This week In The Suite welcomes Julie Littlechild into the guest chair. Julie is funny, full of vibrant personality, and has a deep ability to listen to people. After all, Julie is the founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement, a company that works with advisors to gather and use client input to elevate their client experience. Julie is one of the most highly respected women in the financial services industry with over 25 years of industry experience.
Some people always had a calling and felt drawn to it from a young age. They dreamt about it, yearned for it for years. But Julie says that wasn’t the case for her. In fact, she attributes her growth to being able to find opportunities as they came. She believes wholeheartedly in adaptability, the power of evolving over time. Your career path and strategy might reveal itself as you develop.
Julie credits her success to understanding how to work her way up that ladder. She started in marketing and public relations out of university and like many new graduates, she wasn’t sure what path to take. She went back to do her MBA and connected with a man involved with mutual funds and financial advisors. That’s where she started working with him to develop content over a period of years.
When Julie first started her business, she initially researched and developed content around building and growing a financial advisory business. She thought she was going to coach people but she discovered it wasn’t her forte.
And that’s what sets her apart. That ability to use data, feedback, and qualitative, quantitative polls to have a deep-rooted understanding of a client. Absolute Engagement’s whole mission is to get businesses to fight the urge to use feedback as a way to ask clients what they should do. Instead, businesses need to focus on what they can provide the client based on their challenges and aspirations. You have insights and data. But did you leave it on the table like a paperweight? Or are you using that information to drive your choices? That is the question.
Listen to the episode in its entirety to get all the juicy details from this discussion. Take notes on the below three steps inspired by Julie Littlechild’s advice on:
- Know When to Adapt and Evolve: The best way to grow and improve in your career and personal life is to understand the importance of adapting and evolving. You can’t predict the future and how things will go. Nobody can. The only thing you can do is look at what’s changing. See if you can develop tools, strategies, and questions based on those growth opportunities.
- Listen, Really Listen to Client Feedback: Julie says that there has never been a better time to pause and talk to clients about how they’re really feeling. The pandemic made advisors flip the switch from focusing entirely on “how am I doing as an advisor?” and instead on delivering a remarkable customer service experience focused on “how are you doing as the client?” Ask yourself how you hear what your client has to say.
- Have Deeper Conversations with Women: Speak with women about what it has been like this year trying to run a business and run a family and not feel guilty. The more you speak with other ladies on subjects close to your heart, the more you’ll recognize that we all have ups and downs, great moments and moments of failure. And we need to have these conversations as women to empower ourselves.
Show Notes
Our guest for this episode of In the Suite, Julie Littlechild, dives into the power of listening to your clients. It’s not about hearing what they have to say, it’s about genuinely understanding feedback. It’s an absolute honor to speak with Julie as she is one of the most highly respected women in the financial services industry. Julie is the founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement. Absolute Engagement focuses on helping advisors, advisory firms, and enterprises use the voice of the client in their business.
A business can differentiate the client experience by integrating the voice of the client to find growth opportunities. And that’s what Absolute Engagement does, they hone in on the voice of the client. They really know how to listen, absorb feedback, and then apply to the business to see real-world client change.
During my time with Julie In The Suite, we talk about how businesses can stay afloat by learning to evolve over time. She talks diving into tracking data and feedback over the course of multiple years to understand shifts in health, wellness, loyalty, and engagement. You won’t want to miss this episode!
Join the conversation to hear more about:
- Tracing Julie’s story back and how she got her foot in the door (6.35)
- How she became an entrepreneur (9:51)
- How Julie’s business evolved over time (16:22)
- Improving communication with clients in a virtual-focused world post-COVID (23:30)
- Gauging the client confidence level and the Self Confidence Index (26:30)
- Shifts in health, wellness, loyalty, and engagement (33:32)
- How to get genuine feedback from your clients (37:25)
- Ways to become more referable (41:00)
- Opening up vulnerability Leadership is hard (46:25)
- Opportunities open to women over 40 (48:28)
- Knowing your why and having that discussion with yourself (52:25)
- Julie’s mantra to let go of the pressure (56:25)
Referenced Materials:
