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

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So a couple weeks ago we did an episode just called Good ideas that you can implement today and the feedback from it was really fun and I'm super grateful.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: So I thought I would record a part two and give this to you guys just again, a few simple ideas of things that you can implement.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And you know it's just funny because all the time when I'm coaching I'll hear, hey, oh, that's.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: You know, wow, that's a really good idea.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And these little things that Aren't big enough to make you know an entire podcast episode out of or even be like a Module or something inside of our group coaching program, they're just like little things that pop out of my mouth that I've seen other advisors do that we did.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Or you know, obviously advisors are implementing stuff from coaching and then they come back and go, oh my gosh, that was such a good idea that worked so well.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So really, you know, as I think about, the Full purpose of this podcast is to give you an ROI on your listening time.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: You know I want to entertain you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I hopefully make you laugh on occasion, but really I want you to have some tactical takeaways that you can implement inside of your business and make it just, even if it's 1% better than it was before listening to the episode.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So today we're gonna dive into a few more just random good ideas that I've collected over the years for you guys.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Let's go Look.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I know you're here because you know it's possible to have left over energy and Attention for your family and still have your dream business.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: You know the business that you are running instead of it running you.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the efficient advisor, welcome.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Griewy and I started, built and sold by age 37, a 100% referral only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, oh well, working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year so that I could lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and All of the other hats that we wear in our lives.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm here just to walk alongside you, to show you how to do exactly the same and To help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So let's dive in.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, and just bear with me if you're new here.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I don't normally sound like this, but I am just like so many others right now in that, yay, it's spring and I'm sick mode, so we're just gonna have to deal with the scratchy throat and the sniffles and we're just gonna dive right into a couple of really good ideas.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So one idea I was talking to this lovely advisor in Canada you know who you are if you're listening and we were talking about this idea of how do we get our arms around our client meetings, how do we gain control of the agenda, how do we avoid getting derailed by client questions and, at the same time, be Super surface oriented, right where we wanting to answer whatever is on our clients agenda most so we talked about just Implementing a very simple process in her business where she would then email, or someone on her team would email, clients two weeks prior to the meeting and say hey, if you have any questions for so-and-so, I Would love for you to go ahead and email them to us so that we have plenty of time to adequately research or Prepare anything related to your question, and so she went ahead and started doing this and she told me she's like it has completely Changed my meetings.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I hardly go over anymore.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I can show up so much more organized and ready to go.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Often their questions can be answered by somebody on your team.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You know often when your clients will email you, they think like, oh my gosh, this is something that only Libby can handle.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: When it turns out we could actually Maybe address the question before they even come into the office, and then that way too, if they have a big question, I mean we've all been there, right.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I can remember being in meetings like 50 minutes in and all of a sudden the client saying like, oh, I have, I just have a quick question for you.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: And then they drop some like major bomb question on you that you're like oh my gosh, that in and of itself as an entire meeting, we're gonna have to schedule a second meeting in order to be able to adequately address that, run through illustrations, discuss, yada, yada.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So for her being able to get the questions ahead of time and we always did it two weeks out and we asked politely that they would have it to us a week, at least a week prior to their meeting so that we had adequate time, and that did allow my team to do.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: You know they'd get the email.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: They could either try to handle it themselves or we could do the adequate research Related to the question and I could show up super prepared and I could either fit it into the meeting or I could modify the meeting agenda to accommodate a little bit bigger of a topic around, whatever it is the client wanted to prioritize.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So we still want to be flexible to client prioritization.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to make sure whatever is top of mind for them is what we talk about and we have our own agenda.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So if we show up to a meeting with this big, giant agenda and the client has all of these additional questions, they're going to feel like they didn't get through the entire agenda.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Right, if they see all of these bullet points that did not get addressed, they're going to feel in some way, shape or form like they missed out or they didn't get the information they were supposed to get, or that stuff is going to be like lingering over into next time that you're potentially going to have to address all of these things.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: So we found it to be a lot easier to have that information in advance and then modify the agenda to make sure that we're addressing the client's needs.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And it was so fun for her to have just such a simple little process make such a big difference.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: So she was like, oh my gosh, it's just a thousand times better and I absolutely love it.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So another good idea, or really this is kind of a little collection of ideas all based on the same concept.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So in one of our coaching programs we were just talking about client experience and just like fun little extras that you can do inside of your office to create atmosphere, client experience, et cetera, and I always love talking about this because people come up with just really fun ideas.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So a couple of fun ideas that came up here recently are just little things, little extras that you can do around the office.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So one of the ideas that somebody shared with me within the last year or so that I thought was really really cute is they have in the lobby of their office.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: They have a big bell on the wall and above the bell has like a big metal plaque that says retirement bell, and this advisor was sharing that.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: He has clients ring the retirement bell when they finally pull the trigger and retire, and that they take a quick little video of clients ringing the retirement bell and send it to the client so that they can share that with whomever, and they also get their permission to put it on their social media.