You Missed a Great Conference!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

The CIFPs 8^th National Con­fer­ence Review

By Marc Lam­on­tagne, CFP, R.F.P, FMA

This is my sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year attend­ing this con­fer­ence and once again the agenda was PACKED. Each day began about 7:30 am and typ­i­cally went to 6:00 pm, with din­ner start­ing pronto at 6:30. You clearly earn your CE cred­its and receive your money’s worth at this conference.

The agenda was a smor­gas­bord; enough to quench the thirst for nov­elty of 500 to 600 atten­dees. The high­light was undoubt­edly Her­mann F. Leinin­gen with RBC Global Asset Man­age­ment. Leinin­gen was very funny, and he man­aged to walk the audi­ence through sev­eral com­plex eco­nomic sce­nar­ios and sus­tain their interest!

Take away: Expect U.S. inter­est rates to stay low for at least the next nine months or until there is a jobs recov­ery, stocks are still trad­ing at the lower end of the band due to con­tin­ued global eco­nomic uncer­tainty, and the demand for oil from China and India has barely scratched the surface.

Like any con­fer­ence there were a few mutual fund com­pany “talk­ing heads,” although the more inter­est­ing mate­r­ial came from indus­try par­tic­i­pants such as Cary List, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Finan­cial Plan­ners Stan­dards Coun­cil. List pre­sented some of the find­ings of their recent con­sumer sur­vey on the ben­e­fits of finan­cial plan­ning. This is news that all CFP pro­fes­sion­als will want to share with their clients and prospects. Shawn Bray­man, Pres­i­dent of Plan­Plus, offered us an overview of the top aca­d­e­mic and indus­try research in the field of finan­cial plan­ning. How­ever, he had so many fas­ci­nat­ing papers to dis­cuss, it was unfor­tu­nate he had only an hour to cover his mate­r­ial.  And yours truly gave a short pre­sen­ta­tion on the recent 2010 Advi­sor Sur­vey Report, con­clud­ing that the deliv­ery of finan­cial advice is not that dif­fer­ent between fee and com­mis­sion models.

Susan Wol­burg Jenah, Pres­i­dent & CEO of IIROC, pro­vided an update on the Client Rela­tion­ship Model (CRM) pro­pos­als that will impose greater dis­clo­sure on the indus­try in order to increase investor pro­tec­tion. How­ever, the CRM has dragged on for so long and mor­phed so many times, it is hard to believe it will ever mate­ri­al­ize. Asked by an attendee how the devel­op­ments on com­pen­sa­tion in the U.K. and Aus­tralia might affect us here, Wol­burg Jenah said that IIROC was keep­ing a close eye on devel­op­ments that could poten­tially influ­ence com­pen­sa­tion mod­els in Canada, although it is prefer­able that indus­try par­tic­i­pants “vol­un­tar­ily” assess how to bet­ter align the inter­ests of clients and advisors.

The final day ended at noon, but the morn­ing still had sev­eral excel­lent speak­ers such as Dr. Dale Orr, Jamie Golombek, and Kevin O’Brien, who filled the morn­ing with great nuggets of wisdom.

Take away: Dr. Orr from Eco­nomic Insight pro­vided his short-term pre­dic­tions for Canada’s econ­omy: neg­li­gi­ble infla­tion, the dol­lar will trade close to par or maybe even higher if the price of oil increases, short-term rates will be higher in Canada than the U.S. (again putting upward pres­sure on our dol­lar), expect the Bank of Canada pol­icy rate to increase by 25 basis-points at every fixed announce­ment date for the next three years until it reaches the tar­get of 4% to 4.5%, and finally, don’t expect to see a bal­anced fed­eral bud­get until 2014–2015.

Jamie Golombek from CIBC Pri­vate Wealth Man­age­ment, who always stages a grand show, regaled the audi­ence with sto­ries of cre­ative bro­kers who sup­pos­edly found loop­holes in the TFSA con­tri­bu­tion rules. He also offered sev­eral use­ful tax strate­gies, updates, and sug­ges­tions on advis­ing your clients based on recent tax court decisions.

Take away: Advi­sors should be rec­om­mend­ing to almost every client that they top up their TFSA con­tri­bu­tion room prior to mak­ing RRSP contributions.

