Is your financial services business fat?
One of the keynote speakers at the recent 14th Annual Financial Planners Institute Convention was Krista Sheets, President of US based Paragon Resources. Sheets presented on accelerating team performance to maximise client relationships. Apart from stress
The ‘DNA’ of value
It took teams of scientists many years (and thousands of man hours) to successfully map the human DNA. And it turns out this was the easy part. They now have to focus on analysing and applying the information they’ve unlocked. Fortunately the DNA for value in a financial services practice is easier to understand. Sheets identified the three key elements as time, relationships and knowledge. If you can correctly balance these concepts you will ensure that your practice becomes a truly successful one.
The correct mix and application of these elements helps the financial intermediary to gain insight and wisdom, which in turn instils the ‘holy grail’ of the successful financial practice in your client – loyalty. If your practice can count on client loyalty you are a long way down the road to success. Loyalty means (among other things) that you have a client for life. And it carries all the benefits that go with qualified referrals from that client.
Don’t get bogged down with the daily grind
Too many of us are obsessed with the daily grind of business. The result is that your focus shifts from the business to the checkbox tasks that your staff should be taking care of. This is a typical “can’t see the wood for the trees” situation and applies across a broad spectrum of small and emerging businesses. Sheets listed five problems that you will have to address to ensure you practice moves from a ‘sales’ to a ‘loyalty’ obsession. And FAnews Online will take a look at each of these problem areas in the paragraphs that follow.
Top of the list is vision. Sheets suggested that you frequently ask the question: “Why am I in business.” How can you expect to build a successful practice if you don’t know what that practice looks like? The absence of vision is like embarking on a journey without knowing the final destination. It might seem like fun when you set out; but it’s going to take much longer to get there! Appropriate business systems place second on the list. Sheets noted that systems were an essential part of capacity building. It is important that every staff member in a practice knows what the job is and how to do it. She says a good exercise for any financial adviser is to write out the process (from beginning to end) of successfully prospecting a client. The adviser should then document how a loyal long-term relationship can be established with the newly acquired client. A thorough assessment of these documents will yield the processes that need to be properly defined in the business.
Does your practice need to shed some weight?
The third problem is business obesity. Do you have too many clients? It’s really not a difficult question to answer and most financial intermediaries will know based on how their average week looks. If you’re not able to get around to the important aspects of managing your client’s needs and expectations you could be running an overweight practice. Sheets said you should focus on ‘rightsizing’ your business. It’s not an exercise you can do overnight; but you need to go through your client list and determine which you would like to keep – and which you can pass on to other intermediaries...
Problem four and five address resource utilisation and workload capacity. The main resources available to your financial intermediary practice are: people, knowledge, tools (such as software and industry databases), support (both internal and external) and time. A successful practice has to strike a balance with these resources to succeed in business today.
Editors’ thoughts:
The keynote speakers at this year’s FPI Convention certainly covered a range of interesting topics. Krista Sheets, President of Paragon Resources US believes that the major objective for any financial intermediary practice is to develop each prospect from fresh acquisition to loyal client. Would you agree that a loyal client is the ‘holy grail’ of the financial intermediary business? Add your comments below, or send them to [email protected]
