How Financial Advisors Can Improve Their Relationship With An Unresponsive Client

Every advisor, no matter how experienced or successful, has had to deal with an unresponsive client.

You may have pulled out all the stops—sending them a reminder email, shooting them a text, giving them a call, or even mailing them a handwritten letter—all to no avail.

Whether the client was always a bit flaky or has slowly disengaged over the years, advisors may feel like they’re at a loss. If you can’t reach a client, how can you make amends and improve your relationship to help reengage them?

Diagnosing the Problem Is Difficult

To state the obvious, it would be great to understand what is prompting the lack of responsiveness so you can intervene accordingly. Unfortunately, this is close to impossible given that the client is not responding.

This doesn’t mean that all hope is lost—it just means we have to calibrate our expectations accordingly. Chances are that a client’s unresponsiveness has nothing to do with you and is entirely out of your control. The client may be going through something personal and can’t bear to think about their finances. Who knows?

That said, there’s a chance that the client just needs more of a nudge to reengage with their finances and with you. With this level-setting in mind, one place to start is to change the type of messaging you’re sending to this client. This means incorporating the softer side of financial planning.

How to Try a Different Approach

In our research, we find that investors value advisors not just for their expertise, but also for more psychologically driven reasons. That means investors valued an advisor who helped them better understand their financial goals, made them feel like they had a partner to navigate financial decisions with, and gave them the peace of mind to sleep better at night.

Given these findings, advisors can rework their communication to unresponsive clients in a way that shows the ability to provide the type of advice that can convey these emotions. This task may be easier said than done, so we recommend relying on ready-made exercises that are easy to send via email.

One place to start is by sharing a three-step checklist that we created to help people uncover their true financial goals. Step 1 asks investors to write down their top financial goals off the top of their heads. Step 2 presents investors with a master list of financial goals and asks them to consider each one. Step 3 instructs the client to write down their top three financial goals again, considering their initial answers and the goals in the master list. The key to this exercise is the use of a master list, which aids investors’ decision-making when trying to identify their financial goals, which is a more difficult decision than it may seem.

An email that incorporates the checklist can look something like this:

Dear Client,

Hope all is well.

This is a reminder that our next check-in is coming up on 1/16/2025 at 11 a.m.

During this check-in, I will provide recommendations based on my analysis of your accounts and holdings.

We will also have plenty of time to discuss any changes necessary for your plan. To guide this discussion, I have attached a quick goal-setting exercise for you to complete beforehand. The exercise will help us both get a better idea of any changing priorities or goals in your life that could help us better serve with your financial plan.

All the best,

Advisor

This email may start like any other typical cold reminder email the unresponsive client has received, but some clients may be intrigued by the goal-setting exercise.

Not only does this addition show that you are interested in the client and motivated to better understand their specific needs, but the exercise may also help the client to better understand themselves. In our research, we found that up to 70% of people changed at least one of their top three goals after going through this exercise.

We’ve heard from advisors who have used the checklist this way and that many investors responded positively. Of course, some clients continued to be unresponsive, but others reengaged. These advisors found that the exercise started new conversations and helped them identify new ways to serve their clients.

Wrapping Up

In some cases, an unresponsive client may be out of your control because their lack of communication may have nothing to do with you or your services. However, some clients may benefit from a different approach to your typical email.

Next time you have a client who, despite your best efforts, no longer interacts with your practice, try communicating in a way that taps into the softer side of financial planning.