Happy 2012! We hope you enjoyed the holidays and the New Year is off to a great start.

Team Insights, our column designed for advisory teams, focuses on dealing with change head on. We provide a reminder of good habits you should instill in your practice. Corporate Insights, our column designed for corporate leadership, discusses the leader’s role in a rapidly changing environment.

Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who can benefit. And, if there is anything you would like us to include in future newsletters, let us know! We base our newsletter content on your specific needs and what we hear from the field. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

Embracing Change
Every January, we make the same promises. By March, most of them are out the window.

“A resolution,” somebody once said, “is a thing that goes in one year and out the other.”

Have you made resolutions that you’ve failed to keep? Have you held dreams of success and happiness that you’ve failed to fulfill? Do you sometimes feel, despite how much you have done, that you are still not fully achieving your potential?

If so, there is good news. Your past behavior does not have to determine your future work habits. If you can change just a little each day, then you can change for the better.

Change often seems to happen only when you are frustrated and fed up with your current state. At that time, the idea of doing nothing is more painful than the change itself. For many people, change is inspired more by emotional pleas than by intangible facts. It is natural to want to approach positive interactions or avoid negative ones – this is what stimulates or motivates you to act.

So why is it so hard to find enough reason or motivation to change? Why do you sweep the problems under the rug when you know they will not resolve themselves? Why do some people allow others or situations to drain their energy? Must you bottom out emotionally and reach such a drastic point to change? For some of you, the answer is a resounding YES. Once you reach that point, the pain you are feeling will lead to true commitment to the change. But, you should be able to see those clues for change more readily and with less cost to your own state of well-being. You have to decide what is acceptable and what isn’t when people are interacting with you. You should place great value on what matters most to you and assess every decision to determine whether it helps you to grow and be better. Surround yourself with people in your life who want the best for you and will force you to think differently in negative situations. You need people who will provide you with a different view on the situation and challenge your assumptions and past decisions. Everyone needs support when we are trying to make change happen. Seek the counsel of your family members and friends, team members, manager, coach, or anyone whom you respect and value. We all need different perspectives to make wiser decisions in the future.

There are a group of common resolutions people generally make each year for their personal development – lose weight, stop smoking, get healthy, exercise more, become financially stable, learn something new, and so on. Below is a list of the common practice management issues that we see our advisory teams seek improvement in and struggle with in their businesses. Do any resonate with you?

Lose weight…in your business. Business Obesity is a term we use when consulting with our advisory teams. The reason so many FA’s hit a plateau is because you are trying to run up a hill with excess weight. Those extra pounds are actually too many small clients and/or trying to do too many things for your clients. If you want to have the most profitable and rewarding business, you have to get clear on whom your ideal client is and what business you want to be in. If you want to reach your potential, you need to stop trying to be all things to anyone – you have to focus.

Get fit…by exercising your leadership muscles. When you became an advisor, you probably worked hard on your sales skills. Now that you have a successful business, you need to start working on your leadership competencies. It is your responsibility to guide your team members and let them know the vision for the practice. You can’t do this if you are spending all your time working IN the business. You must work ON the business, too. This means investing time in activities that focus on the future of your business. We challenge our clients to set aside at least 10% of their work week to strategize for the future and deal with practice management issues that may be holding you back from achieving further success. One key ingredient in all the leadership books you can read will be “know thyself and know those who follow you.” This is why we start all client relationships with insightful assessment tools that will help you to understand the players on the team. To learn more check out People Insights

Quit drinking…from the fire hose. Most FA’s are attracted to the chaos and reactivity of this industry. After a few years of churning and burning and increased levels of stress, we usually find businesses that are in distress. Juggling too many balls and keeping up with a high pace for such a long period of time usually leads to burn-out. It often explains why some teams experience a revolving door of team members and clients. Most great support team members prefer a more structured environment where they can be more proactive. If teams are placing too much emphasis on urgent and unimportant activities, they can be wasting time on things that don’t produce real results or add value to the relationships. More and more studies are surfacing which confirm what many of us already know – poor or non-existent service is what leads clients to take their business elsewhere, not portfolio performance. Segment your book of business and determine a service menu for each level of your business so you and your team members can spend more time on the non-urgent AND important activities as the great Stephen Covey recommends. Our Know Service Book offers a 5-step process to delivering 5-Star Service.

Get organized…by building the right team infrastructure. Clearly delineating the lines of responsibility for team members is where we spend the majority of our time with our clients. The first step in building the proper infrastructure is to understand all the work that must be done in your business in order for it to run at its optimal level. In our Performance Insights Process, we identify seven functions for the framework of “what” has to be done in your business. Then, by utilizing our People Insights tools, you can identify “who” should do each “bucket” of work.

Spend more time with family or friends…work smarter not harder. Most of our clients have already built successful practices. When they come to us, they aren’t seeking sales and marketing assistance – they want a good night’s sleep! Running a successful business and managing the people in it is something most of you were not formally trained to do. Once you build a strong team infrastructure, you can then create systems for efficiency and productivity. The more you can do this, the more time you can spend doing the things you love with those special people in your life.

Learn something new…to stay competitive. This goes not only for FA’s but EVERY team member. Encourage team members to develop a learning and development goal each year so that you can increase your expertise as a team.

Help others…know who you are and your points of distinction. Most advisors would agree that their preferred method for focused growth in their business is to get referrals from clients. If you agree with this, then you need to let the right people know who you are, what makes you different, and how to properly position you. Meet with your top clients to let them know you are available for non-investment related help and that you care about them. This gives you an opportunity to build stronger relationships with the key people in your business and let them know you need their help, too. Meet with business owners in your community to learn who they are and what they do. Create a network of exceptional business owners so you can direct your clients to the best of the best when the need arises.

Communicate better…to everyone with purpose. Communication is the like the oil for an engine. Without it the motor seizes up. You must have a communication plan for your team and your clients. Team meetings must occur and must be organized to be effective. If you don’t have purpose for a meeting, then it shouldn’t happen. Our Team Communications Tool Kit provides the structure. If you have a partner, you should be meeting at least monthly to discuss the business and make future decisions. And, with clients since it’s the beginning of the year, we suggest you send out A Look Back…A Look Forward letter via mail or email as soon as possible. Include in the letter: A quick overview of your viewpoint of the past economic environment and the future outlook, past and future client appreciation events, personal/team achievements and goals, commitment to an initiative you have this year that will benefit them such as the importance of having a financial plan or estate planning, and gratitude for your long term relationship with them.

In summary, change is challenging, but it is possible. Here are some general points when dealing with change and creating new, positive habits.

• Doing something once usually isn’t enough. Most people try and fail several times before they successfully change habits. It’s helpful to think of those failed attempts as practice.
• When dealing with a bad habit, there are two ways to attack it: 1. complete elimination or going “cold turkey” or 2. moderating behavior or phasing in change. The easiest, most effortless way to maintain positive behaviors over a lifetime is to start with small acts rather than radical changes. Slow and steady really does win more races in the habit world.
• The only constant in change is change itself. What worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. Strategies for managing a healthy life and business usually need to be tweaked over time and in response to new circumstances.
• A little structure makes a big difference in changing behaviors: devise a plan. Constantly and consistently evaluate what’s working and what’s not. Respond quickly by changing the plan as necessary.
• There are a lot of potholes in the road to change. Anticipating trouble spots or barriers to your success and thinking about ways to navigate around them can help keep efforts to change on track.
• Seek help from others. Without this support, it is hard to maintain success in the new, positive habit.
• What works for one may not work for others. Try to understand yourself in order to find the best solution for you. Your intuition guides you best when you are acutely self-aware.
• Self-control is your ability to exert control over your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Self-control is like a muscle in your body; it can be weak but you can strengthen it. If you do ANYTHING that requires self-control, then that makes it EASIER for you to have self-control in EVERYTHING. Creating structure in your life or business supports this.

First, you must understand the range of responses, often negative, that individuals can experience. When the change is sudden or unexpected, often people are in shock. They may feel negative emotions such as distress, disgust, surprise, or grief. Like a deer caught in headlights some may become paralyzed with fear. Change can often lead to a mental wrestling match of confusion. Questions arise and rumors circulate. Often people immediately respond by thinking only of themselves, fearing what will happen next, and sometimes resisting the inevitable. Even if the transition is seen as being a good move, stress can grow as individuals have to leave something familiar and well-defined and move to something new and unknown. Approximately 40% of our society vehemently resists change and uncertainty. Performance in organizations often declines rapidly as the staff come to grips with the new norm.

We provide the following tips to help leaders better navigate a change to positive results:

• Expect there to be multiple reactions to a situation and that not everyone will be as accepting to the new initiative or decision as you.
• Communicate directly, honestly, and calmly.
• Seek others’ perspectives on how the change will impact staff, clients, and the organization’s goals.
• Put yourself in their shoes to understand the impact the change may have.
• Provide as much information as often as possible. You may find yourself repeating yourself during this adjustment period.
• Give time and space so others can process the change.
• Provide many forums for questions. Private and group meetings may be needed over a period of time.
• If you don’t know an answer, validate the person’s need to know and ensure them you will seek out the information.
• Provide reassurance and take as much time as necessary to address issues and concerns.
• Stay close to the field so you can quickly address the spreading of false information or negative chit chat.
• Don’t make rash promises that you cannot keep.
• Stay positive and help people visualize a bright future so that they have something to look forward to.
• Involve people as much as you possible so that they have a sense of control in implementing an established decision. The more we feel in control, the less resistance we usually have.
• Encourage downtime during a stressful change. A team lunch or fun outing may loosen up any tension and reenergize everyone to follow through on the change.

Wow! Another year has come to an end. We hope it has been one full of fond memories and continued business success. For those with strong practices with competitive teams delivering excellent service, many found they were not only surviving but thriving during this challenging year. We are excited about 2012 as we are more than ever committed to helping teams in this great industry. We are very thankful to our clients who continue to help us grow our business through referrals and challenge us to deliver new and innovative practice management solutions. We wish you and your loved ones a festive and healthy holiday season. Cheers!

Team Insights, our column designed for advisory teams, focuses on the importance of including your entire team when setting performance goals. We provide a simple process to help you improve your business planning efforts. Corporate Insights, our column designed for corporate leadership, discusses the need to support top advisors in their roles as leaders of their teams.

Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who can benefit. And, if there is anything you would like us to include in future newsletters, let us know! We base our newsletter content on your specific needs and what we hear from the field. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

Team Insights
Setting Performance Goals for Your Entire Team
Truly successful investment professionals spend ample time working on the business and not just doing it. They understand that business planning needs to be an ongoing process throughout the year and not just an annual event. Although most business plans focus only on setting revenue goals, increasing assets under management alone does not ensure a profitable business. Planning should involve every aspect of your practice. Client retention strategies, team efficiency, and the team’s services are just a few examples of focus areas that need to be continually evaluated and developed.

So how do you get started? First, you should elicit the help of your team. In order to achieve great goals, you will need help. Other team members can challenge your ideas which will produce better results. Team members can hold one another accountable for the results to ensure they are more likely to occur. Having your team members involved in the process will also make them feel as if they are a part of the success of the practice. You need to ask them for their suggestions to improve the business so they have buy-in to the goals set for the business.

1. Schedule a team meeting with the specific purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of your practice. To prepare for this meeting, identify all of the core functions of your business. To get started, think at a high level about the FIND-GRIND-MIND™ Model that we use with our clients. Every business has to FIND clients and sell to them, GRIND out work for them such as investment strategy and paperwork, and then MIND the relationships with great service so they come back for more. Breaking down these three elements to a business even further will lead to your core functions that have to exist for your business to thrive. You will then be able to identify WHO on your team is responsible for each function so they know their role on the team and how they relate to one another.
Suggested Core Functions

• Marketing
• Sales
• Investment/Wealth Management
• Administration & Operations
• Performance Analysis & Reporting
• Client Management
• Practice Management

2. Now you should define a perfect practice in regards to these functions. Articulate what a “10” looks like in each of these core functions so that you have a standard by which to assess your own effectiveness. Prior to the team meeting, ask each person to rate your business based on a perfect description. If they don’t score “10” for a function, then they should explain what the gap is and suggest solutions to close that gap. They should document all of their thoughts and come prepared to share their input during your team meeting. Alternatively, consider our Business Insights or Performance Insights Process to conduct a thorough 360 degree survey on how well your business is functioning using the FIND-GRIND-MIND Model. To learn more, visit www.paragonresources.com/wp/solutions/business-insights/

3. During your team meeting, have a round-table discussion on each function. Have each person read out their score and offer their suggestions. Make note of the distribution of scores and calculate a team average score. You will want to discuss any large variances in opinion. If someone gives Client Management a “9” and another team member gives it a “3”, then you need to find out why there is such a difference in opinion.

4. After everyone has shared their input on each function, schedule another meeting to discuss what initiatives your team will agree on to improve the overall effectiveness of your business. To prepare for this next meeting, consolidate the comments and suggestions for the functions and provide each person with a copy. Each person should take the functions they are most responsible for and develop goals based on the team’s suggestions. When defining the strategies each person will take, they should also create a step-by-step plan of execution and a target completion date.

5. During your final planning meeting, each person should present their goals and where needed, refine their objectives with the team’s input. The leader(s) of the team should help set priority and provide them the support they need to implement their ideas. Each person should commit to time blocking a minimum of 5-10% of their week to work on these initiatives.

6. In future weekly team meetings, these goals should be constantly reviewed. Mid-year, we suggest that you conduct another effectiveness survey to see if there has been any improvement. Current initiatives can be reevaluated and new initiatives can be determined. Planning should not be an event, but an ongoing process throughout the year.

With everyone committed to the improvement of the practice, the business has no boundaries to success.

Happy Planning!

As many of you know, we strongly believe that in order to exist for the long term in the financial services industry, you must be part of a team or in the process of forming one. Our full-time job is to advise on partnerships, structure roles and responsibilities, deal with team dynamics, and maximize overall efficiency. Great teams must have a strong leadership foundation to succeed. To fulfill their leadership role, designated leaders must spend a majority of their efforts, time, and resources on activities that directly relate to the future development of the business. To enable our leaders to focus on their duties, the team members must spend a majority of their efforts, time, and resources on the day-to-day responsibilities of the business.

Developing this type of synergy between leaders and team members is a challenge for most investment advisory firms because of many factors. Advisors often resist the leadership role or prefer to stay in their comfort zone of doing what they know. Fear of failure and of the unknown usually controls many leaders, which in turns leads to resisting personal growth and avoiding change. Very little training is offered on how to be an effective leader and there are many schools of thought on the subject. Google “leadership” and you will find “about 489,000,000 results,” with a multitude of perspectives on the subject. Leaders are often challenged to define a compelling vision that others want to embrace because it is difficult to hone in on guiding principles for life and business. Without these defining statements, individuals often do not understand their purpose on a team nor do they have clear role definition. If team members are mismatched for their jobs, they will also lack the motivation to be led, which can lead to dissension and disengagement. The first step to motivating people is understanding people. You cannot understand people if you don’t first understand self. Lastly, many people become complacent. If things are going okay, there’s really no need to change. Leadership is only required if there is a burning desire inside to move forward. Leaders must truly believe there is something better out there than what they currently possess.

So what are you doing to support the leaders in your teams? They have so many forces working against them, so as a firm leader, you must support their efforts. Just asking the question, “What are you doing to be a better leader for your team?” will give them food for thought. In no way can a newsletter fully answer this question, but we provide you these tips to share with your top advisors who need to grow into leaders.

• Take a deep breath and own the position.No more trying to pawn your responsibilities onto someone else or ignore the need for your vital position.
• Realize you can’t do it alone. To be a leader you must have followers, so share your leadership conundrum with your team and seek their help. You can’t possibly have all the answers so be open to others’ input.
• Ask those closest to you to help you define your vision. Those who have close ties to you can often help you uncover a real vision that is personal to you. They can challenge you and often see things in you that others cannot. But remember, the vision needs to be one that is meaningful to you and where your personal passion can be vividly illustrated. When people feel your vision, they want to come along for the ride. This builds trust with your followers.
• Embrace a path of self-awareness and personal development. This goes for everyone on the team, not just the leaders. It’s natural for people to want to grow and become more, but many people limit their potential. Our souls crave personal growth and it makes the universe a bigger and better place. Ask your team what they need to perform at the highest level, and seek training and resources that support that.
• Determine your intended purpose. This also goes for everyone on the team. Knowing what energizes versus drains individuals is vital to fully capitalizing on each person’s talents in a team. As stated earlier, the leader of a team needs to focus most of his or her time on activities that drive the future of the business. This would mean that you need cracker-jack people with complementary strengths doing work that frees up the leader to fulfill the primary purpose. Of course you can’t spend all your time looking to the future and your team members may have to take on a variety of responsibilities. Everyone on a team should strive to spend 70-80% of their time on the right activities for them – ones that they are gifted to do. This is why our focus is helping advisory teams build the proper people infrastructure. You must understand all the work that needs to be done in your unique business then put the right people in the right position to drive the work forward.
• Create a positive organizational culture for your team. Understanding what is expected and valued by your team keeps the players in the game. Ideally, you want your team to be motivated by similar interests to make this an effortless task. If you have common bond among everyone on your team, you will be naturally motivated.
• Listen more, talk less. As the leader you have power – either real or perceived – over those that you lead. Whether you like it or not, because of your position, your words carry weight. If you start sharing your ideas when you are trying to solicit input from others, they may be less likely to share their possible solutions. Why? They assume you already have a plan or an answer – after all, in the past you had been doing all the talking. Besides, if you let them share their ideas, chances are one of them will come up with the same thoughts you had, and if that idea comes from the group instead of you it will be much more powerful. Talk less and demonstrate your interest in others.

Our People Insights Process is an excellent start to great leadership by identifying the special talents and drivers to performance for leaders and their team members. To learn more, visit www.paragonresources.com/wp/solutions/assessments/

We are welcoming the wonderful Fall weather in the Southeast after the dog days of Summer. Our recent travels have taken us to Boston, Chicago, New York, and Puerto Rico to deliver programs on teams, business planning, and capitalizing on centers of influence! Sarah has launched an updated website at www.KnowNoBounds.net and Krista is working on some new team assessment training. We are very busy, to say the least.

We were co-delivering a program the morning after Steve Jobs’ death. We will never be up to his level of presentation skills, but we are committed to live his principles of life. Thank you, Mr. Jobs. We never met you, but you impacting our lives. If you haven’t yet heard his 2005 Stanford University Commencement Speech you should.

Team Insights, our column designed for advisory teams, focuses on the ever increasing need to expand your team and evolve your infrastructure to compete in today’s ever-changing environment. We provide a simple activity to help you better define your expansion efforts so that you are building by design, not by default. Corporate Insights, our column designed for corporate leadership, provides some common themes from advisors around the country concerning what they seek from their firms’ resources and support.

What are you up to? Please let us know what content you would like for us to include in future newsletters. We base our newsletter content on your specific needs and what we hear from the field. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who may be interested in the material.

Team Insights
Defining and Prioritizing Your Reasons to Expand
Teaming continues as a trend in the industry, not purely out of desire, but out of NEED! Advisors have had to transition to an industry that continues to ask more of you. Increased rules, regulations, paperwork, new products, and escalating client expectations have led to concerns such as:

• I used to run my practice … now it runs me
• I’ve gone from salesperson to paper pusher
• There is just too much to do, with too little time
• I’m buried in administrative work…I just want to get back to prospecting and client-facing activities
• We are struggling to maintain business and can’t even focus on growing it

Many of you have already expanded from the old sole-proprietor model and have begun to create your own team. However, you are now realizing that in many cases three people may still not be adequate to accomplish all of the work needed to efficiently and consistently deliver the ultimate client experience. We strongly suggest that you clearly define, or in some cases, re-define, the intention of YOUR team. The team’s purpose must be abundantly apparent from the onset to help clearly define specific roles so that each person is energized by what they do and nothing falls between the cracks. The purpose should be communicated to others who seek to align their individual contributions with the team’s goals.

