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BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS: Helping People See
Themselves Better
by John H. Melchinger
Relationship marketing means many things to many people, but for everyone, the
concept includes doing more than pushing product; it means relating to the people
you
want to attract to buy your services or products. Now, you can get pretty touchy-
feely when you talk about the nature of relationships. You can get into all kinds
of
arguments about what constitutes mutually productive relationships, but most of those
arguments are unnecessary. Bottom line: when people feel good about themselves, they
are more receptive to others. Extend this thinking.When you help people feel good
about themselves, they will be more receptive to you. The more deeply you help them
appreciate themselves, the more appreciative they will be. That is the stuff of mutually
productive relationships and relationship marketing...the right stuff.
The Internet and Relationship Marketing
It does not take much time cruising financial services websites on the Internet
to see what appeals and what does not. If the site involves you, it feels better.
When it offers you ways to involve yourself in yourself, it compels your curiosity
to seek more.
A few examples
Example 1: A site tells you information about the vendor, using expensive
graphics
and zingy colors. It takes more time to load the graphics onto your screen than it
takes to read their messages. Boring. It competes with thousands of sites that do
little more than expound on their own virtues. To be creative, some sites over-tout
their wares with hyperbole. The SEC is now examining claims and shallow disclosures
of vendors subject to SEC regulation. In some cases the SEC has restricted the trading
of financial services vendors whose websites provide misleading information or incomplete
disclosure. No (good) relationships being built this way.
Example 2: A vendor knows you won't discover them by just cruising and searching
the Internet, so they advertise (in periodicals, newsprint, etc.) where and why to
visit their website. At the site, you are offered the opportunity to calculate your
net worth and estimate your insurance needs, or better yet, complete a personal financial
risk profile and learn your apparent tolerance for risking your money and perhaps
what types of investments match your personal risk tolerance. The vendor obtains
information it would need to help decide what financial products are suitable to
offer to you, if you decide to release your personal information to the vendor. You,
on the other hand, learn something about yourself that you may not have known. If
the information the vendor provides you about yourself interests you, and you respond
to the vendor, then the first steps of relationship building have begun. How far
it goes is up to both parties--buyer and seller. They each must work at it.
Example 3: A professional association of psychiatrists has a website that tests
the curious for depression. So far so good. After answering several questions, your
responses are scored by the computer and you are told whether you seem depressed
or not. If indications are that you may be depressed, the computer recommends seeing
a psychiatrist and offers you the opportunity to view a list of them for your area.
No surprise. If only to be on the safe side, the test probably scores in favor of
recommending that you seek help. For many people who take the test however, the news
may be worse than the truth, yet you may worry about it until you seek professional
counsel and together decide how much help you need, if any.
These examples demonstrate how engaging people in learning about themselves
helps build relationships between vendors and potential clients. Judge them as you
will, each approach gets responses. Some people like them; others find them repugnant
because they seem manipulative. Regardless, each approach achieves some degree of
success initiating and building relationships.
A personal approach
You probably don't want to mount an Internet website at great cost and advertise
to
get people to visit it. From the marketing perspective, if you are an in-practice
professional, you should not want to do this because the return on investment is
bad. You want a return on investment that works on the streets and in the neighborhoods
and communities where you practice. You need a personal approach to relationship
marketing and relationship building that costs comparatively little and provides
a big and lasting impact.
Once Upon a Lifetime...
Patricia A. Williams, a Canadian woman who spent years making a living by
interviewing people and documenting theirs lives, finally wrote a book that involves
the user and other family members in a compelling way. It is called Once Upon
a Lifetime... The cover caption adds, "Take time to record the stories
of your life." Now here's a very cost-effective marketing tool to give to people
to help them and their families view themselves in a very positive light.
How many times had you heard someone -- even yourself -- say, "if only..."
?
If only we'd spent more time together. If only I'd learned more about the family
before all the old people were gone or no longer capable of explaining. If only we
could turn back the clockhands of time. If only...
But how does someone gather information, especially about the family, from someone
they are close to emotionally but not near enough geographically to interview them?
Even if you had access to the people you want to learn from, how do you go about
learning, interviewing, and recording it all for posterity? If you want to pass on
your thoughts to your loved ones, how do you organize your personal history, jog
your memory, get it all down? Writing history is problematic at best; recording it
is almost impossible.
Once Upon a Lifetime...answers all these questions and does a whole lot more,
in a
diary format that lends itself to recording historical, personal life events and
thoughts that made a person who s/he is.
When I interviewed Patricia Williams, she told me her motivation for creating this
wonderful book. She said, "I have a dream to help restore the family to its
position of
importance in everybody's lives. I decided last year that the time was right for
the book. Once Upon a Lifetime...helps people reconnect by reminiscing and
recording those precious memories. With so many transient families, divorces, and
extended families, stories of our past are being neglected. We all have a gift of
1,440 minutes every day, but most of us don't have enough time to do what we want,
let alone
make the time for those we hold near and dear to our hearts. What better gift can
someone give to their family than the gift of time...times remembered, times almost
forgotten, times that should be retold for future generations of curious family members?"
