Improving Your Business and Your Golf Game (Part 1)

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

A few years ago, I read two books enti­tled Golf is Not A Game of Per­fect and Golf is a Game of Con­fi­dence by Dr. Bob Rotella, one of the world’s lead­ing men­tal game coaches. These books inspired me to do addi­tional research to find out what it took to become a Men­tal Game Coach, as it seemed like a nat­ural match for me as my non-family time is mostly spent work­ing with advi­sors, who have sim­i­lar men­tal game issues as pro­fes­sional and ama­teur ath­letes or play­ing sports. In 2011, I took a sports psy­chol­ogy course to become a Cer­ti­fied Men­tal Game Coach­ing Professional.

If you click on either of the titles above, you will be directed to Audi​ble​.com. If you are unfa­mil­iar with Audi­ble, it is a web­site that sells audio­books. I have a gold mem­ber­ship that allows me to down­load one book each month for $14.95 per month. This is a great solu­tion if you are work­ing out or dri­ving. Both books are one-and-a-half hours in length and are prob­a­bly best pur­chased  for under $10 each if you want to try before you buy a membership.

When I first lis­tened to Golf is Not a Game of Con­fi­dence, my reac­tion was that every­thing Rotella dis­cusses in these books can be applied to finan­cial advi­sors. In this series of arti­cles, I will dis­cuss how pro­fes­sional athlete’s prepa­ra­tion for peak per­for­mance can be used to help you per­form bet­ter when run­ning your business.

I found a great arti­cle in Golf Digest enti­tled 10 Rules For How To Win Your Major by Dr. Rotella. Below are his 10 rules and my com­ments about how each relates to your busi­ness. You can read the full arti­cle by click­ing on the arti­cle title:

1. Believe you can win.

Con­fi­dence is the num­ber one dri­ver of suc­cess for advi­sors. The past decade has been very dif­fi­cult for advi­sor con­fi­dence. Mar­kets have been dif­fi­cult, tech­no­log­i­cal change is sweep­ing your indus­try and you are deal­ing with a whole new brand of much more demand­ing clients – Baby Boomers. On the other hand, to build a great busi­ness, you need to build strong rela­tion­ships with a hand­ful (100 – 150) of high net worth fam­i­lies who need the ser­vices your pro­vide and are will­ing to pay the fees you charge. With the right focus, build­ing a suc­cess­ful wealth man­age­ment busi­ness can be a fairly sim­ple game to win.

2. Don’t be seduced by results.

If you want to play great golf, you need to focus on the process and not the result. In busi­ness, you need to do the right things every­day and the score will take care of itself. Espe­cially in a fee-based style busi­ness, rev­enue is depen­dent on attract­ing the right clients to your prac­tice and achiev­ing con­sis­tently high lev­els of client satisfaction.

3. Sulk­ing won’t get you anything.

Is it easy to get down on your­self over the past decade? In 2008, with client losses mount­ing, advi­sors who main­tained their busi­ness devel­op­ment dis­ci­pline were flat in AUM, rev­enue and prof­itabil­ity. Those who sulked and stopped try­ing to attract new clients suf­fered 20 – 30% drops in AUM and rev­enue and dev­as­tat­ing hits to their profitability.

4. Beat them with patience.

Build­ing a great busi­ness and achiev­ing great results for your clients is a marathon and not a sprint. Set achiev­able and real­is­tic goals and be patient and you will avoid traps that pre­vent you from being suc­cess­ful or get you in trouble.

5. Ignore unso­licited swing advice.

When you have a plan in place for your busi­ness, don’t let dis­trac­tions get in the way of achiev­ing your goals. Dur­ing a typ­i­cal busi­ness year, you will be pre­sented with advice from col­leagues, whole­salers and man­agers. Cre­ate a Word doc­u­ment and store those ideas for review when you build your next one or three-year plan.

6. Embrace your golf personality.

If your busi­ness is not fun, you will have trou­ble being really suc­cess­ful. Your style of busi­ness and the types of clients you work with will deter­mine your suc­cess. Do what you enjoy and del­e­gate the rest.

7. Have a rou­tine to lean on.

Most peo­ple resist rou­tine because they feel that it robs them of flex­i­bil­ity and cre­ativ­ity. In fact, rou­tine helps you to improve focus and get more done in less time. That gives you time to really focus on being cre­ative and hav­ing fun with­out daily dis­trac­tions get­ting in the way.

8. Find peace on the course.

Your abil­ity to achieve a quiet mind will allow you to min­i­mize stress and per­form at your best. Con­flicts, frus­tra­tions and dis­trac­tions detract from per­for­mance. A great for­mula is Per­for­mance = Poten­tial – (con­flicts, frus­tra­tions and distractions).

9. Test your­self in stroke play.

Stroke play in your busi­ness is client inter­ac­tion. Just like you want to per­form well on every hole in a round of golf, you want to do the same every time you inter­act with a client. Client meet­ings are your stage for your great performances.

10. Find some­one who believes in you.

It is easy to find peo­ple who are inter­ested in your per­for­mance but do they really believe in you? Your firms, branch man­agers, whole­salers and some­times even your fam­ily mem­bers have finan­cial inter­ests in their rela­tion­ships with you. We love to find peo­ple who have an aggres­sive vision because this is what is going to moti­vate them to build a great business.