And finally, cer­ti­fied finan­cial plan­ner Kevin O’Brien from Kevin O’Brien & Asso­ciates told the audi­ence his some­times funny, some­times heart­felt story of man­ag­ing his parent’s messy estate before he became an advi­sor. It affected his cur­rent approach to estate plan­ning so much that he pub­lished his story for other advi­sors to read in Where There’s a Will….There’s a Way.

Over­all, it was an excel­lent con­fer­ence, and I would highly rec­om­mend attend­ing CIFP 2011 to be held in Ottawa from June 5 to 8. Media arti­cles from some of the pre­sen­ta­tions are avail­able on the CIFP website.

Fall Con­fer­ence Alert!

There are two first-rate con­fer­ences com­ing up in the fall that I will attend and rec­om­mend as well worth the investment.

The first is the IAFP Annual Sym­po­sium in Banff from Sep­tem­ber 23 to 25, 2010. This one is par­tic­u­larly enjoy­able; it is more sym­po­sium than con­fer­ence because it is anchored by a sin­gle finan­cial plan­ning case study. All speak­ers are required to ref­er­ence this case study in their pre­sen­ta­tions and are encour­aged to pub­lish papers from their spe­cialty per­spec­tive. This cer­tainly elim­i­nates the dis­ori­en­ta­tion one can some­times feel lis­ten­ing to mul­ti­ple talk­ing heads on sev­eral diverse sub­jects at other con­fer­ences. This year the case study is about a retir­ing busi­ness owner who also hap­pens to be a finan­cial plan­ner (is this a coin­ci­dence?). The sym­po­sium cul­mi­nates with a half-day dis­cus­sion on the case study by the 125+ attendees.

The sec­ond is the Knowl­edge Bureau’s (KB) Dis­tin­guished Advi­sor Con­fer­ence in Orlando from Novem­ber 14 to 17, 2010. Knowl­edge Bureau fac­ulty speak­ers such as Richard Croft and Doug Nel­son are top notch and KB Pres­i­dent Eve­lyn Jacks obvi­ously used her time wisely recruit­ing the likes of Don Stew­art, CEO Sun Life Finan­cial, while she was a fel­low mem­ber of the Fed­eral Task Force on Finan­cial Lit­er­acy. The other com­pelling rea­son to attend is this: each day ends at the utterly civ­i­lized time of 1:30 pm, giv­ing atten­dees ample time to enjoy the sun and nearby ameni­ties with col­leagues and family.

Marc Lam­on­tagne, CFP, R.F.P., FMA is a fee-based finan­cial plan­ner with Ryan Lam­on­tagne Inc., fee-model prac­tice man­age­ment trainer, and author of To Fee or Not to Fee II — How to design a fee finan­cial advi­sory prac­tice.  www​.tofee​ornot​tofee​.com

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Tags: Benefits Of Financial Planning, Cfp, Client Relationship, Consumer Survey, Economic Scenarios, Financial Advice, Financial Planners Standards Council, Global Asset Management, Global Economic Uncertainty, Greate, Industry Participants, Leiningen, Mutual Fund Company, Rbc Global, Recovery Stocks, Relationship Model, Second Consecutive Year, Smorgasbord, Survey Report, Talking Heads
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Structuring Your Day For Maximum Productivity

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Two things go into mak­ing our days pro­duc­tive — the first is what we do and the sec­ond is how we do it.

In recent con­ver­sa­tions with advi­sors, a num­ber have begun using a sim­ple idea to dra­mat­i­cally increase the return they get on their day, by ensur­ing that they’re focus­ing on high return activities.The first thing to mak­ing your time in the office pro­duc­tive is being inten­tional, step­ping back at the start of the week and ask­ing what is the high­est and best use of this week as a whole and each day within this week.

I’ve worked with some advi­sors recently who have begun spend­ing 15 or 20 inutes plan­ning the week ahead, iden­ti­fy­ing the biggest pri­or­i­ties. Some do this end of the day Fri­day, oth­ers on Sat­ur­day or Sunday.

Just by doing that, advi­sors tell me that they find their week has greater focus.

The other key to pro­duc­tiv­ity is build­ing con­sis­tent rou­tines into your sched­ule, using the tried and true approach of time blocking.

