An Invitation That Lost a $5 Million Account

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion, an advi­sor asked me what one qual­ity, more than any other, he should work to get clients to asso­ciate with him. There are clearly lots of can­di­dates – dis­ci­plined, pro­fes­sional and client-oriented, to name just three. But my answer was none of those – if I had to pick one attribute, it would be “my advi­sor truly makes me feel special.”

That’s because that sen­ti­ment cap­tures lots of other pos­i­tives -  not only do you do a good job, but you truly lis­ten, have a deep under­stand­ing of client needs, make com­mu­ni­ca­tion a pri­or­ity and value their busi­ness. In an increas­ingly imper­sonal world, being made to feel spe­cial and truly val­ued by the com­pa­nies to whom we give busi­ness hap­pens less and less often – which cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity to stand out.

There’s clear upside to mak­ing clients feel like we’re giv­ing them spe­cial atten­tion – but also big down­side if they feel unac­knowl­edged. Today’s arti­cle describes one exam­ple of that down­side: Prac­tice Management’s Black­hole: Process Over­load by Matt Oech­sli

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Tags: 5 Million, Attribute, Blackhole, Business World, Communication, Compendium, Downside, Good Job, Impersonal World, Invitation, Lost, Matt Oechsli, Nbsp, Opportunity, Practice Management, Priority, Sentiment, Target
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What to Look For in a New Salesperson

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

by Matthew Asser, The Covenant Group

For a finan­cial ser­vices orga­ni­za­tion to be suc­cess­ful, its sales­peo­ple need to focus not only on hit­ting sales tar­gets, but also on the rela­tion­ships they cre­ate through those inter­ac­tions and on build­ing client cap­i­tal. They need to nur­ture the client con­nec­tion in addi­tion to dri­ving cur­rent and future sales.

A finan­cial ser­vices pro­fes­sional may under­stand this as he or she works closely with a select group of clients. Yet other employ­ees in your orga­ni­za­tion may not under­stand that value. That is why, when you decide that it is time to del­e­gate some of the sales tasks to some­one else, there are a few char­ac­ter­is­tics you should look for in a new salesperson.

Cus­tomer ser­vice, sales and mar­ket­ing are inter­twined. Because of that, a busi­ness needs to ensure it is hir­ing peo­ple who know the value of a per­sonal rela­tion­ship and who are not sim­ply try­ing to rush through as many sales meet­ings as pos­si­ble. While hav­ing com­pet­i­tive, dri­ven pro­fes­sion­als is essen­tial to build­ing your busi­ness, their moti­va­tion should not come at the cost of cre­at­ing mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with clients.

Any sales­per­son you con­sider hir­ing should also believe whole­heart­edly in the com­pany, not just in mov­ing prod­uct and acquir­ing a long list of clients. Are they focused on their own inter­ests or on those of the clients? Do they want to pro­vide value-added ser­vice not only to improve their pay­checks and qual­ity of liv­ing, but also to make the lives of those they serve more secure? These are the kinds of fac­tors that should push a good finan­cial ser­vices pro­fes­sional to get up in the morn­ing, not sim­ply the desire to make money.

On the point of mar­ket­ing, you should also seek to build a team of “brand ambas­sadors,” employ­ees who pos­i­tively rep­re­sent your busi­ness and who spread the words of your mis­sion and pro­fes­sional val­ues to every client. In a more per­son­al­ized sell­ing envi­ron­ment, demon­strat­ing enthu­si­asm for the brand can improve loy­alty and show a prospect why the prod­uct is worthwhile.

To pro­vide the extra value to con­sumers and engen­der their trust, sales­peo­ple need to be the experts on the prod­ucts they sell and pro­vide knowl­edge and insights. By offer­ing extra infor­ma­tion to your clients, show­ing enthu­si­asm for the prod­ucts you sell and con­tin­u­ally pro­vid­ing ser­vice, your sales­peo­ple can evolve into trusted advisors.

Matthew Asser has spent the last few decades gain­ing exper­tise in how finan­cial ser­vices firms can opti­mize their oper­a­tions, mar­ket­ing, new prod­ucts, busi­ness devel­op­ment and client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment prac­tices. He’s well-versed in the chal­lenges that an entre­pre­neur may strug­gle with, and as a Senior Coach and Facil­i­ta­tor, helps clients achieve busi­ness change through The Covenant Group’s exten­sive finan­cial advi­sor train­ing programs.