Reasons for developing a team can be diverse. With an average age of over 53, many advisors are looking to team as part of a business succession plan. For others, the goal may be to deepen the level of service that they provide. For some others, it may be about expanding offerings to their clients. These goals will lead to building three different team infrastructures with individuals of distinct talents and backgrounds.
Consider the questions listed below with your personal situation in mind, and then define and prioritize YOUR reasons for expansion.

Consider your present needs and ask yourself:

• How long do I see myself working at the current level of hours?
• Have I achieved my vision for the business? If not, what’s missing?
• How do I want to retire?
• Do I have a comprehensive, written business succession plan? If not, how will I answer a client who asks what the future holds for their business?
• Am I properly servicing my best clients? If not, what am I doing that I should NOT be doing?
• Are my clients satisfied with the service that they receive from me? If “I don’t know” is the response, survey them.
• Is there anything missing from my clients’ experience while working with me? If yes, what SHOULD I do differently?
• Am I fulfilling my clients’ needs and providing the best financial solutions? If not, am I ok with that?
• Am I staying competitive in my craft? If not, where am I falling short on the advice that I provide?
• Are there any gaps in my current practice that could lead to more business or a different type of business? What’s the opportunity cost?
• Do I need to update my unique value proposition to increase profitability or client loyalty?
• Am I currently spending my time appropriately? If not, what activities do I not enjoy that I should delegate?
• Am I staying up late at night worrying about the business? If so, what are my reoccurring concerns?
• Am I spending enough personal time with family and life interests?
  Have I maximized all resources available to me?
• Am I meeting the goals that I have set for myself professionally and personally? If not, why?

As you answer these questions, you may also consider assessing the current productivity of your business and team prior to expansion. For those who already have 3+ people on your team, consider our Team and Business Assessment Tools. You must KNOW your business intimately if you want to GROW your business. Analyzing all aspects of a practice leads to optimizing its performance and increases long-term viability. Business Insights solicits each team member’s perception of both the efficiency and effectiveness of the business. Included are two 360 degree feedback tools that include: summary analysis, hierarchy of team strengths, suggestions for continued improvement, business functional analysis, time resource analysis, strengths and challenges, and action items. This can be an invaluable tool to uncover the real gaps of your business as you consider the expansion of your team that is most appropriate for YOU and YOUR PRACTICE.

To learn more, visit www.paragonresources.com/wp/solutions/business-insights/.

Corporate Insights
How Can Firms Best Support Their Top Advisory Teams?
In an environment that continues to breed uncertainty, some common concerns from advisors around the country exist. Although every firm on the street is different, we provide the following advisor comments which we constantly hear while coaching and interviewing top producers. We hope that they help you consider the effect of the resources that you offer to your advisory teams and the decisions that you make.

Technology

• “We need a much improved contact and relationship management system. Besides our computer and telephone, this is fundamentally the most needed resource to proactively manage our clients, organize our business, and ensure that we document all of our prospect and client notes.”
• “We are looking for more integration among the technology provided. We have many great systems but they are disconnected from one another. It takes so much more time to go in and out of the platforms to get the information we need.”
• “We have spent 25-30 years building a successful practice, and if our firm wants to retain our clients and the assets and revenue generated from our long-term relationships, we’d like to see more assistance on developing and executing business succession plans.”
• “We are seeing our firm continue to allocate large dollar amounts for recruiting initiatives, but a disproportionate amount on providing us, their loyal and top producers, the resources we need to build a bench and make meaningful transitions to the next generation of advisors.”

Teaming

• “With the increased rules, paperwork and CE requirements, documentation, and more complex product lines, it is impossible for one person to do it all. We wish our firms provided additional resources on helping us team and build the infrastructure we need to deliver high-end service and deliverables to our clientele.”
• “We know we need to grow our team, but the firm’s policies make it prohibitive. They encourage us to team, but how to do it so that everyone is fairly compensated is challenging.”

Support
• “My sales assistant is awesome, but desperately needs more training. Our support staff provides our greatest leverage, but when times get tough, training to support staff is seriously diminished.”
• “The sales assistant role today is so different than it was 10 years ago. We need more firm support to help these loyal associates through the transition. We know our production would increase if our support staff had some more tools and resources to help.”

Training
• “If our firm is going to offer less professional development opportunities during tough environments, as a top producing team, we’d like to see some sort of allocation of training dollars so we can choose a conference, a coach, or a new credential to pursue. We do invest in ourselves, but believe our firms should also share in that responsibility.”

Branch/Complex/Agency Management
• “Our roles are so different than that of the branch/complex manager a decade ago. By the time we have gotten through our recruiting, compliance, administrative, and HR responsibilities, there is no time left for our sales development role. We need more help to balance our many roles, tools so we can better aid our existing advisors, and support staff to maximize their production and efficiency.”

How does your firm score on some of these issues? In a difficult environment and turbulent market place, it is certainly not easy from a corporate perspective to get to all of these important topics. As practice management consultants, we are here to help. Contact us to learn more about our offerings or visit our websites at:

www.ParagonResources.com
www.KnowNoBounds.net
www.PerformanceInsights.com
www.BoundlessPublishing.com

A Sampling of Our Services:
Team and Business Assessments
Licensing of Specific How-to Tools and Programs
On-demand Webinars
Branch/Complex/Leadership Programs
Support Training
Train the Trainer Programs
Review our Capabilities

It has been another interesting month in the U.S. and throughout the world. Volatility in the market place, a strained economy, great uncertainty in leadership in critical countries, an earthquake in Virginia, a hurricane that wreaked havoc throughout the Mid Atlantic and North East, fires that blaze to the west and south, and floods plaguing the Gulf Coast. Clearly these are difficult times for many. We are blessed in this industry to have the opportunity to give back and help people rebuild to achieve their goals and dreams. Our thoughts are with all those who are suffering in these difficult times.

Our theme this month is KNOWLEDGE. Team Insights, our column designed for advisory teams, suggests a simple activity to increase the knowledge that they have of their clients which can lead to both differentiating service and new business opportunities! Corporate Insights, our column designed for corporate leadership, addresses the need to really KNOW your top teams in order to retain them, help them grow, and ultimately deliver the value that they seek from you, the home office.

What are you up to? Please let us know what content you would like for us to include in future newsletters. We base our newsletter content on what we hear from the field and your specific needs. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who may be interested in the material.

Team Insights
Uncovering New Business through Client Knowledge
It’s hard to believe that the summer has come to a close, children are back in school, the fall season is upon us, and the fourth quarter is days away! What are your plans to finish the year with vigor?