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And when new prospective clients are coming into the office, they're showing them like, oh yeah, and hopefully you know, we'd love to work with you to the point where we could get you to ring this retirement bell, and it's such a fun and joyful experience.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: But they really created an experience around the idea of this retirement bell, so I thought that was really cute, especially for those of you that are doing in-person meetings and you're wanting to create some atmosphere inside of the office.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Another really cute idea was shared by one of the participants.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: She's just absolutely Okay, just a beautiful person inside of our group coaching program.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: She was sharing that she keeps umbrellas by the front door of the office and I just thought this was really cool and I was asking her like okay, well, how does that work?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: What does it look like?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And she's like, yeah, you can either.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know, if the clients come in and it's not raining, and when they're getting ready to leave it's pouring rain, they can just take an umbrella with them.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Great, you know, and I believe in her case they were logo umbrellas and they could just take an umbrella with them that way, if they don't get wet.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Or you could even walk them to you know, offer to walk them to their cars, so they're not getting wet.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: But I just thought, you know, those are the little things that people do, and you're like, oh, that's a good idea.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: In that same vein, right in this idea of creating atmosphere inside of the office, one of the one of the men in our group was sharing that they do a sign in the lobby.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: So they have a sign in their lobby.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I am picturing in my head like a little letterboard where you can plug in you know different letters.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: And he said, before every meeting they'll change out the name.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So it'll say like welcome Mark and Shelley, or welcome, you know, kate and Jim, or whatever.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And they, they change it out before each meeting.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Again, just trying to make clients feel really special, really cared for Just those little extras that are, you know, are they necessary?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: No, are they fun?
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, are they extra work and effort?
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Sure, but the idea is that we're trying to create an environment where our clients are feeling loved on right.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: We want to build that human to human connection where our clients know that they are so, so much more to us than just an account number or an AUM right.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And yes, as a business owner, we have to think about the economic value of each client and blah, blah, blah.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: How does that play into our profitability and our time and our capacity and all the things?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: But we really want to make sure that we're connecting with them as people.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Which kind of leads me into another good idea.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So back in my thriving days, there was a gentleman there by the name of Dave and he I just thought this was really neat.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: We were doing some.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I don't even remember how this came up.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: We were doing something and and he started sharing that whenever they had clients sign on, part of their onboarding process was taking a picture of the couple, or having them bring in a photo of themselves and I shouldn't say couple, right, it could be couple, it could be family, it could be individual, you know what I mean.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: And he was like, yeah, so we used to take a picture and then we'd have it like physically printed out.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: So this is like back in the day of paper files, if you will, and we would actually clip their photo to the file so that anytime someone was working in their file or before they came in, we would be able to recognize them.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And he's like it was just really helpful for me as I was doing planning to sit there and look at this photo of these clients, remember like okay, these are their three kids, they've got a cute puppy, like we got to.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: You know, make this.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: You know, this is why I do this business, this is why I work so hard is to help them get these kids through college, to help this sweet couple retire, to help this adorable family purchase the weekend Lake home that they've always wanted.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And kind of connecting his team as they were working with the clients as well and building, you know, visual room.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: You know it's hard once you have hundreds of clients right, sometimes it's it's, it gets difficult, and so just kind of remembering who they are.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So when they walk in the door, the front person or your administrative assistant or whoever's greeting people will definitely recognize them and address them by name as opposed to just greeting them with kind of like a generic greeting.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Another just great idea is when you have prospects coming in and they are interviewing multiple advisors, and there's a whole podcast episode on this where I walk you through like a bunch of details related to this.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So I will find that episode and I will link it in the show notes for you.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: But when someone is in that process right, like we're wanting to win them over, we're wanting them to choose us something that you can do in that meeting is actually provide them like, oh my gosh, that's so great.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I love that you're doing your due diligence.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Here's a list of questions that we suggest you ask as you're interviewing advisors right, because you can get out there and you can Google like a client's going to Google, what should I ask financial advisors.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: But what this will do is actually kind of position.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: You as like a hey, not only have we done this a thousand times before, but we're asking, we're putting these questions down and then that way we are able to be kind of the first ones to answer them and to give them some, you know, to give us some sort of control over the narrative of those questions, if that makes sense.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So we always thought that was a really great idea is like hey, let's bring elephants into the room, right, I loved bringing elephants into the room, like hey, especially when I first started my business when I was 22.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And you know I would always bring into the room that I was really, really, really young and just immediately bring it up, address it, qualm people's fears and move on Right, instead of leaving them wondering or letting them build or create their own narrative in their head.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I decided I was just going to grab it and go ahead and address it.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: So in that episode, I give you a bunch of ideas of different questions, but you can talk about how you're compensated.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: What does that look like?