This is the first in a series of arti­cles about improv­ing your busi­ness and your golf game by Bob Simp­son, Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants and Cer­ti­fied Men­tal Game Coach­ing Pro­fes­sional. He can be con­tacted at 905−502−0100 or bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: Additional Research, Amateur Athletes, Article Title, Baby Boomers, Busine, Dr Bob Rotella, Dr Rotella, Family Time, Game Issues, Gold Membership, Golf Digest, Golf Game, Golf Is A Game Of Confidence, Great Solution, Mental Game Coach, Playing Sports, Professional Athlete, Psychology Course, Sports Psychology, Two Books
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A Time For Change (Part 2) – Change The Way You Manage Relationships

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

If you are going to make changes in your busi­ness, why not start with the most impor­tant fac­tor – your client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment processes.

Finan­cial advi­sors, in gen­eral, do a pretty poor job of man­ag­ing client rela­tion­ships.  That is both a prob­lem and an oppor­tu­nity.  We will look at both in this article.

Your clients are the lifeblood of your busi­ness.  At work­shops I have deliv­ered over the past 14 years, I have fre­quently made the com­ment, “you are not in the invest­ment busi­ness, you are in the rela­tion­ship man­age­ment business”.

I recently changed that to “you are not in the invest­ment busi­ness, you are in the client project man­age­ment busi­ness”.  I will dis­cuss this in more detail in a future blog.

The prob­lem with my orig­i­nal state­ment is that cur­rent meth­ods of man­ag­ing rela­tion­ships are right out of sales school.  We used to do a ses­sion where we asked par­tic­i­pants about what they did to cre­ate WOW expe­ri­ences for clients.  The responses were gen­er­ally pretty sim­i­lar:
 
 
 

• Bak­ing cook­ies in the office to cre­ate a pleas­ant aroma
• Send­ing Thanks­giv­ing cards
• Phon­ing clients on their birth­days or anniversaries

As a typ­i­cal Baby Boomer, I seek a very pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship with advi­sors I work with.  I look for peo­ple who are com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sional, who are pleas­ant to deal with and have a good sense of humor, who under­stand my pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties and who I feel are 100% com­mit­ted to help­ing me achieve the best outcome.

Hon­estly, I could care less if your office smells like cook­ies and I def­i­nitely do not want to receive a birth­day card and espe­cially not one of those elec­tronic ver­sions with music and bal­loons.  If you sent me a Thanks­giv­ing card, I would ask to be taken off your list.  I hate mail and get too many e-mail.  I do not want to receive paper state­ments – they drive me crazy.

I want to know when we are going to meet and when I am going to hear from you for the next 12 to 24 months and expect that you will respect me enough to always be on time.  I want every meet­ing to have an agenda and I don’t want to be baf­fled by num­bers and BS.  I never want to feel like I am being sold some­thing.  I want meet­ings to be effi­cient so that I can min­i­mize the amount of time I spend on wealth man­age­ment.  If you invite me to a client appre­ci­a­tion event, I will not come unless I can bring one of my adult chil­dren but I might come if it is a sport­ing event.  I want you to check in with me reg­u­larly to find out whether I am sat­is­fied and I will respond honestly.

If we are work­ing on retire­ment plan­ning, I care that we are work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively, based on my pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties and that we have a plan in place to grow through reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions and that you are keep­ing me account­able and rec­om­mend­ing invest­ments that pro­vide me with the high­est rate of return at an appro­pri­ate risk level.  I care more about pre­serv­ing wealth than build­ing wealth.  I want to man­age my money based on a goals-based approach where each pur­pose is iden­ti­fied and a port­fo­lio devel­oped and per­for­mance reported for each.  If we did a finan­cial plan and we did not plan and imple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of the plan, I would be very frus­trated and would seek another advisor.

I want to know that we are in a sec­u­lar bear mar­ket so my expec­ta­tions are real­is­tic and I want detailed infor­ma­tion about who is man­ag­ing my money (you or invest­ment man­agers), how they are qual­i­fied to man­age it and how they are invest­ing it.  I do not sim­ply want to  focus on the results.

I want to use tech­nol­ogy – tech­nol­ogy to con­duct meet­ings so I do not have to travel to your office to meet face-to-face.  I am too busy for that.  I want my per­sonal affairs to very well orga­nized.  I’d pre­fer an online work­space where I can col­lab­o­rate with my advi­sor, share doc­u­ments and that links me to infor­ma­tion about my wealth plan and invest­ments – not just the num­bers but how and why the invest­ment man­ager is man­ag­ing my money.  (Shame­less plug – Watch our Client Roadmap video to see how to do this)

I do want to feel like my advi­sor under­stands my inter­ests and cares about me.  I like things that are per­sonal and that I feel are done for me based on my inter­ests.  Cards are too imper­sonal.  I can see my advi­sor sign­ing a bunch of them at a time and hav­ing them sent out.  Per­sonal sup­port makes me feel spe­cial and will lead me to rec­om­mend my friends and colleagues.

How is poor rela­tion­ship man­age­ment by advi­sors an advan­tage?  If peo­ple, in gen­eral, are frus­trated with their rela­tion­ship man­age­ment pro­grams with advi­sors, your busi­ness devel­op­ment efforts will be more pro­duc­tive if you have good prac­tices that deliver results.

I’m really sur­prised that most advi­sors do not have a process for iden­ti­fy­ing their clients’ pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties.  You can com­plete one that we devel­oped by click­ing on the link below:

Pref­er­ences and Priorities Survey

Every client has unique pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties.  If you are deal­ing with Depres­sion or War Babies instead of Baby Boomers, you will get com­pletely dif­fer­ent responses and will need to use less tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to obtain them.   The impor­tant thing is to iden­tify them and develop a plan based on them.  The only way to get high lev­els of client sat­is­fac­tion is to iden­tify each client’s unique pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties and deliver pro­grams based on them.