One of the greatest ways to both uncover new business opportunity and get to know your clients on a deeper level is to run a fact-finding initiative. Client meetings are often very focused on reviews or specific portfolio adjustments. These knowledge initiatives (whether phone, in-person, or mail campaigns) are all about asking the right questions and listening to your clients’ responses. With a proper, well thought-out exchange, dramatic results can be achieved. Clients do not always proactively share what is going on in their lives with you; therefore, it is the team’s responsibility to always solicit information and ask questions.

• Deepen Personal Knowledge – Asking questions about your client’s interests, passions, bucket list, hobbies, etc., provides your team with that personal knowledge that leads to improved, customized service and appreciation. For example, knowing which clients love golf, gardening, fishing, travel, wine, etc., allows your team to provide that personal appreciation during the holiday season instead of those standard peanuts, chocolates, or calendars! Customized and memorable appreciation goes a long way to differentiating yourself, deepening the relationship, and increasing retention and referrals.
• Broaden Family Knowledge – By asking questions about their families, you can organically expand the relationship through multigenerational relationship-building. Remember that you not only need a strong bond with the wife (as she will statistically outlive the husband), you should be connecting to children, grandchildren, grandparents, etc. If you want to retain the assets through the generations, family knowledge is critical. Discussing family can also lead to opportunities to do beneficiary reviews or discuss the need to update wills, etc.
• Uncover Cross-Selling Opportunities – By asking the right questions, you may uncover some critical information or a new need that leads to diversifying the portfolio, rebalancing, adding additional assets, providing insurance, etc. Perhaps you used to focus on just one area, (equities, fixed income, insurance, etc.) and have expanded into a balanced wealth-based practice. Your team can create an account snapshot to hone in on specific cross-sale opportunities during fact-finding. Asking questions about assets held outside of your institution provides the opportunity for you to offer a second opinion, adapt the financial plan, and ultimately bring those assets in-house.
• Introduction to Centers of Influence – Asking questions about your client’s centers of influence can also deepen your relationship. Have you ever asked them about their attorney or CPA relationships? This allows you to share that you coordinate and work with such advisors and reflects a new area where you can add further value. If they do not have CPA and attorney relationships, then you can make a referral. Maybe they have other centers of influence totally outside of the financial industry which could lead to asking for introductions and referrals. Perhaps you will uncover a need that they have for a professional in a specific area and you may have the ability to connect them to the best in the community.
• Risk Adjustments – Because we have all suffered through some fairly volatile times, it is a great opportunity to perform a “risk review” with your clients. Again, they don’t always proactively share changes in their thinking with you. Asking questions about the current market and their risk tolerance could also lead to uncovering new opportunity.
• Service Issues – By proactively asking questions about the service that your team offers, you may uncover some issues that again wouldn’t be shared without your asking. We have heard many stories from advisors who began soliciting specific service-related questions that led to finding that there were, in fact, problems that were negatively affecting their businesses. Had they not asked the questions, relationships would have migrated elsewhere and they would have never known the reason. You may THINK your service is excellent, but you don’t really KNOW without asking!
• Repositioning – Many clients may have placed you in a “product box.” For example, ”he/she is my fixed income person, my insurance person, my planner.” Sometimes they only remember the last thing you “sold” them. Yet, in reality, many of you offer a full range of products and services but your clients are not fully aware of them. By asking need-based questions, you have the opportunity to retell your holistic wealth story and uncover new opportunities.

Simplified Process

• Call a team meeting and discuss your fact-finding initiative.
• Decide what area you want to focus on (updating family information, passions and interests, center of influence names, preferences on frequency of contact and preferred contact information, educational topics of interest, product and service needs, etc.) Full fact-finding can often entail 2+ hour meetings, so we suggest picking one or two areas where you want to update information and focus on them.
• Create a tracking mechanism (Contact Management System fields, Excel Spreadsheet, or Client Profile) to capture the new uncovered information.
• Create and confirm the specific questions that you want to include. Ask a team member to craft or update your fact- finding form based on your chosen focused area(s). Be sure to send all client communications through your appropriate compliance channel.
• Decide on your solicitation methods. Perhaps you will choose a method that is segment specific. For example,

A Clients – Establish in-person fact-finding meetings
B Clients – Establish phone fact-finding appointments
C Clients – Mail the update form with a return envelope

• Implement your plan! Keep in mind that pure mail initiatives do not typically generate strong results. Be sure to build in a follow-up phone call in your process if you choose the mail methodology. Make sure one member of the team is responsible for capturing the information that you gather and updating appropriate systems.
• Don’t forget the importance of follow-up. Many new sales opportunities will be uncovered, so make sure that you have a process to follow through and that all team members understand their role throughout your fact-finding initiative.

For more information, instructions, and tools on running a profiling or fact-finding initiative, visit www.BoundlessPublishing.com and purchase our book, Know Service, and corresponding download tools.

Corporate Insights
Are You Adding Value to Your Top Producing Teams?
In an environment that continues to breed uncertainty, more firms are turning their ATTENTION to RETENTION! Recruiting remains an ongoing theme, but retaining top teams is increasingly becoming the focal point. Similar to clients, it takes less energy, time, and financial resources to RETAIN existing advisors than it does to ACQUIRE new ones. Corporates around the country send the message to their advisors that they have to COMMUNICATE with their clients, particularly during tough times. They need to show APPRECIATION to their clients; they need to DIFFERENTIATE themselves; essentially, they need to consistently deliver the ULTIMATE CLIENT EXPERIENCE. With that same theme in mind, are you delivering THE ULTIMATE ADVISORY TEAM EXPERIENCE?

Top teams are looking to expand their practice by bringing on additional people resources. The purpose of this is not only to deliver on their increasingly complex wealth management models, but also to design business succession plans. Your top teams are seeking financial allowances from you for professional development, for marketing, to attend industry conferences, to stay on top of their craft, and to hire coaches and consultants to help evolve their practice. Whether they are veteran or younger successful advisors, firms must have a focus on their existing teams and help them achieve the one consistent goal that you both have… TO DRIVE PERFORMANCE.

Whether at the firm level or the advisory team level, both sides of the table want to gain more assets, increase revenues, and become more profitable. What does your firm offer to accomplish this mutual goal? What is your firm doing to retain your top teams? What are you doing to differentiate yourselves from other firms? What is on your internal service menu that helps both attract and retain top talent? These are tough questions but we hope they are on your leadership agenda!

Again, just like the Advisor-Client relationship, it begins with KNOWLEDGE with the “Know Your Client” rule. How well do you KNOW your top teams? They are all unique with varying strengths and challenges. On some level they all have some “pain,” but you cannot offer cookie-cutter consulting and assistance to your superstars! You have to really get to know them professionally and personally; you have to get to the root cause of their particular challenges in order to help them grow and attain that ultimate goal of driving performance. There is no simple one-size-fits-all solution that will create instant gratification at both the firm level and advisor level – it has to be customized to the specific needs of each advisory team.