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: What kind of architecture do you have as far as open architecture to products?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Are you a captive agent?
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Why is that good?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Why is that bad?
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So, whatever it is that you're wanting to create for your clients giving them this sheet also, that empowers them with actual good questions to go ask other advisors on their journey.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: It just looks professional, it feels professional and it positions you as an extremely transparent advisor.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: You could also send it ahead of time.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So if you have a prospect coming in that you know is like hey, I'm interviewing financial advisors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah you could actually send them this list ahead of time, like, oh, that's so great, we're excited to be part of your quest.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Here's a list of questions that we typically think are really really good, questions that maybe most you know most clients aren't thinking through as they're interviewing financial advisors, and we thought this might be helpful for you on your journey stuff like that so they can come prepared I mean just giving information, being generous, you can even have so.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I've seen advisors have these list of questions and then they have their answers like in a paragraph form underneath the question itself.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So again, here's the question you should be asking a financial advisor how are you compensated?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Boom, underneath, here's my answer to that.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: And providing something like that ahead of time is just a great value add for clients.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And then it also will potentially weed out the people who don't think that you're a good fit, right, yes, of course we're all like, oh no, I want every prospect to love me, but there are also right fit, wrong fit clients, and this will help kind of weed out clients that are maybe looking for something a little different than what you're offering anyway.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: And another good idea that I wanted to share with you was this idea of having a signing party.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Or, as someone in our group called it, a paperwork party, which I thought was a really fun name and basically what this is is part of your onboarding process, and there's a whole episode on the first 100 days and how to craft a killer onboarding process.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I believe it's episode number 40, but I'll link it.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I'll find it and link it in the show notes for you as well.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: But the idea here is that our goal is to reduce friction for our clients.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: So as we think about rolling over money, taking applications, doing insurance underwriting, whatever it is that you do, there's a lot of moving parts and we want to keep it super simple for our clients.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: We want to avoid any area that could potentially cause them friction.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that we found when so this is like back in the day kind of a thing I always feel old when I say stuff like this but like when DocuSign first came out, we would craft these DocuSigns or prepare DocuSigns and just send them to clients, like so our clients would come in, they do the whole planning process.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They'd say, yes, libby, of course we love you and we want to roll over all of our money to you and we say, okay, great, we're gonna send you some paperwork, right.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And it's different because back in the day, we used to have to have them come back into the office and we would sit and go through all of the paperwork with them, and what we found when we started switching to DocuSigns is that we lost that opportunity.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It was another connecting moment potential with our clients.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Not only was it more FaceTime with them, but it was also like able to address any questions that popped up.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So, like, as we're going through stuff and I don't know if you're like me, I have questions all the time so, like, as I'm going through, like my CPA just sent my draft tax return, right, as I'm going through it, I have a whole bunch of questions.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It would be amazing to get the draft tax return and have the CPA sitting there with me, right, so that as we went through it, I could just ask those questions immediately and get the answers to them, versus like, okay, I gotta write these questions down, right, cause now I'm not just gonna sign this draft tax return, right, I'm not ready to sign it.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I actually have to sit down now with my guy and ask some questions first, because I do think there were a couple of errors or a couple of just questions that I had for him, right?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So I went through my tax return last Thursday and I am recording this on a Tuesday and I still haven't put together my list of questions for him yet.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: So same thing with our clients, right?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So as we draft a bunch of docuSigns and ship it off to them, they're gonna sit down and they're gonna go through it and maybe, maybe not, they're gonna actually read it and they might have some questions like just oh, remind me why we're doing this again, and oh, what's this one?
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Or gosh, this seems like a lot, or is this?
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Especially depending on how many things you could potentially be implementing for them?