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Tags: Ambassadors, Asser, Covenant Group, Customer Service Sales, Driven Professionals, Financial Services Organization, Future Sales, Meaningful Connections, Motivation, Nbsp, Paychecks, Personal Relationship, Professional Values, Sales And Marketing, Sales Meetings, Sales Targets, Salespeople, Salesperson, Select Group, Value Added Service
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Engendering and Honouring Client Trust

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

by Anthony Lam, The Covenant Group

Trust is the foun­da­tion of a finan­cial advisor’s rela­tion­ship with his or her clients. With­out it, how can you build a long-lasting con­nec­tion and deliver advice and guid­ance that will help peo­ple achieve their per­sonal and finan­cial goals?

The recently released John Han­cock Trust Sur­vey sheds some light on the close bond that peo­ple share with their advi­sors. Among a list of pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing accoun­tants, con­trac­tors, real estate agents, bosses, finan­cial advi­sors and pri­mary doc­tors, the researchers found that respond­ing afflu­ent investors — those with at least $100,000 in house­hold income and a min­i­mum of $200,000 in investable assets — trust their advi­sors above any of the other groups.

This devel­op­ment was a result of advi­sors being knowl­edge­able about prod­ucts and clearly explain­ing why they rec­om­mended cer­tain invest­ments over oth­ers. Being upfront about com­pen­sa­tion and quickly respond­ing to investors’ ques­tions also helped deepen their trust. Get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions from friends and fam­ily was a fac­tor in investors’ trust level, but was among the less-important aspects named in the survey.

“The bond of trust between investors and finan­cial advi­sors is as strong, or stronger, than with most other pro­fes­sion­als in an individual’s life,” David Longfritz, CMO for John Han­cock, observed. “That is quite a state­ment given the dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times we have all been through.”

How do you show clients and prospects that you are trust­wor­thy? What small actions do you take to demon­strate you have their best inter­ests in mind?

FAs can con­vey that they honor their clients’ trust by learn­ing about and work­ing to pre­serve their pri­or­i­ties and val­ues. To get clients to fol­low your rec­om­men­da­tions and con­tinue their rela­tion­ship with you and your busi­ness, you will need to build up con­fi­dence. Norm Trainor said it well in The 8 Best Prac­tices of High-Performing Sales­peo­ple: “Even if your rec­om­men­da­tion is per­fectly log­i­cal and it is obvi­ous to every­one that you are right, your prospect or client will not decide in favor of your rec­om­men­da­tion if they lack con­fi­dence in you.”

Build­ing con­fi­dence along­side your busi­ness requires stick­ing to your com­mit­ments and fol­low­ing through on actions that you have promised to do. Arriv­ing late to appoint­ments, fail­ing to reply to emails and not show­ing clients that you appre­ci­ate them will detract from the client cap­i­tal you have built and can mar the future of the relationship.

Anthony Lam has spent more than 20 years hon­ing his cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment skills. He has demon­strated his com­mit­ment to high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice in the retail, bank­ing and air­line indus­tries. Anthony is the Man­ager of Pro­gram Deliv­ery and Client Rela­tion­ships at The Covenant Group and coaches finan­cial advi­sors on client ser­vices through The Covenant Group’s finan­cial ser­vices train­ing.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Accountants, Anthony Lam, Being Upfront, Best Practices, Client Trust, Cmo, Covenant Group, Economic Times, Financial Advisors, Financial Goals, Household Income, Investable Assets, John Hancock, Nbsp, Norm, Priorities, Prospects, Real Estate Agents, Salespeople, Trust Level
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Study Shows Clients Get First Impression From Your Website – Make Sure Your Message Is Clear

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

by Stephen Wer­sh­ing, The Client Dri­ven Practice

Don’t make the mis­take of say­ing what other advi­sors put on their websites.

At the Per­sh­ing INSITE 2012 con­fer­ence, Michelle Gutier­rez, a direc­tor at Per­sh­ing, ref­er­enced a Tower Group study that showed that 71% of a sam­ple of investors get their first impres­sion of you by vis­it­ing your web­site. Only then do they want to meet with you. (I can­not find a copy or sum­mary of this study, so I can’t ver­ify this sta­tis­tic. If any­one has seen it, I would be grate­ful if you would put the link in the com­ments below.) So, if your mes­sage is not clearly on your home­page you are miss­ing opportunities.