If you want to build a great busi­ness, you need to have great rela­tion­ship man­age­ment processes.

This is the sec­ond in a series of arti­cles writ­ten by Bob Simp­son, Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants.  Future arti­cles will address strate­gies and tac­tics to make pos­i­tive changes to your busi­ness model so you can thrive in a world of change.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: Anniversaries, Baby Boomer, Birthday Card, Client Relationship Management, Client Relationships, E Mail, Electronic Versions, Financial Advisors, Good Sense Of Humor, Investment Business, Lifeblood, Management Processes, Managing Relationships, Paper Statements, Poor Job, Professional Relationship, Project Management Business, Sense Of Humor, Thanksgiving Card, Thanksgiving Cards
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A “Wow” Experience Is Not Enough

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

We have been told that to attract refer­rals and clients, we have to pro­vide a “wow” expe­ri­ence. But that’s just not enough on which to base a busi­ness devel­op­ment or refer­ral mar­ket­ing plan.

Last week, I was dis­cussing with an advi­sor his strat­egy for uti­liz­ing his client advi­sory board to gen­er­ate refer­rals. Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, he said “We have to make sure we deliver such a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence that the clients will tell every­one about us.” This is a phi­los­o­phy I have heard many times. As a busi­ness devel­op­ment strat­egy, it has some seri­ous shortcomings.

One issue, of course, is that there is no gen­er­ally agreed upon def­i­n­i­tion of “wow.” Too often, when I have heard an advi­sor say this, they then went on to pro­vide their own inter­pre­ta­tion of “wow”, and that is one way to dis­ap­point clients. What mat­ters is that you exceeded the client’s expec­ta­tions, not your expec­ta­tions of what the client wants. And all clients are dif­fer­ent. For that mat­ter, how will employ­ees under­stand what “wow” is? And how can they deliver it if they can­not clearly trans­late it into behavior?

I remem­ber one time I estab­lished a new rela­tion­ship with a bank. There was some form that I neglected to sign or some­thing.  The man­ager, in her pur­suit of deliv­er­ing the “wow” expe­ri­ence, drove to my office to deliver it to me. My reac­tion was “Why is there a bank man­ager in my lobby? The mail would have done just fine. I don’t need to be inter­rupted right now.” My assis­tant went out to see her. She ded­i­cated a mean­ing­ful por­tion of her day to drive some­thing to my office, as tes­ta­ment no doubt to their ded­i­ca­tion of deliv­er­ing an out­stand­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.  And if it had any effect on my atti­tude toward the insti­tu­tion, it was mildly neg­a­tive. She focused on her assump­tions of a great expe­ri­ence and ignored my expectations.

The big­ger issue of “wow” is that too many peo­ple say it. And, yes, most do not deliver it, but YOU do.  I know. But how will prospects know that? If a prospect inter­views five advi­sors, and they all say they deliver an amaz­ing client expe­ri­ence, how will that help the prospect to choose you?

If you ded­i­cate your­self to con­sis­tently deliver “wow” how will you oper­a­tional­ize that? If you are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing “wow” then you must have pro­ce­dures around it and they must be mea­sured. Much, much bet­ter to define exactly what your ser­vice com­prises, and explain that to clients.  Bet­ter yet, ask them if that is how they would most like things to be han­dled. Then cre­ate processes to deliver  that con­sis­tently and man­age to those processes.

If you com­mit to deliv­er­ing a “wow” expe­ri­ence, you will thrill some clients and it will gen­er­ate some refer­rals. Peo­ple are attracted (and make refer­rals) to firms that rep­re­sent spe­cific solu­tions and expe­ri­ences that par­tic­u­lar clients seek. Define what those solu­tions and expe­ri­ences are, and test them with clients. Once you have deter­mined what the tar­get clients’ expec­ta­tions are, build processes to meet them con­sis­tently and exceed them peri­od­i­cally. Then you will have a per­for­mance goal all your employ­ees and clients will appre­ci­ate, and that they will tell oth­ers about. And that will yield a much greater return than sim­ply “wow.”

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Tags: Advisory Board, Assumptions, Attitude, Business Development Strategy, Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Dedication, Mail, Marketing Plan, No Doubt, Philosophy, Referral Marketing, Referrals, Relationship, Some Serious Shortcomings, Testament, Wow
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Using credible experts to help clients stick to their plans

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

War­ren Buf­fett has said it only takes two things for investors to suc­ceed — hav­ing a sound plan and stick­ing to it…and it’s the stick­ing to it part where most peo­ple struggle.

Along sim­i­lar lines, the key for advi­sors in help­ing clients suc­ceed is not devel­op­ing the right plan, it’s putting in place strate­gies to help clients stick to the plan once it’s developed.

That’s typ­i­cally not a big prob­lem when peo­ple are mak­ing money and investors feel rewarded for being in markets.

But it’s a huge issue in times like these, when it’s easy for Cana­di­ans to become anx­ious and discouraged…to go to cash with their exist­ing invest­ments and stop mak­ing RRSP contributions.

In light of that, here’s a strat­egy that can help clients main­tain con­fi­dence and stick to their plans.

