In the 2000 romantic comedy, “What Women Want,” after he accidentally sustains an electric shock, advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) finds himself suddenly able to read women's minds. Gibson uses his newfound ESP to create better ad campaigns and make his boss, Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt), fall head over heels for him.

Apart from the hilarity that ensues, the movie shows how important it can be to get into the heads of the people we care about. That’s what Advisor Products is doing right now with its clients and what advisors must do with their clients.

Advisor Products this morning sent an email to people we care about—advisors that are our clients—inviting them to a webinar where I will speak about marketing opportunities created by using our website services.

The webinar invitation included a link to a survey asking advisors they want from us, and we made the survey findings available. Like Mel Gibson, we now can see into the minds of our clients.

Advisors, to succeed in this environment, must work toward the same transparency, openness, and cooperative communication. How?

Whenever you rebalance a client’s accounts, complete a client’s review, or perform key services to clients, ask the client how you did. Creating a survey and emailing a link to your clients to fill out will take just a few minutes. Ask your clients how you’re doing. Ask them what they want.

SurveyMonkey.com is great for creating quick surveys on the fly, and AdvisorImpact is the most complete program I know about for conducting comprehensive satifaction surveys of advisor clients.

Please join us for our first MarketingSmart webinar Wednesday, April 15 at 4 p.m when we will address what advisors want.