So many sites I see say the same thing: inde­pen­dent, objec­tive, com­pre­hen­sive, wealth man­age­ment, finan­cial plan­ning. Does your web­site say that you build one-on-one rela­tion­ships with clients, offer­ing per­son­al­ized atten­tion and finan­cial guid­ance? Then you are just like a national bro­ker­age! Aren’t you?

If the client can­not quickly under­stand that you are really good at some­thing in par­tic­u­lar that the prospect needs, you may not get the chance to make her a client. You may have an amaz­ing pre­sen­ta­tion that you make to prospects in an intro­duc­tory meet­ing, but you have to get that appoint­ment for it to work its magic. If your web­site looks pretty much like your com­peti­tors, and their in-person sales pitch is good, your prospect may sign on with them with­out ever talk­ing to you.

Estab­lish­ing your brand requires putting your value propo­si­tion, what makes you dif­fer­ent, every­where you have a mar­ket­ing mes­sage. When­ever you have a chance to tell peo­ple what you do, ver­bally, in print, or on the web, you need to be rein­forc­ing the descrip­tion of your ideal client and that spe­cial solu­tion or expe­ri­ence you deliver.

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Tags: Appointment, Brokerage, Driven Practice, Financial Guidance, Financial Planning, First Impression, Group Study, Insite, Investors, Magic, Mistake, Nbsp, Person Sales, Prospects, Relationships, Sales Pitch, Statistic, Tower Group, Value Proposition, Wealth Management
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The Ten Door Approach

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consulting

Here’s a mind­set shift to help you accel­er­ate the growth of your busi­ness.  I call this approach the “Ten Door Approach”.

This mind­set helped me to build a $120 mil­lion book in a lit­tle over 8 years, when the aver­age advi­sor man­aged $3 to $5 million.

When I met a new prospec­tive client, I had a greater goal than to sim­ply open a new account for that per­son or fam­ily.  It was to pro­vide a level of advice and ser­vice that would lead that new rela­tion­ship to help me open ten doors to oppor­tu­ni­ties within their per­sonal or busi­ness networks.

From our first meet­ing, we started dis­cussing how we help peo­ple to achieve their per­sonal goals.  We talked about what they did in their per­sonal and busi­ness lives.  We talked about their chil­dren and the their activ­i­ties and inter­ests.  I knew what social clubs they belonged to and why involve­ment in these clubs was impor­tant to them.  I knew if they were golfers and what club they belonged to.  I learned about their friends that they trav­elled with.  More than 50% of time we spent in meet­ings was talk­ing about them.

Peo­ple enjoy talk­ing about themselves.

Today, I would check them out on LinkedIn.  Last week, I estab­lished my 500^th con­nec­tion on LinkedIn and have 137 mem­bers of Advi­sor Col­lab­o­ra­tion, a group that I man­age on LinkedIn.  It is amaz­ing what you can learn about peo­ple on the Internet.

Edi­to­r­ial Note:  There are some great quasi CRM pro­grams:  www​.con​nect​edhq​.com and www​.gist​.com, which aggre­gate LinkedIn, Twit­ter and Face­book infor­ma­tion into a sin­gle page so you can quickly read up on what your clients are up to.  I wouldn’t use them as my CRM but I would set up an account just to do research on people.

If a client wrote a blog, I would read it.  I am gen­uinely inter­ested in peo­ple and am inter­ested in what they are up to.

There is a fine line between being inter­ested and being creepy.  That is why I like LinkedIn vs. pro­grams like Face­book and Twit­ter.  That is not to say that peo­ple who use Face­book or Twit­ter are creepy but it is some­times too much information.

Through this approach, I received invi­ta­tions to speak to ser­vice clubs.  I also was invited to speak to a retiree’s club for a fairly major cor­po­ra­tion.  I met pro­fes­sion­als, like accoun­tants and lawyers, with whom they worked.  Those were pretty big doors through which I met some inter­est­ing new clients.

The secret to open­ing these doors is stag­ing con­sis­tently supe­rior client expe­ri­ences.  The infor­ma­tion that you obtain by being inter­ested in your clients’ lives is vitally impor­tant in achiev­ing this goal.  Each client expe­ri­ence must be unique and be based on their inter­ests, pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties.  It must include spe­cial touches that make them feel special.

If you sur­vey your clients, you need to receive scores of 9 or 10 to Fred Reichheld’s Ulti­mate Ques­tion:  “How likely is it that you would rec­om­mend us to a friend or col­league?”  Scores of 7 or 8 aren’t good enough.