Pro­vid­ing perspective

In my con­ver­sa­tions with Cana­dian investors, almost all want to deal with advi­sors who are gen­er­ally pos­i­tive but at the same time pro­vide a bal­anced per­spec­tive; so don’t fall into the perma-bull “don’t worry be happy” camp.

That’s why you can’t dis­miss the issues that global economies and stock mar­kets are facing.

And with many clients, you can’t rely on just your own opin­ion or your firm’s research — in times like these, it’s help­ful to pro­vide sup­port from trusted, third party sources.

The lead­ing voices in the val­u­a­tion debate

That’s the rea­son that in early July I con­ducted video inter­views with both Jeremy Siegel and Robert Shiller, the two lead­ing voices on the mar­ket val­u­a­tions, with a view to pre­sent­ing both sides of the argu­ment on mar­ket valuations.

Both Siegel and Shiller are highly cred­i­ble — they each called the tech melt­down and take a fact-based approach to their analysis.

Here’s the link to a March Wall Street Jour­nal front page story that high­lighted these two aca­d­e­mics as the lead­ing voices in the under­val­ued vs. over­val­ued debate: http://​online​.wsj​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​S​B​1​0​0​0​1​4​2​4​0​5​2​7​4​8​7​0​4​7​0​6​3​0​4​5​7​5​1​0​7​4​9​2​6​3​2​5​6​7​8​0​2​.​h​tml

Using the videos with clients

Last week, videos of the inter­views with Siegel and Shiller were posted to the Cli​entin​sights​.ca website.

There are a cou­ple of ways to use these interviews.

One is to email clients the one that sup­ports your point of view.

Alter­na­tively, you might want to send clients not just the one you agree with but both videos — and then talk about the con­trary case that has been presented.

By demon­strat­ing that you’ve looked at the full gamut of views rather than telling just one side of story, your ulti­mate rec­om­men­da­tion has more power.

So if you’re rec­om­mend­ing clients stay fully invested, it’s impor­tant to show clients you’ve exam­ined the neg­a­tive case.

And if you’re cau­tious and rec­om­mend­ing cash, it’s help­ful to demon­strate that you’re not ignor­ing the opti­mistic voices.

Doing this entails a longer, more detailed con­ver­sa­tion — but it’s this kind of con­ver­sa­tion that helps clients stick to their plan at the inevitable time when the mar­ket goes against the stance you’ve taken.

To watch videos of two of the inter­views with Jeremy Siegel, click here:

Why stocks are undervalued

http://​cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​j​e​r​e​m​y​-​s​i​e​g​e​l​-​w​h​y​-​s​t​o​c​k​s​-​a​r​e​-​u​n​d​e​r​v​a​l​u​e​d​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

Respond­ing on mar­ket concerns:

http://​cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​j​e​r​e​m​y​-​s​i​e​g​e​l​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​d​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​m​a​r​k​e​t​-​c​o​n​c​e​r​n​s​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

And these inter­views sum­ma­rize Robert Shiller’s views on the market:

A cau­tious out­look for stocks:

http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​r​o​b​e​r​t​-​s​h​i​l​l​e​r​-​a​-​c​a​u​t​i​o​u​s​-​o​u​t​l​o​o​k​-​f​o​r​-​s​t​o​c​k​s​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

The impact of con­sumer confidence:

http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​r​o​b​e​r​t​-​s​h​i​l​l​e​r​-​t​h​e​-​i​m​p​a​c​t​-​o​f​-​c​o​n​s​u​m​e​r​-​c​o​n​f​i​d​e​n​c​e​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

To watch a dozen dif­fer­ent inter­views with Jeremy Siegel and Robert Shiller, go to www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca.

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Tags: Academics, Balanced Perspective, Canadian Investors, Canadians, Conversations, Credible Experts, Global Economies, Happy Camp, Jeremy Siegel, Market Valuations, Meltdown, Party Sources, Perma, Place Strategies, Rrsp Contributions, Stock Markets, Video Interviews, Wall Street Journal, Warren Buffett, Wsj
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30 Minutes to Secure Your Most Important Clients

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

30 min­utes to secure your most impor­tant clients

Given that time is our scarcest cur­rency, we all need to be cau­tious about tak­ing on sig­nif­i­cant new com­mit­ments. The only excep­tion is cases where there’s absolutely clear cut evi­dence of a sub­stan­tial return.

Late last year, I spoke to an advi­sor about a 30 minute invest­ment in for­mu­lat­ing Client Oppor­tu­nity Plans for top clients that has pro­vided an over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive result.

The con­cept of these plans is sim­ple: If you’re an account man­ager work­ing for Proc­ter & Gam­ble with respon­si­bil­ity for man­ag­ing the Wal­mart or Costco account, every year you’ll spend 30 days devel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive, 200 page busi­ness plan for that account.

It clearly doesn’t make sense to spend a month devel­op­ing a 200 page busi­ness plan for even your largest client – but how about 30 min­utes to develop a four page plan? This advi­sor had attended a work­shop in 2009, in which he’d seen the tem­plate for a four page plan for use with key clients, sum­ma­riz­ing the client back­ground, iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and set­ting out spe­cific actions.

In early 2010, this advi­sor and his team devel­oped these plans for their top 20 clients – they took about half an hour each ini­tially, with a fur­ther 15 to 20 min­utes to update them a year later. As a result of these plans, his activ­ity with top clients is more proac­tive and focused and both he and his clients are bet­ter off as a result. In this advisor’s view, the time he spends in putting together these plans is his high­est return activ­ity each year.

