The review meeting is an important element of an advisor-client relationship. Held on a regular basis, the meeting helps you to stay on top of changes in your client’s personal circumstances, goals and expectations.

Here are a few tips to ensure your review meetings have the desired impact.

Review the performance of client’s portfolio. Depending on the progress, decide if any action – rebalancing, top-ups needs to be taken.

Prepare multiple ideas to discuss with the client. Anticipate questions that may arise so that you are in a position to answer them.

Have a well-defined agenda for the review meeting. This is a good way to ensure that you get to cover all the key topics; it also keeps the meeting on track.

Discuss any events that happened in their life, planned or unplanned changes, how the client is coping with the changes and so on.

Here are some talking-points that will help you set the right tone for the meeting.

Kolkata IFA Tejpal Singh Bagga of Vrishank Advisory got nervous and started fumbling in his presentation at his first investor awareness program. Acutely aware of the importance of public speaking, Bagga started practicing his presentation in front of his colleagues before such events to overcome his stage fear. Eventually, he learnt how to speak comfortably to an audience.

For most of us, it is common to fumble and grope for words particularly if we have not spoken at a formal gathering earlier. To make sure this does not happen, it is important to prepare for a presentation. Preparation helps you remain calm, improves your performance and you come across as a more confident presenter.

Here are a few tips on how to create an impact with your next presentation:

Find out who your audience is. Before the presentation, research your audience, their background, what their interests are and why they are coming to see you. This will give you some idea about what they expect from you.

Practise in front of your family and friends. It will help you overcome your fear and make you more confident.

Also, make note of any suggestions your family gives and work on them. Record your rehearsals. If that is not possible, practise in front of the mirror. It will help you improve your delivery. You can develop right voice modulation and body language

How do I acquire new clients and increase wallet share from existing clients? How do I ask for referrals from existing clients? As a budding advisor, Deepak Jain, an IFA from Kishangarh Rajasthan too grappled with these issues.

Here are some tips for budding advisors on how to be very successful in their career.

Get your mentor or your senior to peer review your first few scheme recommendations or financial plans. Not only will you gain confidence before presenting it to your client, it will also make you a better planner as you learn from their extensive experience.

Chennai based Ramesh Bhat of Aniram feels that peer reviewing is the best way to check mistakes. “Initially, every IFA makes mistakes. If an IFA approaches a client with mistakes in his financial calculations or recommendations, it creates a negative impression. So, budding IFAs should approach a knowledgeable person or mentor to get their recommendations reviewed before presenting them to the client,” he says.

The initial years are crucial in the advisory business. Budding IFAs should focus more on marketing their business instead of spending time on back-office work. Ramesh believes that in the initial years, they should focus 10% on servicing and 90% on marketing.

Setting an example of ‘Plan Big and Think Bold’, Amravati-based Mahesh Gattani of Balaji Investments initiated 500 SIPs on behalf of his clients in a single day. The average ticket size of these SIPs was Rs.2,500 with a minimum tenure of five years.

Inspired by a session on SIP at Cafemutual Confluence 2016 (CC16), Gattani decided

to execute SIP day. Since Gattani has been using NSE NMF II platform for over three years, he knew that he could run SIP drive successfully by leveraging bulk upload facility available on the platform.

As part of the plan, Gattani and his colleague Roshan approached existing clients to start SIPs. “We spoke to 175 clients. We discussed the progress of their portfolio and advised them to top up their investments in equity funds through SIPs. We told them that the markets are at all-time high and they should avoid lumpsum investments in equity funds. At the end of this exercise, almost 156 clients agreed to start SIPs. However, we had to follow up with them at least three times over phone. On an average, these clients started three SIPs in equity funds with a ticket size of Rs.2500 with time horizon between five and ten years,” said Gattani.

Mahesh decided to hold SIP day on September 23, 2017 as it was a Saturday. Sharing the rationale for choosing a Saturday, he said, “Most of my clients are free on Saturday. Also, we will have an additional day i.e. Sunday to get their confirmation.”

Both Gattani and Roshan started the day at 5 am to initiate SIP on behalf their clients.