If you can achieve this goal, your clients will help you build your busi­ness by open­ing doors to friends, col­leagues, busi­ness asso­ciates and groups to which they belong.  Ten doors is a rea­son­able tar­get over the life­time of a client.

If you still believe that the rea­son you do not get an accept­able num­ber of client refer­rals is because you don’t ask, you are dream­ing.  If your clients do not open doors for you, it is because you haven’t earned it.  It is a clear sign that there is some­thing wrong with your client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment systems.

Do the right things for the right peo­ple and be con­sis­tent and patient and the doors will open, even dur­ing bad markets.

Related Links

Tech­nol­ogy to help stage client experiences

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment, was branch man­ager and SVP National Sales for Mid­land Wal­wyn and has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

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Tags: 5 Million, 8 Years, Bob Simpson, Business Lives, Business Networks, Collaboration, Crm Programs, Editorial Note, First Meeting, Gist, Golfers, Internet Editorial, Linkedin, Mindset, Nbsp, Personal Goals, Prospective Client, Social Clubs, Synchronicity, Twitter
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Managing People: Lend Your Employees an Ear

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

As you con­tinue to build your busi­ness, it will be nec­es­sary to del­e­gate func­tions of the firm to oth­ers. How­ever, if you do not man­age the team well, items can fall through the cracks and your expenses can sky­rocket with­out results improv­ing or prof­its ris­ing. What role do you play as man­ager? How much time are you set­ting aside to review the tasks and func­tions assigned to your team?

In terms of build­ing trust and pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships with your team, you should make your­self avail­able to employ­ees and be a source of help if they are strug­gling with tasks, stress or the daily demands of their jobs.

The results of a sur­vey released by ComPsych Cor­po­ra­tion in March under­score the effect that stress can have not only on employ­ees’ morale, but also the pro­duc­tiv­ity and prof­itabil­ity of a firm. Out of the employ­ees who responded to the study, 56.3 per­cent indi­cated that stress had made it dif­fi­cult for them to con­cen­trate on their duties, and another 21 per­cent admit­ted that they had missed dead­lines or made mis­takes due to feel­ing stressed. Dis­cussing and address­ing these issues can lead to hap­pier, more pro­duc­tive employees.

In a sep­a­rate arti­cle, “Help­ing Your Peo­ple to Grow,” I tell the story of Jan Hol­man, a sea­soned finan­cial advi­sor who had added a mar­ket­ing spe­cialty and a sub-producer to his team, but still was not see­ing any results. While the sub-producer showed promise, she still needed a lot of guid­ance, and the mar­keter, although enthu­si­as­tic, was not deliv­er­ing the kind of prospects needed to bring Jan’s busi­ness to the next level.

I told Jan about another one of my clients, Pat Foley, Pres­i­dent of Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Mar­ket­ing at Gen­worth Finan­cial, who had cre­ated a the­ory about man­age­ment that he called Foley’s Law. The essen­tial con­cept is that strong man­agers are both con­fronta­tional and rela­tional, and are able to cre­ate high-performing employ­ees by bal­anc­ing the two. Focus too heav­ily on nur­tur­ing the rela­tion­ship, and your team mem­bers will be mediocre. Act overly con­fronta­tional, and you will only lead them to burn out and quit. High turnover is not good for busi­ness on a num­ber of lev­els: It dam­ages morale, increases your recruit­ing, train­ing and hir­ing costs, and dis­tracts you from work­ing on the busi­ness and amass­ing client capital.

Jan’s sit­u­a­tion with his mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist, Cole, was com­pli­cated by the fact that Cole was the son of one of his friends. While he was hes­i­tant to con­front Cole about his poor per­for­mance, it was nec­es­sary for Jan to not only take respon­si­bil­ity for work­ing to develop the employee but also to hold Cole account­able for keep­ing up his end of the deal.