Key back­ground

The first step is to con­cisely sum­ma­rize key back­ground on each key client. Here’s what the back­ground por­tion of the plan tem­plate might look like, doc­u­ment­ing client infor­ma­tion in thir­teen areas. Con­sider using this as a start­ing point for your own key client plans, mod­i­fy­ing it to your own situation.

1. Cur­rent sit­u­a­tion – a short sum­mary of key trends on assets and revenues:

For 2009, 2010 and 2011, show rev­enue for each year as well as assets at the end of the year.

In addi­tion, doc­u­ment how long you’ve been work­ing with this client – and how you came to work together.

2. Finan­cial priorities

Sum­ma­rize this client’s top three finan­cial issues and priorities.

3. Assess­ment of client sat­is­fac­tion – how sat­is­fied is your client on the key dimen­sions of your relationship

On a scale from 1 to 5 (where 1 is low, 5 is high), write down your assess­ment of how sat­is­fied your client is on key dimen­sions of key dimensions:

1. Per­for­mance of investments
2. Con­fi­dent that is on track to achieve goals
3. Fre­quency of communication
4. Qual­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion – feels lis­tened to, key ques­tions and issues are addressed
5. Over­all relationship

4. Plans in place – an overview of the writ­ten plans this client has in place

List the kinds of writ­ten plans this client has in place, whether they have been com­pleted in whole or in part, when they were pre­pared, when they were last updated and who pre­pared them.

Among the plans to include are

• finan­cial plan
• invest­ment plan retire­ment plan
• estate /insurance plan
• tax plan
• cash flow plan.

5. Key gaps

Iden­tify impor­tant gaps in this client’s plans and finan­cial affairs.

6. Pre­ferred con­tact – how does this client want to hear from you — and how often

Doc­u­ment the client’s pref­er­ence in terms of con­tact via:

• Face to face
• Tele­phone
• Email
• Mail
• Lunch pre­sen­ta­tions
• Evening pre­sen­ta­tions
• Other

As well, iden­tify the fre­quency with which you used each of these meth­ods to com­mu­ni­cate with this client in 2011 – and your goal for each of these in 2012.

7. Your knowl­edge of the client

This sec­tion iden­ti­fies gaps in your knowl­edge of the client. Rate your knowl­edge from high to low in terms of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion (hope­fully high), work sit­u­a­tion, fam­ily sit­u­a­tion, hob­bies and inter­ests, retire­ment plans and any health and per­sonal issues.

Then iden­tify knowl­edge gaps that you need to fill in the next twelve months.

8. Pro­fes­sional advisors

List the name and con­tact infor­ma­tion for this client’s accoun­tant, lawyer and other pro­fes­sional advi­sors. On a scale from 1 to 5, note whether you’ve met those pro­fes­sional advi­sors and the strength of your rela­tion­ship with them.

9. % of Assets held

Approx­i­mately what per­cent­age of this client’s assets do you hold? Where are out­side assets held, what do they con­sist of and what is there approx­i­mate value?

What’s your his­tory in terms of bring­ing on addi­tional assets from this client? When was the last time that you talked to this client about this? Where clients hold assets with out­side firms, have you offered to pre­pare a con­sol­i­dated quar­terly snap­shot of all of their assets?

10. Rela­tion­ship with heirs – where you stand in terms of your con­nec­tion with your client’s spouse and fam­ily members.

List the name of each per­son who will receive a sub­stan­tial inher­i­tance from this client, start­ing with the spouse and includ­ing adult chil­dren. In each case iden­tify whether you have their account cur­rently and rank your rela­tion­ship with them from 1 to 5, where 1 is low and 5 is high. Include any com­ments on your rela­tion­ship with each of your key client’s heirs.

11. Past refer­rals provided

Record cases where this client intro­duced you to friends and fam­ily, includ­ing the date, the assets involved by the poten­tial client referred and the outcome.

12. Close asso­ciates

List this client’s clos­est fam­ily mem­bers, friends and work col­leagues. For each case, indi­cate whether at some point you’ve met them.

13. Past social activity

Here’s where you sum­ma­rize cases in the past where you got together with this client socially. List the event or activ­ity, the date and any response or feed­back from the client. Based on that feed­back, should you repeat this in future?

Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on opportunities

Once you have the back­ground doc­u­mented, next is a five step process to iden­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties and for­mu­late a plan to cap­i­tal­ize on those opportunities.

1. Hot but­tons

What are the one, two or three issues that this client wor­ries about the most – and that will moti­vate him or her to act. Oppor­tu­nity Check­list – a quick sum­mary of gaps in this client’s finan­cial affairs.

2. Oppor­tu­nity checklist

Here’s where you iden­tify any things that need to be done to ensure the client’s basic affairs are in good order. Here’s a list that you could use as a start­ing point – for each of these, indi­cate whether there is work to be done on them in 2012, whether for the client or for fam­ily members.

• Cash Man­age­ment Account
• GICs
• RESP
• RDSP
• RRSP
• Tax free sav­ings account
• Crit­i­cal care insurance
• Life insur­ance
• Long term care insurance
• Power of attorney
• Will

3. Key client oppor­tu­ni­ties for 2012

Write down the one, two or three key ways this client you can help improve the client’s sit­u­a­tion in the next twelve months.

4. Key busi­ness oppor­tu­nity for 2012

Iden­tify the one goal with this client that would advance your own busi­ness in the next twelve months

5. Key steps for 2012

What spe­cific steps are you going to take in 2012 to achieve these goals?