Rou­tine sim­pli­fies our lives — with­out rou­tine, we’d all have to make so many indi­vid­ual deci­sions we’d spend most of our time decid­ing what to do rather than doing it.

Some of the most suc­cess­ful advi­sors I know have very con­sis­tent rou­tines. Each day looks pretty much the same — as long as the rou­tine is one that sup­ports the right activ­ity, it can boost our pro­duc­tiv­ity dramatically.

For many advi­sors, the best way to estab­lish rou­tine in your day is via time block­ing, estab­lish­ing time in your cal­en­dar for key activities.

Sup­pose you say that you want to meet with your assis­tant Scott on Mon­day morn­ing to lay out the week ahead. You can say to your­self — I need to talk to Scott when we both get in. Or you can say to Scott — “let’s book a 15 appoint­ment for 8:30 every Mon­day morn­ing and build it into our routines.”

Or per­haps you decide you need to spend at least three hours a week talk­ing to prospects. To make that hap­pen, you can try to find time dur­ing the week as it is avail­able — or you can  book off an appoint­ment at 10 on Mon­day, Wednes­day and Fri­day, focused on pick­ing up the phone and call­ing prospects.

Here’s another exam­ple. One of the advi­sors who par­tic­i­pated in the video inter­view series avail­able on this web­site decided to ramp up the num­ber of client phone reviews.

So he did a cou­ple of things. First, he booked off every after­noon from 2 to 4 for tele­phone reviews.

And then he sat down with his assis­tant and said: “I’ve set aside 10 time slots each week for phone meet­ings, one at 2 and one at 3 each after­noon. “Your job is to fill those slots. Let’s talk about who you should approach about those meet­ings. And let’s talk about what needs to go out to clients in advance of those, an agenda, a pdf of their state­ment, any­thing else I want to refer to on the call.”

As a result of build­ing a key activ­ity into his rou­tine, he dra­mat­i­cally ramped up the num­ber of phone meet­ings with clients.

When you think about it, you can approach your week two ways. You can have desired activ­ity drive the struc­ture of your week. You can say each Mon­day What do I want to do this week and then fit it into your calendar.

Or you can have the struc­ture of your week drive your activ­ity. You can carve out the same hours each week to meet with staff and for phone meet­ings, client meet­ings and to con­tact prospects.

By putting these hours into your cal­en­dar and incor­po­rat­ing them into your rou­tine, you dra­mat­i­cally increase the chances of mak­ing high return activ­i­ties hap­pen. That doesn’t mean you can’t devi­ate from your sched­ule if some­thing more impor­tant comes up, but for most of us hav­ing a con­sis­tent rou­tine for at least part of our week will make us much more productive.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: 20 Inutes, 20 minutes, Appointment, Calendar, Conversations, Decisions, Least Three Hours, Maximum Productivity, Monday Morning, Priorities, Prospects
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A Million Dollar Meeting Gone Wrong

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

A mil­lion dol­lar meet­ing gone wrong

Land­ing a meet­ing with a prospec­tive client with a mil­lion dol­lars to invest doesn’t hap­pen every day — espe­cially when it results from a cold call.

But get­ting a chance to sit down is only the first step. Over lunch last week, a long-time friend who’s a part­ner with a down­town Toronto law described a recent meet­ing with a finan­cial advi­sor seek­ing his busi­ness and how some sub­tle errors and obvi­ous mis­takes cost the advi­sor the oppor­tu­nity to do business.

This lawyer has assets of well over $1 mil­lion — our con­ver­sa­tion offers a num­ber of impor­tant lessons for advisors.

The first relates to what it takes to get a meet­ing when you’re call­ing cold.

Cold call­ing to get meetings:

Here’s what the lawyer told me.

“The orig­i­nal con­tact came a year ago from a guy call­ing on behalf of a bro­ker with one of the banks. The only rea­son that he got through orig­i­nally was that I get in early so when he called the first time at 7:30 I answered my phone. I blew him off, told him I was happy where I was — but he said he’d like to send me a report from his firm on the out­look for mar­kets regard­less. He also said he’d like to touch base in six months. I said sure, fig­ured I’ve never hear from him again — was a bit sur­prised when that report crossed my desk a week later”

“The same guy called me last fall at about the same time in the morn­ing, guess he’d fig­ured out when I get in — and I told him I still wasn’t inter­ested in meet­ing. And again he said that he under­stood, but would like to email me an arti­cle from For­tune Mag­a­zine that the bro­ker he works with has been send­ing clients on the out­look for the econ­omy and then touch base in about six months.”