By lis­ten­ing to a prob­lem employee, estab­lish­ing a two-way dia­logue and work­ing together to address areas of weak­ness, you will be able to iden­tify why some­one on the team is not per­form­ing as expected and help them grow into a high-performing, results-driven mem­ber of the firm.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

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Tags: Building Trust, Covenant Group, Cracks, Genworth, Genworth Financial, Guidance, Holman, Managing People, Marketer, Nbsp, Next Level, Norm Trainor, Pat Foley, Productive Employees, Productivity, Professional Relationships, Profitability, Profits, Prospects, Relationship, Stress
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Top 10 Ways To Have More Meaningful Discussions With Clients About Their Investments In a Secular Bear Market

Friday, June 1st, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consulting

If you are read­ing this arti­cle, there is a good chance that you are a reg­u­lar reader of arti­cles on Advi​so​r​An​a​lyst​.com.  I have been post­ing arti­cles on their web­site since Jan­u­ary of this year and am very impressed by the qual­ity of infor­ma­tion that is avail­able to you on this web­site.  Isn’t it great to have a place where you can receive unbi­ased, non-sensationalized infor­ma­tion from a vari­ety of great invest­ment minds to help you make bet­ter deci­sions about what to rec­om­mend to your clients?

I remem­ber advice our retail ana­lyst back in the 1980s in which he explained why Cana­dian Tire was a great stock to own dur­ing a reces­sion:  “Peo­ple keep their cars longer dur­ing a reces­sion and need parts and ser­vice to keep them on the road.”

I am sure the same logic applies and that Advi​so​r​An​a​lyst​.com is much more pop­u­lar dur­ing a sec­u­lar bear mar­ket, where there is a lot more uncer­tainty, than a sec­u­lar bull mar­ket when Will Rogers strat­egy of “Buy a stock, when it goes up sell it.  If it doesn’t go up, don’t buy it” is a sound strategy.

As an advi­sor in a sec­u­lar bear mar­ket, you have to work three to five times harder to earn less money than you did in the sec­u­lar bull mar­ket.  Every day, you prob­a­bly hold more hands than you did on prom night.  In a sec­u­lar bull mar­ket, your job is to posi­tion your clients to make money and in a sec­u­lar bear mar­ket, your job is to posi­tion clients to pre­serve capital.

Dur­ing sec­u­lar bull mar­kets, it is easy to sim­ply talk num­bers.  You may, as many advi­sors did, buy and hold and focus on the num­bers.  Under­per­for­mance and fees were accept­able because the num­bers were good.

That strat­egy does not work today.  You need to read Advi​so​r​An​a​lyst​.com so you can make informed deci­sions.  You need to look at alter­na­tive strate­gies.  Long only may not be an accept­able strat­egy.  Maybe you need to diver­sify from the tra­di­tional asset classes of North Amer­i­can stocks, North Amer­i­can bonds and cash.

In the last sec­u­lar bull mar­ket, peo­ple who invested $1,000 in the Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age in 1966, were returned $850 in 1980.  On the other hand, peo­ple who invested in Tem­ple­ton Growth Fund in 1966, were returned $12,500 in 1980.  Sir John’s port­fo­lios were mostly invested in Japan dur­ing this period.  Dur­ing the cur­rent sec­u­lar bear, $1,000 invested in Gold in 2000 has grown to more than $6,000.  It is not easy to spot these oppor­tu­ni­ties, but my mes­sage is “look out­side of tra­di­tional mar­kets (North Amer­i­can stocks, bonds and cash) when they are in a sec­u­lar bear mar­ket phase.  You have to work harder to iden­tify opportunities.”

Dur­ing tur­bu­lent times, peo­ple seek infor­ma­tion.  If you are still pre­sent­ing num­bers, you are play­ing a game of Russ­ian roulette.  Clients need infor­ma­tion, not num­bers, dur­ing dif­fi­cult times.

Here’s my top 10 list (in reverse order) of how to cut back on the report­ing of num­bers and increase the report­ing of infor­ma­tion to enable you to have more mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions with your clients about their investments:

Num­ber 10 – Start using GoToMeet­ing or a sim­i­lar pro­gram to deliver your invest­ment or finan­cial plan­ning meet­ings.  This will make it eas­ier and less expen­sive for your clients to attend meetings.

Num­ber 9 – Have a quar­terly break­fast in which you invite a port­fo­lio man­ager or whole­saler as a guest speaker.

Num­ber 8 – Arrange reg­u­lar web inter­views with port­fo­lio man­agers or whole­salers.  Record them and put them on your website.

Num­ber 7 – Start writ­ing a quar­terly writ­ten com­men­tary about the invest­ment strate­gies and tac­tics of your invest­ment managers.

Num­ber 6 – Start book­ing off one to two days per quar­ter exclu­sively for invest­ment research and reporting.

