Advisors need to embrace technology, says Norm Trainor, president of The Covenant Group in Toronto. Advisors who do not embrace technology today, he warns, may be extinct in five to 10 years.

Trainor and his team want to make it easy for advisors to become technology-enabled. The Covenant Group has just released its newest operating system, the Advisor Development Portal.

The Web-based program addresses the issues with which advisors struggle. Revenue growth, for example, is a key issue. Another is the fact that the expenses of financial advisory practices are growing at a rate that is often significantly greater than inflation. Advisors may be experiencing 1%-6% revenue growth while expenses may be increasing by 6%-10%, squeezing profits.

The difficulty is in knowing how to make your business profitable. In any given year, probably only 10%-20% of your clientele drives 80%-100% of your business growth. How do you make each client profitable? Technology can be the driver and enabler. It can help you increase revenue, improve cost management and increase profitability.

As soon as you log on to the Advisor Development Portal, you encounter the screen entitled “my status.” There you will see a summary of two essential information streams. The first establishes where you are in the practice development program. It determines what activities need to be completed and performed to keep your practice growing. All key areas are covered, including business, marketing, sales and service plans.

The second stream in the Advisor Development Portal details all the activities you identified in your planning as being critical to your success. Each day you can look at what activities need to be performed to achieve the objectives set for you and your staff for the next week, the quarter and the year. At a glance, you get the tactical information that ties into your strategy.

The problem with most advisors, says Trainor, who has worked with thousands of advisors around the world, is they don’t have a plan for business growth or, if they do have one, it is treated as a static document. The plan sits in a drawer and is reviewed only when it is updated for the following year.

All the exercises you complete on the Advisor Development Portal are part of the planning and help you identify what needs to be done to meet your objectives. All of the points lead to an activity manager that can fill your calendar as far out as 60 months, although 12 to 15 months is more likely. All of this links to popular customer relationship management solutions — such as Outlook, Act, Goldmine and Maximizer — which let you know what needs to be accomplished each day.

The other part of the Advisor Development Portal is a series of buttons that walk you through eight modules that show you how to implement a business management system to build a profitable enterprise, how to market to build your brand, how to maximize client relationships and how to manage and harness your resources. Laid out in a manner that’s easy to master, the portal allows you to build business, sales, marketing and service plans. All the elements are linked.

The portal also allows advisors to share best practices with others through the Virtual Wisdom Exchange. There are already 6,000 advisors using the exchange. With this feature, you can become part of a community, learning what does and does not work in running a successful advisory practice.

The portal’s “virtual coach” section is full of ideas and material developed by The Covenant Group that cover every aspect of an advisor’s business. A coach is also available to answer questions at the message centre, or to look at your business plan in real time or in virtual time.

At the “benchmark centre,” you can see how you rank against 15 criteria for business success.

All the documents related to your business will be located in one area called “organize my advisory practice.” It is designed to make running your business easier by keeping the information required for compliance, management and the eventual sale of the business at your fingertips.

To use the Advisor Development Portal, your dealership or sponsoring institution must purchase a licence. After that, there is a $500 annual fee that gives you access to the tools and coaching needed to grow your practice. IE

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