Advisory teams can be hugely helpful when it comes to leveraging the expertise of colleagues to boost business, say Wellington West Capital Inc. investment advisors Ty Cooke and Andy Martin. Such teams can even help members achieve life balance goals and plan for their orderly exit from the business.
Cooke and Martin belong to different advisory teams, which differ from each other in significant ways. Both teams, however, were created using the brokerage firm’s 10 basic principles of effective team management.
Cooke and two other advisors, Diane Orlic and Elizabeth Harding-Sykes, form the trio behind Orlic Harding Cooke Wealth Management Group, an Oakville, Ont.-based Wellington West advi-sory team that focuses on a clientele made up primarily of physicians. The advisory practice also includes restaurant-chain franchisees, who, like physicians, tend to incorporate their businesses. Administrative assistants Lisa Spencer and Kim Chagnon are also part of the team.
Martin’s team came into being when he acquired part of the book of advisor John Zandvliet. The two teamed up to form the Martin-Zandvliet Group, also based in Oakville. Two associate advisors — Noelle Tinus and Laura Hunter — round out this group.
Both practices follow these 10 principles:
> Complete A Personality Assessment Test For Each Team Member
Personality assessment tests allow an advisory team to place members in roles for which they’re best suited, and to identify areas in which the team may need to find someone to fill a role.
“Elizabeth [Harding-Sykes] and I are both implementers — we need to know what’s going on before we take the next step,” Cooke says. “One thing we saw lacking on our team was follow-through. Kim [Chagnon] is definitely a follow-through person, which we found when we did the personality assessments for her. It’s worked out really well to establish a very, very effective team dynamic.”
Both Cooke and Martin used the personality assessment tests from U.S.-based firm Kolbe Corp. , but other such tests are available.
> Decide On An Efficient Team Structure
Having assessed what each person’s strengths are using the personality assessments tests, your team needs to decide which team arrangement is ideal.
There are four main types of teams: specialization; rainmaker and manager; a partnership arrangement; and junior and senior.
In a specialization arrangement, each team member specializes in a particular area of the business. For instance, one team member makes the investment decisions, another is the insurance specialist and another is the financial planning expert.
A rainmaker/manager team involves one member being primarily charged with courting prospects and bringing in new business. Another member is responsible for the day-to-day operations and direction of the business.
A partnership arrangement involves each team member being an equal partner, sharing equally responsibilities, costs and revenue.
Finally, there’s a senior/junior team structure, in which one member serves as mentor, and the other member as protégé and eventual successor to the business.
Cooke describes his team’s structure as a hybrid of the specialization and partnership arrangements. In his team’s case, each of the senior team members has a particular specialty, but each is also an equal partner.
Meanwhile, Martin says, his team is a cross between the rainmaker/manager and the senior/junior arrangements.
“John [Zandvliet] and I talked for a little over two years before he settled on me being the guy who would run with his clientele and develop the book from then on,” Martin says. “Now, I manage the processes of the team, the vision and business development. John, with his roughly 40 years worth of business contacts, goes out there and tries to find four or five really strong clients per year.”
Both Cooke and Martin say that the proper team arrangement results in increased productivity and, ultimately, greater client satisfaction.
> Capitalize On Expertise: Position People In The Best Way To Use Their Natural Abilities
Once the personality assessments tests are completed and the team structure is selected, it’s time to assign jobs in a way that makes the best use of each team member’s talents.
Skills and interests are either similar, thus allowing collaboration among team members, or complementary. In the latter case, the skills of one team member can make up for a weakness in that skill in another member.
At Orlic Harding Cooke, Cooke serves as the “generalist” investment advisor; Orlic, as the investment specialist. Harding-Sykes is the insurance specialist. Spencer and Chagnon serve in supporting roles, with different administrative functions assigned to each.