We realize this clearly creates a challenge for firms from a resource utilization perspective. Depending on your firm, you may have regional, complex, branch or agency managers; you may have internal practice management consultants and trainers; you may have sales development teams or some combination of these elements. Some facet of all of these roles is ultimately tied to helping your advisors and teams drive performance. Do they have the tools in place to make the right diagnosis for your top teams so they can subsequently provide customized solutions that drive performance?

We have created a unique and powerful suite of diagnostics tools – the Performance Insights Process™. Our tools uncover the knowledge that increases awareness of the specific activities or resources that each of your top teams crave. We can assist you in any phase of true practice management deployment, from administering and debriefing team and business productivity assessments, to providing insights based on our years of experience working in the financial services industry. Besides working directly with teams, we offer train-the-trainer programs and companion facilitator guides to make our proprietary process available in-house. We also license our practice management resources for teams and firms and consult to department leaders.

We’re here to improve top teams, not waste their time. Teams that rank in the top 10% of performance for an organization are the heart of profitability. The Performance Insights Process™ is designed to maximize the performance of your cream of the crop players by providing reliable results, consistently delivered.

If you are looking for a unique, results-driven approach that eliminates pain, drives performance, shares best practices, and builds bench strength at your firm, contact us for a demo and consult.

More information can be found at www.PerformanceInsights.com.

Please check out our NEW Interactive Overview of the Performance Insights Process™!. We’re getting some great feedback on this comprehensive diagnostic for financial advisory teams who want to achieve even greater success. If you are stuck at a production plateau and you aren’t sure what to do next, then contact us.

We continue to conduct our train-the-trainer programs, team consulting, and onsite presentations. Sarah recently presented “Optimize You” at a conference in New York where she was the motivational speaker. This 90-minute keynote address highlights the typical self-sabotaging behaviors to AVOID and the best practices to EMBRACE in order to create sustainable value and balance in business and in life. Krista just returned from Boston where she delivered “Drive Revenues with 5-Star Service” at the Investors Capital Women’s Conference. She also was a recent guest at the Barron’s Winner’s Circle Top Advisory Teams Summit in DC. Below she will share her notes from the sessions that were led by top teams in the industry. Our commitment to offer best practices to advisors is strong! We now have our own Facebook page and LinkedIn company profile. When you get a chance, search for “Paragon Resources” on either site and Like or Follow us.

What are you up to? Please let us know what content you would like for us to include in future newsletters. We base our newsletter content on what we hear from the field and your specific needs. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

In this edition, we will provide you with “What Top Teams Know” and “10 Best Practices for Support Team Members.” Hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who may be interested in the material.

What Top Teams Know
The Barron’s Winner’s Circle Top Advisory Teams Summit provides thought-provoking perspectives from top advisory teams on managing investments, clients, and practices. It is a great forum for sharing thoughts with peers and hearing what is on the minds of leading practitioners in the industry. Krista enjoyed spending time with those who are at the top of their game. Below are some of her notes from a panel discussion of two successful teams:

• Move from a “generalist” to a “specialist” mentality. Have a scalable model with individuals deeply focused so that you don’t try to reinvent yourselves each day and so that you can build standardized systems and processes.
• A client belongs to the team, everyone owns responsibility. Team members must have an ownership perspective.
• You must spend time building team structure and culture for it to thrive. Culture is the glue that holds it together. Trust the model and your team members and hire only those who fit in the team.
• Don’t go to a client meeting alone. Team members should attend to add value.
• Treat your staff like “A+” clients.
• Segment! Streamline the business and eliminate those who do not fit. Turn down the wrong business as life is too short and the wrong type of client can potentially drain your resources.
• Philosophical congruence is that everyone is here for the client and everything we do is because of them. Put clients first!
• Cycle team members through meeting all clients so clients understand the breadth and depth of the team.
• Assign team members to specific clients – Senior Relationship Manager, Service Manager, etc., so the client understands who to contact for what purpose.
• Focus on what you love in this business and the personal reward will follow.
• Evaluate EVERYTHING – team members’ strengths, roles, tasks, etc.
• “Rigorous Systems” = more economies of scale = more time for client interfacing activities
• Commit to MEET and COMMUNICATE: Annual planning session offsite to set written goals and a plan of achievement, quarterly meeting (dinner) to “tinker” the plan, monthly restating of the goals, weekly two-hour sharing of what is going on with everyone and with clients, and finally, a daily discussion of the plan for the day.
• Run your business as a business! Put pencil to paper for the plan, mission, vision, market niche, org structure, etc.
• Trust the process of what you do. Market it and the team – it is bigger than you!

10 Best Practices for Support Team Members
In today’s environment, having a well-structured team with dedicated support team members often proves to be the competitive advantage for advisors. With what we see in the industry, support team members are often under-utilized or are not provided with the right professional development opportunities. Again and again, we see advisors achieve tremendous results and expand the team’s overall success when their support staff is given additional training, tools, and resources.

The following 10 tips for support team members are provided by top sales assistants, service managers, and client service representatives across multiple channels including wirehouse, regional, and independent.

Build an open and honest relationship with your advisor(s)
Communicate frequently – morning huddle, weekly team meetings, quarterly planning sessions, etc.
Understand AND exceed advisor’s AND client’s expectations
Be proactive, focus on what can be done to eliminate reactive fire drilling
Build strong relationships with your clientele
KNOW them, listen to their needs, wants, and desires
Learn the technology and platform so that you can do your job better
Document what you know and don’t know
Develop processes to become efficient
Systems are the solution to excellent service!
Maximize all resources available (both internal at your firm and external such as wholesalers, etc.)
Seek out the people who can help you
Increase your self-awareness
Understand your strengths and challenges
Commit to ongoing learning and master your craft
Ask questions, read, talk to your peers and associates, and build your own professional development plan
Free up your advisor’s time to allow them to do what they do best
Without a focus on sales, a business cannot grow
Develop a thick skin – it’s a tough business, but it can be rewarding, too!
Focus on what you can control

CORPORATE RESOURCES
2012 Planning and Budget Season is HERE!
Consider proven practice management expertise as you enter your 2012 planning and budget season! Contact us to learn more about SPEAKING, CONTENT DEVELOPMENT, and PRACTICE MANAGMENT RESOURCES. Please contact Krista Sheets at 770.319.0310 or Sarah Dale at 757.258.0008 to discuss your specific needs.

