopped and he cheered the crowd on, as if he was their truest fan. There was a two-way relationship. [01:00.4]
The moment was striking. That's the way your relationship should be, whether in business or in life. You should be truest fans of other people, and they should be truest fans of you. It's all about creating delight.
Hello, friends. This is Rob Brown. Welcome to Episode No. 6 of the Truest Fan Podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about delighting your fans so they become your truest fans.
You see, I don't think loyalty is enough. I see this a lot in the work that I do with business owners, with financial advisors, when they think about how they can serve or take care of their clients. They talk about routines. We're going to do X number of calls or X number of visits, or some combination each year, or we're going to send out a newsletter. [02:03.8]
They do these standard things that, in some cases, are symptoms of a bygone era, but they don't really create a relationship, and sometimes as we talk about that, what they'll say is, I don't need to do those extra things. I don't need to delight my clients, because they know that when they come into the office and we do our reviews, we're going to have a good conversation and I’ve done a good job. My team has done a good job of taking care of them and that's all they'll need.
I think that's wrong. I think that's taking your fans for granted, and at the same time, if you are taking your fans for granted, they're probably taking you for granted. They're thinking, He's a good advisor, he does okay, but isn't that what all advisors do? They could be a little bit right, but they're not completely right, because you know their situation. [03:05.3]
You've put that plan together. You've put them on track to achieve their most important goals, to avoid pitfalls. You've done a lot of work for them. You deserve to be more than just their advisor. You deserve to be someone that they want to work with year in and year out, but they don't necessarily appreciate it because you haven't taken the extra effort.
Again, it's a two-way street. You don't give them what they want, what they appreciate. They don't feel special. Then you are not special in their eyes. There's that great quote, attributed to Maya Angelou that goes something like, they won't remember what you said. They won't remember what you did, but they will remember how you make them feel—and that's what being a truest fan of your clients and them of you is all about. [04:05.5]
It's that feeling of delight, that feeling of inseparation, that feeling that the relationship goes way beyond the numbers and the plan and the results. It's that it's that interaction that they have with you and your team that makes things sticky. It's better for your business, obviously, because your clients stay around longer, but it's also more enjoyable, more fun.
I can think of countless examples of this from my career, because I started out early on having my own financial advisory practice. I can remember being invited to one of my clients' retirement parties. I thought I was just invited because I had become a friend of Frank and his wife, Eleanor. I was glad to be there and I was thinking, Maybe this will be an opportunity to meet some of their friends and there will be an opportunity for new business. [05:01.0]
But I was surprised, because after dinner, Frank got up to speak to the guests and he said he wanted to introduce a few important people, and I thought, He's going to introduce his kids and his grandkids, and some of his coworkers, because this was his retirement party. But the first person he introduced was me.
He said, “Rob, I want you to stand up and I want you to come up and talk to these people,” and as I was making my way forward, he told them that the reason that I was there and the reason that he was able to retire the way that he and Eleanor always dreamed of retiring was because of the work that we had done together, that he couldn't believe all of those extra things that I did for him year in and year out that kept him on that path that he was, and these are my words, not his, he was my truest fan. He was a big fan of the work that I was doing for him. [06:00.0]
Then, as I got a chance to, to get behind the mic and respond, and talk to the audience, all I could think about was what great clients Frank and Eleanor were. I was their truest fan. I just didn't want to go through the motions and see them reach retirement age with a certain amount of money. I wanted them to be able to enjoy their retirement. I wanted them to see the fact that the plans that they’d made had already helped put one of their grandkids through college.
It was amazing. It was a two-way street, and that didn't happen by accident. It didn’t happen just because we worked together for a number of years. It happened because we had a plan for how my team and I interacted with Frank and Eleanor to make them feel special, to let them know how much we cared about them, their goals, and their dreams, how we wanted to keep them out of trouble when the tax laws changed and stuff like that. It was a consistent process for communication that was highly intentional. [07:07.7]
Are you ready to discover your true purpose, live with impact, and build an ever-greater legacy? Then you need to make time for what truly matters most. Go to TruestFan.com/Challenge to begin the free “Truest Fan” seven-day quick start.