• Top Advisor Summit: Tools and services to make your team’s productivity hum
Ty Cooke, an Oakville, Ont.-based advisor with Wellington West Capital Inc., describes some of the services and software he’s used to make his team work together, including client relationship management software, personality testing, coaching and book analysis. WATCH
• Top Advisor Summit: Four fundamental blocks for team building
Andy Martin, an advisor with the Martin-Zandvliet Group at Wellington West Capital Inc. in Oakville, Ont., describes the four fundamental ways that advisors can begin developing teams. WATCH
@page_break@> Create Clearly Defined Roles
It’s important to make sure jobs are defined clearly and that your team members are made accountable. The ideal way to do this is to write out detailed job descriptions and to implement regular evaluations to make sure all the bases are covered.
“This helps to set expectations — each team member has ownership of a specific role or job that needs to be done for each one of our clients,” Cooke says. “Clear job responsibilities foster greater efficiency per team member and, by extension, less stress for the team as a whole.”
At the Martin-Zandvliet Group, Martin reviews each team member’s accomplishments every quarter, and identifies any areas in which obstacles have arisen or in which workflow isn’t as efficient as it could be.
“If a team member is more suited to a particular task, or he or she can take it off someone else’s shoulders, then we make a change,” Martin says. “That fosters camaraderie and increases our success and job enjoyment on a day-to-day basis.”
> Develop A Well-Defined And Streamlined Client-Service Process
A clear and precise client-service process will ensure that everyone on your team knows his or her specific role, and that duplication is avoided.
At Orlic Harding Cooke, two members attend every first meeting with a prospect, which ensures that the firm understands the client’s needs and desires. A full review of the client’s financial picture is completed and, two weeks later, the firm gets together with the client with a proposed plan. Should both parties decide to proceed with the relationship, all the paperwork is done.
“Each one of our team members owns a portion of these very important initial steps,” Cooke says.
After 45 days, there’s another meeting with the client to review with him or her how his or her financial picture now looks.
> Invest In Team Productivity Tools
In addition to personality assessment tests, other productivity tools such as client relationship management software, segmentation software and business coaching can help in the effective functioning of your team.
CRM software tracks all of the actions taken on any client account, and allows each team member to see at a glance where everything stands for that account at any given moment. CRM software also has advantages for compliance purposes and business efficiency.
Segmentation services allow team members to track how they’re spending their time and how much value they’re realizing for time spent on an account.
“[Segmentation] is a way for us to calculate if a relationship is really worth what we think it is,” Martin says.
Coaching can help with establishing effective processes, including client-service processes. “Coaching has helped our team tremendously,” Martin says.
> Set Business Goals And Communicate Them To Team Members
Setting and communicating goals that are communicated to all your team members is critical to maximizing team’s strengths and achieving goals.
On Cooke’s team, weekly meetings are held to look at what was accomplished and what wasn’t over the past seven days, and everything is measured.
“For instance, [administrative assistant] Lisa puts together a spreadsheet looking at assets that have been transferred [into the business], and what’s pending,” Cooke says, “and what needs to be done from a documentation or compliance standpoint.”
> Engage Your Team: Push Them To Be Better
One of the benefits of working in a team is that it allows members to drive each other and challenge each other to become better.
As well, if your team is working efficiently, that opens up time for other team members to think about big-picture issues or to work toward new designations, which will help drive business growth.
> Offer Competitive Pay
Compensation structures work best when they are as transparent as they can be, both Martin and Cooke say. It’s important that your team members know what’s expected of them, and what they need to accomplish to achieve bonuses or additional compensation. Also, it’s important to have a fixed component and a variable component to compensation.
The variable component provides motivation, and ensures that everyone has “skin in the game.” But the fixed component makes sure that there is financial security there as well.
> Communicate Well And, Most Important, Listen
“Communication is vitally important within a team,” Cooke says. “You have to listen to what each of the team members is feeling, what they’re seeing and what they think is lacking. If you’re not communicating among the team, then the team is bound to fail.” IE