The last four years have tested many client rela­tion­ships. Going for­ward, it will be crit­i­cally impor­tant to be proac­tive and dis­ci­plined in man­ag­ing rela­tion­ships with your most impor­tant clients – a Client Oppor­tu­nity Tem­plate such as this one can play a key role in mak­ing that happen.

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Tags: 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, Amp, Assets, Client Background, Client Opportunity, Commitments, Costco, Currency, Current Situation, Half An Hour, Minute Investment, Page Business Plan, Plan Template, Proactive, Procter Amp Gamble, Substantial Return, Walmart
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What do Financial Advisors Want?

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Every Finan­cial Advi­sor {FA} wants to answer three questions:

1. What role do I play in my prac­tice?
2. How big do I want to become?
3. What is the req­ui­site {required} orga­ni­za­tion {RO} to enable me to answer ques­tions 1 and 2?

Most FAs get paid for results. Their com­pen­sa­tion is tied to the sale of prod­ucts such as invest­ments, insur­ance, mort­gages, sav­ings, loans etc or the sale of advice. Peo­ple tend to think of the FA role as a sales func­tion. Yet, the tasks an FA is required to per­form are much more com­plex than sim­ply sell­ing. Today, the vast major­ity of FAs are entre­pre­neurs who have cho­sen to work in finan­cial ser­vices. They are build­ing a busi­ness. There are two prin­ci­ples that deter­mine how big and sus­tain­able that busi­ness will become:

1. Opti­miza­tion
2. Leverage.

Opti­miza­tion is defined as the abil­ity to work at the high­est level of your capa­bil­ity. Lever­age is the abil­ity to employ peo­ple, cap­i­tal and tech­nol­ogy to enhance your effec­tive­ness. Let me give you an exam­ple. I coach an advi­sor who came to the US in the early 80s. As a new immi­grant, he had dif­fi­culty find­ing work. After a year, he became a life insur­ance agent col­lect­ing pre­mi­ums on a debit. His goal was to earn $100.00 a day. He sold life insur­ance to lower income fam­i­lies liv­ing in a poor area of his city. Today, he has a team of eight peo­ple, includ­ing a CPA and attor­ney. He has 1,000 clients, of which the top 100 have aver­age net investable assets of $10,000,000.00+. Today, his goal is to earn $10,000.00 a day. He has increased the value of his time from $10.00 an hour to $1,250.00 an hour. In addi­tion, he is build­ing a busi­ness where other peo­ple con­tribute to the growth in rev­enue and prof­itabil­ity. Twenty years ago, his goal was to earn a six fig­ure income. Today, it is to build an eight fig­ure busi­ness. To achieve his goal, he has mas­tered the art and sci­ence of build­ing a business.

FAs who only want to sell and make as much money as pos­si­ble need to become part of an orga­ni­za­tion that facil­i­tates the expres­sion of the unique abil­ity to sell. FAs who want to build their own busi­ness have to mas­ter the art and sci­ence of build­ing a busi­ness or find part­ners who bring com­ple­men­tary capa­bil­i­ties and moti­va­tion to build the busi­ness together.

Norm Trainor is the Founder and CEO of The Covenant Group, a com­pany that spe­cial­izes in edu­cat­ing and coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors and entre­pre­neurs and pro­vid­ing them with busi­ness tools to enhance their per­for­mance. He can be reached at norm@covenantgroup.com or 1−877−903−3878 X333.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

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Tags: 80s, Art And Science, Capability, Cpa, Financial Advisors, Financial Services, Immigrant, Income Families, Insurance Mortgages, Investable Assets, Investments, Leverage, Life Insurance Agent, Loans, Norm Trainor, Optimization, Organi, Premiums, Profitability, Six Figure Income, Twenty Years
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Three Steps to Effective To-do Lists

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

For the past few years I’ve been a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Hors­es­mouth, the lead­ing online prac­tice man­age­ment resource for US finan­cial advi­sors. Recently, the site fea­tured an arti­cle by U.S. con­sul­tant Robert Mid­dle­ton out­lin­ing three sim­ple steps to mak­ing to-do lists more effective.

The arti­cle is reprinted below.

To see more of Robert Middleton’s work and get a free copy of his report on attract­ing high net worth clients, click here:

http://​action​plan​.com/​h​ome

And click here for a free 45 day trail to Horsesmouth:

http://​www​.hors​es​mouth​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​f​r​e​e​t​r​i​a​l​/​f​t​j​o​i​n​.​a​spx

By Robert Middleton

Stressed out by the daily con­tem­pla­tion of all you have to do? Get out from under in three smart steps and you’ll soon see order form­ing from the chaos.

It’s vital to learn about and under­stand the prin­ci­ples of mar­ket­ing and the strate­gies and processes used to imple­ment them effectively.

But I call that “The Easy Part.”

The hard part is imple­ment­ing what you already know. And there seem to be 1,000 things con­spir­ing to pre­vent us from putting our knowl­edge into action.

One of the biggest hur­dles is sim­ply man­ag­ing projects and time. There is a sim­ple but pow­er­ful sys­tem that really works to keep on top of and move for­ward with the zil­lion things you have on your plate.

I hate to lead with the neg­a­tive, but…here we go. A few things you’re prob­a­bly doing wrong:

You have a huge list of things to do and you look at it daily. Or per­haps it’s got­ten so over­whelm­ing you don’t look at it at all.
You don’t have a weekly plan for things you are com­mit­ted to doing this week no mat­ter what.
Your daily to-do list, if you have one, is way too long and is not inte­grated into your daily schedule.

