Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 181: Ideas to Implement - Even More Good Ideas You Can Implement Today

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181: Ideas to Implement - Even More Good Ideas You Can Implement Today · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey gang, welcome back.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Each week I try to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about the action steps from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: And I say try because I'm not perfect, I don't do it every time.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I make my best attempt to get an ideas to implement episode out and I say that, or I highlight that, to share that, sometimes just doing it and not worrying about perfection.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know, you've heard me say do it messy and make it fancy later and just putting something out there and if it's the first time somebody listens they're going to think I just have this, you know, really sexy, scratchy voice and I don't know how they're going to want to listen to that moving forward.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, I say that because I see so many advisors just getting hung up on getting started and waiting for things to be perfect, waiting for things to be ideal, waiting to have time on their calendar to do it exactly the way that they want it done, and the byproduct is that it never actually happens.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So just wanted to share that and, as you know, my goal with these short episodes is to really just distill the longer podcast down into a couple of actionable items, and this week they're super easy, right, because it's just a bunch of good ideas.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Here's just a list of random good ideas for you to consider for your business, and if you're new here, welcome.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I am the host of the Efficient Advisor, libby Grywe.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I built a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel-obsessed human.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And I'm here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same and how to take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was just more good ideas.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: So this is the second part of a we'll call it a mini series, right, like a mini series, and I did five good ideas and then you guys loved it, so I thought we'd come back with a few more.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So this week we talked a lot about kind of I don't know.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out like if there was a theme to a lot of the ideas that we were talking about, and I think there kind of was and really I mean, this is honestly, this is kind of a theme to everything that we do, but client experience.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of the ideas that we talked about this week kind of centered around creating an exceptional client experience for your prospects and for your existing members.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: And as we talk about these kinds of things, I always want to remind you that processes, systems and processes you know, obviously, surface level they seem really boring and it's actually really amazing to me that I am known for systems and processes because, if you know me right, I am not much to contrary belief.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I am not naturally a hyper-organized person.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I do not keep everything nice and tidy.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have all of my ducks in a row all of the time.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It is not a natural way of being for me.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I'm actually naturally a little bit messier, a little bit more unorganized, and it's really a system or a process for me was really built out of necessity in order to be able to have the freedom that I wanted inside of my life, and so getting into systems and processes right was, yes, it was a necessary evil in order for me to continue to grow and scale my practice while simultaneously cutting my hours by two thirds.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So I needed processes, I needed to be able to automate, I needed to be able to delegate, I needed to be able to streamline the things that I did have to do, and all of that was really just okay getting it down on paper and how do we get it organized and I realized over the years that processes are really an amazing way to actually deepen the client relationship.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So if you are looking at process or systems inside of your business as literally just paperwork moving the money from financial institution A to financial institution B you're totally missing the opportunity that exists within all of our processes to really deepen the client relationship.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So one of the examples that we talked about was having a signing party or a paperwork party, and you can go back to the long episode for a much lengthier description.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: But really, the idea being, how do we make the process of onboarding a client from start to finish?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: How do we facilitate that in a way that reduces friction?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Where are sticking points for clients?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Where are things that make them second guess or hard?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Where are sticking points for clients?
