I was talking to our marketing director the other day, and she related this story. Jean called her financial advisor, Marcia Cammack, concerned about the AIG meltdown. I'll let her tell it:
"During the conversation, I asked Marcia if she'd received the paper I signed earlier, agreeing to move some money out of AIG. Marcia turned her head and spoke to her assistant, Wendy, this way: 'Wendy, do you have handy that paper Jean Walker signed?' Amazingly, she did.
"Now, this struck me as extraordinary," Jean continues, "for several reasons. For one, Marcia probably handles dozens of clients - most of them with a lot more money invested than I have! For another, she didn't specify for Wendy what 'the signed paper' was about. Yet her assistant knew right away. We joked about what you had to pay to get assistants to read your mind, then Marcia said it was really about her relationships with clients, and that Wendy buys that philosophy 100%. For that reason, Wendy knew that I've been moving a lot of investments around in the last 3 months. (And which ones were most recent.)
'We want our clients to know we're connected to them,' Marcia said. 'That's why we don't greet them with questions like [in an official monotone], What's your social security number? Or, Give me the last three addresses where you lived. Or, What color was your last neighbor's mailbox? You know ...' I laughed with her and said, yes, I sure did, having 'official' conversations with service companies as a regular thing.
"I pointed out to Marcia that when I'd called that morning, she picked up the phone herself (her direct line), and said, 'Hi, Jean. How are ya?' I can't think of the last time THAT happened with an organization providing me a service. Most of them seem to be about trying to impress me with their importance, rather than insisting on mine. 'Well, of course!' Marcia said. 'If we did that around here, I'd be bored to death. I'd have to quit! I don't want to have those kinds of conversations with my clients.'
"We laughed a bit more, took care of business, and signed off. As always with Marcia, I felt an almost physical sense of relief that she is looking after my affairs and actually knows who I am and what my concerns are. And is dedicated to supporting them. How important is that in this kind of economy?!" Jean said.
As I've heard somewhere before, Priceless. So here's a question for you: Do your clients feel the kind of 
confidence in you that Jean has in Marcia? Consistent relationship marketing is key. Interesting coincidence (I swear I didn't notice it) that Marcia's firm has a key in its logo.
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