TEAM RESOURCES
Communication
We offer our NEW Team Communications Tool Kit for $25.00. This resource can help you define and customize a communication strategy based on YOUR team structure and YOUR team goals. Included are the following:

• Sample Team Communication Plan
• Daily Huddle Sample Template
• Sample Weekly and Monthly Team Meeting Agendas
• Sample Team Charter
• Team Communication Checklist
• Activities to Create Your Team’s Customized Plan, Prioritization System, Agendas, and Charter

CORPORATES AND TEAMS
Performance Insights Process™
Your roadmap to driving growth is here and available! Whether you are a home office team responsible for helping your salesforce deepen their success, or an individual advisory team, this tool is the foundation to jumpstart the business in a customized and results-driven manner.
Corporates and individual advisory teams have a critical and consistent goal – DRIVING PERFORMANCE. To achieve that ultimate performance sooner rather than later, internal practice management consultants, coaches, and corporate support teams must utilize a method to really understand each advisory team and their challenges; they must go beyond their symptoms to get to the root cause of their pain. Our new Performance Insights Process™ is a unique suite of diagnostic tools that looks at 3 performance drivers – PEOPLE, TEAM DYNAMICS, and BUSINESS EFFECTIVENESS – and is designed to:

• identify the potential performance barriers that are hindering the ultimate success of an advisory team
• facilitate key decisions that need to be made for the future growth of the practice
• provide a roadmap for specific action

Through a targeted and personalized approach, advisory teams gain the awareness, the knowledge, the action plan, and the tools to achieve those PERFORMANCE numbers that they seek! If you or your firm is interested in this new suite of results-based tools, please visit www.PerformanceInsights.com for more information, or contact Krista Sheets or Sarah Dale.

We continue to conduct our train-the-trainer programs, team consulting, and interviews with top performers for a referral guidebook for a national firm. This last month, we started a project to uncover the motivators and fears of business succession planning and analyzed our assessment database for the latest insight into the DNA of successful advisors and their team members. Our commitment to offer best practices to advisors is strong! Lastly, we now have our own Facebook page and LinkedIn company profile. When you get a chance, search for “Paragon Resources” on either site and Like or Follow us.

What are you up to? Please let us know what content you would like for us to include in future newsletters. We base our newsletter content on your specific needs and what we hear from the field. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

In this edition, we will focus on a mid-year evaluation of your practice. Hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who may be interested in the material.

Mid-Year Review
With June already upon us, it’s time to review your objectives and goals for 2011. Having an activity-based business plan is useless unless you are using it to constantly review and evaluate for current relevance. You should review it at least quarterly and if necessary, make adjustments based on both your accomplishments and shortfalls. In the absence of ACTION there are no RESULTS!

Below we provide you with a Call to Action.

STEP ONE: We believe in starting your analysis process by truly thinking about the big picture. Find some quiet time alone and review the following categories and thought-provoking questions. Take some notes and create or adapt your big picture goals for the ensuing months through December 31, 2011.

Vision.
Ask yourself specific questions about where you are today versus your vision for the future. What am I working for? When will I realize success? What things in life do I look forward to? Do I have a clear picture of what I want in my life? In my business?

Goal achievement.
Are my daily activities consistent with my plan for achieving my life and business goals? What is distracting me from achieving my goals? What can I do to eliminate those distractions?

Those who are closest to me will determine the level of my success.
Have I surrounded myself with the best possible people to maximize my success? This includes my internal (staff) and external teams (strategic alliances), as well as my clients and personal relationships. Do I actively and effectively communicate the value that my internal and external teams bring to my business?

Know and grow.
Do all members of my internal team have clearly defined roles that fit their strengths? Do they own their positions? Do they have active developmental plans to improve their individual performance and competence? What is it that I need in order to feel confident and competent?

Life is change, growth is optional.
How am I dealing with the increasingly rapid pace of change in the world? In my craft? What do I need to do to plan for the future?

Acknowledge that there are those who don’t want you to succeed.
What can I bring to the table that my competitors can’t? What are my points of distinction? Am I using my points of distinction in my prospect/client connection opportunities? Do they understand what I bring to the table? Can they verbalize it to others?

Barriers to my success.
What exhausts me in my life and in my business? What energizes or excites me? Am I minimizing the drains and maximizing the energizers? Do I have any PITAs (pain in the assets) in my life or business? How can I minimize their effect or eliminate them from my life or business?

Health is our real wealth.
What can I do to improve my health and well-being so that I will be stronger and better able to deal with unexpected stressors? How do I define a healthy business? What can I do to make myself and my business healthier?

Emotional deposits.
Have I touched another person’s life today? Am I doing what is in the best interest of my clients? Am I living an authentic life? Do I walk the talk in my own life?

STEP TWO: With the big picture and personal goals evaluated, it’s time to resurrect your team business plan and schedule a team meeting. Be sure that all team members have a copy of the plan prior to the meeting. Also, ask them to bring their successes for the first 6 months of the year and their ideas for priorities for the next 6 months of the year. We highly suggest that this strategic session takes place off-site away from day-to-day interruptions.

Many advisory teams measure their progress purely by looking at quantitative revenue and asset numbers. These are indeed important elements to review, but remember you also should have vital practice management goals that need to be assessed. Obviously every practice is different; however, we have provided a selection of questions below to help ensure that you at least think through the FIND-GRIND-MIND™ building blocks of your practice.

TEAM RESOURCE-COMMUNICATION

We offer our NEW Team Communications Tool Kit for $25.00. This resource can help you define and customize a communication strategy based on YOUR team structure and YOUR team goals. Included are the following:

• Sample Team Communication Plan
• Daily Huddle Sample Template
• Sample Weekly and Monthly Team Meeting Agendas
• Sample Team Charter
• Team Communication Checklist
• Activities to Create Your Team’s Customized Plan, Prioritization System, Agendas, and Charter

TEAM RESOURCE-CLIENT SERVICE

If you believe that you need to turn reactive client service into proactive relationship management, visit www.BoundlessPublishing.com and take a look at our book, Know Service: Connect with Clients. Shape Your Future. Differentiate YOU. Filled with instructional content and specific tools, this resource will help ensure that you build a service model that is differentiating and will lead to driving new business! Additionally, the tools included in the book are available for download.

PRACTICE MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE

Are you a firm leader who is interested in further developing your practice management offerings? We provide corporate consulting, train-the-trainer(s), and program content based on our People + Process = Performance™ and our FIND-GRIND-MIND™ Model for Financial Professionals. Please contact Krista Sheets at 770.319.0310 or Sarah Dale at 757.258.0008 to discuss your specific needs.

April showers are definitely bringing May flowers (and pollen!) to the Southeast early this year. Hope you are enjoying springtime!

We’ve been busy working on several projects – the release of the NEW Performance Insights Process™, developing strategic coaching alliances, interviewing and surveying top performers to develop a guidebook on referrals for a national firm, a train-the-trainer program for practice management coaches, and releasing new practice management tools like the Team Communications Tool Kit. Our commitment to offer best practices to advisors is strong! Please be on the lookout for more tools and resources that you can use.

What are you up to? Please let us know what content you would like for us to include in future newsletters. We base our newsletter content on your specific needs and what we hear from the field. To submit a topic that you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, please email us at info@ParagonResources.com or info@knownobounds.net.