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: You might consider doing either a virtual or an in-person signing party where you can actually email them all the documents or email them all the docuSigns, and they could just virtually go through each one and you could say, okay, pull up this one.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: All right, that's your Roth IRA.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: We're consolidating from E-Trade and Fidelity.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: You know we're gonna roll those both together.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Just a reminder here's what that looks like.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Here's what the fee structure is.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, great, now this one is for your IRA.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: You could just go through each one and, again, the idea is that we're making our clients feel really comfortable, that we're on top of it.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: We're not leaving them to sit and stew on something or come up with questions and giving them an opportunity for friction, because there's nothing your team will hate more than having to redo those docuSigns if they expire.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So again, we want our clients to bang this out.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: We don't want it to be a project for them.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: We don't want it to be where they have to sit down and write out their questions and figure out a time that they're gonna call us, or squeeze time into our calendar to answer their questions Right by having a scheduled signing party, we can just go through and boom, boom, boom, do all the things, answer all the questions and use it as another opportunity.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: We talk about this a lot at the Efficient Advisor is how can we take processes and actually use them as an opportunity to connect with our clients in a deeper, more meaningful way?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And so by doing a paperwork party, in my opinion, it's a really great extra step in the onboarding that helps smooth out the friction and does it require a little extra work?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, but I will share in my own practice.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I did not do these parties.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: We had our director of operations.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: She was amazing.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: She did all of the onboarding parties.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: So that's how you achieve scale inside of a business, right?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: You can't be doing it all.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: So by training and teaching other people to do that work and to answer the questions and to sit with the clients and handle all the operational things, you can actually better leverage your team than during the onboarding process.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: So we love these again, anywhere that you can reduce friction and make it easier for your clients.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: That is totally what we are shooting for.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And the last thing I'm gonna give you today, before my voice completely craps out on me, is having a Dear John process.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: This is just another good idea.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So what I mean by a Dear John process or you might call it like a not right fit when you have a prospect come to you and you do your discovery, call your connect meeting, whatever you wanna call it, and you recognize like, hey, this client is it gonna be a great fit for our team, especially if they were a referral you're gonna wanna have an actual process in place of okay, what happens?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: How do I gently say no to this client and still provide them either some value or some additional resources?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So we like to talk about having a Dear John process that includes like, hey, here is.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, it was super nice meeting you.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Our team does our best work on clients who are X, y and Z At this time I think you actually need a specialist and blah, blah, blah.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So here's a couple.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: While we can't serve you or while you might not be the right fit for us right now, here's a couple of different ways that you can get help for your situation, the problem you have, whatever you wanna phrase it, and you could introduce them to another advisor in your area, even if they're with a totally different company.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: It's the right thing to do.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Or here's a couple additional websites for maybe the CFP board or X, y, p N.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: If you're looking for a fee based planner, you could give them some guidance on additional places that they could go for that kind of information.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, I can remember having clients come in or prospects come in and it's like they really needed help with, like, credit card debt and debt consolidation.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Well, that wasn't a service that we provided.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: So, hey, we do our best.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: We do our best work with clients who are five to 10 years out from retirement and getting ready to transition.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: It sounds to me like you actually would benefit from working with someone who could help you with cash flow and debt consolidation.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Here is a resource for you in that area, or here's an advisor that we know up the road that does a lot of this type of work and might be a better fit to help you with what it is that you need.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: So having a Dear John process in place, that way you're not rewriting this email every time.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: It's a one and done, and then you're gonna also wanna have, as part of your Dear John process, what do I say, what do I do for the person that referred a bad referral to us, and that's a whole thing.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: But we wanna talk about, or we wanna have in place, a Dear John process, a way to let clients down gently that are not gonna be the right fit.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, hope you guys found some of these good ideas to be just good ideas, and I'd love to know if you are implementing any of them or if you have, especially in this arena of client experience and people coming into your office.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I know one of my best friends has like a little almost like a mini oven in her office and they bake fresh chocolate chip cookies every single day, and not only are they delicious and the clients love them and look forward to them, but the office smells wonderful.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I would probably gain 4,000 pounds if I did that.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: But there's all these wonderful little ideas, so I would love for you to share those out in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook and we could start a thread with just.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'll do that, I'll go ahead and I'll start a thread and we could just share what are some of those little extras that make our clients feel extra love and appreciated.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And you can do that in the virtual space too.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of really great ideas of ways to show extra love to our clients that are meeting with us virtually.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Anyways, you know where to find me Efficient Advisor community on Facebook, or I'd love to connect with you over on LinkedIn.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next week.