Marketing with a Twist

I've always been optimistic that departed clients may one day return when their circumstances change, so we try to process withdrawals as professionally as we handle onboarding — treating a client's departure with the same care as their arrival.

A Rob Carrick article in the Globe and Mail got me thinking about this differently. It described a TD Canada Trust mortgage customer facing a pile of exit charges on the way out the door: a reinvestment fee ($300), a discharge fee ($260), a transfer fee ($260), and a government discharge charge ($71) — on top of a three-month interest penalty.

It made me consider marketing Steadyhand as "the easiest firm on the street to leave" — no exit fees, no commissions, no transfer delays, no retention calls, no negative experience on the way out. I'd previously thought that kind of messaging was too negative, and worried it would undermine the pitch for what we actually do well.

But this story has me reconsidering. It's the kind of angle that might resonate with prospective clients who've had similar experiences with their bank, or their cell phone company for that matter.

We operate differently from a traditional bank, and that gives us the freedom to be more transparent and more honest about how we treat clients — coming and going.