Last Updated on July 20, 2020 by Phil Rogers
Want to be as much as a star as Chris Hatfield, a founding member of the Opsahl Group at True Private Wealth Advisors in Portland, Oregon? Here he shares five simple advisor tips that have helped make him a rising star in the industry.
1. Focus on listening.
Everyone likes to talk and mostly they like to talk about themselves. Chris and his firm like to listen. Personalized attention is a core principle for Chris and his firm.
“Everybody’s situation is a little bit different,” he says. “Everybody’s gone through different walks in life. It presents a lot of unique challenges.”
He faces those challenges by simply listening to what the client has to say and get a feel for the experiences and emotions that affect the financial decision making process. Knowing this, he can reinforce good strategies or talk through and change less sound ones.
2. Get your client organised.
Get as much information from your client first. This is one of Chris’s hot tips. By using technology Chris can get all of that information before that all important first meeting. That way, he devotes his time and energy to the client’s needs and the financial plan itself.
“We give them a new client link and ask them to plug in all their accounts. They open up the document vault and there’s a list of all the documents we need them to upload. We don’t have to waste time going back and forth collecting documents, having a meeting where we ask for documents or look for documents that were forgotten.”
3. Get Big on Data.
“I am,” says Chris. A financial plan used to be a static document. Not now thanks to Blueleaf, “every day the plan gets a new set of numbers from Blueleaf, so every day the plan is recalculating itself.”
“I’m big on data. Show me the data that makes something make sense.”
Once a financial plan stood alone, only getting updates manually when the advisor entered the numbers. Now it is updating automatically.
4. Have the Answers Ready.
“We are in a position to give clients more information than anyone out there, information that is meaningful, clear and concise,” says Chris.
Of course, clients of today prefer having access to information. They want it easy to understand. They want answers quickly. Life is fast paced and time is short. One way Chris does that is by providing a weekly email update, with a recap of the performance of every account in the client’s plan.
“You don’t have to guess what you’re looking at anymore. It makes us more efficient and gives our clients the data they want.”
5. Do The Right Thing.
Excellent service is everything. And if it is from advisors who hold communication, integrity and trust at the forefront of their values (like Chris), their star quality will shine.
“There’s no substitute for dealing fairly with clients”, says Chris. “Keep doing right by people, and you can’t go wrong.”
There they are. 5 simple advisor tips from Chris.
True Private Wealth Advisors is a rapidly growing independent financial services company founded in 2012 by former wirehouse advisors. Chris Hatfield and Joe Opsahl founded the Opsahl Group at True in 2013, providing wealth planning, retirement and estate planning, and management with over $140 million in client assets.