“In March, I got another call — this time from the bro­ker him­self. I agreed to give him half an hour over a cof­fee” the lawyer said. “I was impressed by his low key man­ner on the phone and his per­sis­tence. My com­fort level went up when he told me that he dealt with a num­ber of lawyers and had been in the invest­ment indus­try for 20 years. And I actu­ally felt a bit of oblig­a­tion, given that I’d twice said his assis­tant could send me stuff and then he’d fol­lowed through both times.”

Take­aways on get­ting ini­tial meetings

The obvi­ous les­son is that when it comes to get­ting ini­tial meet­ings per­sis­tence pays.

But there are other lessons as well.

First, if you want to get through to busy peo­ple you have to find the time that they’re likely to pick up the phone — whether it be early in the day, later on after their assis­tant has left or on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. The only way to deter­mine this is through trial and error — and once you’ve had suc­cess once, you need to record this for the future.

Sec­ond, one way to build trust is by mak­ing offers that prospects find valu­able and then deliv­er­ing. Send­ing those reports and arti­cles helped build cred­i­bil­ity — if the per­son call­ing for this advi­sor had said “Just check­ing to see if you’re ready to buy yet”, while it cer­tainly would have shown per­sis­tence, it wouldn’t have cre­ated the same impe­tus to meet.

Finally, one of the keys to win­ning over prospects is demon­strat­ing patience. A crit­i­cal fac­tor to the suc­cess in secur­ing this meet­ing was how the calls were spaced out. If the per­son call­ing had made the same three calls a month apart, chances are he would have been seen as a pest rather than call­ing on behalf of some­one worth meeting.

A meet­ing that went wrong

The sec­ond set of lessons relate to how you man­age that ini­tial inter­ac­tion with a prospect.

The lawyer went on to talk about the meeting

“We met at the Star­bucks under­neath my build­ing. He already had a cof­fee and a table when we got there — he rec­og­nized me from my photo on our firm’s web­site. On the phone he’d asked what kind of cof­fee I liked in case he got there first — and sure enough he had it wait­ing for me.

“Our con­ver­sa­tion began just fine. He thanked me for tak­ing the time to meet — said he’d like to learn a bit about my sit­u­a­tion and would be happy to answer any ques­tions I might have about markets.

“First he asked about how I was invest­ing cur­rently — I told him that I’d worked with a bro­ker in the past but for the past 10 years had been invest­ing on my own. He then asked about how I was invested currently.”

The lawyer paused and went on.

“At that point some­thing weird hap­pened. I have a habit of play­ing with my pen, this is some­thing I’ve always done.

As I was talk­ing about what I own right now, this guy picks up his pen and starts play­ing with it also.

Then when I crossed my legs he crossed his as well — and for the rest of our meet­ing, every time I did some­thing he did the same thing. Frankly, I didn’t know what exactly to think.

After about 15 min­utes, this guy says: ‘I appre­ci­ate your tak­ing the time today to talk. Let me tell you a bit about my back­ground and approach.”

The lawyer fin­ished our con­ver­sa­tion by repeat­ing this advisor’s con­clud­ing comments:

“From what you’ve told me, I do think that I might be able to add value to how you’re man­ag­ing money. As a next step, I’d like to sug­gest that we meet one lunch hour over a sand­wich at my office to review your cur­rent invest­ments in more detail — I’d be happy to give you an alter­na­tive point of view on what you’re doing right now. There would be no cost or oblig­a­tion for this.

My office is just a block away from here. I’m free a week from Fri­day and on Mon­day of the fol­low­ing week. Which of these two would work bet­ter for you?”

The lawyer wrapped us his sum­mary of the meeting:

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Tags: 1 Million, Assets, Banks, Coffee, Cold Call, Cold Cold, Contact, Desk, Economy, Fortune Magazine, Half An Hour, Lawyer, Lawyers, Long Time Friend, Lunch, Million Dollars, Persistence, Prospective Client, Six Months, Subtle Errors
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