Num­ber 5 – Pub­lish a quar­terly Barrons-like quar­terly round­table.  This is a great way to do a newslet­ter or blog.  Iden­tify four invest­ment man­agers that you work with, write out two ques­tions for each of them, get responses to your ques­tions, pic­tures and bios of you’re your pan­elists, for­mat and pub­lish.  This is really sim­ple to do!  You can also do this with cen­ters of influence.

Num­ber 4 – Set up a series of wealth man­age­ment meet­ings and calls, so the main focus of every meet­ing is not invest­ment management.

Num­ber 3 – If you are out­sourc­ing invest­ment man­age­ment, change your dis­cus­sions from returns to infor­ma­tion about why you hired their man­agers, man­ager qual­i­fi­ca­tions, per­for­mance in good and bad mar­kets and how they are man­ag­ing their money to pro­tect their cap­i­tal and gen­er­ate returns.

Num­ber 2 – Have a dis­cus­sion with your clients about the sec­u­lar bear mar­ket in North Amer­i­can finan­cial mar­kets and the need for dif­fer­ent strate­gies to pre­serve capital.

(Drum Roll) And the Num­ber 1 sug­ges­tion for hav­ing more mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions with your clients about invest­ment man­age­ment is:

Posi­tion your­self “on the same side of the table as your clients” and work with them to select, hire and fire man­agers and other pro­fes­sion­als.  HNW investors who have made their money as busi­ness own­ers or man­agers in large cor­po­ra­tions like to be in con­trol and build teams to help them achieve their goals.  Most are frus­trated when they work with advi­sors because they do not feel that kind of con­trol.  They want and need a CFO.  Not some­body who sells them things but a trusted advi­sor to whom they can del­e­gate respon­si­bil­ity so they can focus on things that are more impor­tant to them.

I will do a more in-depth blog on a cou­ple of these ideas in the near future to pro­vide you with more details.

I enjoy hear­ing from peo­ple who read my arti­cles by phone, e-mail or text mes­sage.  I respond to all inquiries the same day.  If you have a prob­lem and would like to dis­cuss it with some­body, I would wel­come your call.  I enjoy help­ing peo­ple solve prob­lems and build more suc­cess­ful businesses.

Bob Simp­son

Direct Line:  905−502−0100

Toll Free:      866−646−6002

E-mail:  bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca

Text Mes­sage:  905−502−0100

Web­site:  www​.syn​chronic​ity​.ca

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment, was branch man­ager and SVP National Sales for Mid­land Wal­wyn and has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

You can fol­low Bob Simp­son via:

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Tags: 1980s, Bob Simpson, Bull Markets, Canadian Tire, Earn Money, Good Chance, Investment Minds, Investments, Logic, Meaningful Discussions, Nbsp, Performance Consulting, Recession, Retail Analyst, Secular Bear Market, Secular Bull Market, Sound Strategy, Synchronicity, Uncertainty, Will Rogers
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Don’t Hesitate to Start Saving for Retirement (Trainor)

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

by Norm Trainor, The Covenant Group

Just because you are an entre­pre­neur doesn’t mean you will have to work your­self into the grave. Indeed, some finan­cial advi­sors may have cho­sen this line of busi­ness because it pro­vides them with greater con­trol over their income, lifestyle and career trajectory.

As the third part of an ongo­ing series on retire­ment and legacy plan­ning, this post will dis­cuss how you can achieve your retire­ment sav­ings goal.

Do you reg­u­larly push the idea of retire­ment to the back of your mind? Are you too focused on earn­ing income and build­ing the busi­ness right now to think about what you’ll be doing in a few years or a few decades? With­out writ­ten goals and a strat­egy that will keep you focused and dri­ven, you run the risk of end­ing up at point where you’d like to reduce work respon­si­bil­i­ties but do not have the sav­ings to sup­port the retire­ment you hoped for.

Decid­ing how much you want to save for retire­ment requires a lot of the same cal­cu­la­tions and actions as decid­ing how much income you want to earn next year, in five years or 10 years down the line.

Since entre­pre­neurs don’t usu­ally have an RRSP, 401(k) or other retire­ment fund set up, at least in the early days of build­ing their busi­nesses, you need to take plan­ning into your own hands. This is con­tin­gent upon cre­at­ing a busi­ness strat­egy that addresses where your com­pany is now in terms of rev­enues and prof­its, and where you want it to be in the future. Set an age for when you want to retire and a fig­ure for how much you would like to have saved at that point. How much income will you have to earn and set aside to hit that num­ber? Does the cur­rent path your busi­ness is tak­ing and its growth put that amount in reach? If not, you need to adjust your busi­ness plan and make the changes needed to turn the dream into an even­tual reality.