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Where are things that make them second guess or hard?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: We always want to be thinking about the psychology of a client and what they're thinking coming into a certain step and what they're thinking leaving right, and we always want to be thinking through who is our ideal client avatar and how are they feeling right now and what do we need to do on our end to facilitate that step of the process in order for them to leave feeling the way that we want them to.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: So, for an example, in onboarding right, there is, even if the clients have gone through a planning process with you and they love you and they're super excited to work with you, there's still usually a little bit of trepidation that exists on the client side, from them wanting to, you know, move their money over and, at the same time, gosh.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I hope we made the right choice right, especially if there are fees involved or just a lot of paperwork, effort, time, energy on their end, um, you know, especially if you're working with really busy executives or something like that.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to make sure that they don't get frustrated and like this doesn't even seem worth it.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So doing things to reduce friction throughout the process are incredibly connecting.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And then using those opportunities to really deepen the relationship, to get more face time, to show the clients that you're going to be there and you're going to continue to deliver a really, really high quality experience to them and that your customer service is exemplar and it's not going to fall off after they roll over and do business with you.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So all of that, to say that a paperwork party or a signing party is one of the ways that we can build connection with our clients, reduce friction and help them feel like the process is as easy as possible.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And you know, of course we're going to get NIGOs and we're going to have some things pop up and get in the way, but at the end of the day, you know we want to reduce as much friction as humanly possible.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: We also talked in the episode a lot about you know what are some of those little simple things that you can be doing to make clients feel more welcome, feel more comfortable, whether that's in a face-to-face environment or a virtual environment, and we talked through a couple of just different ideas I shared with you my friend Dave, that would request or take photos of his clients for their files.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And what I don't think I mentioned in the bigger episode that I'm thinking about right now is how this made the clients feel right.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So it was really good for him and the team to have pictures to connect to these clients as more than just account numbers.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: But also the clients loved it right.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So we did this a couple of times with clients.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: It was one of those things that worked so well we stopped doing it.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I know, shocker, I am not perfect and we don't follow our processes all the time either and really we kind of did away with it when we were switching to mostly digital files.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And I say that and I feel so old when I acknowledge that the first half of my career we were still in paper file hell.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So I know it's embarrassing, I'm technically a millennial but I'm an elder millennial and, yes, the first half of my career was paper file based.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So we were kind of doing this right at the end of the paper file era.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And One thing that I do remember is when we would ask clients to bring in a photo of their family or we would take a picture of them.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: They always just felt really touched and they kind of asked well, why are we doing them Like?
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Well, it's really important to us that we connect with you and who you are.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: You're so much more than an account number to us, all of the warm fuzzies.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We also talked about a couple little extras that you can do inside of your office when people arrive or show up for meetings, that might make them feel special.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, something else we would do is we always just had our conference room set, really, really nice.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So we had two conference rooms and I would bounce back and forth between meetings.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Uh, we'd rotate conference rooms and when I would leave a conference room, you know my uh administrative assistant, lisa, would swoop in, clean up the table, take the file, do all of the post-meeting processing and she'd reset the conference room for the next clients.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And that just looked like you know, pad of paper with pens, their customized agenda with their names on it sitting there, two printed.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: If there were two people coming in, you know she'd put a little chocolate on top of each of them, like a little truffle-y kind of thing, and she'd have the chocolate bowl there and a pitcher of water, you know all the things and just making it feel really nice Like we were ready and wanting to welcome them and bring them into the room.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So in the episode we go through a bunch of other little ideas like that.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: We also talked about the idea of a retirement bell or something really fun that you can do to celebrate clients for big moments or big transitions, and how shareable that is on your website or your social media and how fun it is for your clients to be able to share that kind of stuff and what a great passive, aggressive marketing campaign for you as well.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So we got into all the office-y kind of stuff, which is really fun, and we shared a little bit about an advisor that I was working with who implemented the super simple process of just emailing clients in advance, asking for whatever questions that they had for the meeting with a deadline, and getting those questions ahead of time so that she could adjust the agenda and do all of the adequate research, and just how much time that saved her from, especially from trickling over into second meetings.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, my goal is to keep these episodes short, so I talked about a bunch of things we didn't even talk about in the episode, so you'll have to go back, listen to the long episode to grab all of those simple, quick, easy to implement ideas.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And thank you guys so much for tuning in once again.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I am so honored that you show up every week.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: To be one of the top rated podcasts or the top listen to podcasts for financial advisors is mind boggling to me, and the reviews that you guys leave and the messages you send me on LinkedIn legit give me life.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you so much for showing up here week after week.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I'd love to connect with you more over in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook and you know I love hanging out on LinkedIn and getting all the direct messages.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how much I love connecting and communicating with you guys and getting all of your podcast ideas.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: It's just such an awesome community to be a part of.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.