Think you know your clients inside and out? Chances are, you don't, and the gap between what you think your clients care about and what is actually on their minds could be costing you plenty in lost opportunities to retain key clients and tap additional sources of revenue.

That's why it's time to reacquaint yourself with your clients. In our coaching program, I've been encouraging advisors for some time now to conduct what I call rediscovery meetings with their existing clients-including those they've been working with for years or even decades. In these meetings, advisors sit down with clients and ask questions that allow them to understand their clients' unique situations on a deeper level.

THE RIGHT TIME

The reason to have rediscovery meetings with existing clients now should be obvious. So much has happened in the financial markets and the overall economy in recent years. In the wake of all the turmoil and uncertainty, your clients' situations, concerns and big-picture viewpoints on a whole range of financial issues may have changed-perhaps a little, perhaps a lot.

The aim of the rediscovery meeting is to reconnect with clients by showing your concern for their well-being and reassuring them that you want to understand their situation on a comprehensive level so that you can help them as best as possible. This connection is a key part of building rock-solid, long-term loyalty among your client base.

You can accomplish this by asking them about issues that you might ask new prospects during an initial discovery meeting-for example, their key goals and values, their interests and most important relationships, their assets and how they prefer to work with their financial advisors. You might have asked them about these issues years ago, but it's time to know if any of them have changed. Having up-to-date information in these areas will enable you to create an accurate, current and comprehensive profile of your clients that you can use to solve the big financial challenges they face today.

CLIENT DISCONNECT

Unfortunately some advisors don't see the need to rediscover their existing clients. They think they know their clients extremely well. While that is certainly true in some cases, industry research tells us that advisors have a history of being significantly disconnected from their clients' actual needs, wants, goals and concerns.

For example, the top concern among middle-class millionaires is losing their wealth, according to research by Russ Alan Prince and David Geracioti. An overwhelming majority of affluent investors surveyed from this group-88.6%-share this fear.

And yet, the perceptions of advisors who serve these millionaires are far different. Only 15.4% of these advisors think that 20% or more of their affluent clients are very concerned about losing their wealth. The rest of the advisors-nearly 85%-are unaware of one of their clients' biggest financial fears.

These results tell us that many advisors are missing a huge opportunity to serve their clients well. Because they don't understand this essential challenge, advisors are not in a position to begin to solve it. In addition, they're losing out on opportunities to generate additional income-for example, by providing wealth protection products and services.

This advisor-client knowledge gap extends to investment management too. While only 11.9% of surveyed clients overall were concerned about diversifying their portfolios, one-third of advisors (33.4%) believe that their clients have this concern. Whether these clients should be concerned about diversifying their portfolios is a separate issue, of course. The point here is that so many advisors simply do not know their clients' views on this critical part of investment management.

And then there are the non-investment gaps. These days, affluent investors increasingly want you to "get them," to understand them beyond the investment level. But a look at affluent clients' personal interests and responsibilities reveals more gaps between clients and their advisors.

For example, ensuring that heirs are taken care of is a top concern for 79.2% of all affluent clients surveyed. However, just 40.8% of advisors believe this is a concern for their clients. Once again, they are passing up significant opportunities to help their clients solve important financial challenges.

There are additional gaps in key areas, including education planning, asset and personal protection, long-term-care planning and charitable gifting. One example: the fear of being sued. It's a concern of nearly half of affluent investors. And yet, less than 10% of financial advisors recognized that this was a major issue on their clients' minds.

These are all areas where you can add substantial value to your clients' lives and, in many cases, generate additional revenue for your business. But this can happen only if you take the time necessary to rediscover your clients and actually understand what's on their minds.