The Art and Science of Building a Profitable Practice

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

By Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Rick was over­whelmed. He felt as if the whole weight of his prac­tice was on his shoul­ders. Deal­ing with com­pli­ance issues, staffing, client ser­vice and case prepa­ra­tion was wear­ing him down. His rev­enue was down year-over-year, and he wanted to get back on a growth tra­jec­tory. He just wasn’t sure what to do.

The chal­lenge in coach­ing Rick was that he had built a very suc­cess­ful prac­tice through hard work and tal­ent. His nat­ural ten­dency in grow­ing his busi­ness was to play to his strengths. He was a nat­ural sales­man who under­stood the “art of the deal”. Put him in front of a prospect and it was game over. The prob­lem was that he didn’t have enough qual­i­fied prospects. When I asked Rick how many prospects he had in the pipeline, he sheep­ishly answered “about 10 to 15″. When I asked him when he expected to close them, he said it would hap­pen in the next 6 to 12 weeks.

Those responses are fairly typ­i­cal. Most advi­sors have 5 to 40 prospects in their pipeline and expect to close them in the next three months. The num­ber of prospects and the time­frame for clos­ing the sales are symp­toms of a pat­tern in Rick’s busi­ness that lim­ited his suc­cess. Like a gifted ath­lete who gets by on nat­ural abil­ity, Rick was able to per­form at a fairly high level. He had mas­tered the art of sell­ing and deal­ing with peo­ple, but the lack of a more sci­en­tific approach to his busi­ness left him feel­ing over­whelmed and out of con­trol. Noth­ing about his prac­tice seemed as sim­ple or pre­dictable as it once did. He was los­ing his zest and pas­sion for the business.

In con­trast, top per­form­ing advi­sors take what can best be described as a sci­en­tific approach to build­ing their prac­tice. This approach puts sys­tems in place to man­age each aspect of the busi­ness. Rather than rely­ing on gut feel and nat­ural tal­ent, they plan their work and use ana­lyt­i­cal tools and processes to orga­nize each aspect of their work and that of their staff and asso­ciates to enhance effec­tive­ness and pro­duc­tiv­ity. The very best advi­sors com­bine art and sci­ence. They lever­age their tal­ent as rain­mak­ers and sales­peo­ple with clients and prospects and com­bine their unique abil­ity with a sci­en­tific approach to orga­niz­ing and run­ning a business.

In coach­ing Rick, the first step was to get him to slow down and think about his busi­ness and where he was going. Like many suc­cess­ful advi­sors, he con­fused activ­ity with progress. By always being busy, he kept his anx­i­ety at bay. Unfor­tu­nately, he some­times seemed like a car with the engine redlin­ing and the trans­mis­sion in neu­tral. All that energy wasn’t get­ting him where he wanted to be. It took patience and per­se­ver­ance to put together his busi­ness plan. This became his flight plan and his busi­ness took off. The flight plan clar­i­fied his vision for the busi­ness and crys­tal­lized who he wanted as clients and how he wanted to serve them. He broad­ened his prod­uct mix and began to work with clients and prospects that fit his ideal client profile.

Uti­liz­ing processes and sys­tems enhanced his mar­ket­ing, sales and ser­vice effec­tive­ness and led to dra­matic increases in rev­enue. Imple­ment­ing a per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem increased the pro­duc­tiv­ity of his staff and their level of sat­is­fac­tion. He learned to enjoy man­ag­ing staff and asso­ciate advi­sors. Apply­ing the sci­ence of prac­tice devel­op­ment mag­ni­fied his unique abil­ity as a rain­maker and sales­per­son. His busi­ness dou­bled over the first twelve months and con­tin­ues to grow at a sig­nif­i­cant and pre­dictable rate. The best part is that he is pas­sion­ate about what he does and loves his job.

Norm Trainor is the founder of The Covenant Group, a com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in prac­tice devel­op­ment for advi­sors. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, visit his Web site at www​.covenant​group​.com.

Fol­low The Covenant Group at:

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Analytical Tools, Art And Science, Case Preparation, Compliance Issues, Control, Covenant Group, Dealing With People, Game, Gifted Athlete, Growth Trajectory, Natural Ability, Natural Tendency, Norm Trainor, Passion, Pipeline, Profitable Practice, Prospects, Shoulders, Three Months, Timeframe, Zest
Posted in My Practice, Norm Trainor | Comments Off