3 Ways Restaurants Can Teach You to Be a Better Financial Advisor
The restaurant industry has had a hard year. One study found that by December 2020, nearly 17% of restaurants had closed in the past six months, in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the restaurant industry, and the people who work in it, are resilient. I know, because I was once a busboy.
Even in a time like today where the industry is struggling, there are still many lessons that financial professionals can take away if they look to the industry for inspiration.
I’m confident that in the coming months, restaurants will stage a big comeback. As they do, keep your eye on which ones stand out the most.
Here are three ways they do it, and how you can apply their principles to your own financial advisory practice.
Clients Know What They Want
There’s an old saying in retail that “the customer is always right.” In truth, the customer may not always be right but they will always know what they want.
As a financial professional it is important to recognize what your clients want so you can create a client experience that fulfills their expectations and meets their needs.
If we’re considering a pre-pandemic environment, a restaurant rarely closed solely because of the quality of its food. Often, it was because it neglected the customer experience. It didn’t provide a compelling reason for people to come to spend time in its location.
A compelling guest experience creates loyalty among customers. It also creates loyalty among clients for an advisory firm.
Be an active listener and attentive when clients tell you how they want to interact with you, and then provide them an experience that gives them what they ask for.
Attention to Detail
Attention to detail matters in a restaurant.
It can be simple, like having the table clean and set for when a guest arrives.
It can be more advanced, like a waiter who arrives with additional refreshments because they’re asked to bring them.
Or it can be details that have to be shared amongst multiple people in the business, like when a waiter has to communicate specific preparation instructions to the cook to be sure a dish is served perfectly.
The client experience an advisory firm produces is no different. You want to create moments of realization where you provide something a client didn’t even know they needed.
A thorough financial plan can provide that kind of moment, or it can be the way you organize yourself so you remember the topics and decisions you covered in your last meeting so you don’t have to go over the information you covered once already.
Those types of moments might seem small at first, but they create trust and give your client the feeling of complete personalization.
Bigger Isn’t Better
If we look at some of the most well-loved restaurant chains in the country, something becomes immediately apparent: They know what they do well, and they stick to it.
Chick-Fil-A serves chicken and that’s it. They won’t be adding hamburgers to their menu, ever.
Dutch Bros. is the largest drive-through coffee chain in the United States and has fans all over the country. They don’t worry about creating an environment like Starbucks where people can come in and work leisurely; instead, they’re focused on the best drive-through experience they can create and people love them for it.
And perhaps the best example of “bigger isn’t better” is In N Out, which has a famously small menu (even when you include the secret items you can order that aren’t officially on the menu).
I think most financial planners today realize that giving clients a one-hundred-page plan with a table of contents isn’t the right approach.
Financial plans should be flexible and adaptable deliverables that can be adjusted at a moment’s notice as a client's life and goals change.
The better solution is a short plan. Ideally, one that can be shown on a single page so a client can quickly scan what’s important and know what they’re missing or need to update. From there, you can quickly have productive conversations about their financial life.