In this edition, we will focus on opportunities to renew your practice. Hope you enjoy! Please feel free to share the content of this newsletter with anyone who may be interested in the material.

Below we provide you with a Call to Action.

New Life: Referrals – Today, most advisors have a goal of becoming referral-only businesses. Traditional marketing can be time consuming and expensive. However, creating connections and developing relationships with centers of influence that in turn become “feeders” or sources of new clientele can be far more productive, efficient, and cost effective. Centers of Influence (COIs) or Spheres of Influence (SOIs) have the propensity to refer your business. They understand your business and the value that you and your team bring to clients; they are advocates and supporters of your practice. Ideally, they can articulate your story and your unique value proposition. Ask yourself some questions. Do you have both client and non-client referral sources? How strong are those relationships? Are your centers of influence proactively providing referrals to the practice? Are the referrals qualified? Is asking for referrals a normal part of your sales or relationship building process, or, do you avoid making “the ask”? More than likely, you can breathe new life into your practice by focusing on a referral strategy. Perform some analysis on the referrals you’ve received in the last 12-24 months. Whether clients or centers of influence, identify your best sources and reconnect with them. As an aside, many advisory teams have strong CPA and accountant relationships and with tax season almost over, now is a great time to send those CPAs a tray of cookies, brownies, bagels, etc. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and it is a means of keeping your name in front of them for future referrals!

Rejuvenate: Organic Growth – For those of you engaged in a more holistic financial practice model offering multiple products and services, we find there is often tremendous growth potential within your current client base. Perhaps you can sell additional services to existing clients or expand the household through multi-generational relationship building. You may have existing clients who have put you in a box as the provider of one specific product or service, and they are unaware of your overall value proposition including the varying solutions that you offer. With some additional fact-finding or profiling of current clients, you will likely find additional opportunity! Obviously it makes sense to focus on maximizing your existing relationships and we are great proponents of this growth strategy. Ask yourself, do we have some opportunity for growth within our current client base? If the answer is yes, be sure to take action. You should specifically identify the opportunity by reviewing your current clients and then establish appointments to gain knowledge, uncover specific needs, and close with the appropriate services. This will deepen your relationships and increase your assets and/or revenues.

Below is a simple process to both identify new opportunity, whether through referrals or organic growth, and make it a reality within your business!

Spring Cleaning: Segmentation – The above process also provides an excellent opportunity to review your client segments and ensure that you have them coded correctly based on your segmentation criteria. Have you been keeping your segmentation up-to-date? Do all team members know who in your practice are the BEST clients? Are you serving your varying segments appropriately? Do you still have clients within your book of business who would be better suited and served by another financial professional and should be migrated accordingly? As you review your current clientele for organic growth or referral opportunity, take the time to clean up your database. For more information, visit Boundless Publishing for our book entitled, Know Service. Segmentation is included in step one of our 5-Step Process to 5-Star Service and is loaded with how-to instructions, tools, resources, and samples to help you develop and execute the segmentation plan that is right for your practice.

Reenergize: Your Team –

A) Appreciation. Tax season is one of the most energy-draining and time-consuming periods of the year, particularly for support team members. Now is a great time to show appreciation to your team! Providing individual tokens of thanks to your team members based on their interests and passions can go a long way to showing appreciation of the extra work they encountered during tax season. It is also a great time to schedule a team event such as dinner, bowling, going to a movie, or some other activity that the team members enjoy. Blowing off some steam, in addition to celebrating the end of tax season and hopefully a successful quarter, can go a long way toward energizing the team.

B) Evaluate. As the financial services industry continues its complex evolution, so does teaming. It has become far more difficult to execute the sole practioner model in an industry that continues to place more demands on the financial advisor. Whether it is due to the new rules and regulations, increasing amounts of paperwork, new and exciting products and solutions, or the introduction of new technology to enhance efficiencies, staying on top of your craft AND delivering exemplary service to clientele (who also have increasing expectations), is an arduous proposition. Having seen some teams implode over the years due to a lack of due diligence in the planning process, many advisors seek our advice to help ensure that they avoid the pitfalls. They want to know HOW to expand their team, WHO would make a good addition or partner, WHAT is the process they should follow, and WHEN is the right time to add new members. They want to know about trial periods, prenuptial and formal agreements, specifically assigning roles and responsibilities, setting goals and expectations, and assessing the success of the new team. Expanding from the sole practioner model and finding the right people to fill the specific gaps in the practice does not automatically solve the identified challenges. Successful teams are constantly looking for ways to improve and breathe new life into their practice in order to drive more revenues or to take advantage of economies of scale. With tax season behind you, now is a great time to check in with your team, assess how roles and responsibilities are aligned, and discuss any capacity challenges you may be encountering. (You may also be interested in our Business Insights program that allows you to conduct a 360° survey on how your team and business functions.)

C) Solidify Your Team Communication Plan. One of the biggest challenges that we see relates to internal team communications. In our Know Service book, we show you HOW to create a CLIENT communication plan that leads to loyal clients. Clients expect constant communication from their financial professional to make sure that they are on track with meeting their goals and that you are doing your job. Teams are no different. Whether your team is made up of two or ten individuals, a TEAM communication plan encourages engaged team members and is vital to the success of your business. People are the most important element of your practice, and a lack of good communication is the number one reason that problems occur within relationships. A consistent team communication plan can make a difference to both the revenue and efficiency arenas of your practice; the plan can even mean the difference between team member retention and departure. It is so easy to get caught up in daily activities and distractions and become reactive to your day, thereby allowing outside sources to take control. Creating and consistently executing a team communication plan ensures that all members of the team understand what is going on and what priorities they need to focus on in the business.

Tax time and year-end are often the times when teams feel disjointed. Individuals have been swallowed up by seasonal paperwork and they often feel a disconnect to what the rest of the team has been working on and how clients and the business are doing. So ask yourself, do you HAVE and consistently EXECUTE a TEAM communication plan? Are all your team members on the same page in regards to vision, goals, and priorities? If you have strayed from regular team meetings for the last few weeks, be sure to come back together and recommit to your daily huddles, weekly tactical gatherings, and monthly strategic meetings.

TEAM RESOURCE

We offer our NEW Team Communications Tool Kit for $25.00. This resource can help you define and customize a communication strategy based on YOUR team structure and YOUR team goals. Included:

• Sample Team Communication Plan
• Daily Huddle Sample Template
• Sample Weekly and Monthly Team Meeting Agendas
• Sample Team Charter
• Team Communication Checklist
• Activities to Create Your Team’s Customized Plan, Prioritization System, Agendas, and Charter

Visit our online store to order the Team Communications Toolkit.

Read the rest on RegisteredRep.com

Read the rest on RegisteredRep.com.