And that intentionality of making and of being truest fans of Frank and Eleanor flipped around, and that made them truest fans of us—and, honestly, we have a number of clients with whom I could share similar, or maybe not as fun a story because they didn't invite me to the retirement party to speak, but we had that two-way street. We had that interaction. Again, that doesn't happen by accident. That's not just because of loyalty. That's because being a truest fan, delighting your clients and seeing that come back to you is a two-way street. [08:05.7]
Let me share one more story. A couple of years ago, and this is in my current business as a coach to entrepreneurs and to financial advisors, I was invited to visit with one of my clients out in Seattle to be a guest at his client appreciation event. He just wanted me to be around and see how he interacted with his clients, and also for me to kind of chat with them and learn a little bit about them, get to see what they thought of this advisor.
As we got to the end of the evening, Matt, which is the client's name, stopped to make some remarks and the first thing that he said was “I want you all to know that there's one person who has traveled further than anybody else to be here and I want to recognize him, and the reason that I want to do that is because he wrote a book,” and this was my first book called Delivering the Ultimate Client Experience. [09:04.8]
He said, “He wrote a book that helped me put together a plan that determines how I can delight you, how I can deliver the ultimate client experience and let you know how important you are to me. So, I thought it was really important that he get the opportunity to speak for himself.” Again, I was blown away. I wasn't expecting this. I was just expecting to be a guest, but there it was. One of my clients was my truest fan. He really believed that the work that we were doing together was allowing him to turn his clients into raving fans, truest fans of his business.
Of course, as I got up and paused for a few minutes to think about what to say, all I could think about was, I'm a truest fan of Matt. The work that he does with his client to help them achieve their goals is amazing and he's conscientious about it. I could tell by the people that I was meeting with, and, again, it was a two-way street. [10:06.3]
That's the way it should be. You should be delighting your clients. You should be delighting other people that you work around your family so that they can appreciate how much you truly love and care for them, that you are their truest fan, and, in turn, you receive some recognition and some satisfaction, even when you aren't looking for it. Just like I wasn't looking for it from Frank and Eleanor at that retirement party. Just like I wasn't looking for from Matt at his client event. But in both cases, it was because of intentionally doing things, having activities, systems for showing how much we cared, not just talking about it, but taking action, making them feel special. [10:53.2]
That's a huge part of the truest fan effect, this process of helping your clients, your teammates, your family, your friends, the people that you work with and the different things that you're involved in. Helping them feel special and being intentional about them is extremely important. It just takes a little bit of forethought and to really be unafraid about telling them how much you care for them, how much you love them, how much you want them to succeed, how much the things that you are doing, even though sometimes it may not be working out the way that you like, you're doing it because you care for them, because you are their truest fan.
What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to think about those relationships that you have right now in your business. Maybe it's with your teammates or with your clients. Are you truly treating them with the respect and importance as if you are there true as fans? If not, what plans can you put in place to do that?
Think about the personal relationships that you have, the ones that have gone maybe a little bit distant or there's been some disagreement. What can you do to turn that around, to let people know that you want to delight them, you love them and you care about them—you are their truest fans? [12:11.4]
When you do that, your life is remarkably different. Results happen, not just in business, but in life. You get more satisfaction. You get more pleasure. You wake up more days looking forward to that day, because being around people that you care about and care about you, or that truest fan relationship is reciprocal, is an extremely important process to put into effect. That's why I call it the “Truest Fan Effect”.
Here's what I want you to do. If you go to TruestFan.com/Challenge, you'll get access to the “Truest Fan Implementation Guide” with a seven-day quick-start challenge, and inside of that challenge are some ideas that can help you determine if you are delighting your fans, and gives you some ideas on what you might do if you aren't or, if you are, how you might improve them, because this is an ever-continuing process. Again, the website is TruestFan.com/Challenge. [13:16.6]
As always, I want you to know that I am your truest fan. If there's anything I can do, please reach out. Take care.
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