A sur­vey of U.S. res­i­dents from every income bracket, con­ducted by BMO Har­ris, found that 57 per­cent of respon­dents don’t think they will be able to save enough money for an ideal retire­ment, and 52 per­cent said they fore­see push­ing back their retire­ment date or tak­ing on a part-time job in their later years as a result.

With these sta­tis­tics in mind, under­stand the value of tak­ing time to plan out your retire­ment goals, cal­cu­late how much it will cost to meet them and strate­gize the imme­di­ate steps you must take to hit the finan­cial bench­mark. It’s never too early or too late to cre­ate a plan for how you can retire comfortably.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its’ lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

© The Covenant Group

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Tags: 10 Years, 401 K, Bmo, Business Plan, Business Strategy, Career Trajectory, Covenant Group, Earning Income, Entrepreneur, Financial Advisors, Income Bracket, Line Of Business, Nbsp, Norm Trainor, Respondents, Retirement Fund, Retirement Planning, Retirement Savings Goal, Saving For Retirement, Work Responsibilities
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Hiring Cycle: Making the Decision

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

by Matthew Asser, The Covenant Group

Pre­vi­ously, I dis­cussed how prepar­ing and research­ing for the inter­view process can result in more fruit­ful dis­cus­sions with appli­cants. In this sixth part of the ongo­ing series on resource man­age­ment and hir­ing, I want to dis­cuss some of the con­sid­er­a­tions in choos­ing a hire from your list of applicants.

While it can be fairly sim­ple to gauge whether an appli­cant has the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence, per­son­al­ity types can add another vari­able to your deci­sion. Iden­ti­fy­ing what your cul­ture and core com­pany val­ues are is just as impor­tant as hav­ing a list of the job require­ments. Do the can­di­dates that you are con­sid­er­ing have morals and atti­tudes that align with that mission?

One man­age­ment tip I came across in the Har­vard Busi­ness Review urged employ­ers to look at a poten­tial hire’s moti­va­tion as well. What do they stand to gain from a posi­tion at your firm? How do they plan to advance pro­fes­sion­ally? What are their one-, five– and 10-year plans?

As Norm Trainor explains in The Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­ney, you should iden­tify the skills nec­es­sary for the job. Ear­lier, you deter­mined the employee’s areas of account­abil­ity and what kind of pro­fes­sional val­ues are needed to per­form the role well — now ask whether the can­di­date has all of those fea­tures. Remem­ber to avoid the trap of seek­ing out employ­ees who are like you, as the entire point of del­e­gat­ing to other peo­ple is to build a team of employ­ees with a diverse set of skills, strengths and per­son­al­ity traits.

You are build­ing an orga­ni­za­tion, and its suc­cess is depen­dent on each per­son fit­ting into and excelling at his or her pre­de­ter­mined roles. Keep­ing com­pany cul­ture in mind is also vital. For instance, deliv­er­ing con­sis­tently high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice is essen­tial to the suc­cess of a finan­cial advi­sory firm, and that atti­tude must be shared by every­one in the organization.

Don’t for­get to send out a thank-you note to other appli­cants who did not pass the selec­tion process. The fact that an appli­cant was not the best option for this posi­tion does not mean he or she will not be bet­ter suited for a role in your busi­ness in the future. Main­tain con­tact with poten­tial hires and recruits — not only is it a com­mon cour­tesy, it will keep your hir­ing pipeline primed for the next time you choose to expand your team.

Matthew Asser has spent the last few decades gain­ing exper­tise in how finan­cial ser­vices firms can opti­mize their oper­a­tions, mar­ket­ing, new prod­ucts, busi­ness devel­op­ment and client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment prac­tices. He’s well-versed in the chal­lenges that an entre­pre­neur may strug­gle with, and as a Senior Coach and Facil­i­ta­tor, helps clients achieve busi­ness change through The Covenant Group’s exten­sive finan­cial advi­sor train­ing programs.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Asser, Company Culture, Company Values, Core Company, Covenant Group, Culture In Mind, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Advisory Firm, Fruitful Discussions, Harvard Business Review, Management Tip, Morals, Nbsp, Necessary Experience, Norm Trainor, Personality Traits, Personality Types, Professional Values, Quality Customer Service, Resource Management
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