I’ll give you solu­tions to all of these prob­lems, but the first thing to remem­ber is that you don’t have to work insanely hard to get a lot done. I’m some­one who gets a lot done, but I don’t go crazy get­ting it all done, and I rarely feel overwhelmed.

The big key is pri­or­i­ties. That is, you want to be work­ing on big things that move your busi­ness for­ward. Not a lot of things, but the few things that really matter.

So that brings us to…

Solu­tion #1: Tam­ing your big list

A big list is a list of all the things you have to, want to, and need to do. The prob­lem with a big list is that it’s usu­ally only one list. Big mis­take. That big list makes you feel over­whelmed. Every time you look at your big list, you freak out because of all the stuff it con­tains. You have so much to do!

The thing is you don’t. You can only do what you can do today, and not every­thing on that big list is for today. So look­ing at it every day is a for­mula for los­ing the game of get­ting impor­tant things done.

Instead, restruc­ture your big list into a whole bunch of project lists. Mar­ket­ing projects, client projects, admin projects, any kind of project. You can file those project pages in some kind of online sys­tem, or do what I do; put them in a good, old-fashioned binder.

When do you look at your project lists? Once a week and only once a week. Never, ever, every sin­gle day.

Solu­tion #2: Choos­ing your weekly list

Very few peo­ple form a weekly list, but you must if you want to get con­trol of things once and for all.

Once a week, on Fri­day after­noon, over the week­end, or first thing Mon­day morn­ing, you leisurely page through your var­i­ous project lists. Slow down. Yes, delib­er­ately take the pace down a notchto pre­vent over­whelm. (This may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but when you slow down, you will feel that you have more time to get things done.)

Now, as you notice an item that needs to be done this week or that you really want to get done this week, you write that item in your weekly list.

There’s one restric­tion; you may choose only 10 items per week. These are not things you’d like to get done. These are things you are com­mit­ted to get­ting done. You’re going to plan for them and fin­ish them. That’s your pro­duc­tiv­ity game for the week.

As you go through this process week by week, you may dis­cover you need to put a few less or a few more items on that weekly list to fill your time. You will develop a keener sense of what you can real­is­ti­cally accom­plish in one week. Remem­ber, the game is to list only items you really intend to get done. No more, no less.

Solu­tion #3: Cherry-picking for your daily list

Your daily list or as I like to call it, my Daily Con­trol Panel. You can struc­ture it any way you like, but here’s what I do: I use a two-column, full-page daily plan­ner with my appoint­ments for the day on the left and my daily to-dos on the right.

Each morn­ing I open my plan­ner, look at my appoint­ments, and then take a look at my weekly list and ask myself what I can rea­son­ably fit in for today. If I have lots of appoint­ments, I can do less; if fewer appoint­ments, I can do more.

Then my pro­duc­tiv­ity game is to accom­plish every­thing on that list that day. Do I always suc­ceed? No, but I get it done most of the time. With only 10 pri­or­ity items listed for the week, I have only two to four items to com­plete every day.

This is calm­ing! It means that I’m not scan­ning a list of 100 things every day, get­ting over­whelmed, and just doing things fran­ti­cally to get them off list (or worse, freez­ing up under the pres­sure). That just stresses you out, and you never really feel pro­duc­tive because you’re “just doing things.” You don’t come away with a sense of focused accomplishment.

Instead, I’m mov­ing things for­ward slowly and surely, step by step. That way, all the big things I want to accom­plish get done. And the lit­tle things (like answer­ing email) fit in between the cracks, instead of con­sum­ing the whole day.

Bot­tom line: Don’t under­es­ti­mate the forces con­spir­ing to dis­tract you from impor­tant projects and tasks. Make it a pri­or­ity to get orga­nized and cre­ate a work­able sys­tem for plan­ning and time man­age­ment. It might be the most pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing activ­ity you do this year.

To see more of Robert Middleton’s work and get a free copy of his report on attract­ing high net worth clients, click here:

http://​action​plan​.com/​h​ome

And click here for a free 45 day trail to Horsesmouth:

http://​www​.hors​es​mouth​.com/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​f​r​e​e​t​r​i​a​l​/​f​t​j​o​i​n​.​a​spx

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Tags: Aspx, Contemplation, Contributor, Daily To Do List, Financial Advisors, High Net Worth Clients, Huge List, Hurdles, Knowledge Into Action, Making To Do Lists, Management Resource, Managing Projects, Powerful System, Practice Management, Principles Of Marketing, Robert Middleton, Simple Steps, Smart Steps, Three Steps, Zillion
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The Magic Question For Growing Your Business

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Here’s a sim­ple idea to help you build a great business:

• Every time you need to make a deci­sion about your busi­ness, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• Every time you spend money for your prac­tice, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• Every time you make a staffing change, ask your­self “How will this impact client satisfaction?
• After a client meet­ing or inter­ac­tion, ask your­self, “What did I do in today’s meet­ing to improve client sat­is­fac­tion for this client?” and “What should I do in our next meet­ing to improve client satisfaction?”
• Every time you are pre­sented with a client com­plaint, ask your­self the ques­tion “Did I seize the oppor­tu­nity to turn this client com­plaint into an oppor­tu­nity to improve client satisfaction?”
• At the end of the day before you go home, ask your­self, “What did I do today to improve client satisfaction?”