The idea hit me that this book, as a gift from insurance planners, financial planners,
estate planners and other relationship-based professional practitioners, is a great
relationship-building marketing piece.
Once Upon a Lifetime...
- 1,001 questions about your life from childhood to present
- to leave as a legacy for your family
- including guides for making your own audiotape or videotape
Where have you stored your memories? How well do your children know you? How
well do you know your parents? People want to answer these questions positively,
and you can help them do that. This book is a memory tutor for getting rid of peoples'
cobwebs and recording their lives for posterity. It's user friendly, prompting users
to put down lots of heartfelt content. It is blessedly free of graphics that could
make such a book look more like the guest register at a funeral parlor than a personal
history. It's affordable, even to give away to special clients and prospects.
I like a lot of the questions because they foster introspection and good feelings.
Here's a sampling.
#339 Describe what a telephone looked like and how it was used when you
were a child. Were you on a party line?
#442 What was your first car? What color was it? Do you remember what it cost?
How much was a tank of gas?
#473 At school, what did your coatroom and locker look like? Did you tape
any pictures in your locker? If so, can you describe them?
#512 Are some of the friends you had in school still your friends today? Do
you see them in person? Name the one student you would love to meet to share memories
of those past years.
#555 Did you ever live or work in a culture that was far away from your homeland?
If so, where? Did you enjoy the experience?
#628 Did you receive a keepsake from your mother before or after her death
that you treasure?
#665 Did/does your father like to fish or hunt? If so, what stories have you
heard?
There are so many great questions that you need to turn the pages in your own
hands
and catch yourself becoming absorbed in your recollections...all prompted by the
book's questions. It is impressive to experience.
More than a few of the questions in Once Upon a Lifetime...get people to reminiscing,
having fun with it, and enjoying remembering who they have been to
themselves and to others. I personally recalled "marrying" Marcie Corcoran
in the coatroom attached to our third grade class in a New Jersey suburb, and being
caught by the teacher just as I was kissing the bride. My sister got a hoot out of
this story. Marcie "divorced" me before that Christmas.
The 1,001 questions this book poses provides the generational glue that holds families
together, helping people collect themselves and reminisce, then write it down or
record it on tape.
One suggested use is to use the book as the basis for being interviewed by family
members. You could check off the questions you would feel comfortable talking about,
so the interviewer (family member) would have guidelines for asking questions.
Once Upon a Lifetime...is beginning to catch on. Children of seniors are using
the book to help them gather their parents' and grandparents' memories 'before it's
too late'. Couples (brides and grooms) on Valentine's Day are using it to sit down
and get to know each other. Terminally ill family members are using it to record
their memories for their loved ones. People confined in nursing homes are recording
their lives in it.
Patricia Williams was recently a guest speaker at the Alberta Genealogical Society,
and impressed them with how easy it can be to record one's past -- facts, interests,
anecdotes, family stories, etc. -- for posterity and family continuity. It just takes
an aid like this book to get it started and keep it organized.
The marketing idea
For financial advisors who do relationship marketing:
- Two copies of this book cost the same as an arrangement of flowers, and each
will last a whole lot longer in reality and in the minds of clients.
- Giving this book or something like it to clients demonstrates your interest in
them as people and families, not just as cases. A magnet on the refrigerator will
remind them of you. Giving this book will endear you to them.
- The book can be the basis for your asking some compelling questions that you
should know the answers to about your clients.
- You just might have some fun getting to know your clients better if you talk
about what they record in this book, or you may simply enjoy knowing that you have
done something nice for your clients...that also helped solidify your relationship
with them.
If you want your clients to understand that you value them and your relationship
with
them, consider giving selected clients their own copy of Once Upon a Lifetime....
Make a friend and build a relationship.
Once Upon a Lifetime...
by Patricia A. Williams
The Time Broker, Inc.
PO Box 37066
Edmonton, ABT5R 5Y2
f. 403-486-3248
Internet: timethe@planet.eon.net
$14.95 plus 3.00 shipping (U.S.)
Volume discounts start at orders of 6 copies and up.
John H. Melchinger coaches financial planning and estate planning professionals
who market and sell to high income and high net worth buyers. His consultations on
developing their professional practices through effective marketing are highly profitable
for his clients. John's career experiences in financial services and products--since
1977--make him exceptionally qualified to have developed innovative, non-traditional
marketing and skills development programs in estate planning, financial planning,
business planning, ethics and consultative selling. His how-to books, articles, bulletins,
workshops and presentations have become classics in the industry, and his clients
are among the most profitable and productive in their fields.
John is available on the Internet at jhmco@ix.netcom.com,
by telephone
appointment at (403) 459-1472, by fax at (403) 419-2936, and by mail
John Melchinger
3 - 11 Bellerose Drive, Suite 117
St. Albert, AB T8N 5C9
Canada
Web Sitehttp://fsc.fsonline.com/fsm/jhmco.html
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