Fred Reich­held is a thought-leader in the areas of client loy­alty and sat­is­fac­tion. In his book, The Ulti­mate Ques­tion (“How likely is it that you would rec­om­mend us to a friend or col­league?) states that if you can increase your Net Pro­moter Score ((Per­cent­age Pro­mot­ers (9 or 10 scores) – Per­cent­age Detrac­tors (0 – 6 scores)) by 12%, you can dou­ble the growth rate of your business.

If you refer to our blog enti­tled What’s the Com­pound Growth Rate of Your Busi­ness and What’s That Cost­ing You? and use the embed­ded spread­sheet, you can cal­cu­late that a $50 mil­lion busi­ness at a com­pound growth rate of 10% will grow to approx­i­mately $130 mil­lion AUM over the next 10 years. At a 20% com­pound growth rate, it will grow to $310 mil­lion AUM. If you were to sell your busi­ness at the end of 10 years, the dif­fer­ence in total pre-tax income is just over $6 million.

By focus­ing on your processes for improv­ing client sat­is­fac­tion instead of results, like rev­enue or assets under man­age­ment, you will achieve greater results.  Focus on the process and let the results take care of themselves.

What’s the first step in achiev­ing and main­tain­ing sus­tain­able growth of 20%? Increase client satisfaction.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: 10 Years, 50 Million, 6 Million, Ask Question, Assets Under Management, Aum, Client Loyalty, Client Satisfaction, Colleague, Compound Growth Rate, Detractors, Focus, Fred Reichheld, Interaction, Magic, Net Promoter Score, Promoters, Satisfaction Client, Spreadsheet, Thought Leader
Posted in Advisor Collaboration, Synchronicity | Comments Off

Wealth Management – A Time for Change. Part 1 – Time to Play “Moneyball”

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

If you have seen the movie or read the book Mon­ey­ball, you know the story of how Billy Beane, GM of the Oak­land A’s, who fol­low­ing a loss in the post sea­son, the loss of three star play­ers and the inabil­ity to com­plete with the “big boys” pay­rolls, hires Peter Brand, a Yale eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way tal­ent is eval­u­ated using sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis rather than rely­ing on the “gut feel” of his scout­ing staff.

Billy Beane’s new approach helped the A’s to be a play­off con­tender and win a record 20 con­sec­u­tive games in 2002 with one of the low­est pay­rolls in base­ball. More impor­tantly, it changed baseball.

Beane took the Wall Street con­cept of value invest­ing and applied it to find­ing under­val­ued play­ers. If you watch the 2-minute clip below, you will hear Brad Pitt say “What these guys decided was we’ve got to look for new knowl­edge and we’ve got to ques­tion every­thing. They found great effi­cien­cies in the way they were valu­ing players.”

The finan­cial ser­vices indus­try has changed a lot since I became involved in 1981. It is a rel­a­tively new indus­try and strate­gies and tac­tics employed by advi­sors have changed numer­ous times over the past thirty years. Today is an inter­est­ing time to take the Mon­ey­ball approach to your busi­ness. It is time to look for new knowl­edge, ques­tion every­thing and find the inef­fi­cien­cies in your prac­tice and your industry.

Fail­ure to change may result in con­sumers look­ing for alter­nate and more tech­no­log­i­cal ways to sat­isfy their wealth plan­ning and invest­ment needs.

One clip that addresses one of the prob­lems in the indus­try is a meet­ing between Billy Beane, assis­tant GM Peter Brand and man­ager Art Howe. It is a great exam­ple of some of the road­blocks that inno­v­a­tive thinkers encounter in mov­ing for­ward with their ideas. In this scene, Billy Beane con­fronts man­ager Art Howe, who fought him and refused to imple­ment his new strate­gies by play­ing Car­los Pena at first over Beane’s choice of Scott Hatteburg.

Beane had to take dras­tic steps to “encour­age” man­ager Howe to play Hatteberg.

One prob­lem that will slow the nec­es­sary changes is the anti­quated think­ing of senior man­agers in finan­cial ser­vices. Many of these indi­vid­u­als have been advi­sors but have not been on the front lines for many years. As a result, their poli­cies reflect their expe­ri­ences dur­ing the 80’s and 90’s and mak­ing the polit­i­cally cor­rect deci­sions. Com­bine that with com­pli­ance restric­tions that dis­cour­age new approaches and tech­nol­ogy that can increase col­lab­o­ra­tion and trans­parency and improve client rela­tion­ships and the abil­ity to change becomes increas­ingly difficult.

Spend a minute or so and lis­ten to the lyrics of a song from Mon­ey­ball. As an advi­sor, you may see the neces­sity of changes but you’re “just a lit­tle bit caught in the mid­dle” and in some cases you’re “so scared but” you “don’t show it.”

It is time for change. – Time to play Mon­ey­ball. Time for a new way of thinking.

This is the first in a series of arti­cle writ­ten by Bob Simp­son, Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants. Future arti­cles will address strate­gies and tac­tics to make pos­i­tive changes to your busi­ness model so you can thrive in a world of change.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment and was one of the first Cana­dian advi­sors to build a team.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: Assistant Gm, Big Boys, Billy Beane, Brad Pitt, Consecutive Games, Efficiencies, Gm, Inefficiencies, Knowledge Question, Manager Art Howe, New Approach, Playoff Contender, Roadblocks, Star Players, Statistical Analysis, Thinkers, Thirty Years, Value Investing, Wealth Management, Wealth Planning
Posted in Advisor Collaboration, Synchronicity | Comments Off